They slept in the arcade, which smelled of burnt sugar and old carpeting. NeonX pulsed outside like a heart. When dawn came, the first test was announced: an unmarked door in the basement, sealed with a crystalline lock that reflected their faces in fractured slivers. Each code stamped on the token would open one of ten chambers behind that door. Only one chamber contained the "core": a small cylinder rumored to reverse grief, to enhance creativity, to erase a specified memory, to amplify a feeling until it became real in the body. Rumor is a dangerous engine.