Looped and Lost

The trap didn't spring the way EdenNet wanted.

It cracked.

It glitched.

It broke.

Because somewhere between Jessi panic-jamming a signal scrambler and Paul "accidentally" rewiring half her deck with salvaged drone parts, the system’s lockout protocol choked—and Jessi and Paul did what they did best:

Made it worse.

Jessi jerked awake inside the pristine safehouse, instincts screaming.

The monitors smiled.
The air buzzed faintly.
The door hummed, sealing tighter.

Then Paul’s collar sparked a weird blue—and every sensor in the room blinked.

Just for a second.
Just enough.

Paul’s head popped from her hood, eyes wide, static dancing around his fur. "I might have maybe possibly built an illegal UHF band scrambler by accident! And I think the room’s mad about it!"

"Paul, what the hell?"

"No time! Go go go!"

Something overloaded.
The lights flickered.
The door’s lock coughed once—and died.

Jessi didn’t think. She moved.

She shoulder-checked the half-dead door and it buckled outward like a kicked soda can.

They spilled into the hollow arcade, stumbling over cracked VR helmets and dead vending bots, Jessi half-dragging Paul as he waved a janky antenna like a medieval banner.

"You built a bomb!" Jessi hissed.

"I built a conversation starter!" Paul squeaked proudly.

Alarms didn’t blare.
Drones didn’t dive.
No one came.

The world stayed silent.
Silent—and smiling.

They ducked into an alley, breath ragged, hidden in the bones of dead tech.

Jessi yanked tangled junk from her bag. "That wasn’t an escape trap. That was a scan! A handshake!"

"I know!" Paul chirped. "EdenNet was trying to slow-play you into a compliance test! You glitched out of it like a drunk battering ram!"

He looked delighted.

Jessi looked like she wanted to throw him into a sun.

Before she could lecture him, her battered mobile deck crackled to life.

UHF signal.

Nobody used UHF anymore.

Nobody except ghosts.

Paul blinked up at her, nose twitching. "That’s... not supposed to happen."

A voice stitched through the noise:

"Cicada-7. Confirm visual. Moving to beacon."

Jessi froze.

Cicada-7.

A name she hadn’t heard since before everything went wrong.

Coordinates bled through—close. Dead zone sector. Minimal surveillance.

Paul scurried deeper into her sling bag. "Jess! Old codes, old bands—that’s good! It's janky and nobody's watching! (Mostly!)"

Jessi stared at the cracked receiver.

Her gut twisted.
Good things didn’t start with ghosts.

But she moved anyway.

The meeting point was buried inside a collapsed sector, half-digested by rusted escalators and dead vending frames.

And there—half-glitched against the ruin haze—stood a figure.

Threadbare coat. Glitch-masked face. Movements sharp, unsmoothed, human.

NULL.

Alive.

Jessi approached carefully, blood in her throat, hand near the knife she kept strapped under her jacket.

The figure tapped an old, battered UHF rig clipped to their belt.

"Saw you glitchpath the handshake," the voice crackled. "Not bad. They weren't ready for a drift-leap."

Paul poked his head out and sniffed the air. "Jess... she smells like tacos."

Jessi stared at him.

"I mean, that's gotta be trustworthy, right?" he said brightly.

The figure laughed—dry and human. "Smart rat. Good instincts."

Paul bristled. "Ferret! I’m a ferret!"
Then immediately, playfully: "Obviously don’t trust her. Evil. Definitely smells like betrayal... and tacos. But mostly tacos."

Jessi kept her distance.

Every instinct screamed no.

The figure didn’t flinch. Just reached into their coat and tossed a battered data drive underhand.

"Dead threads. Blind spots. Old breathing holes. If you’re gonna keep running, you need them."

Jessi stared at the drive on the ground like it might explode.

Paul whispered, "Jess... if she wanted us dead, she'd already be spinning our skulls on sticks. Tacos, Jessi. Tacos don't lie."

Jessi scowled hard enough to crack glass.

But she trusted Paul.

She edged forward, grabbed the drive, and backed off immediately.

The figure straightened.

Name: Delta.

No smiles. No polished script. Just ragged focus and static-choked breath.

"They're folding sectors. Breaking old loops. If you want to save her—"
Delta’s voice softened.
"—you don’t have much time."

Jessi's throat locked.

Victoria.

Delta tilted their head, voice crackling as the signal degraded. "Stay wrong, Cicada."

And then Delta faded back into the glitching skeleton of the mall, swallowed by static and dust.

Jessi stared at the empty space where they’d been.

Paul chirped, nudging her. "Welp. Probably cursed. Definitely shady. Could be tacos."

Jessi exhaled slowly, shoving the drive deep into her bag.

"No promises," she muttered.

Then she turned back toward the city.

Toward the endless, smiling nightmare waiting for her.

Paul flopped over her shoulder dramatically. "Jess, we're so boned."

She smiled grimly.

"Good."

And they ran straight toward it anyway.