It wasn't about the money. She’d paid for classes before. It was about access . The nearest gym that offered Les Mills was forty-five minutes away, and with her new promotion eating up her evenings, she couldn’t make the live sessions anymore. The official on-demand subscription was reasonable, but something about this felt different. A rebellion.

Her left fist shot out. Then her right. A front kick. A side kick. She wasn’t doing the choreography from the video—she was doing something older. Something that felt less like fitness and more like a ritual. Her knuckles ached. Her shins burned. The air in her apartment grew cold, then hot, then cold again.

On screen, the hollow-eyed woman stepped forward, phasing through Rach. The background—the familiar blue-lit studio—rippled like a curtain. Behind it was a gray, endless room filled with other people, all throwing the same sequence. All with hollow eyes. All mouthing the same words.

She should have deleted it then.

She clicked download.

The glitch returned immediately. This time, the hollow-eyed woman stayed on screen for three full seconds. She wasn’t leading a workout. She was staring directly at Maya, mouthing something. Get out.

The file arrived as a cryptic bundle of MP4s and a tracker note. She dragged the first video into her media player, cleared her living room floor, and pressed play.

She looked at her hands. The knuckles were bruised, but the bruises formed patterns—letters. SEED.