The stadium was shaking so hard from the cheers that the dust was falling from the rafters like snow. One hundred and eighty thousand people were chanting my real name, over and over, until the sound became a single, roaring heartbeat."LILLE! LILLE! LILLE!"I stood at the edge of the stage, the microphone trembling in my hand. A massive wave of relief washed over me, hot and stinging behind my eyes. A single, clear tear rolled down my cheek. This time, it wasn't a blue, digital tear from a glitching suit monitor. It was a real human tear. And for the first time, I didn't wipe it away. I let them see it.Behind the stage, the double doors of the main tech booth burst open. Leo’s voice cut through my earpiece, completely out of breath. "Lille! The corporate firewall is trying to reboot! Mr. Min's tech team is launching a global counter-patch to black out your mic and kill the stadium power in sixty seconds! You have to finish this now!"I didn't panic. I looked back at the dark, shattered 100-foot screens behind me. "They can cut the power, Leo," I whispered into the mic. "But they can't cut the music."I turned away from the cameras and looked directly at the live stadium band sitting in the shadow of the stage tiers. The drummer was staring at me, his sticks frozen in the air. The guitarist looked terrified, his fingers hovering over his strings. They were adults, used to playing corporate backing tracks for a robotic doll."Track 4," I called out to them, my voice carrying across the stage without the system's help. "No synth beats. No vocal tracks. Just play it real."The drummer blinked, looked at the furious, red-faced managers screaming at him from the wings, and then looked back at me. He saw a ten-year-old girl standing tall under a million watts of stadium light. He smiled, lifted his arms, and brought his sticks down with a crashing, acoustic boom.The live guitars ripped into the air, raw and loud. It wasn't the perfect, polished studio track Mr. Min had sold to the world. It was a real, driving, rock anthem.I turned back to the crowd, raised the microphone, and began to sing the true version of "The Illusion of Us." My voice cracked on the high note, but the crowd didn't care—they cheered even louder. I hit the stage choreography, but I threw away the mechanical robot movements. I danced with pure, unscripted human energy, jumping and spinning because it felt good, because the stage finally belonged to me.From the dark wings, Mr. Min desperately grabbed the master power lever, his face twisted in a mask of defeat. "Shut it down!" he roared, slamming the lever into the off position. "Shut her up!"The stadium spotlights instantly snapped off. The microphones went dead. The amplifiers fizzled out into pitch-black silence.But the crowd didn't stop. One hundred and eighty thousand fans instantly raised their smartphones, turning on their flashlights until the entire dome looked like a galaxy of brilliant, white stars. And then, they did something that made my breath catch in my throat.They started singing the chorus with me.Without any speakers, one hundred and eighty thousand human voices picked up the melody, singing the words back to me in the dark. I stood in the center of their light, my heart fuller than it had ever been in my entire life. Mr. Min had pulled the plug on his machine, but Lille’s voice was officially unstoppable.
