Page 80 of Villainous Rise

Translation: He’d come after me himself.

The driver pulled the car to a smooth stop beside a particularly garish entrance where a wall of electric blue light cascaded down the building’s exterior. He came around and opened my door, extending his hand to help me out. I ignored it and stepped out.

The sidewalk pulsed with embedded lights that rippled outward from each footstep. Above, competing holographic advertisements cast my skin in alternating washes of pink, green, and gold.

The driver gestured toward the entrance, where the neon sign reading “MAZE” flickered rhythmically, the Z occasionally shorting out.

I stepped into the pulsing world of the Neon Maze, immediately assaulted by sensory overload. The narrow corridor ahead split into three identical paths, each bathed in different colored light—crimson, electric blue, and acid green. Holographic arrows pointed in contradictory directions, some flickering out of existence before reappearing elsewhere.

People brushed past me from all sides—tourists in sensible shoes with AR glasses, locals in cutting-edge fashion that changed color with the beat of music, and club-goers whose outfits left little to the imagination.

“Excuse me,” I muttered as a group of laughing twenty-somethings nearly knocked me over.

I pressed myself against a wall that rippled with digital koi fish swimming through invisible water. The surface felt warm beneath my palm, almost alive.

My phone showed no service bars, but the screen lit up with a text notification.

Let’s play.

A sharp spike of adrenaline hit my bloodstream as the memories flooded back of his body pinning me down and the thrill of being hunted. The game always ended the same way: with me breathless and begging.

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering uncertainly. I should text “truce.” I should walk away.

But my fingers refused to type the word.

Another message appeared:

Run.

My body responded before my brain could object. I pushed off the wall and plunged into the blue corridor, my evening gown hampering my stride. Around me, the walls pulsed like a digital heartbeat, matching my own accelerating rhythm.

I darted through the shifting crowds and my skin hummed with the certainty that he was tracking me.

The passage opened into a circular chamber where the floor itself was a massive screen displaying a swirling galaxy. Overhead, miniature drones carrying pinpoint lights darted like fireflies, casting moving shadows across the faces of the crowd.

I glanced back at my phone. Still no service. I should leave. Return to the entrance. Get a taxi back to the Tower.

But I didn’t want to.

I gathered my skirt in one hand, and ran across the galaxy floor.

My lungs burned as I pushed deeper into the Maze, but I welcomed the pain. Each breath felt like swallowing fire, yet somehow it was cleansing, burning away the perfection I’d been maintaining.

Had I completely lost it? Probably. But the burn in my muscles felt better than the numbness I’d been cultivating.

I darted past a corridor where the floor tiles shifted colors with each footstep, creating rainbow trails behind stumbling tourists. Nobody gave me a second glance. A woman running in an evening gown was hardly the strangest sight in the Neon Maze.

I veered left where a holographic waterfall of binary code cascaded down a wall, the purple digits reflecting off my skin like digital freckles. The passage narrowed, the ceiling dropping lower until the walls seemed to press in from all sides, their surfaces rippling with abstract patterns that pulsed in time with distant music.

The crowd thinned as I followed a spiral staircase upward, its steps illuminated from within, changing from cool blue to warm amber with each footfall. My breathing came in ragged gasps, but I pushed on, driven by some instinct.

I emerged onto a narrow walkway that floated in midair, suspended between buildings. Below, the maze of passages twisted like neon arteries. Above, the night sky was barely visible through the haze of light pollution.

Wait—where was everyone? The walkway stretched empty before me, devoid of the usual crush of bodies.

Something was wrong. The Neon Maze was never empty, not even at⁠—

The impact came from nowhere, a solid mass colliding with me from behind. I hit the ground hard, my breath escaping in a painful whoosh as I was flipped around and pinned beneath a familiar weight.