The massive auditorium was still echoing with the sound of one hundred and eighty thousand voices singing in the dark as security guards rushed the stage. They didn't use force—not with millions of smartphone cameras watching their every move—but they surrounded me tightly and escorted me off the platform.Mr. Min wasn't backstage. His tablet was gone, his marketing team had vanished, and his office door was locked wide open. The corporation was collapsing in real-time."Get her to the transport capsule," a junior manager panicked, shoving me toward the private hyper-train terminal hidden beneath the stadium. "Move! Before the press cuts off the perimeter!"They pushed me into the sleek, windowless cabin of the hyper-train. The heavy pneumatic doors slid shut with a sharp hiss, locking automatically. The train instantly jolted forward, accelerating to three hundred miles per hour within seconds, tearing through the underground vacuum tubes away from Osaka.I was completely alone in the silent, metallic capsule. I collapsed onto the floor, my silver blazer rumpled and my throat burning from the raw, acoustic performance. My body was completely exhausted, but my mind was electric.I reached into my pocket and pulled out Leo's green stone. As I held it up, the main control panel on the train wall suddenly flickered. The digital destination display scrambled, changing from TOKYO MAIN TERMINAL to a single, blinking line of code.USER_LEO: (っ◔◡◔)っ CHICKEN_PULSE override active."Lille!" Leo’s voice burst through the train’s emergency intercom speaker. He sounded like he was running, his breath coming in short, jagged gasps. "I intercepted the train's navigation route. Mr. Min’s remaining corporate directors tried to automatically route your capsule to a secure facility in the mountains to lock you away until the news blows over.""Where am I going now, Leo?" I asked, looking up at the blinking monitors."I rerouted the tracks," Leo said, a fierce, triumphant laugh breaking through his exhaustion. "I crashed their navigation mainframe. Your train is heading straight past the corporate borders, down into the lower sectors. In ten minutes, you're going to hit the end of the line. The cage is officially broken, Lille. I'm waiting at the platform."I looked at the glass wall of the capsule, watching the digital speedometer tick higher and higher as the train raced toward the dark, free world below. I held the stone tight against my chest.I was ten years old. I didn't have a corporate budget anymore. I didn't have a script, and I didn't have Mr. Min’s spotlights. But as the train blasted through the final security gate, I knew I had everything I ever needed.
