The side street is wet with light rain.

  Not enough to soak you, just enough to coat everything in a thin, reflective sheen. The pavement glistens like it’s been lacquered. The parked cars glow under the streetlamps, each one holding a warped reflection of the boys standing beneath them.

  The air smells of damp concrete, fried chicken from the shop on the corner, and the faint metallic tang of the railway line two streets over.

  Kam leans against the shuttered off?licence. Hoodie up. Hands in his pockets. His weight settles into the metal shutter like he’s anchoring himself to something solid. He feels steady. Heavy enough. The kind of heaviness that keeps you from drifting.

  Taylor paces in front of him, trainers splashing through shallow puddles.

  “This is stupid,” Taylor says, throwing a look at the empty street like it personally offended him.

  He pauses mid?stride.

  “Why are we meeting some guy from Snapchat?”

  “Because he has eight group chats, three burner accounts, and admin access we don’t,” Leo says, not looking up from his phone.

  “So he’s a nerd,” Marcus says, arms folded, hood half?up, trying to look unimpressed.

  “No,” Leo says. “He’s a distributor.”

  Marcus frowns, like the word tastes wrong.

  A white van rolls up slowly. Too slowly. Casual in a way that’s deliberate. The indicator clicks — a soft, repetitive tick that echoes off the wet brick walls.

  The van stops.

  The door slides open with a smooth mechanical glide.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  Daniel hops out.

  He’s young — younger than they expected. Clean trainers, navy tracksuit, a gold chain that looks like it was chosen, not bought. He moves like someone who’s used to stepping into conversations already in progress.

  He smiles like he’s done this before. Like he’s done this a lot.

  “You lot took your time,” Daniel says, brushing rain off his sleeve.

  “Who are you meant to be?” Taylor asks, squaring up a little.

  “Daniel,” he says.

  He grins.

  “But online I’m whatever you need me to be.”

  He leans against the van, posture loose, confident, like the whole street belongs to him.

  “I’ll be real with you,” Daniel says. “Harry’s annoying.”

  Kam looks up at that.

  “You know Harry?” Kam asks.

  “Everyone knows Harry,” Daniel says. “Rich kid. Cold hands. Makes problems disappear.”

  He taps his temple.

  “I fix problems by multiplying them.”

  Leo’s eyebrows lift. “You run signal floods.”

  “I run interest,” Daniel corrects. “Different thing.”

  He pulls out his phone and shows Kam the screen.

  A clip of the tech store fight. A different angle. Cleaner. Sharper. Someone was filming from the mezzanine.

  Captioned wrong:

  LOCAL KIDS DEFEND SHOP FROM LOOTERS

  Hundreds of shares. Thousands of likes. Comments stacking like sediment.

  “That’s not what happened,” Kam says.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Daniel says.

  He swipes.

  Marcus bouncing someone off a fridge.

  BIG MAN MODE ACTIVATED

  Another swipe.

  Kam glowing for half a second — the moment the limiter slipped.

  BRO THINK HE’S IN AN ANIME

  “I didn’t make these,” Daniel says. “I nudged them.”

  “Why?” Taylor asks.

  “Because Harry runs on control,” Daniel says. “And control hates noise.”

  He steps closer to Kam, lowering his voice like he’s letting him in on a secret.

  “You want him off your back?” Daniel says. “You don’t fight him. You drown him.”

  “In what?” Kam asks.

  “Content,” Daniel says. “Rumours. Clips with the wrong context. Ten weak signals beat one truth.”

  Leo swallows. “That destabilises everything.”

  “Exactly.”

  Marcus snorts. “What’s the cost?”

  “Cheap,” Daniel says. “No training. No upgrades. Just let me post.”

  Kam looks down at his hands.

  Heavy. Normal. Human.

  “And when Harry comes for you?” Kam asks.

  “He won’t,” Daniel says.

  He taps his phone.

  “I don’t exist in one place long enough.”

  A bus passes at the end of the street, headlights flaring across the wet pavement. For a moment Daniel becomes a silhouette — a cutout shape with no edges.

  “Think of me like lag,” Daniel says. “You don’t notice it until it ruins the match.”

  He opens the van door.

  “I’ll give you one free push,” Daniel says. “To prove it works.”

  He gets in.

  The van pulls away, indicator clicking once before the turn.

  Silence settles in the street.

  Rain patters softly on the metal shutter behind Kam.

  “That guy’s bad news,” Taylor says.

  “He’s unstable,” Leo says.

  “He’s a coward,” Marcus says.

  Kam watches the taillights fade into the dark.

  “Maybe,” Kam says.

  He pauses.

  “But Harry flinches when things get messy.”

  Leo’s phone buzzes.

  Then again.

  Then again.

  “Uh,” Leo says.

  He turns the screen.

  A trending clip:

  WHO IS THE BIG GUY IN SOUTH?

  Harry’s name isn’t on it.

  “He’s already started,” Kam says.

  Kam feels it. Not heat.

  Momentum.

  Somewhere else — in a server room, in a data centre, in the quiet logic of a system that tracks anomalies — something shifts.

  The system grows louder.