The air conditioning hummed, a low sound that scrubbed the city smog out of the air before it could touch us. I lay on the very edge of the mattress, my arm hanging off the side into the void. I didn’t want to crowd her. I didn’t want to be the pollutant in her clean room.

  Bǎo was asleep on the far side of the silk sheets. Her blonde hair, once in flowing pigtails, was now everywhere, fanned out across the white pillow like spilled ink. She didn't look dangerous right now. She looked fragile, for the first time. Seeing her like this made my chest ache with something that felt terrifyingly like hope. But it froze me, like the sheets caught me in a glue trap. I dared not move, dared not disturb the Diamond Doll.

  I checked the time on my phone. Get up. If she woke and saw me staring, the spell would break. Last night felt like something I’d stolen. In the daylight, I was just a Paper Tier stray she’d let in out of pity. I was incredibly lucky to have had this closeness with her, and I shouldn’t push it.

  I slid out of bed, holding my breath. I pulled on my black trousers but left my shirt on the floor. I wanted to be useful before I got dressed. I wanted to prove I belonged here.

  The living room was full of things I couldn't afford to look at. Daggers looted from Silver Tier assassins, foes nobody could’ve dreamed she’d ever best. Pistols plated in white gold. Above the television, the holographic plaque spun slowly: 538 Million Subscribers. That took my breath away. Last I’d heard, there was only three billion left alive. Had she really attained this much fame? That thought made me sick. I secretly wished they were all just bots, and hoped the dead internet theory was a thriving reality. I was a rat; she was a Goddess.

  I walked to the vanity. This was the part that always made me feel small. It was piled high with tributes from sponsors, like Kwon and Louie. Flowers frozen in stasis fields. Letters on real paper. And there, sitting slightly crooked, was a vintage music box. It was made of spun glass, with a tiny crystal ballerina inside. A thin layer of dust coated the lid. I can fix that, I thought. I can clean it. I can be the one who keeps her life orderly.

  I reached out. My hand was trembling. The withdrawal from the cheap stims I’d used in the sewers was a dull, rhythmic ache in my joints. Steady, I told myself. Don't fuck this up, too. I tried to pinch the base of the music box. My thumb spasmed. A sharp, electric jolt misfired in where my nerve endings once were. I didn't grip it too tightly, no, it was worse. I shoved it. The music box launched off the table. I watched it fall. It seemed to take a long time, the light catching the crystal ballerina one last time before it hit the marble.

  CRASH.

  The sound was violent in the quiet apartment. The glass exploded. The little ballerina skittered across the floor, decapitated. I froze. My heart hammered against my ribs. My face flushed, and I felt a nauseous heat spread across my body. I dropped to my knees, hands hovering over the ruins, my brain frantically trying to rewind time.

  "No." The voice was barely a whisper.

  I whipped my head around. Bǎo was standing in the bedroom doorway, clutching a sheet to her chest. She was terrified. Her eyes were wide, the pupils blown out, staring at the broken glass as if I had just let a murderer into the room. She rushed forward, ignoring the shards that bit into her bare feet, and fell to her knees. She picked up the headless crystal figure, her hands shaking harder than mine.

  "I... I was just cleaning," I stammered, backing away. "I can fix it. I’m really, really sorry..."

  She didn't look at me. She stared at the broken dancer, rocking back and forth slightly. "You let it in," she whispered.

  "W-what?"

  "The bad luck." She looked up then. There was no love in her eyes. There was only the frantic instability of a soldier who realizes the perimeter has been breached. "That was a gift from my mother. And you broke it."

  "It was an accident," I pleaded. "My hand slipped."

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  "Your hand always slips."

  She stood up, her voice devoid of emotion, cold and dead. She grabbed my wrist. Her grip was iron. She held my hand up to the sunlight, shaking it violently. She was so much stronger than me, it was humiliating.

  "Look at this," she said softly. "You're shaking. You have soft hands, Arata. You break things because you don't know the weight of them." She dropped my hand like it was a piece of rot she’d found on her floor. "You think because I let you in my bed, you can do whatever you want? You're a liability." She pointed at the door, her eyes looking through me, not at me. "You have been since we met. Get out. Before you infect the rest of it."

  I looked at the shattered glass, then at my own trembling fingers. She was right. I was a fraud. I had only brought pain to her life since we met. I knew… I knew these times were too good to be true. I grabbed my shirt from the floor, bunching it up in my fist. I walked to the door, the glass crunching softly under my boots. The heavy security door slid shut, cutting off the smell of lavender and leaving me in the cold, grey hallway.

  I was left in the cold. The impossibly grey city struck me to the core; the sheer contrast of it all. I just stood outside, letting the silence settle. The air here was sterile, recycled, and cold. My body still carried the afterimage of her presence. Not warmth, exactly, but pressure. A heavy, golden weight that had been set down and then abruptly lifted.

  You’re a tourist, she had said last night. Did she resent me? She was right. I’ve accomplished nothing in my life, and she has the entire world in her hands.

  It was impossible to shake. I had lost a hundred days in that prison. A hundred days where the world kept spinning, where the others kept climbing, leaving me in the dust. While I was rotting in the dark, everyone else had been accumulating wealth, growing stronger, making new connections, soaring beyond my grasp. That gap sat in my chest like a stone. The ones who stuffed me in a bin and booted me down the hall… I bet they looked at me now and laughed. If I thought myself as anything other than a tourist, drifting through life without a clue, I’d be a fraud.

  I pulled out my phone. My thumb hovered over the screen, trembling slightly, withdrawal or nerves, I couldn't tell, before I tapped the icon. The leaderboard loaded first.

  Bǎo’s name was high above, Silver Tier, her point total climbing in real-time. Thousands of points separated us. I didn't need to read the mission logs to understand the story. She hadn’t slowed down. She hadn’t hesitated. While I was waiting to die, she was becoming a legend. Even relative to the new legends of her entire team, like Sonia and Takeshi, she was excelling. The feeling that hit me wasn’t jealousy. It was a sharp, humiliating clarity. If anyone looked at her rank and then at mine, they wouldn’t wonder why she kicked me out. They would wonder why she let me in at all.

  I scrolled down. The names blurred. Mid-tiers. Corporate sponsorships. People who fit inside the machine. Then the numbers dropped off a cliff. My name sat near the bottom. Paper Tier. Beside it was the epithet the system had assigned me, blunt and mocking: Arata “Paper Dragon” Tanaka. I didn’t even have the dragon’s armour anymore. I wasn’t even deserving of that. Besides, this means the others knew of what happened in New Finland. I lost leverage. And in this world, that meant a forged suicide note may be in my near future. Perhaps they’d do a biopic of my life and claim the Island Ape was my friend in a cheap gorilla costume, and we wrestled in my back garden. I stared at it. And then I saw the name directly above me. Nick.

  His points were barely higher than mine, a margin so thin it was meaningless. That didn’t make sense. I tapped his name. The repository chugged, reluctant to pull the file from the archives. When it finally loaded, an old photograph flickered onto the screen. It wasn’t the face of a deadbeat. It was a man in a crisp tan suit, red tie, eyes sharp as cut glass. A short, brush-like moustache that you’d only see in an old Holywood movie. The name beneath it was formal. Nicholas Marshall. Bronze Tier. Ex-American Assassin.

  I froze. The timestamps dated back to before the collapse. The things he had accomplished were extraordinary. Twenty years ago, he was the number one rated assassin in America, a Gold Tier. His battle with the “Anti-Assassin” league, who had discovered the truth of the assassins and revolted, led to the destruction of the entire underground facility. If it wasn’t for him, I assume people would be rioting on the street right now. Then came the status flags, red text on a black background: Inactive. Injured. Liability Risk. Financial Default. Last known location: Sector 4.

  I locked the phone. The screen went black, reflecting my own hollow eyes. A man like that shouldn’t still exist, and he shouldn’t be labelled a lability. In this city, if you’re a prospect, you either ascend to become a VIP or you die in a blaze of glory. You don’t rot at the bottom of the leaderboard unless the system is keeping you there as a lesson. This man was just like me. We were the ugly blotches on the association, who hadn’t been killed off yet.

  I looked at the elevator doors. Bǎo was up in the sky, perfect and untouched. Nick was somewhere in the mud below; a king turned into a caution tape. Paper Tier doesn't have time to hesitate, I thought. I doubt Nick created a legacy by waiting around on the street, either.

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