Bugz brought her sleeve to her face to wipe her eyes. She sniffed and composed herself. She saw through Feng now; his pedestrian insult had somehow calmed her. “I’m sorry I brought you into my life,” she said softly. “Everything fell apart once you came along.” She studied his irises for a sign of compassion, for a glimpse of humanity, for something. Her search came up empty. “I thought you saw me for who I really am.”

“What about me? All the abuse I’ve been putting up with for you. Now I’ve got to restart from scratch. And worse yet, no clan is going to want me now that I’ve been blacklisted by Clan:LESS.”

“Who cares? They’re a bunch of losers.”

“I gave up everything for Clan:LESS. I left my friggin’ country for them. And then what did I do? I betrayed them to help you. What a mistake. I’m the one who lost everything!”

“There’s a million goons out there like you. You can just buy back every dumb gun and skin you lost.” Bugz shook her head. “I can’t do that. An entire way of life. A back-up of our civilization. It’s over.”

“You can respawn!” Feng stretched his arms out as though egging Bugz on to fight him. “Build it again!”

“Feng, just leave.”

“No, you have to talk to me! You owe me that.”

Bugz turned away. “Just leave,” she said, her voice low.

“Fine, I’ll leave and go look at some more memes about what a traitor I am. And you can put your fake face and fake body back on and go hide behind your ’Versona.” Feng stormed off for a few steps, stopped, and turned. The chatter in the crowd died. Feng stared at Bugz, letting his gaze travel from her head to her toes. “I can’t stand how you look without my phone anyway.”

CHAPTER 49

Bugz processed the words with detachment as Feng disappeared further into the crowd. The crowd itself seemed to shift nervously, trading shocked expressions. Bugz felt as if she were buried under an avalanche of eyes studying her. She knew if she took her phone out now it would make her seem small and sad, and the action would be immortalized forever on the livestreams. So she chose something slightly more reasonable: she ran. She pushed through the crowd to a nearby accessible restroom and locked the door behind her. She sat in the tiled corner and, letting the tears flow, pulled out her phone and fumbled with it aimlessly.

Bugz heard a knock at the door.

“Go away!” she shouted.

Three more knocks.

“I said, GO AWAY!”