"Wait," Megan choked out. "How? How do I get there?"

The older Megan smiled. "I know what you're thinking. An avatar. A trap. A virus. But I'm none of those things. I'm the Reward."

Her fingers flew. She typed the anti-code, the backdoor she’d found in the third layer's geometry. A string of hex that translated to: I am not lonely. I am chosen.

It was her. An older her. Twenty-five, maybe. Her hair was shorter, practical. She wore a lab coat over a band t-shirt. But her eyes—Megan’s own gray-blue—held a terrifying calm.

Megan, seventeen, with a constellation of acne on her forehead and a Star Trek: The Next Generation technical manual permanently tucked in her back pocket, craved it more than air. The jocks at school called her "Murky-ski" and shoved her into lockers. The popular girls whispered about her "weird smell" (solder and stress). But here, in the phosphor glow, she was Murk , the architect. She’d reverse-engineered the first three layers of DarkroomVR when she was fifteen.

And in the center of the room, sitting on her patchwork quilt, was a figure.

The screen went black.

"The reward for the true nerd, Murk. Not the one who wants the cheat code or the nude texture pack. The one who wants to understand . You didn't just solve the third layer. You felt sorry for the lonely polygon in the corner. You named it 'Gary.'"