The sky above Vexis pulsed like an overclocked circuit, vivid lights bouncing off of towers of glass and chrome as if the city itself were alight with excitement.

The megacity was often loud - an unending thrum of traffic, holographic advertisements, rooftop parties and a vibrant synthetic nightlife - but tonight was different. Tonight, the world wasn’t just living. It was alive.

From the LED towers of Sovereign Heights to the outer walls of Zone Nine, every digital surface (and many analogue ones) had been claimed by the planet’s premier pop sensation, Shinbi. Dimensional projectors cast her twin wolf logo on every wall, mag-lev trains looped her latest single and even the traffic lights were recoloured with her signature shade of electric blue.

Shinbi wasn’t a pop star anymore - she was a planetary phenomenon, a force of media the likes of which Axion Prime had never known.

And tonight was the world-stopping final event of her record-shattering tour. A concert so vast it wasn’t just being attended, it was being worshipped.

And nowhere were the devout more excited than in the custom-built Velocisphere, a globe-like stadium that used artificial gravity to allow members of the Wolf Pack to watch Shinbi’s performance from every inch of the sphere’s hollow interior while the superstar herself would perform on a smaller sphere suspended in the center.

Fans in the arena screamed, sang, wept and collapsed, their bodies wrapped in glowing digi-fabrics and dynamic tattoos cycling through Shinbi’s song lyrics in radiant, flickering loops. Above them, drone swarms painted her signature wolves above the crowds, bathing the sphere’s interior in vivid shades of cyan.

A single word blasted from the audience in anticipation of the show starting, echoed digitally on banners, signs, screens and streams around the world:

SHINBI.

SHINBI.

SHINBI.

Hidden at the apex of the sphere, high above the stage, Shinbi sat quietly inside a private prep suite.

Her dressing room was a cathedral of chrome and light, with angled mirrors projecting her flawless reflection in a dozen directions.

She adjusted nothing. Her makeup was flawless, her outfit already shimmering with reactive synthlight that would shift hue with every step of her performance.

And yet she sat, frozen in place.

After a quick check to make sure she was still alone, she reached into a hidden pocket buried deep within the fabric at her waist and took out a small earpiece. She slotted it into place before activating an encrypted channel buried deep beneath the stage frequencies.

A moment later Police Chief Murdock’s voice came through with a buzz of static.

“You’re late checking in.”

“I’m supposed to be on stage in three,” Shinbi whispered, “I shouldn’t be talking at all.”

She let out a slow breath. “Is it happening tonight?”

A pause.

“I’d stake my badge on it.”

For weeks she’d suspected it. The new tracks she’d been given for this leg of the tour had felt… off. Not in terms of melody or structure, but something else entirely.

Her producers had gone quiet when questioned. Her contract, though extremely lucrative, had locked her out of certain parts of the creative process. Recently she’d noticed strange rhythms in the backing tracks, vibrations that were mirrored in the crowd's response. Perfect sync. Eerie smiles. Microglitches in eye dilation.

Someone was embedding something in her music. She could feel the manipulation in the waveform, even if she couldn’t yet name it.

“Can you stop it?” she asked.

“State-of-the-art data interceptors have been placed at the zenith and the nadir of the arena,” Murdock said. “If there’s a trigger, we’ll clip it. Your feed is your own, I promise.”

Shinbi swallowed. “And the others?”

“You’ve got four decoys tonight. Three hardlight, one real. No one will know which is you.”

“They’ll still come.”

“They won’t get near you.”

In the months leading up to tonight Shinbi had never detected emotion in Murdock’s voice. He was every bit as professional as his reputation described.

But tonight she felt it - a tension in the silence.

“Good luck, Shinbi.”

Her lips curved in a nervous half-smile. “You too.”

She tapped her ear to cut off the feed before rising to her feet. Her heart thudded.

This was it.

The arena darkened, causing the crowds that lined the sphere to erupt in shrieking, frenzied waves of screams. Fans crushed together, their hands reaching desperately toward the suspended core at the center of their world.

A single glittering spotlight ignited the central stage from the top of the arena - piercing the darkness like a ray from the heavens themselves breaking through the clouds.

And from it, Shinbi plummeted.

No wires, no safety rig, just a meteoric descent from her dressing room on the inside apex of the sphere to the stage that hovered at its core. As she fell she trailed a twisting vortex of spectral wolves and streaks of blue lasers that span around her in a carefully-choreographed cyclone.

The moment she landed - a perfect three-point superhero drop onto the main stage - the arena exploded. Light, sound and devotion collided in a singular, deafening detonation.

And for just a moment Shinbi forgot about all of her worries. It was just her, the music and her fans.

Until it wasn’t.

All around the Velocisphere, the screens began to change. A flickering rainbow of colourful lines and broken pixels jittered across every device. The lights blinked out again, followed by the music and Shinbi’s microphone, until all that remained was a dark arena filled with confused fans shouting into the void.

Shinbi reached frantically for her earpiece in the darkness. Was this it?

Murdock’s voice cracked through before she even found it.

“We’re l̷͇͖̝̩͌͘ͅö̷̻͔͔̩̬̳̀c̸̦̩̹̖̤̣̱̙̓͋͊͋͘ͅͅk̶͉͔͌ͅȅ̸̝̳͝d̶̡̻̰͎͚͕̤̰̙̭̾̓̾͂͊́͝ out, Shin…” his voice glitched. ”Some… external override. This is… the b̶̪͖̲̪̊́̂͋̄͋͠ǫ̴̜͚͙̠̟́̾̀͜ą̵̯̩̭̘͚̿̅͌̐̕͜r̸̰̜͒̊̿͌̈́̏͛̐̕d̵͔͙͔̲̼̞͒̀͛̄̀̽̆͠. I re… this… N̶̛̟̗͑̋̆̇̉̿O̸̳̲͆͛̒̑̈́ͅT̸͉̬̣̱̟͕̃̿̌̐͌̆̐̂͑ ̴̧̖̮̌̑͒͘͝ͅthe board. It… someone ę̵̩̝̬̬̣͍̖̂̏̃ļ̸̢̳̼̟̰̅͐̃́̽͂̌̑͝͝s̷̨̛͕͙͉͎̰̟̲̞̥̐̇̈́e̵̤̺̞͈͆̉̂̑̌̑̅͐͒̈́ͅ.”

A moment later, blinding color exploded across the stage. Across Vexis. Across Axion Prime.

Every TV, every digi-paper, every synthetic-adboard. They all shone a crude light.

The sky remained lit by lights and beacons, but gone were the radiant blues and silvers of Shinbi’s brand.

Replacing them was a rich and indulgent magenta, deep, pulsating and electric, plunging the planet’s skyline into an ominous pink-red.

One by one the screens across the arena and the city beyond flickered to reveal an animated image of a simple cat’s face, grinning wildly against the hot pinks.

The crowd fell silent as a single voice cut through the arena’s speakers.

Shinbi didn’t move.

She didn’t even dare to blink.

Recognition cut deeper than fear as, on a planet drenched in magenta, her face became the only thing drained of colour.

The voice that followed was glitchy. Digital. Intimate.

“Long time no see, 언니.”

Words by Echo Seeker Kari