I stand in the bathroom and stare at the cards in my palm. I never called about the Stairways to Heaven audition. Didn't show up either. My café latte sits cold on the counter, untouched. I was supposed to go today, but I froze. So I left the cards here, on the nightstand. It's an ugly trophy of the choice I didn't make.
The day after I bail, everything feels off. My shift at Chrome Daisy has been quietly shuffled to the graveyard hours. It's the club's dead zone: stray smokers huddled under flickering neon, all rage and emptiness. I clock in at midnight, eyes burning and they hand me a new locker key with a shrug. No explanation. Behind the peeling paint, I find a locker already inhabited by somebody else's perfume. My costume, my black boots, gone. Everything I own reeks of someone else. I run my hand along the battered metal and pull out a glitter thong that isn't mine. I slam the door shut a little too hard. My knuckles are white on the key as I walk away.
I take the stage as usual, but the routine's different. No one cues my favorite electro-jazz track, no special spotlight on my best pole. Instead, I'm shuffled onto the corner circle, under a single strobelight, pretending Velvet is still alive. The club smells like burned plastic and stale tequila. Floor mirrors are cracked; the bass thumps through the worn carpet. A couple of tired drunks watch me from the bar like I'm an ant on a microscope slide. I spin too fast, catch my heel and nearly tumble. I catch myself and mouth the words to a song that isn't even playing. My breath hitches as I move through the set, shoulders tense.
"Feels like I'm working overtime in hell," I mumble under my breath, sarcasm the only way to smile at this.
Mace, the bartender, still slides me free drinks. He used to chat, lean in conspiratorially when he refilled my glass. Tonight he's all quiet eyes and strained smiles, like he's keeping a secret or just tired of mine. I catch him looking at me once, then he looks away fast, lipstick and regret smeared on his lips. He says nothing, just slides a whiskey to the edge of the bar. I sip it slowly. It burns, but not as much as seeing Mace shrink back when Velvet falters. He used to call me "doll" and ask if I'm okay. Now he just nods and moves on.
With each dance, Velvet slips further away. My calves cramp on every turn. A customer's hand grazes my arm and I flinch, the touch burning like acid. I catch my reflection in a broken mirror: mascara spidering down my cheek, hair knotted, the painted smile crooked. I don't recognize myself. I press a fist against the glass, then let go and finish the set with my head down, barely hearing the half-hearted applause.
When the shift finally ends, I drag my bag through the alley, the shoulder strap digging into my skin. I lean against the bricks and let the cold seep through my dress. My throat tastes like old cigarettes. The club's neon sign flickers behind me, burning blue across the puddles. I pull my jacket tighter and slip back into my apartment, each step quieter than the last. By the time I reach my door, I'm holding my breath, like I might vanish if I make a sound.
The holo-TV's voice greets me before the door even finishes shutting. I'd left it on for the company, mostly static and background ads, but now it's streaming one of those glossy late-night entertainment shows. City skyline, spinning lights, the host's fake smile hovering a meter off the floor.
"…New Angeles welcomes Maraya Bale, top of every chart from here to Ceres Station. She touched down just hours ago and fans are already lining up outside the Apex and Skylight Dome for tickets. Bale's tour manager says this is her only stop on Earth this season..."
Clips flash in the air: Maraya stepping off a chrome shuttle, fans pressed against the barricades, flashes going off like fireworks. She's all perfect posture, fierce eyeliner, that wild silver-blonde hair. The studio rolls a snippet of her hit, one of the tracks I sometimes spin to at work, when the crowd needs something bright.
I pause a second in the hallway, letting the scene play out. For a moment, I can almost smell the stage fog and sugar-sweet perfume, feel the old muscle memory in my calves. The host keeps talking: "Rumor is, the mayor might even attend her opening night, maybe we'll see Bale light up the Apex with a new track..."
I click the holo to mute. Maraya's voice lingers in the room a moment longer, bright and impossible. I'm not in the mood for dreams tonight.
I drop my bag by the door and glance at the corner where the dress box sits, half-hidden beneath a pile of laundry. The red dress, the one that appeared in my locker last night, all micro-LED shimmer and gold-trimmed invitation. Still hasn't moved. I haven't even touched it since I brought it home. Just seeing it there makes my pulse jump. I tell myself I'll deal with it later.
I flop onto my saggy futon and sync up my neural comlink. Dim light flickers across the ceiling fan as my vision overlays Chrome Daisy's worker dashboard. Evidence I deserved better? A clue in binary? I'm not even a script kiddie just someone who watched too many late-night tutorials and keeps trying old exploits that never quite work.
Like everyone at the club, I use that off-the-books plugin, a greasy bit of code sold cheap by someone who probably never set foot onstage. The best it's supposed to do is show old schedules or payroll slips management "lost." Usually, it crashes before I even get a loading screen.
Tonight, though, I get reckless. Out of habit or maybe spite, I poke around with some half-broken lines of code I half-remember from a forum, trying to make the plugin cough up more than it should. Most nights it's a dead end, but tonight something glitches. The interface stutters — glass spiders across the screen —then suddenly I'm inside a layer I've never seen before. There's raw data spilling everywhere: login records, shift swaps, even flagged profiles. It looks like a scheduling algorithm is running live in the background, code fluttering at the corner of my vision. It makes my fingers twitch as I scroll, code running behind my eyelids. Usually I'd stop at something silly, like an inventory glitch. Tonight I'm actually scared of what I might find.
Between social feed pings and streams of coded lines, I spot it: a strange tag attached to my profile. The words "PENDING HOLD – EXTERNAL REVIEW." It pulses across my comlink UI like a sentence etched in code. My name, Lyra, underlined in red bureaucratic paint.
The tag pulses in my vision, daring me to do something. My fingers twitch. I want to scrub it away, but I can't. A lump rises in my throat and I swallow hard, pretending it's nothing.
I pinch my lips tight, trying to will the tag away. What the hell? This is my life, my data, who the fuck is external to Chrome Daisy reviewing me? Sweat beads on my collarbone. I cycle through every basic command I know, desperate for it to vanish. The text flickers at the edge of my vision.
I lean back on the futon, wide awake. The buzzing fan tries to cool the heat in my chest. On the nightstand, the black card pulses beside its twin. A golden card, edges lit with their own soft light. My fingers hover over the gold one, but I can't bring myself to touch it. I yank my hand away and roll over to stare at the cracked ceiling.
The black card was handed to me after a set at Chrome Daisy. The guy with the gold tie waited near the steps, smile stuck in place, waving the card like it meant more than it did. "Just a messenger," he'd said, eyes never quite meeting mine. "Private room. One night..." I turned him down.
I took it straight from his hand before he could change his mind, sliding it into my boot and not looking back.
The gold card came later, tucked inside that flashy red dress box in my locker. No note. No explanation. It's colder than the black, glints sharper in the low light. I keep thinking maybe it's some kind of VIP pass or maybe some guy who didn't like getting turned down thinks a shiny card and a cheap dress will change my mind. That's not me. I've seen too many people try to buy a different answer.
Both cards sit side by side, heavy in the dark, neither one offering answers. I tell myself I should just throw them out forget the men who think a card and a dress can buy a person. But sometimes I wonder if one of them is a door out and maybe, stupid as it sounds, I'm not ready to give up on that. Not yet.
Outside, distant sirens wail through the rain-damp streets. Inside, I taste everything bitter — burnt coffee and neon gone dim. I press my knuckles to my lips and turn my face to the wall, breathing slow and shaky, wishing I could disappear into the quiet. My heartbeat sounds loud in the small room. I close my eyes, hugging my knees in, hoping the city outside will just let me rest, just for a while.
I lie curled in the dark, listening to the city hum through the thin glass, every sound too sharp. The black and golden cards glow quietly on the nightstand, like strange eyes watching over me. I pull the blanket tighter around my shoulders, wishing I could believe in safety, in warmth. I close my eyes and count my breaths, hoping the fear will fade with the night. It doesn't. Not tonight. Maybe not ever again.