Theo watched Erika carefully as she moved through the room. Her intuition was still leading her across treacherous paths sure-footedly, but she had slowed down significantly now. At one point, she stopped and looked back at him, and although half of her face was concealed by her mask, her expression still told him that she, too, sensed that something wasn't right about this level.

They circled through the room repeatedly, pacing around the door in the center like two predators on the prowl. But neither Erika's intuition nor the dust that floated in the air unveiled the right path towards their goal.

They met up again at a ledge from which they could see the door, suspended way out of their reach and slightly above them. With a deep sigh, Erika sat down on the floor with her legs dangling over the edge.

"This is it. The one level I never managed to crack," she confessed to him as he sat down next to her.

"Huh. So you actually don't know if it's really the last level?" he asked to tease her, as he leaned back and rested his weight on his palms behind his back.

She shrugged. "I suppose I don't. At first I thought I just wasn't good enough to find the way, so I kept on trying. I got a lot better at moving around in this place-"

"No shit," he remarked quietly. The way she moved around in here still had him in awe.

"...but I can never find a way to this door." She turned to look at him, which cast a ripple through her floating, golden hair. "But seeing how you figured out this place so quickly, I thought you might be able to?"

Once more, he scrutinized that door, looming mysteriously ahead of them, amidst an area that was conspicuously free of any dust. He slowly shook his head.

"Sorry. I think it might be impossible to reach," he told her. "Actually, I'm fairly certain. I guess the person who made this place just didn't finish building this level."

She crossed her arms before her chest and cocked her head to the side as she looked at him. "And you're really trying to tell me you haven't been here before?"

There was no point in keeping the truth from her any longer, but he also really didn't want to have the entirety of this discussion right here, right now. In a subconscious nervous gesture, he lifted a hand to run it through his hair, but of course, in this space, he only had a hood and a mask. He tugged on the hood instead, pulling it down further over his concealed face.

"Yeah, I've been to cyberspace before," Theo said quietly, "But not here, specifically."

"Yet you moved through the levels in a breeze. And you talk like you know this place..."

"That's just because I figured out how it works," he said.

He leaned over to her and pointed at a spot in the distance, where the haze was passing horizontally before a visible patch of black space in the distance. It was far easier to spot there than in front of the white structures that made up the walkways and stairs.

"Do you see that in the air? Right there in front of us?"

"Uh... the door?" she asked.

"No, not the door." He rolled his eyes, "It's in the air. Something like... dust. It's a stream of little particles."

She turned her head and gave him a long, hard stare, as if he was some sort of lunatic. Then she looked back in the direction he had indicated.

"I don't see it," she said flatly. "Are you shitting me?"

"No, it's really there," he insisted, "It's a constant datastream, barely visible, but there is a pattern to it. It's how I could move in the other rooms. I think it's part of this place's source code. Once I saw it, I understood the laws of this place a bit better."

"I don't see anything," she repeated.

"Hm. Perhaps that's because you're more used to looking at rendered images, and I'm more used to looking at code," he suggested with a shrug.

"Seriously?" she asked. He vividly imagined her raising an eyebrow under her mask.

"Now I'm not saying I can wrap my mind around quantum computation processes," he said and raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "But you don't need to know how the atoms in concrete hold together to build a wall. And you don't need to know any of that find a crack in it. This... haze... it's like dust that floats in through a crack. I can tell where the cracks are, because I watch the dust move. Whereas you, you know where they are because you... feel the draft."

She mulled that over for a moment, and then lifter her head up toward the door once more.

"And you say there is really no way?" she asked.

He shook his head. "None that I can see. I'm sorry, Erika."

She rubbed a hand over her mouth and contemplated his words in silence for a while. He was about to say that he nonetheless had had a lot of fun here, when she abruptly got up to her feet.

"We could get there, though. If there was a stream of this... dust," she said. "If we created one."

"And... how would we do that?" he asked, looking up at her.

She turned to face him again and put a hand on her hip as she looked down on him. For some reason, he had the feeling that not even his masked avatar in cyberspace could hide his growing uneasiness under her stare now.

"Come on, Theo," she said. "I know you could do it. I'm not stupid. You said it yourself. You can see the code of this place. It can't be so hard to shuffle a few ones and zeroes around here or there, and redirect one of those streams...?"

She looked at him expectantly, and he tried to meet her gaze with as impassive an expression as he could muster. Not that she could see it, but it helped him to somewhat keep his cool as he replied.

"That would be cheating," he said flatly.

"...so?"

"Well... I mean...."

He squirmed uneasily at the mere thought. Messing with other people's code wasn't what he had come here for. On the contrary, it was precisely what he had avoided doing for the past few years and why he hadn't set a foot in cyberspace.

"I now that you like playing by the rules, Theo," she said and heaved a sigh, "But this is just a stupid game."

I like playing be the rules? Really? Is that the person I have become? He wondered, moving a hand up to his face, but touching only the virtual mask. I suppose she has a point.

"It's even less than that," she went on, "There's nothing to be won or lost. There's no reward for making it all the way. But I... I really just wanna see what's at the end of that level! You know, kinda like when you flip to the end of a book, to read the very last page?"

"Uh... what? You do that, usually?" he asked.

She stifled a shy giggle, and rocked back and forth on her heels –something she did in the real world too, when she was embarrassed. In this space, the golden cloud of hair surrounding her head followed her movement in a wavy motion.

"Well... occasionally. When I can't handle the tension. But it doesn't mean I don't like the story I'm reading, or that knowing the end will make it any less of a thrill to get there, do you understand?"

"No," he replied truthfully. "Not really."

"What I'm saying is, there is no harm in doing it. It's just some user-for-user game. The original creator seems to have abandoned it long ago, and whatever we change, we can return to normal before we leave. If the level isn't supposed to be solved, then I guess we won't see anything at the end... but I'm just... curious."

"That, I understand," he replied quietly.

"So... you will help me?" she asked, the expression on her half-visible face brightening.

With a weary sigh, he got up to his feet to stand beside her. "Of course. Isn't that why you brought me here in the first place?"

"Aww, you're the best!" she proclaimed, and threw her arms around him in a hug. The interface was good – he could feel the pressure of her touch as if it was real, but in this world, it lacked any warmth. Nonetheless, it caused him to smile.

"And for the record," she added, "I didn't bring you here because of this. I brought you here because I thought you might like it. I didn't even think you'd make it this far."

"Please, Erika," he huffed, "Don't insult me."

"Well then, show me what else you've got, and take us to the finish line!" she demanded.

"Very well," he said with a smirk. "Sit back and watch."

~ ~ ~

Erika watched as his avatar began to flicker before her, and then turned into a black silhouette. The white mask with the black X was the only discernible feature about his appearance that remained.

He didn't sever the connection all the way – somehow he was apparently moving in the real world while still connected to the plug-in interface. He really seemed much more accustomed to all of this than he had initially let on.

I accessed the source code. Give me a minute to make some sense of it.... I will try to redirect one of the streams, his voice resounded from and indiscernible direction. It did not seem to come from the black shape, and it almost seemed to her as if he was speaking directly in her head.

He must be accessing the source code of this place... half-half, with his augments, and through the terminal? She thought while she waited. She couldn't even imagine how that would work, and made a mental note to grill him about it later.

"I still don't see this dust you were talking about," she remarked, unsure if he would be able to hear her.

I know. You'll have to take a leap of faith, I guess.

She could practically hear him smirk as he spoke.

Take the path to your left, and up the next stairway. It should be safe.

"Should be?" she asked, but followed his directions nonetheless.

Something about the place had shifted, but in an invisible, intangible way. It was to her as if she could feel Theo's presence, not in the black silhouette behind her, but all around her, as he sifted through the code that held this mysterious place together. Right now, the room around her seemed more rigid. He had probably stopped the chaotically shifting gravitational pulls from acting in this area to make her approach easier.

She moved to the edge of the platform, until the tips of her toes barely reached over it. She could sense that from here on, she would be pulled down. The door was slightly below her, but still far beyond her reach in the middle of the room.

You'll have to jump, he informed her.

"Are you sure this will work?" she asked skeptically. "I won't just drop and fall through the grid?"

You wanted to know what's behind that door. Are you chickening out now?

She huffed and straightened her shoulders. Then she looked back and down along the path she had come. His avatar was still standing there, now less hazy and more solid again. He was watching her with his arms crossed over his chest.

"Of course not," she said with a grin.

She took a few steps back, burst into a running start, and leapt.

An invisible force pulled her down, just as she had expected. But as she jumped, she also noticed that she was moving further than she would have thought possible, as if carried by a powerful updraft. Time seemed to slow down, and the air around her cackled angrily as she reached an edge of this space that was clearly not intended to be accessed. She clenched her teeth and stretched out her hand as far as she could. The door was close, the handle just within reach. She would have to figure out how to open it in mid-air, she realized.

But it didn't even come to that. The moment her fingertips so much as brushed against the black iron handle, the door disappeared completely, and a brightly glowing light erupted forth from the passageway that had opened up.

She shrieked in surprise as she tumbled onward, plunging straight into the searing brightness.

Erika?

Theo's voice seemed more distant now, but she could hear the worry in it.

"I'm good," she replied breathlessly.

The space around her made little sense to her – there were faint sensations of a pull, indicating up and down, but her body didn't seem to follow along with it by default. There was the passage of time, but it seemed non-linear and prone to looping. Nothing more than barely noticeable splits of seconds, but in total still very much noticeable as she lifted her head and looked around.

She was on an endless plane, in the geometrical sense, rather than the geographical one. Overhead, the view was reminiscent of the sky at sunset, something she only knew from pictures and movies. It was tinged in hues of pink and violet in its entirety, and bulging and churning clouds were moving across it, occasionally stopping as time momentarily grinded to a halt. On first glance she thought the ground below her feet was invisible or translucent. It gave off the impression of being suspended in midair. But in fact, the ground was a mirror, reflecting the sky above, but not her avatar.

It was eerily silent – not a sound was to be heard, not even as she took a few tentative steps on the mirror ground.

Where are you? Theo asked.

"I thought you could tell me," she replied.

I somehow lost track of you the moment you passed through the door. Whatever place you're at, it seems to be... outside of the source code, he explained, sounding pensive.

"But I can still hear you, that's good."

Are you sure you're not just hearing me talk in the real world, in the lab?

"Very sure," she said, "I'm in here one hundred percent. You could set a bomb off next to my body and I probably wouldn't notice right now."

Alright so what do you see?

She described the place to him, but he was unable to locate her.

Seems like you were right. The game was just never finished. Sorry about that, he said. Now, I'll need you to withdraw into your body before I revert the changes I made to the code, I don't know what it will do to your mind otherwise.

She ignored him, and walked across the mirror ground aimlessly.

"There must be something here..." she mumbled.

Erika, are you listening?

"Yeah, I hear you," she said.

But you're not listening, he noted.

She didn't even bother replying to that. Up ahead, something had caught her eye. A small distortion in the mirror surface – nothing more than a dot, like a pixel difference in the image of the sky above to the reflection below. She dashed towards it, feeling a sudden rush of excitement take hold of her. When she stopped right before it, she realized that it was a small folded piece of paper.

Confusion mingled with her excitement, as she bent down to pick it up and read the message written on it.

Three points in space
Where two lines meet
Form my favorite shape

"What the..." she muttered.

Erika, I really need you to get out of there, Theo's voice suddenly called out to her, sounding alarmed.

"Why?"

I don't know what's going on, but parts of the data structure are... collapsing in on themselves. You need to leave. Now.

As soon as he finished talking, she could feel it – a tremor shook the mirrored space around her and almost knocked her off her feet. The paper slipped from her fingers as she stumbled to keep her balance.

"Alright, I'm logging out," she agreed.

But nothing happened.

Normally, leaving cyberspace was easy – much less difficult than accessing it. Once she shifted her attention to her real body, she would always snap out of it, like a day dream. But now, it was as if the connection to her body had been severed.

"Uhm... Theo," she called out to him, "I... I can't leave this place for some reason."

What?! Oh, come on. This stupid piece of...

The rest of his stream of curses was drowned out by a sound like breaking glass. The ground below her was still shaking, and cracks began to form now, black and angry lines that expanded all across the mirror surface.

"Ohhh shit. This is bad," she noted, balancing from fragment to fragment and avoiding to touch any of the lines.

I'll open a gateway in the previous room, he said, and we'll just have to hope that it will connect wherever the fuck you're at. If you see it-

"I see it!" she exclaimed. It appeared in the distance as a white glowing light much like the one she had entered through.

Well, then get your ass moving!

He didn't have to tell her twice. She burst into a sprint toward the light, avoiding the jagged edges of the ground as it shattered all around her, and jumping over cracks that had grown into deep and bottomless chasms. She reached the light and hurled her avatar through it, and when she burst through on the other side, she found herself in the previous level again. But this space was unstable now, too. The code came apart at its seams, she could feel it as the ground was shifting below her feet. And she still couldn't feel her body.

"Theo, where's your avatar?" she asked worriedly. She could outrun the destruction, but he was still slower than her.

I unplugged all but the central neural uplink to talk to you, I'm safe. Next passageway incoming. RUN.

And run she did. Never before had she crossed any of the levels at that pace. In every room, Theo created another passageway for her, leading her further and further back along the way they had come from. Her heart was beating frantically now, and she felt the mental exhaustion that in this world took the place of physical pain whenever she overexerted herself. She couldn't die in cyberspace, but being stuck in the middle of collapsing code could have its own set of dangers. And she still couldn't feel her body, which was an unsettling feeling overall. So she pushed on.

All the while she could feel how the space around her was dismantling itself. She didn't dare look back over her shoulder, for fear of seeing absolutely nothing there.

As she burst through the final passageway, she stumbled out into the darkness of the outer Prism. Behind her, the dark grey door slammed shut with an obnoxiously loud bang, and when she finally turned around to look back, she saw that the data structure that had housed the Cube had disappeared. Only the door was still there.

She heaved a deep sigh of relief, and realized that her body in the real world inhaled and exhaled along with her avatar now. She closed her eyes and shifted her attention to the rest of her body – the feeling of the smooth interface under her palms, the solid ground under her feet, her clothes on her skin. And as she opened her eyes again, she was back in the Cradle, and the first thing she saw was Theo's face and his dark eyes as he stared at her with an expression of worry on concern.

He had put his hands on her shoulders and was shaking her lightly.

"Hey, you okay?"

She nodded slowly.

"Is all of you back, or did we forget something in there? Say something, please."

"I'm fine," she said, and forced herself to smile.

She removed her hands from the panel and clenched and flexed her fingers. A strange prickling sensation spread throughout her body, like the feeling of blood rushing back into a limb that had fallen asleep.

She didn't want to admit it to him, but she felt like shit. More because of what she had gotten him into, than what had just almost happened to her. Before she had pressured him to break the rules of that place, all had gone along so well. He had enjoyed himself, she was certain of it. But now, how was she ever going to convince him of going back into cyberspace again?

"That was.... Interesting," he noted.

Her head perked up and she stared at him in surprise. "Really? You think so?"

"Well, I mean.... It's not every day that I fuck up so spectacularly that I break an entire data structure," he said, and ran a hand through his hair, "Now I'm intrigued, because I don't know if I worked so sloppily or if the structure was shit to begin with."

"I don't think you had anything to do with that," she said. She remembered the strange note, and wondered about its significance. She couldn't shake the feeling that it was more than an enigmatic easter egg.

"I think I triggered this," she admitted, "When I went into that last... level, or whatever it was."

"Hm. If you say so."

They both looked at each other in silence for a moment, several unasked questions hovering in the air between them. Neither got to ask them.

"Next time, can I come and play with you?" a small voice chirped behind her.

Erika turned around, and spotted Bubbles hovering up toward them. The little sphere moved over to Theo, who backed away reflexively as it approached, but then let it come closer. Bubbles seemed to stare at him with its blue light spot, and he raised a brow as he eyed it in return.

"In cyberspace? Are you sick of the real world so soon?" Theo asked.

"No, that's not it. I just want to play with my friends. I played a lot with Rhea today, next I would like to play with you," Bubbles explained.

"Friends?" Theo repeated, and cast Erika a sideward glance.

"Of course, Bubbles," Erika said and smiled. "But for today, we will have to go home. We can play tomorrow."

"Home?" the AI asked, turning to face her.

"Where we get rest and sustenance, so we can work efficiently."

Theo snorted with disdain at her explanation, but she didn't care. Bubbles seemed to understand, that was all that mattered.

"Do I have a home, too?" Bubbles asked, sounding contemplative.

"You will stay here at the Cradle for now. Rhea has prepared you a docking station," she said and pointed to the corner of the room where it had been set up. "But we will see you again tomorrow, then we can play."

"We will?" Theo asked.

"Yes, we will," she said sternly and threw him a glare over Bubbles spherical body.

"Can I not go home with you? Or Theo?" the AI demanded.

"Oh, I'm sorry Bubbles, but we cannot take you with us. You will have to stay here for now, until your training is complete. Those are the rules, you agreed to them, remember?"

Bubbles mulled that over for a moment, then the little sphere bounced up and down a few times.

"Okay..." Bubbles said quietly. "But I see you tomorrow, yes?"

"Of course," Erika said and smiled again.

To her surprise, Theo nodded as well, and that seemed to satisfy Bubbles sufficiently. As it hovered over to its docking station slowly, Erika noticed that Theo watched it with a hint of a smile tugging at his lips.

"Good night, Erika, Theo," Bubbles said, as its spherical body settled into the station, and the blue light dimmed to a muted glow.

"Night, Bubbles, Rhea," Erika greeted them as she grabbed her belongings and headed for the door with Theo.

It was late at night, and the building was already deserted. As they crossed the foyer, the only other person there was the AI working the front desk, a humanoid, suit-wearing android with a screen for a face. From afar, she could only tell that it displayed some sort of dynamic, but random images now, indicating that he was in sleep mode or standby.

"So... what are we gonna do now?" Theo asked her once they were out of the building and on the street, walking a part of their way back home together.

"I don't know what you're gonna do, I know that I'm going home and straight to bed," she replied.

Her sprint through cyberspace had exhausted her in a weirdly non-physical way, and yet it was not the same as mental exhaustion, because her thoughts were racing. Her limbs were still tingling from that strange sensation after she had disconnected from the interface, and she kept pondering what had happened inside the last level of the Cube, and what the note could have meant. She wondered if the code would restore itself over night, or if it was gone for good.

"Are you sure you're okay?" he asked her.

She snapped out of her thoughts and looked at him.

"I'm good, don't worry! What about you? Did you have fun?" she asked with a smirk.

He looked back at her with a familiar deadpan expression that told her that her guess had been spot on.

"Well. Let's just say I don't think I'll be seeking entertainment elsewhere tonight," he replied.

"Ha. I knew it!" her smirk widened to a grin, "Let's repeat that sometime... I still wanna know where you got that mask."

"And I want to know how you found that strange place."

"Well then, tomorrow, coffee break, usual place, usual time?" she suggested.

"You're paying," he reminded her.

"Of course," she said and rolled her eyes.

They parted ways at the corner of the street, and Erika headed straight home. She lived in walking distance to her work place, a luxury that allowed her to avoid the public transport of Eos, which was packed even at this late hour. The city was covered by an extensive network of monorail trains that ran between the buildings. Even now, floods of people were streaming in and out of the stations she passed. While Alba was the central business district of the city, there were also clubs, pubs and rooftop venues all over the district. Sometimes, Erika wondered where these people got the energy from, to go out and party like that after a long work day.

Then she thought of Theo and his twelve shots of espresso that day, and wondered no more.

Erika's place was a cozy little one-bedroom apartment on the twentieth floor of an apartment complex. The biggest advantage of her place was the fact that all the windows looked out into a smaller side street which was much less riddled with glowing lights and adverts than the main streets of Alba. So when she walked in through the front door, it was reasonably dark in her apartment. She avoided turning on the lights for now, hoping the darkness would make her feel sufficiently tired to fall asleep soon.

She was in the process of taking off her shoes, when through the darkness, she spotted the blinking light at the wall terminal in the living room. A furrow appeared on her brow. She was certain that she had switched it off when she had left this morning.

She could have used voice commands, but she preferred not to talk to herself while alone in her empty apartment. So instead, she walked over to the wall terminal and placed her palm on the panel. It came alive under her touch immediately, and she felt the familiar, tingling surge of energy as the interface connected to the augments under her skin. It even managed to chase away that strange, lingering prickling that the collapsing Cube had left her with.

Half watching the screen, half watching what her augments displayed for her, she skimmed over a bunch of messages that she had received throughout the day. Most of them were news and updates of places she kept forgetting to unsubscribe from, some were spam or scam. One was a message from an old school friend updating her on another mutual friend getting married soon. There was another private message, and as she saw the sender, she froze. It was from her brother Bjorn. She filed it for reading later – she would deal with this tomorrow.

She was about to remove her hand from the panel and shut down the terminal, when another message popped in right that very moment. It was just one line, hovering there before her in the virtual space, somewhere between the cyberspace of the terminal and her augments.

>I heard you like geometry.

At first she thought it was spam, or perhaps some ill-fated pick up artist on one of those dating sites she had registered with a long time ago. She was about to delete it right away, but when she spotted the sender's name, or rather, the absence thereof, her heart skipped a beat. Instead of a name or tag, there was nothing, not even a blank line. The message didn't have a sender – it seemed to have come straight from her own terminal.

The furrow on her brow deepened. Perhaps it was just a glitch in the messaging system?

She pressed her palm more firmly against the panel, and began to formulate a reply in her mind. Words and phrases manifested and disappeared in her field of view in real time, flickering at as rapid a pace as she thought them in.

She finally settled for something, confirmed and sent it with another thought.

>who are you & how did you get my contact ID?

>I'm just a fellow geometry lover.

The answer came back straight away, and it left her even more confused.

Is that some weird kind of pick up line? She wondered.

Maybe he was one of the people who frequented some of the other games she was playing in cyberspace. Many of them were geometry themed. Although that didn't explain why whoever sent this message did so without revealing their own contact ID, and how they were doing it.

>okay.... do I know you?

Something about this seemed off to her, and her heart beat accelerated as she waited for a response. The other user was online, and they were now messaging live. She didn't dare to reach out and meet that person in cyberspace – there was something about the anonymity of direct messaging that made her feel safer right now. Although it was ridiculous, because there was nothing that could really harm her in cyberspace. Yet, after what had happened earlier that night, she was wary of shady corners of the Prism just as much as of the side alleys of Eos.

The reply appeared immediately, and it caused her heart to skip a beat.

>you don't know me. But I believe you know my favorite shape.

She stared at the line hovering before her eyes until they became too dry and she had to blink a few times. The line was still there, both in her cybernetic field of view, and on the screen before her.

>tell me, do you know my favorite shape?

She fervently tried to recall the exact wording of the message she had found in the last level of the Cube.

Three lines... she thought, No, something about points...in space...

The realization hit her so hard that she almost smacked her forehead with her free hand.

>triangles.

Her reply appeared before her, and she confirmed and sent it before she even consciously thought about it. In breathless anticipation, she waited for the next message.

>are you ready for a more challenging game, Entropy?

Her eyes widened in surprise as the other person addressed her with her nickname. They were messaging on her private account, not the one she had set up under the user tag she used for online gaming.

>what kind of game? who are you?

>a lucractive game. If you believe you are ready to play with us?

She hesitated with her next reply. Whoever wrote these lines continued to ignore her question about their identity, yet they seemed to know a lot about her already. A shiver snaked down her spine, and she suddenly couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. She shook her head to clear it of her paranoia. Lucrative, the message said. That could mean many things. But one thing was for certain, and that was that the person was talking about a game with higher stakes, and higher rewards than she had ever played before.

Her pulse was racing as she thought of her reply.

>yes.

>can you follow our rules?

>I don't follow anybody's rules. I break them. that's what got me this far in the first place.

She pressed her hand against the panel more firmly to stop it from trembling.

>then I think you will like the game we're playing. if you're interested, come to 43-506 Lower Market Street, Rouge. we will be waiting.

>who are you, exactly?

>I'm the Devil, Entropy.

She stared at the screen in disbelief, until a moment later, another line appeared.

>but you can call me Nova <3

_______
A.N.
The first person to catch the (non-Fixt) song reference will get a virtual cookie!