"Hey Vivian, audio message Roxanna Davis. Message: ..." Staring into space with a sudden feeling of uncertainty, I try to think of what to say to my best friend. "I... I'm sorry we never got to talk. I promise I'll answer your questions when I can... And thank you for not turning me in. Remember that creepy mad scientist, Dr. Blayne? Turns out, I'm his target for experimentation. Yeah, Cayden meant the whole 'hope he doesn't experiment on you' thing as a joke, but I guess there was some truth to it." Now that I've started speaking, the words begin to flow. "Anyway, sorry I didn't see you at school. I was, y'know, running from the crazy mad scientist. I promise I'll talk to you soon, and... I'm sorry. Maybe I should've told you sooner. Or maybe I shouldn't have told you at all, I— I don't know. I don't want to burden you with what I said and what you now know... But then again, you'd know now anyway..." Once again, words start to fail me, and I don't know what to say. "Anyway, umm, talk to you soon, hopefully. Bye, Roxy. End message."

"Message recorded. Please confirm this is correct:" Vivian says, and plays back my audio message. "Would you like to send it to: Roxanna Davis?" The virtual assistant asks.

After a moment's hesitation, I shake my head, then realize Vivian can't see me and say,

"Um— no thanks. Don't send it." I've dragged her into my messed up life enough, I should just let her be. The less she knows about what's going on with me, the better.

Besides, even though I've arranged for my AMs to be sent through 1NT-C0M, the dark-web site I used to use for "work" communications, the UNBI might still be alerted to Roxanna receiving the message even if they can't trace where it was sent from. They'd ask her about it, and she'd have to decide whether to lie for me, putting herself at risk, or just let them hear the message, and would probably feel like she's betraying me, even though there's nothing on the recording that would lead them to me anyway, but they would know about Dr. Blayne, and is that even a bad thing?, and... OK, shutting up my chaotic thoughts now. Point is, bad idea.

"Would you like to scrap this recording?"

"Umm... No. Save it as a voice note." Maybe I can't send it, but at least I can keep track of the things I wish I could say. Maybe that'll make me feel a little less... alone.

"Happy birthday to me, I'm only seventeen, and I'm alone in my apartment, with the whole world after meee..."

With an eye roll, I blew out the single candle on my sad little cupcake. Hey, at least I'm not in the hospital like I was on my 14th birthday.

That thought didn't make it much better, though. At least on June 16th, 2118 I had Idra, Roxanna and Cayden sitting by my bedside, talking and joking with me to take my mind off things. Even my mother stopped by the hospital room, bringing with her what would turn out to be the only reminder I'd have of my dad — the birthday gift he bought for me a few weeks before he died.

Instinctively, my hand moved to my neck, but the familiar pendant wasn't there. No, the little black circular charm with the Gemini constellation engraved was back in Japan, lying on my dresser, abandoned.

The constellation wasn't chosen because of my birth month. As an astronomer, my dad never cared much for the myths and beliefs surrounding astrology. No, he chose Gemini because of one star, Alhena, or Gamma Geminorum.

When I was little, he used to call me A-Star, saying my eyes shined like a blue, A-type sun. He always liked Alhena in particular, the larger star in a bright binary system near the bottom of the Gemini constellation, representing the right foot of the left twin. In place of that star on the necklace was a tiny blue light, powered by a solar cell that camouflaged as the night sky background. I used to wear it everyday, back in Tokyo. Well, every day except one.

Tuesday, June 08, 2120. The day after I told Roxanna that I was Codebreaker. With my mind preoccupied with her, the Dr. Blayne warning from Darien, and the interview by the police, I completely forgot about it that morning. Later, when I stopped back at the house before catching my flight, I was so busy packing and triple-checking my escape plan that it slipped my mind again.

So, here I was, sitting alone in my apartment on my birthday, my friends, mother, sister and my last connection to my dad all 10 000 kilometers away. I can't even invite Melia over, because as far as she knows, my birthday is in April.

"What do you think, cupcake?" I sadly addressed the pastry. "Will you keep me company?"

Ding-dong...

Placing the cupcake back on the table, I headed toward the door, checking through the peep-hole before opening it. Darien.

"Hey," I greeted him. "What's up?"

"You know, Liz," he shakes his head, "I'm very disappointed in you..."

"And why's that?"

After we'd both gone inside and closed the door, he answered,

"You didn't tell me it was your birthday! Can you believe I had to find out from a true crime blog about you?"

I laughed. "I didn't think it was important..."

"Of course it's important," he tells me. "Just because you no longer have blue hair and dress like an emo kid from an early-2000s high school movie..."

"Hey!"

"...does not mean you aren't still Kalix Raven. Your birthday is part of your identity, and just because you're pretending to be someone else, doesn't mean you should stop being who you are."

I smiled and pulled him into a hug. After letting go, he held out a small wrapped box and said,

"Besides, everyone likes birthday presents, right?"

Beside me on the bed, my phone chimes, pulling me out of the memory.

It's a notification from the reminders app telling me to update SnapKnot. I set it up when I first started using my new identity, so I'd remember to post often enough that I look like an actual person. Even if I look real in the Identity Database, an 18-year-old with no internet presence is kind of suspicious, especially since I supposedly have a social rank of B.

I tap to open the app and navigate to my profile. Below my rather uninspired bio — "loves reading, hates bugs, bad at writing bios" — there are 52 posts, fairly generic photos, timestamped from 2113 to now. Backdating it took some work, but I can't have it looking like I only started using SnapKnot this year. My alias would've been 11 in 2113, a pretty average age to start an account. To make it more realistic, I made sure to increase the frequency of the posts as the alias got older — 50% of the photos are timestamped from the past two years.

Now, what could I post... Maybe I'll look through other people's feeds for inspiration.

Melia is listed as my most frequent contact, so I'll start with her. Below her name, pronouns and bio — a Shakespeare quote, "This above all: to thine own self be true.", followed by several emojis including a book, a cup of coffee, a gear and a trans flag — are mostly pictures of her with friends as well as a few scenic shots.

I think I have a sunset picture from a few days ago... Maybe I could post that.

Then again, the last five posts on my page have been similar sorts of nature shots or pretty sky pictures. To be fair, not being able to post pictures with my face in them certainly limits my options, but I should still have variety, right? Would it be suspicious to post too many similar things? Or am I overthinking this?

Leave it to me to start overthinking about a frickin' SnapKnot post...

The thing is, part of me wants to just post some random photo, the pretty sunset or a skyline shot or something. Because that part of me wants to believe this doesn't matter, not really. It's temporary. It just has to look reasonably real until I can go back to my real life. But, how do I put this nicely...

That part of me is a delusional coward.

How exactly does that stupid little brain voice think I'm going to just go get my life back? Even if Dr. Blayne spontaneously combusts or something, it's not like the UNBI will just forget about me.

And I know, either way, this is a little silly. I'm a wanted fugitive and I'm worried about what to post on my SnapKnot feed? But this is my life, my reality, for the foreseeable future. It's almost like putting little effort into my post is some kind of metaphor for putting little effort into my life here.

...Or, maybe I'm being ridiculous and should just post the stupid sunset already.

Yep. That. That's the truth. I roll my eyes and click the "new post" button.

After posting the photo, then mindlessly scrolling through other people's pictures, I somehow stumble upon a crumb of creativity regarding the bio situation. With a click of the edit button on my profile, I start typing,

Life, noun.

The thing passing you by while you scroll through SnapKnot.

With that, I close the app. I'm about to put my phone away when it chimes in my hand, alerting me to a new message from Darien.

Darien: Hey :)

Darien: I'm bored, can I come over and annoy you? /hj

Elizabeth [Me]: Sure 😂

Darien: Yays

Darien: Also... I made way too many brownies. Can I bring some over?

Elizabeth [Me]: Absolutely! (and you really don't have to ask before bringing brownies)

Darien: Cool beans! Brownies and one (1) Bored Friend With Too Much Energy on their way.

* * *

"That's impossible!" I exclaim, reaching for a second brownie... or maybe a third. "No one could beat level 42 on their first try. I still haven't passed it on my 87th try..."

"He did it, I swear," Darien says, seeming almost as disbelieving as me. "That guy was like the Hopstacle Course chosen one or something. He wouldn't stop telling me and his other friends about it, either, though. So, I played the game all week, managed to clear level 43, taught myself some basic hacking and changed the number of attempts to one. He couldn't believe it. To this day, I haven't told him the truth." He pauses for a second. "Maybe I should feel kind of bad about that..."

Still chewing a bite of brownie, I try not to laugh.

"You never know, you might've permanently destroyed his Hopstacle-Course-derived self-confidence..." I joke, shaking my head in mock disapproval. "That's seriously how you started learning hacking, though? Your friend's video game score?"

"Yep. That is, and and will forever be, my origin story."

"Well, it's definitely very you."

"What about you? How'd you get into all this?"

"Honestly, just boredom. A whole lot of boredom. And maybe some teenage emotions I didn't know how to deal with."

"Fair enough," he says, reaching for the container. "So, what have you been up to?"

"Oh, my day's been nothing special. Just work, then trying to figure out what to post on my fake SnapKnot to look like a real person."

"Hmm." Darien pauses for a second, appearing to thoughtfully examine a brownie. "Do you ever think about how weird it is? SK, social ranks, all of it. Everyone in the world being... categorized, graded based on the online interactions on a series of images, and messages back and forth, and mentions of your name. It's like society is a game we're all just playing, trying to raise our scores."

"I guess I've never thought about it that way, but you make a good point. It's all so calculated, so... what's the word..."

"Unreal?" he guesses.

"Exactly."

"Philosophical discussions of society aside, though, did you find anything to post?"

"Just a sunset. Kinda boring."

"I bet it's pretty, though."

"Well, sure, but the sky gets the credit for that. No creativity on my part."

With an amused smile, he tells me it doesn't matter, because I'm creative in real life. I guess he's right, but then again, "real life" is somewhat of a grey area at the moment.

"Speaking of SnapKnot," he starts, "have you, by any chance, looked yourself up lately?"

"Well, I was on my profile when I posted—"

He shakes his head. "Not that profile."

"You mean, my actual identity? No, not since I left Tokyo."

"You've got to see this." He takes out his phone and, in a few fast taps, unlocks it, opens SK and types my name into the search bar. He passes me the device.

My eyes scan the screen, quickly taking in the information. I have a private account, so my follower count hasn't changed, but—

"40 800 mentions?" My eyes widen at the number at the top right of my profile. "That's... so many mentions! That's a lot— that's... that is just too, too many... Do you know how many mentions I had two months ago? 72. Not 172, not 720. Seventy. Two."

"I know," he chuckles at my reaction. "Pretty strange, huh?"

"'Strange' is an understatement..." I nod, handing his phone back. "Wait, what do you mean 'you know'? That was before you knew my identity."

"Oh, I looked you up when I found out Dr. Blayne was planning to kidnap you," he says.

"Ah." The comment made me start to wonder about something. "How did you find out about that, anyway?" I ask.

"It's kind of a long story."

"Not like I have anything better to do with my time," I joke.

Darien nods, glancing thoughtfully at the floor for a few seconds before beginning the explanation.

"It started out pretty simply, actually. I was bored, so I started scrolling through 1NT-C0M chats, not really knowing what to do. You know how someone set up an alert thingy in case an agent tries to access the NSN from a UNBI server? Well, it started going off, and I was the only one online at the time, so I decided to check it out."

"Hold on, the UNBI found out about the NSN?"

The NSN, or Nuclear Server Network — nuclear as in "family", not "weapons", chill — is a collection of dark web servers only accessible to hackers on 1NT-C0M. It's incredibly top secret and hidden from the rest of the dark web, used only for a few similarly secret messaging groups and what's referred to as counter-investigation projects, basically security projects to protect us from the UNBI. Only a handful of people know it exists. As far as I know, 28, to be exact, all of them hackers and members of 1NT-C0M.

"As it turns out, no," Darien answers. "But at the time, I was wondering the same thing. When I looked into the signal, though, it got weirder. It wasn't coming from some powerful UNBI supercomputer, but an elevator console in a building in Copenhagen. After analyzing it further, I found that the attempted connection had opened up a weakness in the building's main computer network, so I used it as a backdoor and got access to the whole security system. Door locks, cameras, everything."

"Just like that?"

"Seems too easy, right? I thought so too. It's like someone wanted me to get in. Specifically, I think Azria Quarta wanted me to get in, which we'll get to in just a second."

"What? Why would she—"

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, scrolls through something, and hands it to me. A video from what must be a security camera at the UNBI office shows two people in an argument, Azria Quarta and an unknown man.

"You don't understand!" Azria says, protesting with clear concern in her voice to the man, presumably a UNBI agent. "He's following the rules for now, but if — when — he accepts the sponsor, he'll be untouchable. All due respect, Agent, you don't know how much influence these corporations can have. Dr. Blayne, with corporate backing... the ethics committee doesn't stand a chance against that kind of power."

"Ms. Quarta, I wish I could be of help to you, but you know as well as I do that the UNBI can't interfere with corporate disputes," the agent tells her.

"This isn't a corporate dispute," she explains, "at least, not yet. Look, I'm not telling you to arrest him or anything, just keep an eye on him. I don't know everything he's up to, but I know what he's told me, and I know him. He's obsessed with his work, and if he doesn't get what he wants, he'll break the law, or get someone else to. One way or another, he will get his hands on the test subject, and it will end badly. The UNBI can't just sit back and let this happen!"

"I'm sorry, I really wish there was something I could do, but I can't." He seems apologetic as he replies. "You could take this higher up the chain of command, but honestly, I don't think you'll get anywhere. Even in cases where it's technically still within our rights, the UNBI doesn't like to get involved in corporate matters."

Azria answers something inaudible to the security camera's microphone, then starts to walk toward the exit. Just as the door slides open, she turns back around.

"He's going to kill her, you know that?"

"Wha— who?"

"The test subject. Some kid in Japan. He's going to experiment on and, in all likelihood, kill a teenage girl because even the one organization in the world that's supposed to maintain global safety and justice is afraid of a damn corporation!"

The video ends as she walks out the door.

For a few seconds, I stare at the phone screen in silence, not fully knowing how to react. He's going to kill her. Me. I'm her. Of course, I already know Blayne's intentions to experiment on me, I already know they wouldn't exactly end well, but hearing her say it out loud...

"How did she even do it?" I ask him, though whether it's a genuine question or I'm just trying to change the subject, I don't know. "Give you backdoor access, I mean."

"My best guess? She connected to the elevator panel with some kind of mod in her cybernetic arm. I had access to the elevator security cameras as well, and she has her back to the panel, but her hand is resting against it. Maybe she suspected talking to the UNBI wouldn't work, so she wrote some kind of virus as a backup plan, managed to somehow download it wirelessly from her cybernetic hand, and hoped if an 1NT-C0M hacker found the security footage, they'd leak it or something." He shrugs. "Anyway, the connection closed after I downloaded that video clip. No one else saw it."

"I still have a lot of questions," I tell him. "For one thing, how did Azria know about the NSN?"

"No idea," he answers. "All I know is, that's how I found out about Blayne's kidnapping plan."

"Hmm, I guess that— Wait, she didn't tell the agent my name. How did you know I was the... proposed kidnapping victim?"

"Remember that whole mess when I hacked that Nexlo office building?" Darien asks. "Some Cortland guy hired me to do it. At first I didn't agree to the job, I know better than to mess with corporations, but then I had an idea. Since I was already suspicious of Dr. Blayne because of the UNBI video, and I figured this client might know more about the corporate sponsorship with all his connections, I agreed to hack Nexlo in exchange for information." He pauses. "Well, also money. But it's a much better story if I was just trying to save an innocent and defenseless damsel in distress—"

"Hey!"

He smirks. "Kidding, of course. But, to be fair, I didn't know the test subject was a genius hacker. Or, dare I say, infamous..."

With a laugh, I inform him that "genius" is a bit of an exaggeration, then continue to think over his explanation of the deal. "So, the Cortland guy told you I was the subject?" I ask. "How did he know?"

"He didn't," Darien continues. "He told me he didn't know anything about Blayne's sponsor, and at first, I didn't believe him. This sort of information gets around in corporate circles, they're always trying to keep up, know everything about each other... but he swore he didn't know. I told him I wouldn't do the job unless he could help me, and eventually he said he could call in a favour to try to get something... I don't know the specifics beyond that, though. But I remember it had something to do with, once again, Azria Quarta."

"Certainly sounds like she knew who I was in the video. And she knew Dr. Blayne pretty closely," I point out, remembering an interview I saw recently. "They used to work together, maybe she knew how to access his lab or something, and that's how she found out. The favour thing would make sense, too. Fourth Wall Tech is one of the only companies outside the Big 5 that isn't currently being bought or driven out of business by them. Maybe Cortland's been protecting her."

"Could be." He nods. "Anyway, I still don't know who the sponsor is, or much of anything about what Dr. Blayne is actually doing. All the Cortland guy could find out was the identity of the test subject. You."

"I guess there's not much else we can do. Maybe I could try to get access to his payment records or something, but..."

"But your priority should be staying hidden," Darien finishes for me.

I nod. For a second, we're both quiet, and my thoughts head straight back to Azria's final words in that recording. He's going to kill her.

I...

I don't want to die.

Beside me, Darien seems to pick up on some clue, some emotional sign I must be showing. He watches me, carefully, concern visible on his rarely serious features.

"Kalix..." He reaches for my hand. "You'll be OK."