EXT. RESIDENTIAL STREET — DAY

  Morning. Grey light. Drizzle.

  Kam, Leo, and Taylor stand at the spot where the fight happened last night.

  They are looking down.

  At the asphalt.

  It’s perfect.

  Smooth. Dark. Fresh.

  No crack.

  No footprint.

  No evidence that Kam stood there and crushed the foundation of the city.

  "It’s not just filled in," Leo said, crouching low, his fingers brushing the tarmac. "It’s replaced."

  "Council doesn’t work this fast," Taylor said. "The pothole on my street has been there since FIFA 19."

  Kam stood over them, hands deep in his hoodie pockets. He didn’t offer a theory. He pressed the heel of his boot into the fresh patch of asphalt. It was harder than the surrounding road. Unyielding. Cold.

  He knew what his heat did. It cracked things. It melted them. It left scars.

  This wasn't a scar. It was an edit.

  "No," Leo muttered. "Heat leaves burn marks. This is... seamless. It’s a texture overwrite."

  Leo stood up. He looked pale. He tapped frantically at his tablet screen.

  "And my log of the fight is corrupted," Leo said. "The video file is just zeroes."

  "It’s not just the video."

  They turned.

  Maya was walking up behind them. She wore her uniform—charcoal blazer, white shirt buttoned to the top—like armour. Her braids hung neat past her shoulders, and her expression was sharp. Too sharp for a Tuesday morning.

  "Marcus isn’t in school today," Maya said.

  "Yeah, cause Kam turned his hand into gravel," Taylor scoffed, kicking at the curb. "He’s at A&E."

  "No," Maya said. "I mean... he’s not on the register. I checked the intranet. 'Marcus Dean.'"

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  She turned her phone screen toward them.

  "SEARCH RESULTS: 0," she read. "USER NOT FOUND."

  Kam shifted his weight. He stepped closer to Leo, blocking the wind, absorbing the sudden chill in the group. He looked at the screen.

  "Gone," Kam said.

  It wasn't a question. It was an assessment.

  Here is the scene converted to prose, with the Charm Envelope applied to keep Kam’s internal state physical rather than verbal.

  "He wasn’t suspended," Maya said. "He was deleted."

  Silence. The only sound was the hum of a street cleaner vehicle turning the corner down the block. It was driving slowly. Too slowly. Sweeping up things that weren't there.

  "The air feels..." Kam rubbed his neck. The friction burned his palm. "Thin."

  "They didn’t just patch the road, Kam," Leo said. "They patched the narrative. Marcus was a bug. They resolved the ticket."

  "So we won?" Taylor laughed, a nervous sound that cracked in the cold air. "Boss despawned?"

  "If they can delete him..."

  Kam didn’t finish the sentence. He looked at his own hand. The knuckles were glowing faintly orange inside the pocket. Molten.

  "...why didn’t they delete me?"

  "Because you’re not a bug, Kam."

  Leo looked at the fresh, perfect tarmac. Then up at the grey sky that looked flat, like a skybox texture.

  "You’re the crash," Leo said. "You don’t delete the crash. You quarantine the system."

  INT. TUBE STATION — MOMENTS LATER

  They walked toward the barriers. The rush hour flow was a river of damp wool and exhaustion.

  Kam kept his head down. The heat was building up under the hoodie. Not anger. Pressure. It felt like the station walls were two inches closer than they were yesterday.

  Taylor stepped up to the barrier. Swiped his card. BEEP. Gate opened. Maya swiped. BEEP. Gate opened. Leo swiped. BEEP. Gate opened.

  Kam stepped up.

  He held his card to the yellow circle.

  Nothing.

  No red light. No error message. Just dead silence. The machine ignored him completely.

  He tried again.

  "Come on," Kam said quietly.

  "Just jump it," Taylor called from the other side.

  Kam looked at the plastic paddles. He knew the physics. If he jumped, he landed heavy. If he landed heavy, he cracked the tile. If he cracked the tile, the "fix" came back.

  "I can’t," Kam said.

  "Kam," Maya said. "Just push through."

  Kam hovered his hand over the barrier. He didn't touch it. He just let the heat radiating from his palm interact with the surface.

  The plastic casing instantly turned shiny. Tacky. Warping under the proximity.

  If he touched it, he would melt right through it.

  He pulled his hand back.

  A guard by the booth looked up. Eyes locking onto the hood.

  "Oi," the guard shouted. "Hoodie. Move it or buy a ticket."

  "Kam," Leo whispered, staring at his tablet. "Don’t engage. The NPCs are set to Hostile."

  "I’m stuck," Kam said.

  "We’re not stuck."

  Leo turned his screen to show them. A map of London.

  But the Tube lines were greyed out. The bus routes were greyed out. The Uber app was showing No Cars Available across the entire city.

  "Fast travel is disabled," Leo said.

  "What does that mean, Leo?" Maya asked. Her voice was calm, sharp.

  "It means the game is still running... but the map just got a lot smaller."

  Kam stepped back from the barrier.

  Steam vented from his collar, visible now. People were staring. He was a hazard.

  "They want us to walk," Kam said.

  "Walk where?" Taylor asked.

  Kam looked at the dark mouth of the tunnel. Then back at the fragile station tiles.

  "Somewhere we can’t break anything."

  Kam turned around. He walked against the flow of the crowd.

  The crowd parted. Not out of politeness. Out of instinct. A wide berth for the walking reactor.

  "He’s getting heavier," Maya said, watching him go.

  "Yeah," Leo said. "And the server is trying to throttle him."

  "Well."

  Taylor looked at the closed gates. Then at his friends. He zipped his red puffer jacket all the way to the chin.

  "End of tutorial," Taylor said.

  He vaulted back over the barrier to follow Kam.