Chaz finds Justin before first period, a shadow with a letterman jacket and a week’s worth of rage.

“Where’s the little computer geek?” he bellows, close enough for Justin to smell spearmint and trouble. “Tell me or I swear I’ll give you the beatdown he’s got coming!”

Justin throws up his hands. “I don’t know where Preston is, man. He hasn’t answered calls. I was about to bus over and check on him.”

Chaz isn’t mad for sport today—he’s got a math problem. Preston was supposed to drop Chaz’s Algebra homework in his locker all week, the way he usually “helped.” Instead, nothing. The zero torpedoed Chaz’s weekly grade, got him benched by Coach, and lit his mom’s phone on fire. The fuse has been burning since homeroom.

Chaz snorts. “Good. I’m coming. If he isn’t dying, he’s gonna wish he was.”

They ride in silence, Justin staring out the window, Chaz vibrating like a grenade with the pin half-pulled. When they step off two blocks from Preston’s place, the street already feels wrong—like the world’s holding its breath.

There are cars in the driveway that don’t belong in this neighborhood. A black AMG with red calipers. A vintage Jag polished to a mirror. Something electric and silent that looks like it belongs in a Bond movie.

Chaz whistles despite himself. “Geek’s been busy.”

Justin’s “maybe they’re shooting a commercial here” theory dies when the door opens and twin girls in matching athleisure and sly smiles fill the frame.

“Hi,” says one. “I’m Mix.”

“And I’m Trix,” says the other.

“Like… the YouTube twins?” Justin blurts.

“The very ones,” Mix purrs. “We hang out with interesting people.”

Inside, a butler with a tray glides past like this is normal. Down the hall, a man in a suit is red-faced and shouting into his phone. “He wants to load up on a stock no one should touch—but the kid keeps calling every top and bottom like he’s got a crystal ball. If he says up, we bet the farm!”

The house is not the house Justin remembers. New furniture. Art. Screens on every wall. Money—recent money—glinting off every surface.

They move with Mix and Trix through pockets of strangers until they reach a steel door guarded by a man whose neck could bench-press a car. The scar on his jaw says military. His stare says don’t make me earn my paycheck.

“You here for Preston?” he rumbles.

“Tell him it’s Justin,” Justin says.

The guard—Mercer—thumbs a panel. “Boss, two kids.”

A voice comes metallic through an intercom: “Let them in.”

The room on the other side looks like a command bridge welded to a renaissance study. Banks of monitors blink with data and esoteric glyphs. On the walls: star charts, diagrams in chalk. On the table: heavy books with titles in Latin and older, and a scattering of brass instruments that might be astrolabes or something stranger. In the center is a throne of a chair—more server rack than seat—and Preston in it, pale and sharp, eyes rimmed with the kind of focus sleep can’t touch.

Chaz points at the biggest screen. A lattice of symbols and numbers crawl like living code across a wireframe of… the substrate? The longer you look, the less your brain trusts your eyes.

“What the hell is that?” Justin whispers.

Preston swivels, amused. “That? It’s reality—or as much as I can render without going insane.” He taps a key, and the lattice blooms brighter.

Chaz leans closer, a thin line of drool at his lip. His face loses expression, like someone unplugged him.

“Not for the weak-minded,” Preston says dryly, and kills the feed. Chaz blinks and staggers, awareness snapping back like a rubber band.

“Where’s my homework, you piece of—” Chaz starts, but Mercer has him by the collar before the sentence can make bad life choices.

Preston lifts a hand. “It’s fine. Sorry, Chaz. I was supposed to have the answers to you today. Things got… urgent.”

“Urgent?” Justin looks around again, at the artifacts, the screens, the twins taking selfies with a glass sphere that might be a globe or a prison. “Preston, go back to the reality thing.”

Preston rubs the bridge of his nose, deciding how much to say. Then: “Alright. You know the theory that we’re in a simulation? Some say inside a black hole, some say nested, turtles all the way down. I started trying to… talk to it. If reality is code, maybe it can be read. Maybe it can be edited.”

“Edited,” Justin echoes.

“I’m good with code,” Preston says, his smile going sideways. “Computers, logic problems—the clean parts. Turns out science doesn’t cover all the interfaces, so I broadened the stack. Archaic math. Sympathetic frameworks. A little ritual to get the compiler’s attention.”

He gestures to a spiral of chalk on the floor that’s half-circuit, half-sigil.

“After a while,” he says, “I found the source.”

Justin stares. “You’re saying you hacked reality.”

“Something like that.” Preston’s fingers dance over a keyboard. “Whoever wrote this is smart. There are safeties everywhere. You can’t push too hard without the sandbox biting back. But you can… bias the RNG. Nudge probabilities. The last two Powerballs? Me.”

Justin’s mouth opens. Closes. “Are your parents—?”

“On an all-expenses-paid cruise around the world. They’re thrilled. I hired Mercer. They relaxed.”

“Lottery money?”

“Mostly. Some stocks. Some bets. A few outcomes that wanted encouragement. I’m sitting on unlimited fun, if not unlimited funds.” He grins. “Close enough.”

Chaz finally finds his voice, the bully reflex struggling to reboot in the new gravity. “You’re gonna share, right?”

Preston tilts his head, considering. He glances at Justin. “With him? Probably. With you?” He shrugs. “You’ve made my life hell since second grade.”

Chaz’s face goes the color of uncooked steak. “Then I’m telling everyone.”

Mercer looks to Preston, expression flat. “Want me to take this little punk where no one finds him?”

“Jesus,” Justin blurts. “You can’t—”

“Relax,” Preston says. “I’m not a villain.” He turns back to the console. “Chaz, you’re free to go.”

Chaz backs toward the door. “I mean it. I’m telling anyone who’ll listen. You can’t keep this to yourself.”

“Do what you must,” Preston says, eyes on the code. Lines ripple. Symbols shift. Somewhere in the house, thunder rolls like a bowling ball.

Chaz leaves.

The room exhales. Mix and Trix wander off, bored when no one’s streaming. The stock guy passes the doorway again, gleeful now, yelling to buy. Justin steps closer to the main display where a new script is blooming—shorter than the last, sharp, almost elegant, like a scalpel.

“Preston,” Justin says carefully, “what are you doing?”

A beat. Preston doesn’t look up. “Hardening a boundary. Adjusting entropy in a very small region.”

Outside, the sky darkens as if someone dragged a slider. A wind rattles the glass. The smell of rain cuts through the ozone tang of electronics. Somewhere close, a door opens, then slams.

Lightning hits.

The sound arrives a split second later, a crack that shakes picture frames. Screams follow—the twins, high and bright—then the pounding of bare feet on hardwood as they burst back into the room.

“Preston!” Mix gasps. “Your friend—the one who just left—he got struck. He—he’s—”

“Dead,” Trix finishes, eyes wide, voice small.

The room contracts. Justin feels the floor under him, the chair under Preston, the weight of the world turning on a thread.

He looks at Preston. At the screen, where the code has resolved into a neat, closed loop. At the chalk spiral on the floor, a single line smeared as if by a deliberate shoe.

“Preston,” Justin says, voice shaking. “What are the odds?”

Preston finally turns. He looks very young, and not at all. The smile that touches his mouth doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Better,” he says softly, “than they used to be.”

A teen coder tilts the substrate and learns every edit has a cost. #Dblkrose #BlkSpyderPublishing #DarkFantasy #Fiction #ShortStory #SciFi #Thriller #TechNoir