After the Message — Kyrie's Room (Night)
The message still blinked on Kyrie Barnes' screen.
"You're already in our simulation. Day 3 of 7: Confidence calibration complete."
He stared at the words in the dim blue glow of his laptop, his reflection faintly mirrored in the screen's black border. It wasn't the threat that unsettled him—it was the precision. The calm confidence of someone who had already moved three steps ahead.
He clicked back into the simulation footage. Again.
Each movement. Every pass. Rendered into metrics and motion maps.
He paused at Timestamp 58:42:
"X + Z2: Tempo clash. Partial desync. Exploit via high-line trigger."
X was him. Z2 was Ren.
They weren't just tracking plays. They were tracking relationships. Micro-shifts in rhythm. Emotional fractures masquerading as tactics.
He reached for his notebook and flipped to the most recent page.
"Code 10.0 — Reactive Mutation"
He drew a line through two bullet points. Circled another. Then stopped, his pen hovering. He turned toward the hallway. Toward her room.
Charlie.
He walked quietly through the darkened hall and paused at her door. It was slightly ajar. Inside, she was sitting cross-legged on the floor, coloring intently. A page filled with dragons, the kind that looked more like monsters than myths.
"Ky?" she said, not looking up.
"Yeah," he replied, his voice lower than usual.
She finally glanced over. "You okay?"
"Yeah," he lied.
She tilted her head and squinted. "No, you're not. Your voice goes flat when you're scared. Like you're reading a script."
He almost smiled at that.
Almost.
He watched her for a few more seconds—long enough to memorize the safety in the moment. Then turned and walked back to his room.
Inside the notebook, he added a new line beneath the code:
"If they touch the anchors, we burn the simulation."
Practice — The Next Day
Ren Nakamura was the first to notice.
Kyrie arrived early. Earlier than usual. He was already jogging along the touchline, his strides too tight, his eyes unfocused. Not in the good way. Not the calculating kind of focus.
It was the kind of focus that belonged to prey.
When drills started, Kyrie ran a press trigger too early, forcing a pass where none existed. On the next sequence, he cut inward, but the angle was off. In the third, he stepped late and nearly collided with Dante.
"Yo! You good?" Dante called, brushing off his shoulder.
"I'm fine," Kyrie answered, curt. One word. Sharp edges.
Coach Dominguez didn't say anything. Just folded his arms and watched.
After drills, Kyrie leaned against the fence, water bottle in hand. Ren walked over, not with aggression, but with purpose.
"You're playing like someone's chasing you."
Kyrie didn't flinch. "Maybe someone is."
Ren narrowed his eyes. "This isn't you. You're not just reacting. You're scrambling."
Kyrie kept his gaze forward. "You don't know what 'me' looks like."
Ren shook his head slowly. "I know what a leader looks like. And this isn't it."
Kyrie turned to face him, finally. His voice was low, controlled. "If I break, everything breaks."
"Then stop breaking," Ren shot back. "We don't need a hero. We need a teammate."
A beat passed.
No resolution. But something unspoken was left behind.
Coach split them into two teams for scrimmage. Kyrie and Jordan ended up on the same side.
For the first five minutes, Jordan didn't speak.
But he played. Hard.
Intercepted a pass clean. Threaded a switchball to Dante. Pressed Taylor so tightly he had to boot it into touch.
Afterward, Jordan walked past Kyrie.
"I'm not trying to be your shadow," he said. "But I'm not disappearing either."
Kyrie nodded slowly. "Then don't. Be undeniable."
Jordan grinned. "Already working on it."
5. Late Night — New Message
That night, the next message hit harder.
There was no video this time.
Just text. Cold, clinical.
S3: Emotional volatility = 67% spike.
Z2: Sync trust degradation = 12% per day.
X: Confidence fracture. Dream-state infiltration: Ongoing.
And then the final line:
"Day 4 of 7: Anchor extraction in motion."
There was a photo attached.
Charlie. Outside school. Backpack slung over one shoulder. Blurry figure in the background. Not close. But watching.
Deliberate.
Measured.
A shot across the bow.
6. Kyrie's Room — New Protocol
He didn't panic.
He didn't slam the laptop shut or throw a chair or scream.
He opened his notebook.
Drew a square. Then another around it. Then layered crosslines like a trap.
"Code 11.0 — Phantom Directive"
Dismantle predictive identity.
Inject chaos into offensive sequences.
Force opponent systems to recalculate every possession.
Convert team into multi-threaded decentralization. No single point failure.
He underlined one word three times:
"Chaos."
Then wrote beneath it the same words from his previous code , now more than ever before this seemed like the solution :
"They're watching. Let them. I'll blind them with silence. And when their system breaks… I'll be the ghost inside the crash."
Outside the window, a shape shifted in the shadows.
A figure.
Still.
Then gone.