And for the first time, he wondered if HyperDeep was the scaffold—or the hole they kept selling him the ladder to climb out of.
He looked at her—really looked at her for the first time in days. His retinal display flickered. An add-on he hadn't purchased, a hidden one, auto-loaded from the usage data. hyperdeep addons
He blinked the menu away.
For a while, it was heaven. That night, he lay on his bed, eyes closed, while Lena scrolled through her own feed beside him. He didn't use Eidolon for the big things at first. Just the small, lost perfections: the weight of his childhood dog’s head in his palm, the taste of rain on his tongue at summer camp, the frictionless joy of riding a bike downhill, legs extended, no hands. And for the first time, he wondered if
Jex flexed his fingers. He was a middling rock climber at best. But FlowState ? He imagined scaling the obsidian cliff face of Point Lamento without a rope, his fingers finding holds that didn’t exist. A shiver ran up his spine—not from fear, but from the sheer, obscene thrill of it. An add-on he hadn't purchased, a hidden one,