Page 33 of Push My Buttons

“She was probably avoiding you,” WrathSpawn says, dry as ever. “Can’t blame her.”

I type:Some of us have lives outside the apocalypse.

HexedOut laughs. “Oh, she lives! Kind of. Keyboard counts.”

I settle back in my chair, the tension in my shoulders easing for the first time all day. This space—this weird, chaotic trio we’ve built—feels like a pressure release valve.

The queue pops. We drop into a mission. Familiar terrain—cracked pavement, rusted overpasses, rain falling in steady sheets. We know this map like the back of our hands.

Or so I thought.

We’re ten minutes in when things start to go sideways.

Visual flicker. A half-second stutter on my screen. The world seems to… shudder. Textures warp. Sound cuts out, then snaps back too loud, too fast.

“Whoa,” HexedOut says. “Did anyone else just glitch?”

“Hold,” WrathSpawn snaps. “That’s not server-side lag.”

Then the sky shifts—just for a breath. A dark cloud moves unnaturally fast overhead. Static bleeds across the screen. My HUD flickers.

And in the top left corner, letters form briefly:

HELLO, LILLIANA.

I freeze. I don’t breathe. I don’t move. No one else says anything, like it only appeared for me.

The message vanishes like it was never there.

“What the hell,” WrathSpawn mutters, rapid-typing something I can’t see. “This shouldn’t even be possible. I wrote the damn—”

He cuts off sharply.

I blink. My mind replays the words slowly.

I wrote the damn software.

My brain clicks. One plus one finally adding up inside my head. WrathSpawn is Jace. The realization tightens around my chest, panic skittering along my nerves.

I don’t say anything. Can’t. Not yet. My heart’s pounding too hard, and that flicker—that message—still pulses behind my eyes.

“False alarm,” WrathSpawn says after a beat, his voice forced-casual. “We’re clean again.”

“Spooky,” HexedOut mutters. “Like poltergeist spooky.”

“It was nothing,” WrathSpawn insists, sharper now. “Some script kiddie thought they were clever.”

Maybe. But my hands tremble slightly on the mouse.

HexedOut tries to reel us back in. “Okay, team, let’s pretend we didn’t just witness a minor digital exorcism and finish the damn mission.”

We continue, and I watch WrathSpawn—no, Jace—closer than I ever have. Every callout, every direction he gives, suddenly feels more vivid, more personal. How did I not notice the familiar rhythm of his speech before? The quiet authority in his tone, identical to the gentle but firm way that he had coaxed me through my panic attack.

My stomach knots. Could he be the stalker? The thought slithers coldly through my mind, but I immediately push back.I remember his eyes—dark, sincere, concerned—as he signed gently to ground me. That wasn’t faked. I know sincerity when I see it, don’t I?

Still, my paranoia has teeth, gnawing persistently at my certainty. Each clipped command from WrathSpawn triggers fresh suspicion. Each sarcastic remark makes me question why he'd never revealed himself. Had he known all along who I was? Had he been watching me longer than I realized?

Another mission loads, and I play on autopilot, dissecting his every interaction. WrathSpawn is methodical. Careful. Strategic. Traits I now see align perfectly with the Jace I know from the café—the man who orders ginger scones, who hesitates before speaking, who blushes when our eyes meet unexpectedly. The man who looked genuinely concerned for me. Protective, even.