Dungeon Exploiter

Three days after I tipped their pig, MegaCorp announced the heroes.

MEGACORP PRESENTS: THE SUPREMES™

Five ranks. One promise. Confidence, restored.

Catch the REMEMBRANCE CLEAR — Sector E-6, Saturday. Tickets from $89.

Sector E-6 was the garment district. Six people died there the week of the patch, at an exit that used to be optional. Now MegaCorp was reopening it as a live show. With a gift shop.

JON’S DICTIONARY — remembrance clear: when a company sells tickets to the place people died, and calls that honoring them.

We went because Tim already had tickets. Tim is a Supremes fan the way other people are a blood type.

“That’s APEX™,” he said in the stands, pointing at a jaw with a man attached. “Tank. Contractually the leader. That’s VANTA™ — he’s the edgy one. His contract says he can’t smile in photos.” Then Tim’s voice dropped to a whisper, out of pure respect. “And that’s SKY™.”

She came out last. Small, quick-eyed, sword worn the way working people wear tools. She waved like waving was a language she spoke perfectly and hated.

“Her real name’s Haneul,” Tim said. “It means sky. So when the company debuted her, they just translated her and trademarked it. She’s trained since she was eleven. Four years left on her contract, and then they decide if she gets renewed. She’s not allowed to date. It’s a clause.” He said all of it happily, like reciting stats about someone you love. “Mom approves of her. Posture.”

Liya watched her wave. “That one counts exits,” she said.

She was right. First thing SKY™ did on stage — before the pyro, before the anthem — she found both exits and the service door. That’s a habit you only build one way. You build it in rooms that were never once safe for you.

Bev was working the event. Crowd staff, orange vest, three weeks after her firing, because rent has opinions about everybody. She’d taken one look at the seating chart and appointed herself the whole east section.

Near the rail I saw a man holding a photograph. He wasn’t cheering. Six names were painted on the banner overhead, and one of them belonged to the photo. I stood with him a while. He didn’t want words. He wanted somebody standing there who knew what the banner cost, so I stood.

* * *

The show was the show. Fog machines. Sponsor reads between combat phases. The boss rose out of a freight ramp on cue — horned, huge, roaring.

My quiet screen told the truth in one word I’d learned at a private club in the hills.

REMEMBRANCE BOSS — Class-3 (STOCKED)

Sedation: current. Claws: capped.

Choreography: rehearsed. Four sessions.

The monster knew the dance. The heroes hit their marks. The cameras hit theirs. Under a banner with six dead names on it, a fight that was never real happened again, safely, to music.

Then the floor cracked open where nobody had rehearsed anything.

The things that came up were pale and fast and wrong, and every one of them turned toward the stage like flowers finding sun.

BREACH — UNSCHEDULED.

Entity: BREACHLING (swarm).

Targeting: highest concurrent viewership.

This is not part of the show. Please continue enjoying the show.

Targeting: highest concurrent viewership. They didn’t want meat. They wanted whatever was most watched. And the most-watched thing in the building was a stage holding five trademarks and forty cameras.

Here’s what eight thousand people did when monsters poured out of the ground. They raised their phones. Not their feet. Their phones. Every glowing screen said HERE, and the swarm read the crowd like a menu.

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And here’s what the heroes did. Nothing. Their handlers hit them like a wave, folded all five behind a velvet rope, and every wrist on the team lit up with the same screen.

ENGAGEMENT REQUEST: SUBMITTED.

Unscripted combat voids insurance coverage.

Legal review in progress. Estimated: 9 minutes.

Please hold.

JON’S DICTIONARY — engagement request: five superheroes asking permission to be superheroes. From lawyers.

Nine minutes. The Supremes stood in full battle gear, swords out, lit like gods, forbidden to take one step. APEX™ was screaming at his own wrist. The wrist held.

So it was us.

“Bev! East doors!”

“Already open, box kid!” She had a hundred people moving before I finished the sentence, counting them through the door out loud. “Fourteen, fifteen — walk, don’t film, sixteen—”

“Kayla. You’re the biggest screen in the room. Kill the stream.”

A quarter million people were watching her. That’s a career night. Her face did the whole argument in one second.

“Chat, I love you. Get out of the building.” Dark. Just like that. I owe her more than I’ve said, so I’m saying it here, in writing, where she’ll read it.

The phones were dying all over the stands now, some from panic, some from Bev yelling at people to walk. The swarm re-sorted. The heads swung back to the brightest, most-watched thing left.

The stage. Where the handlers had five heroes pinned in a spotlight, because nobody had thought to kill the spotlight.

I got to the lighting desk because nobody ever guards a lighting desk. A hundred sliders, drone controls, pyro controls, and one big red button labeled FINALE.

The plan was a child’s plan. That’s how I knew it would work. If the things eat attention, feed them somewhere empty.

I killed the stage wash. The arena went black except for one place — the little B-stage across the floor, where I sent every camera drone in the building to circle, lenses hot, filming nothing. The most-watched spot in the city. Zero people on it.

The swarm turned like one animal and flowed toward the empty light.

Most of them. Not all.

Three peeled off at the bleachers, following the strongest signal left in the stands — Tim’s phone, held high, hands shaking, filming, because Tim’s love is stronger than Tim’s survival instinct and it isn’t close.

I was already moving. There was a dead sponsor display halfway up the rail, full of commemorative pucks. I’m not calling them pucks. They were pucks.

The first breachling came down the rail and I one-timed a puck through its head at thirty feet. It dropped and stayed dropped. The second one leapt and I met it mid-air with a shoulder — you check the body, not the speed, every rink kid knows that — and it went through a merch table.

The third got low, went for Tim’s legs, and there’s a move for that too. Poke check. Stick blade in, under, lift. Its jaw hit the concrete.

It scrambled up for another try. It didn’t get one, because something crossed the velvet rope.

She was there before her handlers knew she’d moved. No wasted steps. Sword still sheathed — because drawing it was a recognized combat action, and she knew her own contract cold. She hit the thing with a shoulder like a door closing and held it, bladeless, breaking no clause anyone had ever thought to write, while her wrist screamed at her.

ENGAGEMENT REQUEST: DENIED. DENIED. DENIED.

Between her shoulder and my stick, the breachling decided it wasn’t famous enough to matter, and slunk off toward the bright empty stage where all its friends were standing in the spotlight, mouths open, drinking the attention.

I hit FINALE.

The pyro was rigged for the whole show’s ending. It went off all at once, on the B-stage, right on top of the swarm. The fireball rolled up forty feet. The crowd that Bev had walked out watched through the doors as the building’s own fireworks budget solved the building’s problem.

“He shoots,” Kayla said quietly, beside me, filming nothing, out of habit. “He scores.”

* * *

SKY™ looked at me for a second before her handlers arrived. Up close she was younger, and her eyes were older.

“You’re the tipping one,” she said. “The pig.”

“Yeah.”

She looked at the stick, and the dead display of pucks, and the exits she’d counted an hour ago, and she picked her next word carefully, like it cost money.

“That looked free.”

Then the handlers came in a wall and took her back the way money moves. Over her shoulder she said to Tim, “Nice phone grip. Steady.” Tim did not speak again for the rest of the night.

The broadcast aired at nine. THE SUPREMES CONTAIN SECTOR E-6 BREACH. Drone shots of the fireball. The team posed in front of it. APEX™ carrying a rescued child who, as far as I can tell, does not exist. I’m not in it. Bev’s not in it. The nine minutes aren’t in it.

“They can edit the broadcast,” Tim said, thumbs flying. “They can’t edit the fandom. We archive everything.”

He posted his fan-cam. Twenty seconds: a girl crossing a rope she wasn’t allowed to cross, holding a monster off a stranger, her wrist flashing DENIED. In the corner of the frame, blurry, a man with a hockey stick.

By midnight her fans had subtitled it in nine languages. MegaCorp’s official account replied with one trademark symbol — which is a threat — and eleven thousand fans reposted the clip, which is a war.

Rob found his own battlefield. The broadcast had called me “some unranked bastard” on air, and at 9:41 Rob served MegaCorp a cease-and-desist, because The Bastard™ is registered, and he owns it. He framed the filing receipt. It’s on his wall now. He calls the wall “the portfolio.”

The courier page came at midnight.

ASSETS: 1 (goblin — registered).

BRAND VALUE: TRACKING (disputed — third-party claim).

NARRATIVE VALUE: SUBSTANTIAL. UNMONETIZED.

VALUATION: IN PROGRESS.

Note from us, not them: the door those things came through. nobody opened it. we checked twice. nobody opened it.

Liya read the last line three times. Then she came and sat next to me instead of the windowsill.

“Doors are opening that nobody’s opening,” she said. “Ask me tomorrow why that scares me.”

SKILL ACQUIRED — EXPLOIT: LIMELIGHT

Effect: attention is aggro. You may point it.

Note: the famous can’t use this one. they can’t put it down.