21. GameKross
GameKross
Playlist: Aftermath - Caravan Palace
Lyra
I wake to noise.
It’s not the quiet hum of DreamNet, but movement: laughter, boots pounding on pavement, and music humming somewhere in the distance.
I pick myself up off the cobblestone, cobblestone that’s warm instead of cold.
Except it isn’t cobblestone, just an augmented reality of a ground that glitches under me.
It’s flickering between a damp Parisian street and circuit grids.
My breath is ragged, lungs on fire, pulse still heightened from fear of deletion.
When I finally stand tall, I almost laugh at the spectacular world unfolding around me.
GameNet.
GameNet is the most addictive and beloved underground server in the city.
Everything here is louder, sharper and less curated.
GameNet doesn’t cradle you the way DreamNet does, it throws you into the deep end and waits to see if you swim.
It’s a perfect blend of wanton hedonism and brutal reckoning.
Every month, the system loads a new world simulation: a city, a future decade, a war, or a mythological past. Edo-period Japan.
New York during Prohibition. The Fall of Rome.
Sometimes even re-creations of ancient myths or fictional fantasy worlds.
This month is obviously Paris in the 1960s.
There is usually some type of quest or battle, but it’s an open map world where you decide your own fate. There are two basic rules:
No magic can be used for gameplay
If you are killed in-game, you cannot return until the next month’s game change
Of course, I would land here.
Giant holoboards give a nod to the creator, Dax Kross, while still maintaining the look and feel of the streets of Paris. GameNet was built by someone young. Someone reckless enough to think a system like this would stay free.
They say Dax was barely out of his teens when he built it, a brilliant U21, absurdly wealthy before he could legally drink.
Another prodigy who coded like time bent around him, who believed games were the purest form of truth and the harshest drop from reality. VikkCorp bought GameNet from him, making him an instant billionaire. They polished it, monetized it, but the bones are still his and players still pay homage.
GameNet still carries his fingerprints: hidden pathways that loop time when they shouldn’t, NPCs that remember things across the monthly resets, clock cycles that drag or jump without warning.
Rumors ripple through the underground that he didn’t just build this place, that he injected his magic into it.
Another casualty of StarFell. Rebels say he can step sideways through time, rewind mistakes, change outcomes before they happen. A time trickster. A KairoShifter.
VikkCorp allows GameNet to continue solely to watch and analyze U21 behavior while inside. Which means either I’m very lucky to be here or trapped exactly where someone wanted me to land.
I begin walking, scanning the crowded street as players rush past me. No one looks twice at me because I’m already immersed as an avatar. In GameNet, your “skin” or your “drip” is currency.
I can do this. Maybe I can hang out in-game until this blows over. Play, get killed and it will kick me out. Back to my bed, back to life.
I round the street corner and catch a glimpse of my image reflected in a passing shop window.
My avatar adjusts instantly, the game draping me in the look of the era, only sharpened, sexed-up by the system’s taste for spectacle.
I’m poured in sleek black cigarette pants, cropped just above the ankle, paired with a sheer, form-fitting turtleneck that clings to my skin like smoke.
A cropped leather jacket hangs loose over my shoulders.
The game leaves my hair long, messy in a way that’s intentional, like I’ve just rolled out of an artist’s bed. My eyes are framed in thick liner, cat-eyed, lips lacquered in what I like to call, “Come fuck me red,” that feels more vixen than beauty queen.
I feel empowered for the first time since this happened. Sexy. Untouchable. Designed to distract before I pull the trigger of my dual .45 laser pistols strapped to each thigh.
Café awnings line the street in splashes of red and black-and-white stripes.
Posters of jazz singers and revolutionaries plaster the cracked walls, edges peeling.
Vintage cars with present-day features idle along the curb.
Their headlights pulse like glowing eyes, and cables snake from their hoods like veins.
Above, the Eiffel Tower rises elegantly into the sky, its ironwork fused with flickering holograms, half art, half machine.
Somewhere inside this madness, answers are waiting. I just have to survive long enough to find them.
A neon object whirs past my head and ricochets off the brick of a nearby building. Gunfire.
Digital bullets cut streaks through the smoke-filled air.
A café window explodes into shards of glass and code, scattering like pixelated bugs.
Figures sprint past me, U21s, my age, maybe a bit younger, all with glowing DreamNet bands on their arms, weapons shimmering in their hands.
They’re laughing, shouting, fighting like gladiators in a world where history and circuitry collide.
“Hey!” a voice yells behind me.
I spin, heart hammering, and see a group of U21s, some of the same ones who haunt STATIK.
The ones I’ve seen sketching graffiti messages of rebellion on concrete walls.
They’re all gathered here, avatars dripping in bohemian-cyberpunk style, berets tilted, leather jackets laced with tubes of light, wielding revolvers that hum like energy cannons.
“Shit! She’s new!” one of them yells. “Come with us before you get ghosted!”
Ghosted. I’ve heard the term before. When you’re killed in GameNet, your avatar glitches out in smoke and static like a ghost disappearing. Being “ghosted” means you’re gone, unreachable, locked out until the next monthly reset. Little do they know, that’s exactly what my plan is.
A girl with short, glittery pink hair and aviator goggles grins at me. “Welcome to Paris, Chérie. Hope you like gangs and guns.” She skips off laughing maniacally.
We sprint as a group. Bullets flying, jazz echoing from somewhere. Soft saxophone overlaid with a pounding electronic beat. Smoke curls in the alleys, mixing with the smell of burnt metal and rich black coffee.
Once again, I feel alive and free. There’s no way I’m dead.
Conversation and the clatter of glasses echo from a nearby jazz club. We duck in to escape the gunfire that rattles down the boulevard. A bohemian war zone. Players scream, laugh, chaos dressed in nostalgia.
I peer around the door, assessing the threats across the street. Through the glitching shimmer of an old theater sign, I see a shadow of a man, eyes glowing, looking as cool as the city around him.
Ash.
My heart skips. His fedora is tilted low, coat collar up, protecting him from the phantom fog the system conjured.
He looks carved into this world, like he belongs here, cigarette glowing between his fingers.
Détective privé just like in the French comics of years ago.
His eyes sweep the crowd, cutting through avatars like they’re paper. Searching.
Stars, this could be my chance to get out of here. My pulse races. I want to run to him, but the group blocks my trajectory. I freeze.
He spots me. The fedora tips back, as his mouth slides to half-smirk, half-relief. “Shit, Lyra! I knew I’d find you here,” he says, over the noise all around us. “I picked up your vibrations a few minutes ago. You have a unique magic signature.” He laughs.
I run and grab him by both arms, my stomach twisting with anxiety. “You have to help me, Ash! I’m trapped, stuck. I can’t get out of DreamNet, somehow I landed in GameNet. I have to get to Eli.” A sense of urgency fills each word.
Ash pulls me closer. “Lyra, it’s okay. Kael told me what happened. We’ve been looking for you since the virus.”
“Virus?” I feel tears swelling, “What happened? Am I dead? I don’t think I am because you’re here. Did the CIC come for us?” I plead with all I have. “Ash, I need you to tell me what’s going on.” My nerves balance on the edge of breaking.
“Lyra...” His look is serious, like he’s carrying the weight of two realities, one outside, and one crumbling inside of him.
I interrupt him anxiously. “What? Why are you here?”
“I’m here because you don’t listen.” His tone hardens.
“Listen to what?” My magic flares defensively, on the verge of escaping. The Eiffel Tower flickers, ads stuttering, as I look at him for answers.
“To us.” He sighs.
I blink. “Us who?”
He leans in, low enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath. “Kael and I.”
His name breaks something inside me. My lips part, but nothing comes out. Kael. The man from my dreams. The one I kissed. The one who I didn’t see coming. Also the one I hate for standing on the wrong side of the world.
He should have known better than to cross the corporate line.
Ash studies me like he can read every secret I’m trying to hide.
“He thinks you’re not dead, Lyra. He told me you were in DreamNet together when the virus launched.
He sent me to find you before it’s too late.
” He looks at me from under the rim of the fedora.
“Says he can just feel it somehow that you’re still alive. ”
The words feel like chains. “So, what are you now? His messenger?”
His jaw tenses, raw emotion flickering in his eyes.
“No.” His tone is soft, almost comforting.
“He happens to give a damn if you’re alive or dead.
He does have feelings, you know; he’s not a complete ass.
” He steps even closer, the fedora shadowing his face but not hiding the protective look in his gaze.
“We need to discuss this, figure out how to get you out of here.”
“I know why I’m here.” I stiffen. “The ‘complete ass’—Kael. He did this with that system of his. I was wrong about your corporate golden boy!”
The words taste like venom on my tongue; they fill my chest with a scorching, angry heat.
His face runs in my mind, that quiet, controlled darkness, the way he looked at me in DreamNet as if he wanted to devour me.
And now, it all clicks into place. The lab, the Corporation, his code that now cages me.
He built this. The Anomaly Hunter, as the rebels call him.
He planned this. Rage curls its fingers around me.
Ash shakes his head. “No, it’s not like that. Kael...”
CRACK!
A violent pop ripples through the night air. Gunfire bursts into deafening noise. Players spray bullets into the crowd, code unraveling into shards of light. One shot zips straight for Ash’s chest.
Without thinking, I move. This is my chance. I throw myself into its path, arms wide, leather jacket tearing as the impact slams through me. Fire, heat, light. My body crumples into code. “Lyra! No!” Ash grabs me in his arms.
For one brilliant second I think I’m free. This is the way out. This is how I wake up.
But then the world doesn’t turn to mist. It folds in, dark and cold. The gunfire silences, the jazz dies, and the stars disappear from the midnight sky. The city dissolves into a void of static and gray light.
And I’m still here. Still trapped. Now, just in the darkness again.