It sounded just like the notification chime of a successful download.

Not a game lobby. Not a loading screen. A hallway. The walls were made of raw data—scrolling lines of green code that bled into reality. The floor was polished black marble, but every few seconds, a tile would flicker and show a different ground: bloody snow, wet asphalt, the deck of a starship. The air smelled like ozone and burnt sugar.

Kaelen looked down at his own hands. They were beginning to flicker. The same translucence.