Leo, known online as , was a ghost. A seventeen-year-old with insomnia and a laptop that ran hotter than a volcano, he existed in the gray space between player and programmer. His playground was Frontier Earth (FE), the most popular hyper-immersive survival MMO. For three years, he’d climbed its leaderboards, but he’d never fired a single shot.

And on the other side, something was writing back.

The screen went white.

Proxy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he moved the cursor to

And at the bottom, a chat log. It was already active.

Then he looked at his own hands in the game. They were no longer a default model. They were his hands. Real. Flesh. Blood.