The apartment was dark except for the glow of three monitors stacked on a cluttered desk. Energy drink cans and snack wrappers littered the floor, evidence of nights blurred together. The hum of a cooling fan filled the silence, broken only by the frantic pounding of keys and the faint chatter of a live chat scrolling along the side of the middle monitor.
Sitting in the center of this chaos was her.
A young woman with sharp cheekbones, long dark hair tied messily into a ponytail, and eyes that glimmered with the focus of someone who had long since traded sleep for ambition.
Her gamer tag, [Lyrica], floated above the stream overlay, framed by neon graphics and viewer count.
Twenty-seven thousand people were watching.
Just moments ago, they had all witnessed her defeat.
"…Who the hell was that guy?" she muttered again, leaning back in her chair, headset sliding off her ears. Her voice cracked with frustration, but the chat had already exploded into a frenzy.
