The silence after the system's last sentence felt heavier than any scream.
"Not authorized?" Leo repeated. The words tasted wrong. "So… you're saying someone did this to me. On purpose."
No answer.
The white-gray chamber seemed to stretch, the grid beneath his feet expanding into the distance. The circular timer beside the deletion warning pulsed faintly, as if reminding him it was still there. Still counting. Still patient.
Leo took a step forward.
The world rearranged itself around him.
One moment he stood in the blank chamber; the next, the white peeled away like mist burned off by sunlight. Color flooded his vision in violent waves—neon blues, electric pinks, harsh yellows that cut across the gray like wounds. The air filled with noise: the hum of engines, the hiss of distant steam vents, the low murmur of thousands of overlapping voices.
He stood in the middle of a street.
A city street.
Towering buildings climbed into a sky smeared with holographic advertisements. Screens wrapped around entire skyscrapers, flashing smiling faces, product logos, looping news headlines in languages Leo couldn't read. Cars glided along invisible rails above the road, their undersides glowing. Below, streams of people moved in tight, hurried lines—some solid, some faintly transparent, their edges flickering like weak signals.
Leo froze.
No one looked at him.
Pedestrians passed through his space without slowing, their bodies intersecting with his like overlapping images on a screen. The sensation was… strange. Not painful. Just wrong. Like being erased and redrawn in the same instant.
"Okay," he breathed. "Okay, okay, okay…"
He turned in a slow circle, taking it in. The city was beautiful in a way that made his chest ache—too bright, too alive. Neon signs reflected off rain-slick pavement that never seemed to dry. A massive hologram of a woman with silver eyes smiled down at him from the side of a tower.
FOREVER CLOUD – LIVE FOREVER, LIVE BEAUTIFULLY
The slogan made his stomach twist.
"This is… real?" he asked the empty air. "This is what your world looks like?"
"This is Neon Spire City," the system replied. "Rendering optimized for Digital Ghost perception."
"So I'm stuck inside your… screens," Leo said. "Like some kind of glitch in a video game."
"Correct."
He swallowed. "Can anyone see me?"
"Only registered Digital Ghosts and authorized users can perceive your presence."
Leo's gaze snapped to a group of translucent figures gathered near a glowing storefront. They looked human—an old man with a cane made of light, a woman holding the outline of a child's hand. Their faces were sharp, their eyes too still. They spoke to each other, but no sound reached him.
"Those are… like me," Leo murmured.
"Yes."
The word landed heavier than it should have.
A sudden flicker rippled across the street. The holographic advertisements glitched, their perfect smiles breaking into static. The crowd of digital ghosts stiffened as one, their heads snapping toward the far end of the avenue.
Leo followed their gaze.
Something moved through the air.
At first he thought it was a drone. Then he saw the shape—tall, angular, humanoid. Its body was made of dark, shifting polygons, as if reality couldn't decide on a single form for it. Blue lines traced its limbs, pulsing in time with the faint mechanical whine it emitted.
Then another appeared.
And another.
Three figures descended from the space between buildings, their feet touching the ground without sound.
A ripple of fear passed through the gathered ghosts. Some scattered, dissolving into nearby screens. Others flickered, their forms destabilizing.
"What are those?" Leo asked, his pulse spiking.
"Data Police," the system said. "Enforcement units tasked with locating and purging corrupted files."
Leo's eyes snapped back to the timer hovering in his vision.
Corrupted file.
Him.
The nearest Data Police unit turned its faceless head toward him. Where its eyes should have been, two points of blue light flared to life.
Leo ran.
He didn't know how his legs worked in this place. He didn't feel them pumping, didn't feel the slap of feet against pavement. The city blurred around him as he darted between solid bodies and flickering ghosts, neon reflections streaking across his vision.
"System!" he shouted. "How do I get away from them?"
"Evasion protocols are not available to corrupted files," the voice replied.
"Then give me something that is!" Leo yelled.
A Data Police unit lunged. Its arm elongated, fingers splitting into sharp threads of light that sliced through the air where Leo's head had been a second earlier. The street behind him rippled as the threads cut into the digital fabric of the world, leaving a jagged scar that glowed before sealing itself shut.
Leo swerved, barreling toward a massive vending machine embedded in the side of a building. Its glass front glowed with rows of brightly colored drinks that didn't exist anywhere except as light.
"Go!" he gasped, slamming into the screen.
The world shattered.
For a split second, Leo existed everywhere at once—his vision splitting into dozens of overlapping angles, each one framed by glowing glass. Then he slammed back into himself, the sensation of being squeezed through a keyhole making his nonexistent stomach lurch.
He reformed inside the vending machine's display.
The city outside was muted now, filtered through layers of translucent glass and glowing product logos. The Data Police units skidded to a halt on the street, their heads turning in precise, mechanical unison.
One of them stepped closer to the vending machine. Its blue gaze swept over the rows of drinks, pausing for a fraction of a second on the space Leo occupied.
He held his breath.
The unit tilted its head, as if listening to something only it could hear.
Then, suddenly, the glass in front of Leo flickered.
A different face appeared in the reflection.
Not his own.
A girl stared back at him from the other side of the screen.
She looked about his age, maybe a little older. Her hair was pulled back into a messy knot, strands escaping to frame sharp, focused eyes. She wore a battered jacket with glowing circuit-thread seams, and one of her hands held a small, flickering device covered in wires.
Her eyes widened.
"You can see me?" Leo mouthed, pressing his glowing palm against the glass.
Her lips parted in shock.
"You're not supposed to be here," she whispered.
Behind her, the Data Police units turned in perfect sync.
And the vending machine's screen began to crack.