The vending machine shuddered.
Not physically—there was no real metal here, no true glass—but the digital construct that held Leo flickered violently, its bright product icons warping into jagged shapes. The crack that had spiderwebbed across the screen pulsed with unstable light, spreading like a fracture through ice.
Outside, Neon Spire City seemed to hold its breath.
The Data Police units stood in a loose arc around the vending machine, their featureless heads angled toward the fractured display. The blue lines tracing their bodies brightened, flowing faster now, as if responding to a threat.
Leo's pulse thundered in his ears.
The girl on the other side of the screen didn't move.
Her eyes were locked on him, wide but not panicked—alert. Calculating. The kind of look people got when they were already halfway through planning an escape route.
"You're not supposed to be here," she repeated softly, her voice barely audible over the low electrical hum of the street.
Leo pressed his palm harder against the glass. The surface rippled like disturbed water beneath his touch. "I don't know where 'here' is," he said. "But they're trying to delete me."
Her gaze flicked to the blue lights of the Data Police, then back to Leo. The smallest crease appeared between her brows.
"They only hunt corrupted ghosts," she murmured. "How did you even—"
A sharp tone cut through the air.
The nearest Data Police unit raised one arm. Thin threads of light unspooled from its fingers, slicing toward the vending machine in a precise, surgical arc.
"Move!" the girl snapped.
She lunged sideways, grabbing the edge of the vending machine's housing. Leo felt the digital space around him warp as her hand intersected with the construct's control layer. The world stretched, compressed—then snapped.
Leo was yanked free of the vending machine and hurled sideways into another screen.
This one was smaller. A cracked advertisement panel on the side of a bus shelter. The transition was rougher this time, like being scraped through broken glass. His vision fractured into static for a heartbeat before reforming.
He sucked in a breath he didn't need.
The vending machine exploded into shards of light behind him as the Data Police's threads tore through it. The girl rolled across the wet pavement, coming up in a crouch, her device already glowing brighter in her hand.
"Okay," she muttered. "That's new."
Leo peeked out from the bus shelter screen. The Data Police units reoriented with unnerving smoothness, their attention shifting to the shattered vending machine—and then to the bus shelter.
"They're going to follow me," Leo said, his voice trembling despite his effort to keep it steady. "Every time I jump, they just—find me."
"Yeah," the girl said. "That's what tracking algorithms do."
She glanced up at the nearest building, eyes darting across the glowing lines of embedded screens and security cams. "Can you move through any screen?"
"I… I think so," Leo said. "I just sort of—went."
"Good," she said. "Then you're coming with me."
"With you?" he echoed. "I don't even know who you are!"
She flashed him a quick, almost-smile. "Name's Maya. And you're about to get us both in a lot of trouble."
She bolted.
Leo barely had time to register what she'd said before she was sprinting down the street, weaving between pedestrians and glowing ad pillars. The Data Police units surged forward in unison, their bodies blurring as they accelerated.
"System!" Leo called desperately. "If I jump into another screen, will that slow them down?"
"Data Police possess cross-node tracking capability," the voice replied. "Your location will be recalculated within 0.4 seconds of transition."
"Great," Leo muttered. "That's… super helpful."
He leapt anyway.
This time, he dove into a towering billboard advertising some luxury apartment complex. The image of a smiling family dissolved around him as he slipped into the display's digital layer. He burst out through a screen on the far side of the street, reforming inside a news kiosk with a flicker of static.
Maya was already there, ducking behind the kiosk's glowing display.
"You're fast for a ghost," she said, breathless. "Good reflexes."
"I'm not fast," Leo shot back. "I'm just… very motivated not to die again."
She shot him a look. "Again?"
Before he could answer, the air behind them rippled. One of the Data Police units stepped out of a nearby streetlight screen, its blue gaze locking onto Leo's position instantly.
"Yeah, okay, that's not good," Maya muttered.
She slammed her device against the kiosk's side panel. Lines of code flared to life across the screen in front of Leo, cascading faster than he could read.
The kiosk's display glitched—then split open into a jagged, glowing seam.
"Through there!" Maya shouted.
Leo hesitated for half a second. The seam didn't look like any screen he'd seen before. It looked… wrong. Unstable. Like tearing through a place that wasn't meant to be torn.
The Data Police unit raised its arm.
Leo dove.
The world convulsed.