The gun's muzzle flashed silver—but Liam was faster.
He slammed his phone into the driver's temple. The screen lit up with a cold blue pulse as the No Die app deployed a local Contract prompt.
"Contract Offered: Fix your trigger finger… or lose it forever."
The woman jolted. Her pupils dilated, as if something invisible had just wormed into her frontal lobe.
Her finger twitched.
And then… relaxed.
She blinked, the aggressive tension in her arm bleeding away like ink in water. The pistol lowered, sliding against her thigh with a soft scrape of metal-on-fabric.
The app chimed.
CONTRACT ACCEPTED
SUBJECT: "MASON"
PAYMENT TYPE: DIGITAL CURRENCY
CRYPTO INCOMING...
Liam backed away slowly, keeping his eyes locked on her twitching hands. "What's your name?" he asked.
"…Mason," she said through gritted teeth. "But I paid in crypto."
A sudden ding made Eva flinch. Liam glanced at his screen:
$LIVE COIN DEPOSIT: 10,000
(Value: $50,000 USD)
FOLLOWER DRAIN: 200K "GUN-TUBE" SUBS TRANSFERRED TO USER: LIAM KESSLER
Then it happened.
Mason's fingers straightened all at once, snapping into place with an audible crack-crack-crack. She screamed—not in pain, but confusion.
"What the hell did you do to me?!"
Liam was already typing on the app's dev shell.
"Side effect," he muttered. "Minor rewiring."
He looked up at her with the faintest grin.
"Now you crave vitamins."
Mason recoiled like she'd been slapped. "What?!"
"Just a taste of the Placebo Upgrade Path. You'll be eating broccoli in your sleep."
Eva was still processing everything. "Wait… wait, we're selling contracts now?"
"No," Liam said. "We're selling reasons to stay alive."
Trending Now – #1
#NoDieChallenge
2.1M Tweets
"YOLO is dead. Now we YOLD – You Only Live Decades."
"Just drank bleach. @NoDieApp save me or I'm suing."
"This app is either satanic or genius or both."
Back on the street, the world had changed.
People stood on rooftops, phones raised. They weren't filming fires or war or influencers anymore. They were filming miracles.
Liam couldn't walk five steps without someone asking for a pulse scan.
In the crowd, a man dropped to the ground and fake-froze his own heartbeat with synthetic toxins. A timer started flashing on his chest:
"DEAD FOR 3 SECONDS. CONTRACT ME NOW!"
Another woman coughed up blood—too real to fake—and shoved her daughter forward, begging Liam to fix her. Others waved wristbands with government-issued death dates blinking red.
Then the sirens started again.
A Reaper van screeched past, doors wide open, its megaphone screaming:
"ATTENTION CITIZENS. THE 'NO DIE APP' IS A SCAM. ALL USERS WILL BE TERMINATED."
Some people ducked behind walls. Others pulled out their phones and recorded it.
Liam's buzzed.
He expected death threats. Ministry notices. Data wipes.
Instead—
ENCRYPTED MESSAGE
From: HEALTH REAPER #8819
"I'll give you 10M $LIVE for my daughter's asthma. DM me."
His hands froze.
Even the enforcers were breaking.
Eva peeked over his shoulder. "Wait… is that legit?"
"Ministry tag matches," Liam murmured. "Health Reaper. Rank-B. No fake."
Mason whistled. "They're not loyal anymore. The system's cracking."
"No," Liam corrected. "The system's bleeding."
He turned back toward the crowd—and froze.
In the middle of the street, a tall armored figure had landed from a black glide-drone.
Cloaked in obsidian plating, her mask displayed a single glowing character: 年 — the symbol for "year." Her weapon looked like a taser, but the coils glowed bright violet.
Eva whispered, "That's not a normal Reaper…"
"No," Liam said grimly. "That's a Captain."
Absolutely — let's keep the cinematic
The Captain's boots hit the pavement with surgical precision. She didn't walk—she measured steps. Each one echoed like a gavel cracking open fate.
Eva backed up. "I've seen vids of her. They call her Soma. Taser's not standard. They say it… ages people."
Mason blinked. "Excuse me—what?"
Soma raised her arm. The violet taser unfolded, snake-like and segmented. High-voltage veins pulsed across it—alive. Her voice came smooth, digitized, almost… motherly.
"Liam Kessler. Citizen 47-88-2B. Under Article 19, Section 66, Subsection C…"
"You are under arrest for unauthorized healing."
Liam didn't move.
"Drop the device. Surrender peacefully. The Ministry guarantees a painless extraction."
Eva whispered, "Do not drop that phone."
The Captain moved first.
The taser hissed, and violet arcs lanced across the air. She fired—
—and Liam caught it.
Literally. His hand closed around the wires, skin bubbling with burnt static—but he didn't scream.
He smiled.
No Die App: CONTRACT MILESTONE REACHED
10 CONTRACTS SECURED
ABILITY UNLOCKED: BIO-LOCK BREACH (TIER 2)
NEW SKILL: REVERSE AGING – 5 Years per Use (Cooldown: 12 hours)
Liam's pupils glowed white for a second, then his voice deepened—resonating with system undertones.
"Wanna test that taser again?"
Soma's eyes flickered. Confusion. Her HUD likely said immune.
Then Liam activated it.
His hand twisted upward, and a pulse—subtle but unnatural—shimmered between them. A temporal loop reversal, anchored through biometrics.
Soma's body convulsed. She staggered back.
And then… began to de-age.
The first thing to change was her skin—wrinkles pulling taut like time had gone in reverse. Her back straightened. Shoulders leveled. The rigid stiffness melted.
Her tactical armor looked too big suddenly.
The violet taser fell from her fingers.
She reached for her face slowly. "I… I haven't looked like this since I was… eighteen."
Her voice cracked.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Someone shouted, "Is this a glitch?"
Another person livestreamed, "Bro just turned a Reaper into a teenager! WHAT?!"
Liam stepped forward. The aura around him—blue, glitching, holy—almost didn't seem human anymore.
"Tell your boss," he said, "I can do that for him too."
He tilted his head.
"For a price."
#Trending:#ReverseAgingHack
"Dude gave her a skincare routine from God."
"Ministry Captain turned IG baddie?!"
"I need this app before my high school reunion."
Soma dropped to her knees.
Not because she was weak—but because she believed.
"You could save us…" she whispered.
Her voice wasn't metallic now. It was human.
"You could fix everything…"
Liam said nothing.
Behind him, Mason stepped closer—staring at his phone, jaw slack. "Liam…"
He didn't respond.
"Liam—dude—my subscribers…"
Liam turned slowly. Mason's face was pale.
"They're… messaging me."
"What?"
"From beyond the grave."
Absolutely — here's the cinematic final part of Chapter 2, completing the "Viral Blood" arc with a haunting twist.
CHAPTER 2: "VIRAL BLOOD"
(WebNovel Format | Part 3/3)
(~1,000+ words)
Mason's hands trembled. "Look at this…"
She shoved her screen toward Liam. Eva leaned in too.
Comments were flooding in. But not from bots. Not from trolls.
@JaxLives
"Dude… tell my mom I didn't mean to OD."
@SerenaStillHere
"Contract Liam. Even if you have to dig me out of Sector 9."
@ZeroLastBreath
"Is it true… I can come back? It's cold here."
One by one, the user bios showed the same terrifying thing.
Status: DECEASED.
Date of Death: [REDACTED]
Ping Source: UNKNOWN CLOUD LAYER.
Eva stepped back. "That's not just spooky. That's illegal. The cloud doesn't allow pings from closed accounts."
Liam's eyes narrowed. "Unless they're not from the cloud…"
He turned back to his phone. His interface—once simple—was glitching, folding in on itself like a Mobius strip made of code. A new tab appeared.
[ DEΛDNET ]
"One million echoes await your response."
The screen pulsed red.
In the corner of the plaza, Soma—still knelt and teenage again—whispered, "DeadNet… was just a theory."
Liam barely heard her.
He tapped the new tab.
Reality flickered.
And suddenly—
The world went quiet.
The crowd vanished.
The buildings grayed out.
Only static remained. Floating particles like ash in moonlight.
Liam looked around. Eva, Mason, the Captain—gone. His phone? Still in his hand. But the screen now read:
Welcome to the Waiting Room.
Population: 1,002,871
Category: UNRESOLVED
And then—they appeared.
Not ghosts. Not quite people. Faint outlines, shimmering like corrupted holograms.
Their faces flickered. Their voices sounded like cached whispers in a lagging livestream.
One of them stepped forward—an old man in a priest's robes, half his jaw missing.
"You cracked it."
"You made death afraid again."
"So now… the dead want in."
Liam's breath caught. "What is this place?"
"It's the inbox the system hides."
"The part of the cloud that doesn't sync."
"The part where souls scream silently, hoping for one more ping."
He tried to back up, but his feet were rooted.
"Why me?"
"Because your app… isn't just saving lives."
"It's flagging anomalies."
Liam's interface buzzed.
Ping: Request From User @JaxLives
"Sign Contract: Re-entry to Life (Class: Spectral Recall)"
Warning: HIGH RISK | System Breach Likely
"Accept or Decline?"
He hesitated.
Behind him, a ripple in the static stirred—and more outlines stepped closer. Hundreds. Thousands. Echoes of people who had once lived, now fighting to exist again.
They began to chant:
"Don't let them silence us."
"Don't let the Ministry erase us."
"You made an app that broke the firewall of the afterlife…"
"So finish it."
Back in the real world—
Liam's body twitched. Eva screamed.
He'd gone still, eyes white, face pulsing with micro-glitches. "He's locked in!" she shouted.
Mason was already typing furiously. "Don't touch him. If he's syncing with DeadNet, even a jolt could kill him."
Soma stood up, eyes full of awe and dread. "Is he the first to cross both realms?"
Mason didn't answer.
Then—flash.
Liam gasped, collapsing to his knees, as if falling from space. His phone hit the ground. Smoke rose from his fingertips.
But he wasn't the same.
Behind his eyes now glowed not just code—but faces.
Thousands.
NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: DEΛDNET MODE
"You may now contract with the Deceased."
Risk: EXTREME | Sanity Threat: ACTIVE
Perk: You gain access to memories and abilities of the willing Dead.
Perk: Followers from the Other Side boost your Viral Index permanently.
✅ You have 1,000,000 Followers from Beyond.
Liam looked at his screen—at the names flickering like candlelight in code.
"Okay…" he whispered, voice half-hollow. "Then let's make death… go viral."