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A data‑driven world where memories become currency. Mira enters a virtual economy to find her missing brother and discovers that progress is purchased with pieces of identity. She risks herself to rupture the system, pulling fragments into a fragile sanctuary while tech and corporations fight back.
Mira Kest waited until the city outside her window thinned to a grid of motionless lights before she sat up all the way and cinched the band of the interface. Her palms were steady despite the way her chest felt like a locked room; she had rehearsed this in every spare hour for a month. The lobby of Axiom Gate would know her in two heartbeats, and a million little permissions would decide whether the path to Theo began with a breadcrumb or a dead end.
The headset warmed the soft skin behind her ears. The world cleared and then resolved into the plaza: glass and wire, avatars drifting like constellations around a central obelisk of translucent chips. A holographic guide unfolded in front of her, a calm ribbon of tutorial text that every new entrant saw: WELCOME, SELECT CLASS. Data-Knife hovered as an option, a blade with circuits for teeth—an architecture built for slicing information and turning breach into advantage. Mira accepted with a quiet precision. Her hands moved before her breath did.
HUD:
CLASS: Data-Knife
BASE: INT 14 / AGI 10 / RES 8
ACTIVE: Info Slice (basic)
INVENTORY: Starter Kit, Personal ID
A gentle chime designated an introductory quest. The Gate rewarded players who moved quickly, favored those who learned the rules. Mira clicked through the brief, reading the polish language of systems designed to reassure. The training corridor was a narrow lane of code and light; holographic dummies annotated with weakness markers and a soft counter that ticked experience.
She caught, in the corner of the HUD, an ancillary window with a muted header: MNEMONIC EXCHANGE (beta). Hover text: Sacrifice a small memory shard for an immediate stat or skill augmentation. WARNING: All trades are permanent. Mira's eyes slid away from the box. She had expected this possibility—she had read rumor threads and watched one too many leaked demos—but seeing it rendered where a simple click could pay for movement felt like treading a threshold.
There was a smaller note beneath the warning, almost corporate in its softness: HELP BUILD A LIVING WORLD: consent to contribute optional experiential memory shards and unlock premium progression. Mira closed the window with a hand that trembled nothing like fear and everything like resolve. Theo's name sat in the hollow at the back of her mind, sticky and raw as an open wound. She had come for him.