"We removed the happy ending, Wei. No boat ride with Pendrew. No memorial. You just get the truth: you’re not a hero. You’re a worm eating two corpses—the police and the triad. The repack just… extracts the fat."
"You took the oath," the fake Wei whispered. "But you kept a wire. A repack is just a lie zipped into a smaller size. You, Detective Shen? You’re the biggest repack of all."
Wei looked at his hands. They were wireframes now. The polygons of his character model were dissolving. He wasn't playing the game anymore. The game was playing him.
The text appeared not in the usual yellow font, but in dripping red. No waypoint. No Winston to call. Wei’s radio crackled with static, then a voice he didn't recognize—glitched, layered, like three people speaking at once.
