Rain pours under the underpass.

  Heavy. Cold. Relentless.

  The road is a sheet of broken light, headlamps smearing across wet tarmac in long, trembling streaks. Above them, the city hums traffic, transformers, distant sirens awake and indifferent.

  Kam, Leo, Taylor, and Maya huddle beneath the concrete span. All four are soaked through, tired, pressed tight against the shadow line as surveillance drones drift lazily between streetlights like bored predators.

  A drone passes overhead.

  Its spotlight sweeps once.

  Twice.

  Moves on.

  “We can’t stay here,” Leo says, voice thin. “My thermal regulation is failing. I need a radiator.”

  He pulls his jacket tighter. His hands shake from the cold.

  “We need a safe house,” Taylor says. “Somewhere with no cameras. Somewhere the map doesn’t light up the second we step inside.”

  He checks the street. The tunnel mouth. The sky. Every angle feels compromised.

  “There’s nowhere,” Kam says. “The map’s greyed out. Everywhere we go, the lights turn red.”

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  Steam curls from his shoulders despite the rain soaking his hoodie. Where water hits him, it hisses softly, like the night is trying to cool a reactor.

  “We need supplies,” Maya says. “Food. Water. Something that isn’t adrenaline.”

  Another drone hums closer.

  Lower.

  They all draw back instinctively, shoulders tightening, breath held.

  “You need a patch kit.”

  The voice comes from the shadows.

  They turn.

  At the edge of the tunnel, a figure sits on a discarded mattress, half?hidden in the dark.

  Then he stands.

  He looks wrecked.

  A torn school uniform under a dirty, oversized parka. Hair matted. Face drawn tight. Eyes sharp in a way that suggests he hasn’t slept in days.

  His right hand is wrapped in a thick plaster cast.

  Marcus.

  Taylor steps forward slightly, instinctively putting himself between Kam and the unknown.

  “Whoa,” Taylor says. “Boss respawned.”

  “Marcus,” Kam says.

  Kam pushes off the pillar. Steam rolls off him in slow waves.

  “Relax,” Marcus says, raising his good hand. “I’m not here for round two.”

  He taps the cast against his chest.

  “Lesson learned. Don’t punch the mountain.”

  “You were deleted,” Leo says. “I checked. User not found.”

  Marcus laughs once a short, broken sound.

  “My key doesn’t work in my front door,” he says. “My phone bricked itself. My bank app says I don’t exist.”

  He swallows.

  “My mum”

  He stops. Looks toward the road like he’s afraid the sentence might summon something.

  “She looked right through me,” Marcus says. “Like I was lag.”

  A drone’s light flickers across his face.

  He doesn’t flinch.

  “Chloe wiped me, didn’t she?” Marcus says.

  “She archived you,” Maya says. “You’re a glitch.”

  Marcus steps into the streetlight.

  He looks smaller there.

  Unfinished. Half?rendered.

  He looks at Kam.

  “You’re the source code,” Marcus says. “You’re why everything’s breaking.”

  Kam’s posture tightens, the air around him shifting.

  “Are you going to try and stop me?” Kam asks.

  “Stop you?”

  Marcus reaches into his parka pocket slowly.

  Taylor stiffens, ready to move.

  Marcus pulls out a loaf of bread and a bottle of Lucozade and tosses them to Taylor.

  “I’m barely level one,” Marcus says. “I can’t fight the system. I can’t go home. I can’t log in.”

  He looks at them — really looks — and the fear in his eyes is raw.

  “I don’t exist.”

  A drone hums closer.

  Its spotlight sweeps the tunnel mouth.

  Sweeps past Marcus.

  Doesn’t slow.

  Marcus watches it go.

  “You’re the only ones who can see me.”

  Silence settles in, thick and cold.

  Rain pounds the concrete.

  The city roars on, uncaring.

  The drone fades into the distance.

  Kam keeps his eyes on Marcus.

  Something shifts in the air between them — not heat, not weight, but inevitability.