The city bled light like a wound that wouldn’t close.

Holo-screens hovered over the skyline like vultures, rotating through ads with surgical brightness. One flashed a contestant mid-scream as she dodged a swinging axe in a neon-lit maze—GameEnders: Final Cut. Another showed a smiling teenager blindfolded, hands outstretched in a pit of knives. Text scrolled beneath her: "Win your freedom, or bleed for the crowd."

Above it all, the banner for VirtuNet uncoiled across a high-rise, the voiceover chiming with sterile pride:

"VirtuNet—protecting citizens, one narrative at a time. Your safety is our story."

Another screen glitched to a polished PSA: an actor in a clinical coat smiling against a bright white background.

"Why execute, when you can educate? Every villain earns their end... so you don’t have to."

The screens pulsed with each cycle. Rhythmic. Hypnotic.

Beneath the glow, the city hunched low and clustered tight. Buildings mashed together like teeth—half-built over old scaffolds, stacked with sheet-metal walkways, washing lines strung across thirty-storey gaps. Grey. Cracked. Wired. They swarmed the street level in twisting corridors of concrete and steel, choked with heat haze and smoke. Higher up, the skyscrapers cut clean lines through the smog, their mirrored panels untouched by grime.

The crowd moved like a single machine.

Some rushed home, heads down against the drone traffic. Others queued at sizzling vendor carts, waiting for steaming plastic tubs of spiced synthetic noodles or skewers of processed meat that gleamed with some uknown glaze. A few just stood still—eyes blank, visors glowing faint blue as their fingers twitched in short, erratic motions. Browsing menus only they could see.

A chime rang across the streets:

"Category 4 Simulation Upload – Premiere in 00:18:36"

Heads turned. Some paused. Most didn’t care. There was always another show.

Two workers stepped out from a recycling station’s side hatch.

“Bloody hell, that stinks,” said the older one, peeling his respirator off and dragging his sleeve across his face. “You alright, Ava?”

“Not really, Jules.” She tossed her gloves into the chute and unzipped the front of her jumpsuit halfway. Her fringe was soaked in sweat, neon reflections dancing in her green mod-eyes. “If I see one more cockroach the size of a cat, I’m quitting.”

Jules snorted. “You say that every week.”

“And yet here I am.”

They turned onto the main drag. Didn’t talk. Didn’t need to.

An android in toddler form clicked past them, dragging a cleaning bot shaped like a dog. Its legs rattled with every step.

Above, a drone zipped low, barking promos for Suffer & Shine: Redemption Trials. The ad glitched. Restarted. Glitched again. Someone had spray-painted over the bottom: "What happens to the ones who lose?"

Up ahead, a massive red-wrapped screen stood waiting. It pulsed.

"New Broadcast Incoming: Category 4 Villain Program. Viewer Rating: Restricted."

“Category Four?” Jules raised a brow. “Must’ve done something juicy.”

Ava cracked her knuckles. “They always cry in the first five minutes.”

“If she starts apologising to the Saint, I’m turning it off.”

“That’s three this month.”

They reached the lift shaft of their housing tower—windowless, rusting, stamped with peeling white paint. A static logo flickered above the doorway: NEUROVISTA COALITION // For Safer Tomorrows.

Neither of them commented on it.

The lift creaked down. They stepped in. Just before the doors hissed shut, a final ad played:

"She built the code. She betrayed the trust. She butchered her blood. Now... let’s see if she can survive her own story."

Ava raised an eyebrow. “Insider?”

Jules gave a low whistle. “Ooh, they’re pulling out the big tropes tonight.”

The elevator doors hissed open with a jolt, coughing them out into the corridor like gum spat onto the pavement. Fluoro strips buzzed above, flickering between warm white and corporate blue, casting pale light onto cement walls lined with identical grey doors—each one stamped with a unit number and an electronic lock.

Level 20. Block H. Apartment 2047.

Ava keyed the lock and pushed the door open with her hip. Stale air hit her face, warm and recycled, thick with the scent of instant noodles and disinfectant. The place was barely wide enough to swing a broom in—bed, table, screen, reheat dock, and a fold-out sink wedged into the corner.

Home. Technically.

Jules stepped in behind her, shoulders heavy with the kind of bone-deep exhaustion only a ten-hour shift at the recycler could give you. He dropped his work bag in the doorway, peeled the seal on two nutrient boxes, and shoved them into the reheat dock.

“Same crap, different packet,” he muttered, punching the setting. 

Ava was already at the wall panel beside the screen, fingers flicking through the holo-channels in quick bursts of light. Ads pulsed across the interface—Escape Tower, The Execution Games, Prison Sweethearts, Vote to Kill—each more unhinged than the last. Laugh tracks. Blood splatter. Another contestant crying as they begged to keep their limbs.

She stopped when the screen shifted to the VirtuNet Channel. A soft purple-and-gold shimmer took over the room like fog in a cathedral.

“New Broadcast Incoming: Category 4 Villain Program. Narrative Title: The Saint’s Crown.”

A five-second countdown began, pulsing red in the corner of the screen.

Jules handed her the first box, steam curling out of the lid, and collapsed into the couch with his own. The cushions wheezed under him. Ava didn’t sit. She crouched in front of the screen like it might say something different if she got close enough.

“Another Saint show,” Jules said flatly.

Ava snorted. “Bet the villainess gets jealous, poisons someone, then chokes on her own tears before the second episode.”

“If they want ratings, they’ll have her push the Saint down the stairs in the first ten minutes.”

“Or start kissing her. Depends on the sponsors.”

The final tone hit.

The screen darkened, then flared to life with a crimson-lit PSA.

“VirtuNet: Your Safety. Your Entertainment. Your Justice.”

A city skyline appeared, clean and gleaming—unlike the one outside their window.

A calm, genderless voice spoke:

“In an age of chaos, VirtuNet offers rehabilitation through immersive simulation. Criminals are not executed. They are reformed. Their stories… are yours.”

A reel of headlines spun across the screen:

“Betrayal in the Core: VirtuNet Insider Slaughters Family.”
“Daughter of Simulation Architect Destroys Home in Cyber-Terror Plot.”
“School Prodigy Turns Killer: Rein Ashlin Arrested.”

Blurry surveillance stills followed. A pale girl in a school uniform, sitting in an interview room. A blood-stained desk. A man’s hand, limp and outstretched, still gripping a stylus.

“Rein Ashlin. Age seventeen. Student. Designer. Traitor.”

“Convicted of high-level data sabotage. Multiple counts of murder. Breach of simulation law. Sentence: Full Immersion. Category 4 Villain Path. Observation begins now.”

Ava blinked. “Shit. She’s just a kid.”

Jules didn’t look away from the screen. “Kids can be monsters.”

His eyes dropped, briefly, to her stomach.

Ava caught it, smirking as she reached up, caught his chin, and tilted it back up.

“Relax,” she murmured. “They always get what they deserve in the end.”

They both went quiet.

The PSA ended. The screen went black.

The the next scene started. No title sequence. No jingle. No filters.

Just a cold, candle-lit ballroom swallowed in shadow and smoke.

The walls were carved from dark, oil-polished wood, so smooth they reflected candlelight like pooled tar. The chandeliers above flickered, their flames twitching like they didn’t want to be here. Velvet drapes, too heavy for the windows, muffled the draft but not the unease. Everything was too still—like the whole scene was holding its breath.

The guests had already arrived. Nobles in long coats and corseted gowns stood in quiet clumps, eyes darting, backs stiff, murmurs rippling like wind through dry wheat.

They were waiting for something. But it wasn’t this.

At the centre of it all stood a man carved from winter. Black hair streaked with silver, drawn back and tied with surgical precision. A high-collared coat of deep crimson trimmed in silver hugged his tall, lean frame. He didn’t move. He didn’t blink. He didn’t need to.

The weight of his silence did all the talking.

Beside him, out of place like a porcelain doll set in a cage of wolves, stood a girl. Petite. Frail. Swallowed in a cream gown a size too large, sleeves slipping off one shoulder, lace bunching at her wrists. Her hands trembled—barely—but enough that her bracelets gave her away. Her eyes flicked toward the door, then down, then to her feet. She didn’t know where to look.

She wasn’t supposed to be here. She knew it.

“Is this... the Saint?” Ava squinted from the couch, a half-eaten packet of freeze-dried noodles going cold in her lap.

“Where’s the villain?” Jules muttered, sitting forward, elbow on one knee, remote forgotten in his hand.

The silence broke with a sharp inhale—noble murmurs rising.

The man at the centre turned his head. Slowly. Tension cracked in the air like ice underfoot.

“Where is she?” His voice was low, iron-dipped and venom-slick.

A servant in brown livery crept forward, head bowed so low his chin nearly touched his collarbone.

“We… we don’t know, my lord. She—she vanished and we haven't seen her since…”

His voice withered mid-sentence.

Gasps. Whispers.

Then—

SLAM.

The ballroom doors crashed open like a cannon blast, the wood rattling in its iron hinges. The flames in the chandelier guttered. Heads turned.

Two figures stood at the threshold.

The first was a boy—tall, smirking, dressed in a jacket tailored with enough gold trim to bankrupt a minor barony. His posture screamed nobility, but his grin was too sharp to be court-trained. He offered his arm not with courtesy, but confidence. Showmanship. Like he knew the room was his—he just didn’t care.

The second figure took it.

She stepped forward, heels striking the marble like the start of a war drum. Her hair was bone-white, cascading like silk over pale shoulders. Her eyes—crimson, merciless, unblinking—locked on the man at the centre of the ballroom and didn’t budge.

She wore black. Not mourning black. Not noble black. But predator black—sleek, high-collared, trimmed in crimson that sliced down the sleeves like veins cut open to breathe.

Gasps turned to whispers.

“That’s the second prince.”

“What’s he doing with her?”

“She was in isolation—wasn’t she disqualified?”

At the front of the room, the man in crimson narrowed his eyes.

“Where have you been?” he snapped, voice hard as iron gates.

The girl smiled.

Poised. Icy. Like she’d walked into this world with ash still on her boots and blood on her tongue.

She didn’t flinch. She didn’t bow.

“I’m home,” she said, voice silk-wrapped steel. “For my disinheritance.”

She took a step forward, red eyes catching the firelight like garnets.

“But it’s not going to go the way you planned.”

Her next words rang out, louder than the ballroom’s breathless silence. Louder than the whispering nobles. Louder than the crackling flames.

“This is my story.”

She smiled wider.

“And I decide what happens next.”

The apartment fell silent. Ava stared at the screen. Jules forgot how to breathe. The noodles sat forgotten, steam curling against the window-glow of corporate light.

Neither of them spoke. They leaned forward as if drawn toward a cliff’s edge.