ONE
Zia
The chat scrolled past in a purple blur while I adjusted levels for ChaosKitty97's disaster stream. Her audio peaked red every time she laughed, and the compressor wheezed like dying lungs.
"Turn your gain down to about thirty percent," I murmured into the mic, watching the waveforms smooth from jagged mountains to rolling hills. "There. Now your viewers' ears won't bleed."
"OMG thank you Z!! You're literally saving my life!"
The chat erupted.
Face reveal when??
Show us the real foxgirl
Why won't you go on camera??
"My audio quality is my face reveal." I pushed the noise-canceling cans down around my neck and scraped purple-black hair into a messy knot. The movement made my fox-tail tattoo flash at my wrist, the only part of me the internet would ever see.
ChaosKitty squealed about something on her game while I fine-tuned her EQ. The hoodie I'd stolen from my roommate three moves ago hung past my fingertips, soft from too many washes. My boots tapped against the desk leg, leather cracked and comfortable.
I scanned the chat once more.
FoxTail best girl
bet she's ugly tho
Omega vibes fr.
My jaw tightened. They didn't know how right that last guess was. Didn't know about the triple deadbolts on my warehouse loft door, or the white-noise machines layered in every window to scramble scent trails. The go-bag under my desk held everything I needed to vanish: interface, XLRs, lavs, gaffer tape, surge protector, military-grade suppressants that cost more than my rent, protein bars that tasted like cardboard.
Four beats in, six beats out. The breathing pattern steadied my hands on the board.
An encrypted DM popped up in my second monitor. Rowan Quill, the kind of Beta who wielded legal documents like scalpels and had "manager" as both job title and superpower.
Seattle load-in meltdown. Riot Theory's rig is eating itself. We will pay obscene panic rates.
Riot Theory. The glitter-punk sensation that made consent education sound like foreplay. I'd mixed their live streams twice, remotely, never meeting them. Just voices through the board and wire transfers that cleared without questions.
I stared at the message. Local gig meant leaving my bunker. Meant breathing the same air as whoever was panicking about their broken rig. I messaged back.
How obscene?
The number she sent made me inhale sharp enough that ChaosKitty asked if I was okay.
"Technical difficulties," I said, already reaching for the mechanical pencil tucked behind my ear. My go-bag opened with practiced ease, everything had its place, its purpose, its escape route. Interface cables coiled neat as DNA helixes. Lavs in their case like sleeping insects. The suppressants rattled when I checked the seal, little white lies in pharmaceutical bottles.
On my way
ChaosKitty's stream played on while I gathered my things. She didn't need me anymore. Her audio sang clean and balanced, every frequency sitting pretty in its lane. Purple fox avatar bobbed on screen, those cartoon headphones permanently attached. Safe behind pixels and distance.
The memory hit sideways: seventeen, sitting in that glass office while some Beta executive explained the "Omega Rider" like he was doing me a favor.Wellness support clauses mean your assigned Alpha has access during heat cycles, ensures proper care, standard industry protection for vulnerable designations...
I'd walked out. Paid for it in blacklists and whisper campaigns. Learned to hide behind usernames and vocoders, building walls from code and contracts.
I want producer credit,I thought, zipping the go-bag.Without anyone touching me, smelling me, or branding me.
The Seattle rain started before I even locked the door. Fat drops that turned the streets into rivers of light reflections. I pulled up my hood and headed toward the venue, some place with Showbox SoDo energy, all exposed brick and sticky floors and history bleeding through the walls. KEXP muttered through my earbuds about local shows and weather patterns, comfortable as white noise.
