The next morning, I texted Matt as soon as the door clicked shut behind Mom heading to work. If anyone could figure out this console and its game controller before school’s late start, it was him. He didn’t seem fazed by Mom’s involvement, probably because of all the routine drama at home with his druggie sister and his mom’s sports betting. Not that he’d even told his parents about the body; I had the pleasure of that drama all to myself.

He was crouched against my futon, staring out the window at dawn feathering the sky. Crumpled homework and peanut butter Clif Bar wrappers spilled from his backpack beside Mom’s faux-Scandinavian armchair. When his red-rimmed gaze finally slid over to meet mine, he was more serious than I’d seen him outside a tetherball tournament. “You wanna plug in a random dumpster device people are willing to kill for? What makes you think someone with a glowing gun won’t track it through WiFi as soon as you turn it on?”

I drew the curtains behind the media center, angling the reading lamp to only partially sear my retinas. “I’ve been thinking about that.” I’d had plenty of time since yesterday—tossing in my sheets, pushing away the grisly image of the girl and her empty eyes. That and fruitlessly scrolling for news coverage of her until I finally passed out. It just didn’t make sense someone had killed a girl with the console’s logo on her jacket over a game—and then left it behind. “What if we put it in one of those metal Faraday cages to block any signals? You know, like in Physics. We can fire it up, look for the manufacturer or any clues about why this guy might be after me.”

“You’re building a Faraday cage before first period?”

I strode to our steel trash can and stomped on the foot pedal. “Who said anything about building?”

Matt came over to thrust his phone into the trash, banging the lid shut. “Call me.”

I dialed and waited. The only sound was the rattling bathroom fan. “You good?”

He retrieved the phone, trying not to look impressed. “As long as I can go first. I haven’t played a lot of mystery dumpster video games, but I’m sure I can help here.”

As per usual, Matt just wanted to prove himself. Except he didn’t need to prove anything to me. “This still might be dangerous. You really wanna get more involved?”

He gave a sullen sniff, scanning the courtyard outside. “There are many things you’re good at, Ko. Physics. Calculus. Library book waitlists. But I was there the day you tried to use an Xbox controller upside down.”

I sought strength from our popcorn ceiling, swallowing a smile. “That was one time. You, like, game every day.”

“Exactly my point.”

After we’d gotten the console situated atop ramen wrappers in the trash, we discovered there wasn’t anywhere to put in a disc. Which was just as well, because we didn’t have one. There were standard-issue ports for power and HD video though, corresponding to cables I liberated from the bowels of the junk drawer—and wrapped with aluminum foil to block any signals. Sure, with the cables snaking in, the trash’s lid didn’t exactly close. But more foil sealed that right up. It just didn’t make sense the console had gotten hot in my backpack without power.

I dimmed the lights and flopped beside Matt on the carpet, cradling the lone controller we’d found with the console. It was like any generic PlayStation controller, just with that double hexagon logo.

Matt snagged it from me, his grip awkward with the wrist cast.

A throbbing progress bar shot across the TV, dissolving into a twilight scene. A suited man, the player’s character, stood on a sidewalk beside suburban houses. Huh, no game selection menu or anything about the game. The character was motionless, his broad back to us as if a chase cam hovered behind him. From this vantage, I could only make out a strong jaw and pale skin. Photorealistic trees bobbed above while traffic hummed in the distance. The graphics were somewhere between game quality and a real video, like the start of a live action movie only with the saturation cranked to eleven.

Matt made appreciative sounds, I guess about the graphics. Maybe this was one of those games where you ran around a city doing quests or whatever. Not really my thing, even if I had any time for gaming.

My belly fluttered as I leaned forward, my hands clasped under my chin. This was our one lead about the scary guy from the alley. “Is there anything about the company that made this thing? Anything we can look up online? I already tried image searching the logo.”

“I have an idea.” Matt pressed a button and a menu faded in with slender icons for settings and replay videos. The menu vanished and an inventory page slid down in its place. He scrolled a glowing cursor past a newspaper and stubby key, selected a handgun, and dismissed the page to mash buttons.

Was he playing this? Oh, Matt. Watching him dork around like this was kind of endearing, even if it made my fingers itch for the controller.

The man on screen crouched and stood. His movements were a little stiff, but the graphics made my breath catch. His suit rippled like real cloth, his dark hair catching the breeze. Shadows clung to parked cars right where you’d expect given the street lights.

Then the game character extended his arm and emptied the gun into the rear window of a sports car. Gunshots rang in the dusk, glass spilling into the back seat as smoke ribboned from the gun.

“Umm, Matt?” We didn’t have long before we had to leave for school. Mom had said it was safe to go to class—Arguello High was pretty well secured—but her emoji-laden check-in texts weren’t exactly making her case.

He frowned, his brow knitted. “I’m just trying to figure out what 3D engine this is running. Might tell us who made it. Did you see how the glass shattered? These game physics are hella good.”

I guess the glass crumbling did seem pretty realistic. Not that I’d done a whole lot of shooting up cars.

On screen, a woman in a bathrobe emerged from a stucco house, bars on the windows. She scowled under the porch light, ducked back inside, and slammed the door.

“Do you think you can—”

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“Hold on. I can do this. There’s one more thing to try.” He leveled the controller at the TV, his thick shoulders pressed forward as if willing the character to move. The man jumped, crouched, and took off down the sidewalk, his arms pumping. The chase cam trailed him as he careened past low-fenced yards, his dress shoes gleaming in the street lights. Matt veered him into the road, dodging a hatchback with one headlight and a keening horn.

Everything was so lifelike—the car’s peeling bumper stickers, the maples swaying above, the leaves cartwheeling in the gutter.

Matt steered the character into an alley, brick on one side and a fence on the other. “You know how every modern game uses polygons to make their graphics? I … I don’t think this one is using them anywhere.”

The man cantered to a halt and nearly slammed into the fence.

A dog barked nearby and something tickled the back of my mind. That fence. The graffiti. The dog. All strangely familiar. No. It couldn’t be … could it?

“What?” Matt asked.

I held out my hand. “Lemme show you.”

He dangled the controller, his lower lip jutted.

I took the controls and steered the man further down the alley with one of the joysticks, wheeling him around to face a rusty dumpster. “Look familiar?”

Matt’s eyes grew big. “That’s the same dumpster where you found the body. And the game system, right? The system we’re playing right now. This is … disturbingly meta. But where’s the other dumpster?”

I had to see how far the simulation went. Face tingling, I maneuvered the man into shadows deeper in the alley, striding him past a narrower one branching to the right. Just like where we’d gotten cornered yesterday. The man reached a sidewalk and sidled to a parked minivan, cars whizzing by.

“California plates.” I steered him past a shuttered biscuit shop toward an intersection, sidestepping a delivery guy with an undercut and an insulated pizza. A street sign stood on the corner. “Cedar and Fourteenth.”

“That’s right near Mission Pizza….”

It was weird enough seeing streets from our little suburb—not somewhere you’d expect anything to be set, much less a sprawling game. Mental note to check whether that biscuit shop went out of business in real life. It seemed way too popular.

I squinted at the controller. “Which button is inventory?”

But when Matt didn’t answer, I followed his open-mouthed stare back to the screen.

Across a busy street, in the shadows between a gun shop and a vinyasa flow yoga studio, stood the bearded man from the alley. Joggers and sunglasses, an ugly bruise on one cheek, his ball cap pulled low. He pivoted, scanning storefronts—until his gaze locked right onto us.

We froze. Silence hung over the room. My pulse thundered a mile a minute, sweat beading on my brow. The asshole from the alley was in the game.

He thrust a hand into his pocket and stepped into the street—coming toward us.

My limbs were rigid, my head full of fog. “Turn it off.”

Matt folded his arms. “W-What, because some asshole cosplaying as a game character chased us around yesterday?”

The man reached the median, cars whipping past him.

“Unplug it!” I hissed.

“Gimme the controller if you don’t wanna—”

I rocketed from the futon and dove toward the power strip, ripping it from the wall. The TV winked out. I stared back at Matt, plug limp in my hand.

He approached me like you would a child with a knife, gently prying my fingers from the power cord. Then he plugged it back in and strode to the futon, shaking his head. “It’s just a game with really good graphics. I-It has to be.” The screen shone black—no neighborhood and no game character. Matt selected inventory on the controller, but the TV only gave a sad tone.

My cheeks burned. Had I broken it? Maybe I was a little hasty. I crept back to sit beside him, palming the controller and scrolling through menus. Those still worked. On a whim, I selected a replay symbol from the grid of app-style icons—and the only video. We could at least get a better look at Beard Dude.

But the scene opened full-screen on a darkened alley. The game character—not Beard Dude—was crouching, his back against a dumpster, the fence behind it skirting low houses.

Matt leaned forward. “What’re those numbers at the bottom of the screen?”

“Looks like … a timestamp.”

“Shit, this is from Saturday. Before we even found the game system.”

“Matt.” I exchanged a look with him. “This isn’t from when we were controlling it. This is someone else’s replay.”

A strip of ankle-high weeds ran down the middle of the alley where tires didn’t reach. The man shifted, gravel underfoot. Clearly a different alley from where we had our run-in with Mr. Beard n’ Joggers. The game character was facing the camera for once, his features in shadow, a taut jaw and heavy brow. It was hard to read his expression, but his body was coiled tight. He peered around the dumpster, a fluid stealth to his movement—carrying himself like, well, a real person. Pretty distinct from when Matt or I had the controller.

Matt was transfixed, his lips parted.

The man crept from behind the dumpster with footsteps crunching. He drew a pistol—no glow in sight—and glided forward, rounding another dumpster, the camera over his shoulder now.

And there, sitting cross-legged on the ground with an upturned hand, was … me. Her. The dead girl with asymmetric hair. Only wide-eyed and very much alive, wearing the same silvery uniform we’d found her in, her face unblemished by that awful gash.

I jerked back, my adrenaline reserves kicking in. She looked exactly like me, except for that unfortunate haircut. Jesus, and there was my weirdly shaped ear on her. The dizzy feeling from when I first found her came rushing back, a tingling in my face. I had a twin. She had to be. This was just surreal.

Matt gasped, his palms to his forehead. “What in the actual fuuuck. She looks just like you.”

“I told you.” A swell of nausea made the room pivot about me. How was this possible? Who was she? My mind spun, coming up blank.

“I’m not sure I wanna see this.” Matt squirmed against the futon, his knees hugged to his chest. “Ko, hit stop.”

“I don’t know how to—”

“Stop the video!”

My fingers hovered over the controller.

The man tucked away his gun, and the girl’s eyes darted around like she was a cornered animal—or a kid on too many uppers.

“Hey,” the man said, his voice booming. He knelt with a palm on his weapon. The girl pulled her hands to her chin, cowering. I did the same on her behalf, my eyes glued to the screen.

“It’s okay.” He extended a hand. “Hey, what do you have there?”

The girl blinked, her shoulders softening, and smiled. She gave something to the man from her cupped hand, obscured by his tall frame. He accepted whatever it was, presumably adding it to his inventory. Then, without warning, the girl bounced to her feet and pushed past him, the view pivoting as she dashed along the alley, a blur of filthy feet. The replay ended, replaced with the video selection screen.

I blew out a breath, mopping my brow with a sleeve.

“What the hell did she give him?” Matt shouted, his fingers in his hair.

I hit play again and scrubbed the video forward, pausing just as she handed over the item. And in that last frame before her outstretched hand was obscured, something small and yellow peeked out from between her fingers.

“I don’t know,” I said, squeezing the controller. “But I think we should find out.”