The following day, Project Veil’s central hub felt crowded—too crowded.  

When Lyra spawned in, notification icons swarmed her like gnats. She’d gained hundreds of follower requests overnight. The anonymity she’d chosen was eroding one algorithm at a time.

> System: Congratulations, Vann! You’re trending in Combat Metrics Top 100.

Her heart sank. Fame had found her again, even behind a mask.

She wandered through the marketplace, passing avatars with animal faces, digital halos, glitch tattoos. They whispered when she passed. “That’s her. The one who blooms the glitches.”

She messaged GhostMaker.  

> Vann: Did you do something?  

> GhostMaker: Define something.  

> Vann: I’m trending.  

> GhostMaker: Then stop being interesting.  

> Vann: Not my strong suit.  

Meanwhile, Cassian’s screen was a storm of alerts. NovaCore’s intrusion detection flagged his firewall again—someone inside the corporation was digging for Vann’s IP trail. He swore under his breath and leaned back, rubbing his temples. He couldn’t protect her forever.

He typed into the console:

> run [heartbeat_scan.v3]  

The code traced live server pings—thousands of user signatures flickered like fireflies. Then one pulse shone brighter, rhythmic, erratic—hers. Vann’s emotional output, raw and unfiltered, mapped like a heartbeat across the grid.  

He stared. The data wasn’t supposed to have rhythm. But hers did.  

“Emotion as encryption,” he muttered. “You brilliant mess.”

He copied the waveform to a private drive.

Lyra queued for another raid to distract herself, but every lobby she joined filled instantly. Players wanted screenshots, interviews, to “touch the glitch goddess.” She logged off before the countdown.

Her phone buzzed—no number displayed. Against instinct, she answered.

“Still chasing ghosts, Lyra?” The voice was smooth, amused, female. Nia Trent. The influencer who’d started the first scandal. “Funny how your resurrection sells better than your fall.”

Lyra’s throat tightened. “How’d you get this number?”

“Public records, darling. Your past leaks louder than your silence. Tell me, is the rumor true? The dev himself is protecting you?”

Lyra ended the call without replying. Her hands shook. Not from fear—from fury. She stared at the console and whispered, “Let’s see how invisible you really are, GhostMaker.”

When she logged back in, the skybox glowed blood red—a rare event signal called *Server Eclipse*.  

GhostMaker stood waiting at the edge of a glowing data lake.  

> Vann: I’m being hunted again.  

> GhostMaker: I know.  

> Vann: You tracked my heartbeat, didn’t you?  

> GhostMaker: Only to keep you safe.  

> Vann: That’s not safety. That’s surveillance.  

He paused.  

> GhostMaker: Then what do you want from me?  

> Vann: The truth. Even if it ruins you.  

The virtual wind howled. Behind him, the horizon began to fracture—lines of code unraveling like veins of light.  

> GhostMaker: I built this world so no one could be owned. Not by fame. Not by data. Now they’re using it to sell feelings.  

> Vann: And me?  

> GhostMaker: You’re the only thing in here still real.  

Her breath caught. Pixels trembled. For a second, she believed him.  

Then a sniper blast of white light struck her avatar square in the chest.

System Alert: **User Vann - Data Integrity Breach Detected.**

She gasped aloud, ripping off her headset. The screen went black.

Cassian’s monitors screamed with warnings. Someone from NovaCore had injected a deletion patch into her user data. He deployed every failsafe he had, fingers flying over the keyboard.

> patch.override(Vann_id, priority: absolute)  

> restore(entity, heartbeat_signature)  

Code cascaded like a waterfall. Her digital pulse flickered—once, twice—and then stabilized.

On-screen, Vann reappeared, kneeling in the crater where the shot had landed.  

> Vann: You brought me back.  

> GhostMaker: I don’t let things I care about vanish.  

> Vann: Dangerous confession.  

> GhostMaker: Worth the risk.  

Later that night, Lyra sat on her balcony, city lights flickering below. The scandal still burned online, but she felt strangely calm. Somewhere in that network of code, a man she’d never met in person had rewritten the rules for her survival.

She opened her laptop. The file “heartbeat.wav” had appeared in her downloads—no sender.

When she played it, the sound was faint but steady—a pulse layered with static. Her own laughter echoed through it, buried deep.  

She closed her eyes. “You really are a ghost, aren’t you?”

Far across the city, Cassian saved the final line in his private log:

> // Project Veil anomaly confirmed. Subject Vann: alive.  

> // Risk: escalating. Emotion: uncontainable.  

> // Conclusion: protect at all costs.