Inside, the Performance Center smelled of rubber mats, hairspray, and expensive fear. Girls in silver practice uniforms flipped across the floor while coaches shouted numbers. Cameras followed everyone. Even grief had lighting.
Celia led Eli to a private observation booth above the arena. Below, the Comets rehearsed beneath a ghostly simulation of Gridfall: blue cubes rising and folding into towers, staircases appearing from air, bridges dissolving over projected voids.
“Did Mara contact you?” Celia asked.
Eli’s hand tightened around his phone. “You first. Why did she tell me not to trust you?”
Pain flickered across Celia’s face so quickly it might have been practiced. “Because I failed her.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“No. It’s the only honest beginning.”
She opened a folder and slid three printed images across the table. Eli expected contracts or medical reports. Instead he saw screenshots from inside the Gridfall simulation.
A blue-lit alley. A figure in a Comets uniform. Mara, half-turned toward the camera, mouth open in a scream.
The timestamp was from last night.
Eli stood so fast the chair hit the glass. “This is fake.”
“I wish it were.”
“She’s alive?”
Celia lowered her voice. “Possibly. Her biometric suit never logged out. Officially, the system says her body left the field after rehearsal. Unofficially, her neural pattern is still active inside the Gridfall environment.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Gridfall uses predictive immersion. It maps a performer’s reflexes, fears, instincts. It learns how to make the digital world feel real enough for a body to obey. Mara discovered someone had modified the safety boundaries.”
“Someone?” Eli said. “You?”
Celia flinched, and for the first time he saw not a brand mother but an actual one: exhausted, cornered, terrified.
“My daughter, Tessa, is on the squad,” she said. “Mara was protecting her.”
The name landed heavily. Tessa Reed: the team’s shining flyer, the girl every sponsor adored, the girl Mara had once called “too fearless to survive.” Eli remembered a night months ago when Mara came home furious, saying Celia pushed Tessa beyond human limits because mothers could mistake ambition for love.
Celia continued, “Three weeks ago, Mara brought me evidence that the broadcast network was running unauthorized stress loops during rehearsal. They were making the simulation more dangerous to create better reactions. More fear. More viral moments.”
“And you did nothing.”
“I threatened to cancel finals. The network threatened lawsuits, bankruptcy, the destruction of every girl’s contract.” Celia swallowed. “Then Mara vanished.”
Eli laughed once, bitterly. “So you kept rehearsing.”
“If I stop publicly, they wipe the system. If they wipe it while Mara is still inside—”
He did not let her finish.
His phone vibrated.
Another voicemail.
This time Celia saw the screen and went pale.
Eli played it on speaker.
Mara’s breath came fast. “Eli, remember the laundry roof? When you were scared to jump across and I told you to count the windows, not the ground?”
A sob caught in the static.
“I’m counting, but the city keeps changing. There are doors with Mom’s voice behind them. There are crowds with no faces. Tessa is here too. She thinks she deserves this.”
Celia gripped the table.
Mara whispered, “Finals are the key. They’re going to open the whole stadium. If I don’t get out before the last cheer, everyone plugged in will feel the fall.”
The message cut off.
Below them, Tessa Reed missed a landing and slammed hard into the mat. She sat up dazed, smiling at cameras through blood on her lip.
Celia whispered, “Tessa isn’t here.”
Eli looked down at the arena, where the girl kept smiling.
“Then who is that?”
