EmojiCon-1: The Fission Protocol

Welcome to EmojiCon-1: The Fission Protocol: This is the first 10,000-word micro-story in an epic sci-fi fantasy thriller where the war for reality is waged in the static between memory and code.

In 2074, PsyOps—a corporate power—launches the Fission Protocol, aiming not to erase history, but to own it. Real stories are being replaced with optimized data. Emotional sovereignty is under siege.

Lín Yīng is a streetwise girl haunted by loss. Jade is an operative unraveling her own fractured identity. Jax moves unseen as a ghost in the system. Maui, a fallen demigod, leads a wild crew of livestream-crazy misfits. Together, they stand at the front-line of a war for memory and meaning.

Their weapons are EmojiCons—living encrypted characters like “Courage” and “Harmony,” summoned from deep cultural memory. Each story is a puzzle piece in a larger resistance. The Protocol is active. The fight to remember has begun.

Chapter 1: The Stillness Before the Glitch

It’s getting closer. Lin stumbled, hitting her head on the sidewalk. Dazed, she blinked through the blur to see her nǎinai, her smile gentle but weary, eyes shadowed with exhaustion.

Nǎinai struggled to pull her chair out from the table, her hands trembling slightly. Lin’s chair tipped as she rushed to help, steadying and guiding her nǎinai into the seat.

For a moment, Lin just held her, wrapping her arms tightly around Nǎinai’s frail frame. The weight of everything—the fear, the helplessness—washed over her, and tears spilled freely down her cheeks.

“Sit down, Lin,” Nǎinai whispered softly, brushing a hand against Lin’s hair. “How was your day? School? Your grades? A boy, maybe?” Nǎinai chuckled softly.

The dinner plate between them was nearly empty—a few scraps left, barely enough for one.

“Here, take this,” she said. “It’ll help you focus.”

“No, Nǎinai,” Lin replied quickly, shaking her head. “That’s yours. You need it more.”

A tired smile softened Nǎinai’s lips. “You know, Lin, you are the best thing that ever came into my life… Have I told you that?”

“A million times, Nǎinai. A million times.”

“Well, who’s counting?” Nǎinai whispered. “Here’s to a million more…”

A sharp pain—ouch—the daze cleared as anger rushed in the distance—no, no, not now—wrenching herself up. She threw the garbage bins behind her, the crash echoing in the narrow alley.

Quick, I need to get there. She could feel it. Close.

A brutal jab to her ribs. An elbow, sharp and unyielding, stole Lin’s breath and buckled her knees. On the wall, shadows merged, a fleeting, violent scuffle against the brick.

Fear, cold and razor-sharp, jarred through her, a rapid firestorm in her mind. Please, Nǎinai, I’m scared.

The scent hit Lin like a punch to the face: roasting duck—fat, sweet, and rich. She twisted, bracing in fear. The memory wasn’t a whisper; it was a tidal bore in her chest, a burning, aching current that stole her breath. Her throat closed tight. She tried to breathe, but the air refused to come.

She stumbled sideways, collapsing against the wall. Her fingers scrabbled, clawing at the cold surface, but there was nothing left to hold onto. She slid down, a wreck of limbs and gasps. Alone. Desperate. Starving.

As she slid, her side was exposed. Boot prints stamped across her soft skin. The blare of a store’s TV—explosions, gunshots, raids, the relentless chaos of the news—screamed a counterpoint to the hell unspooling in her mind.

Just as the darkness threatened to consume her, her jade koru pulsed, a vibrant glow swirling outward—a celestial SOS, too late there they were.

COMMS:

BREACH UNIT 7 | 00:13:03:13

PsyOps Command: Target marked. Apartment 6F. Ten mikes. Standby.

ICE-3: Green-tag civilian.

Command: Doesn’t matter. Stomp your mark. Neutralize on pushback.

ICE-3: Copy.

Command: Make it loud. Make it hurt.

ICE-3: Breach in ten. Go. Go. Go.

Bang— The jade koru clenched in Lin’s hand pulsed in soft tones that rippled across the wall, its glow strobing like time unraveling, sending a silent, desperate signal out into the void.

COMMS: BREACH UNIT 7 | 00:13:13:13

Somewhere, an ancient debt was being called in. Twisted light slammed against the wall, dragging PsyOps into daylight.

Truth unspooled, frame by frame:

The door burst open. Hell stormed in.

Her eyes widened. Guns aimed at her head. Black masks. She froze—then screamed.

Lin Yīng—one leg tangled in her jeans, hoodie half-pulled over her head—had been about to slip out to scavenge for a late-night bite, her stomach a hollow drum. Now the world exploded into motion and terror.

Hands clamped onto her, rough and unyielding. She was in her underwear—exposed, vulnerable. Before she could make a sound, they yanked her hair, pain ripping across her scalp as they dragged her backward. Her bare feet scraped over cracked tile, each rasp a small scream.

Black balaclavas hid their faces, only cold eyes glinting through dark holes. They spoke no names, no orders—just the guttural rhythm of boots and the harsh clack of rifles swinging through air. The silence between impacts was worse than shouting.

They trashed everything. The crack of porcelain hit first—Nǎinai’s teapot, the one with the tiny blue flowers, shattered against the wall.

Lin froze her head pin by a smelly ICE boot. A flash of blue burned across her vision as her hood yanked sideways, fabric biting into her throat. Tea spilled across the floor—the same green her grandmother once poured for her, fragrant and warm. Now it ran cold in crooked lines, mixing with shards like splinters of sky.

That sound… that sound ended it all.

Bootss slammed into her ribs. Air ripped from her lungs. One minute she felt the bite of tread, next she was airborne—her body smashing into the table, their table, the one where she and Nǎinai had spent every night talking about life, about surviving, about dreams too small to be dangerous. The chair where Nǎinai used to sit splintered beneath her weight, breaking as easily as the promises Lin once believed kept them safe.

Her scream didn’t matter. Not here. Not to them. It ripped through the stairwell—high-pitched, raw, almost inhuman. She stumbled backward, arms flailing, trying to regain balance as if an unseen force shoved her. One leg still tangled in her jeans jerked her sideways. She slammed against the wall, the impact rattling her teeth.

A fist yanked her hair, jerking her upright. Cold steel pressed to her temple.

“Get the message,” the lead agent snarled. “We can erase you, or you can tell everyone who looks like you—what is it, tech-savvy Gen Z? Gen Z my ass—to get the fuck out of my country tech geek. Your choice.”

She saw they broke Nǎinai’s photo. That small, smiling face now lay trampled under heavy blood-stained black steel-capped boots.

Before she could blink her head was shoved into a hanging mirror. Glass shattered with a violent crack, fragments spinning through the air.

The sound of the shattering glass did not end in the stairwell. It echoed across a plane Lin couldn’t see, a high, sharp frequency of pain that ripped through the stillness of the afterlife.

Far beyond the veil of the sky, among stars and ash, Nǎinai felt the impact as a phantom blow against her own soul. The fierce, protective love she held for her granddaughter, a force stronger than gravity, became a conduit for Lin’s agony. The hurt overwhelmed her. It was not a memory of pain, but the living, breathing reality of it—a daughter’s terror, a violation so profound it threatened to unravel the peace she had found.

She wept. Not with sound, but with a surge of pure Qi, a single, perfect tear tracing a path through the starlight on her cheek. It was a grief so profound it eclipsed the nearby nebulae. Her sorrow was not silent; it was a call, a cosmic lament that pulsed outward. She raised her voice to the heavens, not in a plea, but in a demand born of absolute love. A command for justice. A roar of protection for the best thing that had ever come into her life.

That celestial vibe, a fusion of sorrow and rage, flowed across the cosmos. It was a beacon that awakened ancient debts and simmering vendettas. It found Maui, already carving a path through glitchlight, his gaze snapping towards Earth, drawn by the raw power of her cry. It washed over shadowed figures—psyops and saboteurs who owed allegiance to older powers—and their movements stuttered, their very myth-code unraveling as they recognized a force they could not fight. The call promised a reckoning, awakening all those who sought to settle their own beef with PsyOps. A grandmother’s love had just declared war.

In one falling shard, Lin saw it—a face that wasn’t hers. A young woman, about her age, eyes blazing with fury. Not terrified. Not broken. Angry.

The shard hit the ground, shattering that image into dust. Lin’s thoughts fractured with it. For an instant, she didn’t know which one she was—the girl screaming on the floor or the stranger staring back.

“Get out,” the agent hissed, shoving her, “or die like dogs in the street—my streets. ICE-3 to PsyOps—command message sent.”

“Nǎinai!” Her voice cracked as she flailed, her mind breaking into static. Boots slammed into her side—once, twice, again—each blow a brutal punctuation. A rifle butt struck her shoulder, pain detonating white-hot down her arm. Spit hit her cheek. Harsh laughter followed, sharp and jagged, echoing off the tiled walls like shattered glass.

She scrambled, palms raw against shards of broken mirror scattered across the floor. They grabbed her hair again, yanking her head back.

Another stumble. Her breath came in ragged gasps. Her heart pounded—wild, frantic, like a trapped bird.

Then, with a final, contemptuous shove, they booted her in the back. She tumbled like trash in a hurricane, crashing down the remaining steps, landing in a heap on the cold pavement.

Above her, wood splintered. Glass shattered. The sounds of her home being erased.

Lin couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. The world blurred—smoke, neon city glow, and choking dust rising from an adjacent building.

Her head struck a railing as another shove spun her sideways. An elbow clipped her skull. Shadows moved, collided, then scattered down the stairwell, vanishing into the hustle.

She yanked her hoodie down, bra strap loose, jeans half-on, boot prints smeared across her underwear. Her phone slipped from her hand, hit the pavement, and cracked. Its screen flickered—then emitted a jagged, mocking laugh that didn’t stop.

Only one thing remained.

The pendant.

It pulsed against her chest—warm, defiant, alive. She reached across her shaking fingers closed around it, a desperate anchor. She lifted it to the flickering city light bleeding through the cracks in the stairwell wall. That face—that angry face—steered out from the swirl.

“I am coming for you,” it said, then vanished.

Inside the koru, the jade stirred closed.

A slow, spiraling storm unfolded—green and gold and memory.

Maui roared.

He wasn’t the stoic god of legends, but a creature of raw motion and friction, his hair wild, his gaze sharp with half-truths. He carved a path through glitchlight and fate-choked threads, his cloak already scorched with the marks of betrayal. Shadowed figures—psyops, saboteurs—swarmed him, their movements unraveling the very fabric of myth-code in his path. Still, he stood, a defiant island in a sea of chaos.

And then, the pulse of Nǎinai’s Qi reached him—a fierce, ancient current carried by her granddaughter’s tears. He turned, his gaze cutting through the swirling darkness.

He saw her.

A girl, small and shattered, clinging to the last thread of her world.

He didn’t speak words, not aloud. His command rippled through the chaotic air, a silent directive to the tricksters he knew would understand.

Protect her with your Qi. With your chaos. She is more than they know, she is my debt, I’ll fight them here.

Quick, go.

Maui gestured, nodding with a sigh.

Wiggi ruffled his feathers, sleek and shimmering with glitchlight, a spark of mischief in his sharp eyes. Didgi clicked his beak, hanging upside-down from a wisp of ether, a knowing grin on his avian face. Zip rolled his eyes with an almost human exasperation. Flip twitched his tail, a blur of restless energy.

Anything?

Zip’s thought cut through the chaos.

Whatever it takes.

Maui’s will resonated.

You know who you all are and what PsyOps will do.

The four vanished in a shimmer of coded raccoon tails and magpie feathers as the roof to the heavens cracked. Digital rain ran sideways across the glass plain skies, glitching through frequencies never meant to be spoken.

Flip vanished first—a flick of tail, a twirl of shadow and smirk.

Then Zip, already halfway gone, muttering, “About damn time.”

A feather spiraled to the floor, left behind by Magpie, who had never truly landed.

And Maui—if it was him—watched them vanish. His hands didn’t tremble. His gaze didn’t linger.

“Go, raccoons. Magpies. And be. Do.”

Maui turned as the wildcard vanished through the ether.

“He didn’t wait. True to form. Go now—before he burns the house down.”

He didn’t look back. He never does.

Maui turned back toward the unraveling sky. He dove.

Fire. Rage. Sacrifice.

The heavens cracked.

The demigod fell as PsyOps’s trenchcoats swooped in.

War had come and Maui, well…

Without warning, the pendant split open. Inside, a ghost-light etched a sigil into the air: 「氣⌛」—Qi and Hourglass. As it formed, the atmosphere shifted. The scent of iron bled into the room, chased by the faint, familiar trace of old tea leaves. It was a smell of lineage, of memory.

Then came the voice—not heard, but known, vibrating not in her ears but deep in her bones.

「護她如護吾命。」

Guard her as you would my own life.

It was not a command. It had always been. A truth etched into something older than language.

Above the clouds, among stars and ash, a great hook cut across the dark. Another sigil burned into being, flaring blue-white against the cosmos: 「ㇿ🔥」—Hook and Fire.

No voice followed it, but silence cracked like stone splitting under heat. Maui’s will pressed into the world—not spoken, not pleaded. Simply true.

「永隨行。」

Walk with her always.

Not a promise. A rewriting of fate itself.

In the pause that followed, shadows began to breathe. Four shapes stepped from the spaces-between.

Wiggi, feathers rimmed with the silver of dawn-frost.

Didgi, claws clicking like a key turning in a lock.

Zip, tail-knots wound in stolen seconds.

And Flip, eyes slit wide, glimmering with voidlight.

None spoke at first, but all gazed upon the koru as its light flickered—the fused sigil gleaming: 「氣ㇿ⌛🔥」—Qi. Hook. Hourglass. Fire.

Didgi tilted his head, light catching his beak, turning it gold.

“Oh,” he murmured, voice soft as breath. “This one’s different.”

Flip flicked his tail once, and time seemed to stumble.

“Always was,” he said.

The jade pendant slowly sealed itself. The sigils faded, their glow retreating like a tide. But the air remained thick, humming with the aftertaste of something divine.

Lin reached up, fingers brushing the stone. It was warm.

And somewhere, just beyond the veil of now, four pairs of eyes blinked in unison—as they moved to stand beside her. With her. Always.

The vision fizzled like burned-out code.

Lin Yīng blinked.

She was still slumped on the stairwell, soaked in tears, blood, and dust. The jade pendant throbbed weakly in her palm, like a heart that hadn’t quite stopped.

The scent returned—soft now.

Duck.

Sweet.

Real.

The kind of hunger that made her joints ache, that pulled her vision sideways.

Her hands trembled—not from fear, but from nothing left in the tank.

The smell pulled her, not just by hunger, but by gravity.

She forced herself to sit up, then stand, legs shaking.

She followed it past boarded windows and flickering signs toward the strange, strobing glow beaming from Old Man Wei’s shop like incense rising to heaven. The scent curled through the ambient light, flickering intensely in a nearby alley.

She walked slow—toward something impossible.

Her knees buckled. Her jaw clenched.

She was starving.

Not peckish.

Not skipping-a-meal hungry.

This was the hunger that made her joints ache, that pulled her vision sideways if she stood too fast.

Her hands trembled—not from fear, but from emptiness.

She passed more boarded windows and flickering signs, slowing near a crushed cardboard box by the curb—not a trash bin, just a maybe. A hope. Something left behind.

A chill wind snaked down the alley, carrying the metallic tang of damp concrete and something else… a faint hum. Not radio static, but something deeper, vibrating through the pavement.

She shivered, pulling her thin jacket tighter.

The air always felt charged here—a silent tension humming beneath the city’s decay.

She lifted her head, scanning grimy facades. Every window a blank stare, every shadow a potential threat.

Survival was a solitary game, played out on these streets where the rich got richer and the rest just faded away.

She was fading.

But not yet.

Not today.

My boot crunched on what was left of Nǎinai’s tea set. Celadon shards ground into the floorboards like fine green dust. I still hear the sharp crack of porcelain hitting the wall. ICE was brutal. They took pleasure in the breaking.

My camera. My face. My translation credentials wiped from the terminal with a single, contemptuous keystroke.

It wasn’t like I had anything left to sell anyway. The state had bled me dry—auto-deductions, digital debt, citizen compliance fees, even a goddamn tax on Nǎinai’s funeral.

Now tariffs mocked survival—rice, oil, soy sauce—luxury goods all.

Thoughts of the Jacksons—Barbara and Will—sent a hot spike of panic through my chest. Their benefits had been ‘re-allocated.’ I had nothing left to give.

I gave the kids next door my emergency Cal-Stiks. I still see their thin faces, gnawing on the nutrient paste like it was a feast. I couldn’t take it back. They needed it.

How do I stop the hunger?

Why me? Why, Nǎinai? Why me?

She reached for a cracked handrail outside a shuttered storefront, metal biting cold against her skin.

Sell everything? Sell myself?

Nǎinai, please help me. I miss you.

Those scum trashed our home. I’m sorry, Nǎinai—I couldn’t stop them. The landlord boarded it up.

Below them, Lín Yīng stood before the cracked jade guardian lion outside Wei’s Noodles & Celestial Repairs, whispering something only grief knows how to say. One hand rested between its ancient paws, the other clenched a plastic bag of mantou and bok choy. Her eyes shimmered.

I can still feel their eyes on me. Not the men in masks, but everyone—the ones who look away too quickly on the street, and those online who don’t look away at all.

The video is everywhere. Sold as a laugh. Just some girl, screaming. They slapped a glitching rubbish bin sticker over my head as they kicked me down the stairs. “For privacy,” they said. Just another joke. My body plastered online for likes and shares.

The only good thing? The bin helped blur who I am. Or who I was.

Who am I now? The girl who screams and flails? Or just the data they’re selling?

And that face… the one I see in the haze of code when I close my eyes. The one from the mirror shard. That angry woman staring back at me. Who is she? What have I done to her? Am I going mad, Nǎinai? Are these hallucinations just my brain breaking apart like everything else?

I don’t know who I’m talking to. A rock. A memory. But my hand fits perfectly between its paws, and the stone feels warmer than it should. Colder than your hand was.

“They broke the teapot, Nǎinai,” I whisper to the stone, words catching in my throat. “The one you loved. The one with little blue flowers. They trampled your picture. There’s nothing left. I have nothing left.”

My hunger is cold and sharp, but the shame is sharper.

“I’m sorry,” I choke out, pressing my forehead to the cool stone. “I couldn’t stop them. Please. If you can hear me… I’m so scared. And so, so hungry. Please help me.”

She pushed herself up, leaving a damp spot where she knelt, and walked away without looking back.

A single tear traced a path down the lion’s weathered cheek and settled in a small crack at its base.

As the tear was absorbed, a tiny, brilliant glimmer like a trapped star pulsed once in the darkness of the crack.

Lin didn’t see it.

But from a twitching wire overhead, a magpie did.

With a flash of dark feathers, it darted down, landing silently on the lion’s paw. It cocked its head, peering into the crack before jabbing its beak at the light.

The glimmer didn’t shatter; it flowed—a liquid thread of silver-white energy that traveled up the magpie’s beak and vanished. The bird shivered once, energized.

Then, it fluttered up and landed directly on the bridge of the lion’s nose, staring into its unblinking stone eyes.

“Yo,” the magpie squawked, voice low and gravelly. “Better do what you can, old-timer. You see my bros up there?” He flicked a wing at the sky. “We know some… pigeons. The kind looking for a holiday safari perch. And you’re it. Comprendo, lion?”

The other magpie on the wire muttered to his friend, “She’s leaking again.”

“What?”

“Out her head.”

“Oh—that’s what those are? Leaky head syndrome.”

“Leaky head?” the other scoffed. “You’ve been sipping that fermented seed juice again.”

“I know tears when I see them. It’s the shimmer. Gets behind the eyes. Starts a leak. Precursor event.”

“Precursor to what?”

“Big weird.”

“Great. First tariffs, now that fermented seed head with his PsyOps,” said the other.

“Just another Tuesday.”

Then came the static. The antenna above Wei’s shivered as a tremor of unnatural frequency passed through the wind.

The lion statue didn’t roar. It didn’t move.

But something ancient stirred beneath its weathered surface—something that listened.

In the shop, the freezer hummed louder. The bead curtain twitched without breeze.

Lín stepped back from the lion, unsure whether she’d just felt its paw twitch—or imagined it.

The magpies hopped sideways, eyes bright with something older than gossip.

“The air’s holding its breath,” one whispered. “And look—it’s here.”

“What is?”

“EmojiCon-1.”

“Cue EmojiCon-1 to QiCon Air Traffic Control, Chinatown—and action!”

The call came not from a headset, but through the lion itself, static-pulsed and faint—like an old radio stuck between channels.

Then came the reply: “Copy that. EmojiCon-1 is a go. Rolling myth layer in three… two…”

EmojiCon-1, the interglitch cruiser disguised as a Qixi Festival dragon, ignited its tail and roared across the orbital glitchscape—serpentine, animated ink drawn across sky-skin, threading constellations and moonlight like silk.

Its scales shimmered with stories too old for satellites.

On the ground, the crowd cheered, assuming it was all AR spectacle. Bootleg “EmojiCon: The Movie” tees flew off carts. Lanterns swayed in sync.

Chapter 2: Initiate: PsyOps Breach

“So, what’s wrong with it?” Jax muttered, his voice a low, rasping thread that barely cut through the suffocating hum of the simulated city. He crouched over a jury-rigged workbench—rusted crates and scavenged tech layered over a flickering sim-overlay, in an alley that felt real with grit, graffiti, and neon drips, yet its edges twitched like a bad memory, a living reality shell, static-born, hiding what lay beneath. Jade slid the burner phone across the stained surface. Its screen glitched violently, spitting static like a dying breath. “It just… keeps freezing. Then these ads—like, insane ones—show up. Sometimes it just blanks. Goes dead,” she explained, her voice small and controlled, but her hands shook, and her young eyes carried lines carved by panic, by knowing too much and never knowing enough. Jax picked up the device. Calloused fingers, webbed with solder scars, ghosted across the glass. For a second, his posture shifted—tighter, more alert. Jade let out a tight breath, then—half sarcasm, half nerves—muttered, “I think it also laughs, like mockingly.”

Jax froze. For a split second, the alley simulation blinked. Then his body moved—fast, fluid. Muscle memory kicked in like a neural override. He spun and slammed his fist through a rusting trash bin beside him. The container imploded, vanishing into jagged white deletion—not bent metal, but vanished code. The hum of the glitch surged. A nearby crate sparked with static. “You think this is funny?” he barked, eyes flashing. “You think it laughs like mockingly?” He kicked over the stack of crates between them. Metal and plastic clattered across the sim-floor, scattering fragments of illusion. Then, in one fluid, terrifying motion, he grabbed her by the collar and thrust her through the glitch as his background closed in around them. Jax dragged her toward a fiery wall that looked like red-hot molten code, ready to chomp everything in sight , snarling, “Time to shove you through the Firewall Troll,” his voice layered, distorted—like another presence had coiled through his vocal cords.

Jade screamed. Her feet kicked, panic overriding everything. Jax dragged her straight into the exposed edge of the projected alley—where the real world had torn open. “No!” she gasped, flailing. “Wait—wait! I’m not a threat! I’m not a PsyOps!” He shoved her forward, and the sim-wall folded like broken glass, revealing a glitchfield behind it: writhing static, a humming edge where time warped sideways. “Then prove it!” he barked. “Only reason you’re still here is because it hasn’t chosen you yet!”. Her body hit the edge of the glitch. Static licked at her skin like acid rain. She cried out, eyes wide with terror. “I don’t know what you think I am! I’m not part of this! I want to be a JumpMaster like you!”. Jax slammed her back into the wall. “Who told you that?” he demanded, pushing her head closer to the firewall. “You breached my files!” he roared. “You reached for the core. You opened the lock without knowing what it held!”. “I didn’t mean to—”. “You said JumpMaster. You looked me in the eye and named it”. “I thought—” she sobbed. “I hoped—”. He leaned in close, forehead nearly pressed to hers. “You hoped what?”. “That you could help me”. He didn’t move. Didn’t let go. Didn’t believe her. She closed her eyes. Her body trembled. The glitch coiled around her like a serpent, seething with latent deletion. Every part of her hurt. There was only one thing left. She reached for him. And kissed him.

It wasn’t sweet. It wasn’t romantic. It was pure, terrified instinct—fueled by desperation, raw emotional surge, and the ancient truth she didn’t know she knew: Emotion corrupts viruses. Feeling breaks PsyOps. Her lips hit his mid-sentence. His hand jerked. Not in consent—but confusion. Shock. The glitch reacted, not just by recoiling, but by tearing open. For one blinding, fractured second, the alley ceased to exist. Jade was no longer just Jade. She was a conduit, and the raw emotional energy she unleashed punched a hole through reality itself.

The static screamed, and in the white noise, she saw a blur of another place, another life. A girl with haunted eyes, huddled on a cold stairwell, clutching a glowing pendant. She felt a phantom pang of hunger so profound it made her own stomach ache—a hunger for duck, for safety, for a memory of a grandmother’s love. She heard a name whispered on the cosmic wind, a name that felt like her own but wasn’t: Lín.

Simultaneously, in an alley miles away, Lin Yīng, following the scent of phantom duck, stumbled as a wave of vertigo hit her. The world shimmered, and for a heartbeat, she wasn’t staring at a grimy wall but at a snarling man with a face like a collapsed star, his hands on a terrified girl whose lips were pressed to his. Lin felt a surge of impossible, defiant energy that wasn’t hers, and the scent of ozone and forgotten code filled her nostrils before the vision vanished, leaving her breathless and confused.

Back in the glitchfield, the dimensional tear sealed itself shut. The containment cracked. A wave of static buckled outward, but didn’t collapse. Instead, it recoiled from Jade. Emotion. Contact. Resonance. PsyOps couldn’t read it. Couldn’t mimic it. Couldn’t own it. The field pulled back from her body like it had touched a live circuit. Jax shoved her away. He stumbled back—eyes wild. “What the… did you just do?” he hissed. Jade wiped blood from her lip, breath shaking. “I didn’t know what else to do”. “You don’t—” He pointed at her, voice cracking with fury. “Ever touch me like that”.

“You were going to erase me”.

“You still might be infected”.

“Then why didn’t it kill me?”. Silence. The glitch floated around them like suspended ash. Not neutral. Not safe. But… changed. “You don’t get to make guesses like that,” he said, voice tight with disbelief. “You don’t throw feelings at a firewall”. “It worked, didn’t it?”. He stared at her. His hands flexed—ready to strike again, or run, or collapse. He was unraveling. “What the hell are you?”. She swallowed hard. Her voice barely held. “I want to be a JumpMaster”. He stared. Like she’d spit on the word. “You think that’s a title?”. “I think it’s the only thing that makes sense anymore”. “You kissed a corrupted fixer inside a glitchfield”. “And I’m still standing”.

The sim-wall buckled gently, then resealed itself behind them. The glitch receded into the void. Jade sagged to her knees. Shaking. Raw. But present. Jax didn’t offer her a hand. But he stepped back, giving her space. “Then you better understand what you just stepped into,” he said grimly, the fury now replaced by a cold, hard resolve. “This isn’t mentorship. This is survival. And it starts with truth you don’t come back from”. He turned his datapad. New files opened. CORRECTION TAG // AI VERIFY: FALSE – LUCIFER PROTOCOL: TIER 6 DISTORTION ‘BREAKING: Earth’s orbit destabilizing. Stay indoors. Avoid open thought’. Jade wiped her face and forced herself to focus, but a sudden buzz behind her eyes, a strange, electric static that hummed low in her skull, made her question: “Twist what we see, sure. But… what we think?”. Was this in her head? The fear felt real enough to taste. “They don’t infect code,” he said, his voice flat lining the dread. “They infect cognition. Ads. Notifications. Micro-rewrites. Sub-thought corruption. It’s a silent, invasive LAN party in your brain, Jade. They’re running scripts right in your thought-stream”. He pointed to a log entry, glowing blue glyphs that seemed to pulse with a cold, invasive logic: PSYOPS TRANSMISSION: /lucifer.alpha.trace/ Truth is malleable. Memory is programmable. If they hesitate, they’re yours.

Her eyes scanned the glowing blue glyphs, then locked on a name, and a wave of something like recognition, a ghost of memory, shimmered through her. “Qi,” she whispered, the word feeling oddly solid on her tongue. “The one thing they couldn’t replicate. The thing that burns them, I think”. She was already searching deeper, her fingers flying over the datapad. The data sang to her, a siren song laced with ancient grief, and a sense of wrongness that made her skin crawl. Every file blooming open felt like a wound tearing. MÍNGHÉ // INTERNAL PULSE ARCHIVE Do not fear the chaos. It is not your enemy. But what feeds on it… is. Jade blinked fast, her vision blurring at the intensity of the myth unwinding. “She was serenity,” Jade whispered, the word a fragile echo. “And they wanted to… corrupt it. To break peace itself.” The thought felt like a data-panic in her chest. Jax didn’t stop her now. She scrolled faster.

PSYOPS INTERNAL MEMO // BLACKLISTED DATA Subject MÍNGHÉ resists all penetration vectors. Emotional mimicry ineffective. Recommend full corruption protocols. “Liánhuǒ,” she murmured, the name a jagged shard of empathy. “They used him against her. They weaponized his love.” The words tasted like ash, a 404 heartbreak pinging directly into her soul. LIÁNHUǑ // DISTORTED AUDIO FILE She looked at me like I was smoke. Beautiful, but passing. So I burned her galaxies into memory. Her stomach churned. “His love became a weapon. That’s how they built the first virus, isn’t it? They corrupted feeling”. “And it’s still happening,” she said. “Right now”. “In your phone. Your feed. Your breath,” Jax answered, his voice a low hum. “The war isn’t hiding—it’s coded into everything you ignore. It’s the static in your bones when the connection drops”. She looked up at him, face pale but fierce. “So when you feel… off?”.

“That’s not failure. That’s your warning,” he said. JUMPMASTER // TACTICAL BRIEFING 1:3 If you feel off, you’ve been touched. If you question it—good. That means Qi hasn’t left you yet. “JumpMasters don’t fight,” she whispered, the words a sacred promise. “They correct. They feel the broken bit and fix the stream”. Jax nodded. “And not everyone survives that task”. The glitchfield behind them hummed once more, folding inward—accepting her presence now, no longer pushing her back. Jax watched her. Still unreadable. But something in his gaze had shifted. “You opened a door no one forced you to touch,” he said. “And that door? Only opens one way”. As Jade sagged to her knees, shaking, a small, shimmering object tumbled from her pocket, skittering across the sim-floor. Jax’s eyes locked onto it: a sleek, iridescent pass. He picked it up, a sardonic smirk twisting his lips. “Celeb access, aren’t we? Privileged wannabe JumpMaster. Look at you, all pretty in the glitch”. He held it out, then snatched it back, pressing his face close to hers, his voice a low growl. “Want it back?” Then, in a move that stole her breath, she saw his lips ready to crush against hers. Confusion, anxiety and a surge of excitement flowed then crashed as Jax pressed the card to her lips dropping it into her trembling hand. “Here. Take it”. Jade was speechless, reeling from the sudden assault, her mind a blank, not knowing what to think or feel, just the ghost of his touch vibrating on her lips.

Chapter 3: Magpie Duo

Inside QiCon HQ—camouflaged as Wei’s noodle shop—the air guarded the entrance with the aroma of soy steam and overheated cables. Rickety myth-screens flickered across the walls, layers of glitch maps jittering: dragon scales mapped over orbital debris, EmojiCon flight threads tangled with old myth paths. Wei’s stylus tapped like a woodpecker on cracked plexi. “Wiggi!” he barked, teapot in one hand. “The dragon’s masking layer is drifting! Lock that tail—if the city sees the breach corridor, we’re exposed.” Perched on a sagging Ethernet cable, Wiggi—a sleek magpie with data-blue glowing pinions—tilted his head. “Re-threading tail weave. Ninety-three point seven percent integrity and climbing.” His beak snapped open six holo panels at once. Above him, Didgi hung upside down from a bamboo rafter, feathers shimmering under the light of glitch-screens. He clicked once. “Belief index falling. Another influencer rage-quit the festival feed.” Wei slammed the teapot down. The lid spun. “The Qixi dragon is the maiden flight of EmojiCon-1. Not a light show. It’s the carrier. The breach corridor is stitched to its path. If the mask slips, the whole route lights up on citywide scan.” Wiggi: “Tail weave holding but slipping—seven percent drift.” Didgi: “Anchor signal is unstable. It’s leaking.” Wei’s eyes narrowed at a pulsing glyph on screen. “It’s not the corridor. It’s Maui. He sent the four guardians ahead.” Didgi: “To her.” Wiggi’s feathers flared. “That leaves him open.” An alarm whooped. Myth-screen #6 convulsed. Black fractals bled across the edges. Wei swore. “Ambush confirmed. Maui’s signal collapsing.” A sky shockwave cracked through the upper atmosphere. Didgi: “Impact vector unscheduled. Source: high-altitude myth rupture.” Wiggi: “Guardian threads severed. Maui’s falling.” Didgi: “Alive. Barely. Signature unstable.” Wei’s jaw locked. “He turned his back for her.” He drove the stylus into the console. “Redirect corridor routing. Shift to Karmic Layer B. Secure the tether.” Didgi: “The tether is her.” Wei: “Exactly. Reinforce it.” On the floor, the jade lion statue shivered. Ancient stone cracked with breath. Wiggi spread his wings, glitch light pulsing at the edges. “Engaging full myth mesh. Shell collapse imminent.” Didgi clicked once. “Luck is a statistical error. Start flapping.”

The fracture in the heavens sent a tremor through the earth. As the shell of their mission began to crack, so too did the fragile shell of a girl clinging to the edge of the world, feeling the vibration not in the sky, but in the bones of the city itself.

Outside The box Lin was staring at shuddered in the wind. Behind her, the noodle shop’s greasy window flickered with the light of a battered TV. The sound was off, but the headlines screamed:

TARIFF CASCADE TRIGGERS SHORTAGES

GLOBAL COMMODITY RIOTS IN SEVEN ZONES

No names. No faces. Just graphs, burning silos, and a ticker crawling under red numbers:

“$3.22 / egg.”

Lin turned away. She already knew how the world was ending. She nudged the box again. Empty. Of course.

Lin Yīng edged closer to the noodle shop’s grimy front window, duck grease streaking the cracked glass. Her stomach cramped deep in her gut. Inside, glitch-screens cast blue light across Old Man Wei’s face. She heard pieces of it through the static:

“…dragon’s the ruse… breach corridor… she’s the anchor—”

She pressed her palm to the glass. Her breath fogged the surface. Steam curled from the vents beneath her coat.

Anchor?

Her. Hungry girl. Myth tether. She didn’t understand what it meant. Only that the smell of duck pulled at her ribs, and the glowing dragon overhead wasn’t just decoration. It was watching. Waiting.

A voice rose behind her reflection—low, cold, and not hers: “Feed the glitch. Or be fed to…” She pulled her hand away. Fingers numb. The words hung in the air, and just then, the panels smashed out in indentations of claws and the ugliest PsyOps heads. As beaks and small mitts punched where the head dents were etched out hands off.

Lin Yīng move towards the cracked glass freezer outside Wei’s shop, her ear pressed up hard her breath fogging up the frostbit panes. A thin line of steam curled from the vents above the door, carrying the smell of duck fat and stale soy — so thick it felt like it was melting into her skin. Inside, old mantou sat stacked like pale bricks behind frost. The roast duck, glossy skin split — seemed to watch her through the glass. She leaned closer, letting the warmth of her breath blur her reflection. At first, it was just her: hollow cheeks, bruised under-eyes, lips cracked from too much wind, not enough water. But then the neon sign above the freezer — a lucky koi half-burned out — flickered red and green. Her reflection warped, the edges crawling with static. It looked like her — but sharper, lips full, skin smooth, eyes jade-bright. Hungry. Hungrier than she’d ever let herself admit. Its grin twitched like bad signal, teeth glitching into fangs before snapping back. She jerked back, but the glass dragged her in. The reflection’s mouth moved, but the words slipped behind her ribs, cold and oily.

Do you even know which one of us is real? She pressed her hand flat on the glass. Frost crackled under her palm, and for a heartbeat she saw the jade lion statue behind her, reflected upside down in the freezer door. Its eyes flickered too, green static pulsing.

Feed us, the phantom voice crooned.

Empty stomachs pretending to be people. That’s all we are.

A sour whiff of fermenting cabbage drifted up from the trash bins behind her — old bok choy, wet cardboard, yesterday’s dumpling steam turned rank. Her own stomach cramped like it wanted to fold her in half. She clenched her jaw so hard her teeth hurt.

Why me? Why this city? Why tonight?

But a beat later, the stink hit her like permission:

If the world’s rotting anyway, what’s one little food hit? She was out of plans. Tonight, she’d make one. A child’s voice called out from the static of a busted sidewalk radio: “Hell is here!”

Lin Yīng smirked bitterly at the phantom in the glass.

Good. Then let it eat me last.

A single, bitter choice. A crack in a girl’s soul that was also a command. In that fracture, reality itself tore open, and the city answered her despair with its own scream of static.

A thousand livestreams across Chinatown glitched at once. Noodle-pulling masters froze mid-toss, their dough strings stuttering like buffering videos. Mahjong hustlers near Bayard squawked as the tiles rearranged themselves into QR codes that pulsed “EmojiCon-1 Early Access: Sold Out.” A fruit stall auntie’s phone screen fractured into digital snow — her streaming fortune-telling session dissolving into a storm of flying peach emojis. In the midst of this pixel bleed, two streaks of sequined fur split the feed — twin comets of raccoon chaos. Zip and Flip, mid-dumpling review, tumbled from the digital into the damp, cracked concrete of Mott Street. Flip cannonballed into a half-full soy sauce barrel, sending a pungent splash over crates of bok choy. His tiny pinstripe suit turned black with brine. He emerged spitting out a shrimp tail like a torpedo, eyes narrowed.

“Did we just ruin reality’s Yelp score?” Zip grunted, landing surprisingly upright on a pile of rotting cabbage. His tiny CEO hat buzzed with corrupted emojis, glitching from 😎 to 🤯 to 🦝. Above them, a flickering LED sign flashed: “Fresh Bao 5 for $5” → “404: Bao Not Found.” Flip sniffed, slicking his whiskers back with a paw that reeked of fermented soy. “This location sucks,” he muttered, pulling a half-chewed dumpling from his pocket and chomping it defiantly. A food stall vendor shouted in Mandarin, waving a glitching phone: “Aiyo! Are they raccoon? Or CCTV demon?!” Zip dusted off his sparkly tail, nose twitching as he sniffed the static-charged air. “Payload’s close,” he said, voice low. “Smells like duck, despair, and zero crypto.” Flip’s eyes gleamed. “Perfect. The glitch called. We answered.” He flicked soy sauce off his ears, then tapped his little phone — the screen cracked, but a single message pulsed out: “🦝 Zip & Flip — Myth Mode Activated 🦝.” Somewhere above, the digital glitchstorm twitched — EmojiCon-1 winked into view behind the clouds, dragon-shaped, its tail slicing reality like a brushstroke. Lin Yīng, hidden behind a stack of oil drums, clutched her bag of mantou tighter. The raccoons’ eyes locked on her like twin GPS signals locking on a moving dumpling. “Hey you!” Flip squeaked, voice echoing like bad karaoke through the alley. “Stay put. We’re gonna need you to sign the reality waiver. Small print: we own your existential crisis.” Zip popped his collar, CEO hat flickering.

“This feed’s about to crash harder than your rent bill. Smile for the glitch, kid.” Lin’s stomach rumbled so loud it cut through the static. Flip’s grin went razor sharp. “And there it is. First transmitter always hunger. Next up: big weird.” Zip and Flip—celestial raccoon agents of controlled chaos—descended like glittering furball comets, skidding sideways through a blast of glitch-aura into Wei’s storeroom. Lín stared, the air still shivering with Maui’s impact. “I… just talked to a rock,” she whispered. “Nope,” chirped Flip, flicking a bao bun off his shoulder. “You dialed a hotline. The lion’s Qi amplified the signal. Boom. Celestial wake-up call.” “She called,” Zip confirmed, adjusting his tiny CEO shades. “Hunger’s always the first transmitter. Then come grief. Then come the tears. After that? Dragons don’t sleep. They wait.” Flip slapped a janky badge onto her chest. “Welcome aboard. You’re the payload now.” Flip’s ears twitched. He whipped out a battered phone duct-taped to a dumpling. “Wait—hold it! We need to TikTok this up. Full glitch glam, cosmic lighting, ancestral lens flare—” Zip slid across a freezer lid and struck a kung-fu pose mid-air. “Okay, viral in three—two—oops…” The phone buzzed. ✨[SIGNAL LOST: COSMIC OVERLOAD]✨ “*Too late, *” Flip groaned. “

Already went viral in eight adjacent timelines. One of them’s now ruled by sentient bao.

” “We’ll monetize later,” Zip shrugged. “Focus. We’ve got a payload with emotional resonance and snack-based telemetry. You good?” “Yeah,” Flip said, adjusting the duct-taped phone like a crown. “Just don’t forget the hashtags this time. #StoneLionFanclub #GlitchBlessing #MauiDidWhat” “#EmojiConDrop,” Zip added. “#NoFilterJustQi.” The air pulsed. Somewhere above the clouds, EmojiCon-1 twitched like a beast waking from prophecy. Flip blinked up at the shimmer. “Okay… I think the sky just swiped right on her.” Zip nodded solemnly. “Then we go full upgrade. Myth Mode: Activated.” “EmojiCon-1’s inbound,” Zip added. “It’s glitching. We need to stabilize. She’s the tether.”

“Still hungry?” Flip asked, pulling a two-liter milk carton from thin air. “Good. Anchored by appetite. That’s ancient magic.” The lights flickered. The till gasped open. The freezer howled. Far above, orbit whispered again: “JADE HALO DOWN.”

The words meant nothing to her, a phantom pain for a stranger whose name she’d never heard. Yet, the feeling was deeply familiar. A fracture in another’s life that echoed in the shattered pieces of her own, reminding her of the crushing weight of a world where everything, and everyone, eventually falls.

Her throat tightened. She clutched her jacket closer, as if the memory of her grandmother could still keep the wind out.

I wish I had a Zip and Flip, she thought bitterly, those crazy raccoons you used to tell me stories about. What a wacky world they came from. Always scheming, always hungry… They always found a way, didn’t they? Please, Nǎinai. Please.

She doubled over on a stoop, arms across her stomach, trying not to cry because tears wasted water.

Food banks are empty. No work left. I applied. I tried. I studied like you said. But nothing’s left. This pain… it hurts so much. Forgive me. Please.

Her legs moved before her mind did. She was going to steal it. She didn’t care anymore. No more plans. No more precision. Just food. Just enough to make it through the night.

Down below, the Golden Dragon pulsed with late-day static—steam vents hissing, scooters buzzing, old pop songs bleeding from dusty speakers zip-tied to poles. She scanned it all, eyes skimming the surface of chaos, peeling back layers like code. Target check. Distraction team. Exit route. The players were all in motion.

Too much movement for a shop this size. Shipments flying out, sketchy deliveries sliding in like clockwork. She watched, jaw tight. Something dirty underneath the dumplings and candy wrappers. Illicit, maybe. Then again—if they’re running their own little side hustle, what’s a little extra missing off the top? Tonight, lies were lighter to carry than hunger. She caught a glimpse of a flickering street sign near the market entrance: “Mott Street,” it read, then distorted into a series of jagged lines before briefly resolving into the Chinese character 勿 (wù), meaning “don’t.” A shiver traced its way down her spine.

Don’t what? she wondered, a familiar anxiety stirring in her gut.

Don’t remember? Don’t look too closely?

It was just past five, the Golden Dragon Market buzzing with the late afternoon rush. Elderly aunties, faces etched with a thousand stories, haggled over dried herbs and cheap rice, their voices sharp and quick as they nudged Old Man Wei for the good lottery tickets he kept hidden. Construction workers, sweat-stained shirts clinging to their backs, lumbered in for energy drinks and single cigarettes he sold loose under the counter. Broke gig workers hunched outside, nursing one milk tea for hours while their dead e-bikes charged on the store’s outdoor outlets. Yīng spotted him right away—the young man in the Canada Goose jacket. Or something close to one; the stitching was a little off. He hovered his phone over the QR pad. Alipay approved. In his basket: matcha KitKats, a single durian puff, and a high-end bottle of baijiu sealed in gold. New money, she noted. More flash than substance. Head somewhere else. Two construction workers stepped in next, boots dusted with paint, speaking low in a Henan dialect. They counted coins quietly, enough for a shared pack of huajuan buns. At the counter, they split them with care. One glanced toward the durian puff, then looked away. Working hard. Probably skipping lunch. Efficient hands. Best not underestimate. The next group swept in with energy—three girls in crop tops and well-worn Air Force 1s. They laughed, tossed shrimp chips and a Slim Jim into a basket. One of them eyed the baijiu and grinned.

Ooooh, gēge, you gonna share? The ABC crew, Yīng thought. Playful. They like attention—but that can work both ways. Then came the aunties. Three of them in floral pajama sets, practical and alert. They zeroed in on the lychee bin, elbows sharp. One peeled a fruit right there, sniffed, and shook her head.

Zhè ge bù xīnxiān! Not fresh. Wei groaned. Without a word, he knocked fifty cents off the price. Veterans. Know what they want. Know how to get it. Useful pressure. At the edge of the store, near the alley door, stood a man in a Dǎjiàng e-scooter jacket. He lingered in the shadows, fingers tapping his left pocket. Again. And again. Something’s off. Maybe new to this. Maybe nervous. Either way—he’s the one.

The scene settled into a pattern. Yīng could feel it sliding into place.

Distraction: The ABC girls would raise a fuss with Wei—like clockwork.

Cover: The aunties would crowd the counter, commanding full attention.

Blind spot: The tech bro would drift into the camera’s view, caught mid-pose.

Movement: The Dǎjiàng guy would make a break for it. She’d slip out behind him.

She picked up a lollipop—always buy one thing—and popped it into her mouth. The crunch was clean. Sweet. Sharp. A beat. From the front: “Wei-shū, why’s your lǎobǎn sauce taste like ketchup?!” Right on cue. She exhaled. Time to move. She pushed off the dumpster, sneakers silent on the cracked asphalt. She was halfway to the door when a massive shoulder slammed into her. “Watch it, kid!” A burly fishmonger, reeking of brine and stale cigarettes, shoved past her without breaking stride. A battered cooler swung dangerously close to her head. She stumbled, caught herself on a crate of instant noodles. The edges bit into her palm. And then it hit her. Cigarettes. Not the mild perfumed kind that drifted from office patios or bar decks.

These were heavy. Coarse. State-issue, maybe. Factory standard. The kind your grandfather smoked in silence after bad news. The kind you only smelled now in backrooms, nowhere near here. The fishmonger hadn’t looked at her. Not really. But the shove was perfect. Too perfect. Strange, she thought, trying to steady her breath. No one smokes these days. Not like that. It’d didn’t fit. She scanned for a lighter, a burn mark, anything. Nothing. Doesn’t add up. Still, she filed it away, let her mind slide over it, smooth its edges. Probably just some old guy habit. Maybe the cooler’s leaking something. She kept telling herself that. Making the hit feel right. Justified. She stared at the alley. The rider was gone. The moment gone with him. “Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself. Her jaw clenched as the sweetness of the lollipop turned acidic. The plan didn’t fail. It shifted. Just a beat off. Just one unexpected variable. That’s all. She turned slowly, slipped back into the market, and let the door close behind her like nothing had happened. But the smell lingered. So did the doubt. They say in this war, everything is code. A string of data to be analyzed. I lived by that rule. It’s how we survive. But then there was Jax.

The brief called him a rogue asset, a ghost. But when he cornered me, he wasn’t a ghost. He was real. Too real. His armor was supposed to be a wall of black code, but I saw the glitches—a young man with a defiant smile and deep, emerald blue eyes that saw right through my own defenses. His scent wasn’t sterile metal; it was warm, like spice and ozone, and it cut through the static in my head.

Protocol screamed to neutralize him. My heart hammered a different rhythm. In that split second, with alarms blaring in my mind, I broke the rule. I closed the distance. I kissed him.

It wasn’t soft. It was a circuit completing. A spark jumping a gap that should have been impossible to cross. For a moment, the universe went silent. There was no code, no war, just the shocking warmth of his lips and the taste of rebellion.

And then, the universe answered back.

The disruption wasn’t just in my head. It was a pulse. A wave of pure, chaotic energy that shot out from us.

In his hidden data-den, Kael yelped as his monitors flared. A waveform bloomed across the screen—not jagged and hostile, but a perfect, shimmering spiral of emerald and gold. It was an energy signature he’d never seen, a signal that was technically impossible. It was beautiful.

On a dark street, Lin gasped as the jade pendant against her skin pulsed with a sudden, warm, emerald-blue light. It felt like a hello from a stranger she somehow knew.

In a London bedroom, the teen doing the #MauiPump felt the drill beat suddenly sync with a rhythm in his chest. The bass dropped harder, deeper, and for a second, he felt like he wasn’t dancing alone.

In a Tokyo arcade, a gamer’s fingers froze over a rhythm game as the beat she was following was joined by another, a faint, powerful pulse only she could feel.

From a glitch in the sky, Maui laughed, a real, booming laugh. He felt it. The whole vibe of the fight had just changed. A new instrument had joined the orchestra.

On a wire overhead, a magpie chittered, and from a drainpipe below, a raccoon looked up. They didn’t know what it was, but they knew it was one of theirs. A new member of the chaos.

I pulled back, breathless, the ghost of the kiss on my lips. My heart was still hammering, but now it felt less like panic and more like a drumbeat. I hadn’t just broken a rule. I had created a network. A connection.

But what if the data is right? What if he’s a trap, and I just gave him the key?

Then what?

Because the enemy’s first move isn’t an attack. It’s a seed of doubt.

On the ground, the air was thick with doubt. In the void, the silence held the promise of war.

The doubt was a glitch. The mission was the reset.

FROM STATIC TO SIGNAL

QiCon Command // Directive: QI-FUSION
Threat Level: COSMIC (Fission-Farming Extinction Event)
Status: BROKEN ARROW PROTOCOL – ACTIVE
Primary Objective: Absolute, unmitigated obliteration. No mercy. No negotiation. No survivors. The interstellar silence is our only message.

I. Strategic Overview (Jingya // Grandmaster Strategist)
SITREP: Enemy is weaponizing our culture, elders, and the concept of Yin itself. They are Fission-Farming our compassion and using chaos as a cover.

ASSESSMENT: They have fundamentally miscalculated. Our compassion is not a weakness; it is our anchor. The chaos they create is the canvas for our response.

DIRECTIVE: Broken Arrow protocol is engaged. This is not defeat; it is tactical necessity. All strategic restraints are lifted. Their targeting of children makes righteous fury our primary doctrine. We will meet their reality-splintering attacks with absolute force. All assets are committed.

END STATE: We will turn their harvest into a cleansing fire. We will make their war a memory. No hesitation. No mercy.

II. Inbound Intelligence & Comms Chatter

INCOMING TRANSMISSION: GALACTIC PIGEON ENVOY // Priority Omega <<
Message received via folded-space coo-ier. Decryption: Quill & Ink.

The Great Waves do not carry soldiers. They carry erasure. A hunger that consumes light. They seek not to conquer the nest, but to unmake the sky itself. The silence they promise is the silence of the void. Trust the small ones. Trust the stones. The Earth Mother remembers what they seek to make forgotten. Fly true. Feathers up.

INTERCEPTED RACCOON CODE // Shadow Scavenger Net [FINAL TRANSMISSION] <<

[ZIP]: aint no plan for this. they’re weaponizing the feels. aint right.
[FLIP]: //EXECUTE CHAOS_PROTOCOL_9.JS //TARGET: THEIR_WHOLE_DAMN_VIBE
[WIGGI]: 🦝🔥. for the boss lady. for the little guy.
[DIDGI]: tell maui… he owes us a pizza party. goin dark. make it count.
[SYS]: …
[SYS]: …4 connections terminated.
[SYS]: …signal lost.

WeChat Group: “🐉DRAGON DEEZ NUTS🐉” <<

Anya_QiDragon: U seein this? #PsyOpsWasRight is trending. They’re selling bootleg Qi-Pets at the night market already. One of them just screamed “Your ancestors have been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty” in corrupted Cantonese and then melted.

Kael_JadeDragon: Data confirms. They’re Fission-Farming our trauma for clout. Engagement is off the charts.

Anya_QiDragon: We fought to save our culture, not turn it into some cheap cash-grab.

Maui_The_Mod: [Sticker: Raccoon giving a thumbs up while on fire]

Maui_The_Mod: Lads, we’ve peaked. Our trauma’s a tamagotchi now. Time to Yin-Yang their algorithm into next week.

SMS // MAGNÚS <-> TŪMATAUENGA <<

[TŪ]: They use children as shields. There is no honor.

[TŪ]: The land cries out. My blood boils. We will not hold back.

III. Public Feed Analysis (TikTok // #AncestorMode)
CURRENT FEED: A rapid-fire montage.

TikTok 1: A teenager in a London bedroom, but remixing. They’re doing a Maui-inspired haka, stomping to a heavy drill beat thumping from their speakers. It’s raw, not perfect. They call it the #MauiPump. Their Qi-Pet pulses with the bass. Caption: “Ancestors, catch this vibe. #QiFusion #DrillHaka”

TikTok 2: A deepfake of a kindly-looking elder flickers on screen. Its smile stretches into a pixelated nightmare. Voice distorts: “Give up… Your traditions are dead weight…”

TikTok 3: The feed is immediately remixed by Anya. The deepfake is now forced to lip-sync to an ancient lullaby as comments flood in: “NICE TRY TRENCHCOAT,” “MY NǍINAI SINGS BETTER,” “GET FISSION-FARMED LMAO.”

TikTok 4: From a high chair, a small hand reaches out and presses the button on a Qi-Pet. The screen flashes white. The video ends. The user is @Papatuanukus_Kid. The video has 1 billion views.

IV. Final Directive: Execute BROKEN ARROW
All units, all assets, all celestial guardians: The rehearsal is over.

Magnús, Tumatauenga: You are the tip of the spear. Create the opening. Be the anti-glitch. Remind them what stolen sovereignty feels like.

Maui: The sky is yours. We need a fire bright enough to cleanse the void. Make it absolute. Make it final. For Zip, Flip, Wiggi, and Didgi.

Anya, Kael: You are the firewall. Turn their memes to ash. Turn our culture into a weapon they cannot comprehend. Drown their servers in wholesome, righteous content.

The innocent has pressed the button. The land remembers. The ancestors are watching.

There will be no mercy. There will be no retreat.

Cleanse the Fission from this world. Leave only our signal in the silence.

A Glimpse in the Static
A ghost will become a conduit for dying worlds, his pain a weapon he doesn’t know he wields.

A hero’s name will be given to the wrong man, and the cheers for him will forge a new kind of shield from spite.

A warrior will feel the truth of a pulse, even as she accepts the safety of an embrace built on a lie.

And they will all learn that the war for reality will not be won with logic or code, but with a defiant kiss, a broken heart, and a love that glitches the entire system.

Want to Keep Reading?
Unlock the full novel and library for just $7.99/year.