Page 49 of Anti-Player

PAIGE PAIGE PAIGE

THIN THE TORTOISE

<3 <3 <3

:

Seeing her rush ofdelight, her relief, has my head throbbing with restrained emotional tears. “Thank fucking goodness,” I whisper to myself. Paige, beautiful, stunning, amazing Paige, she did the impossible. She turned the tide and now her fans are back.

Better than that, her subscribers begin to sky-rocket. It's a blur of numbers. New and old combine until she and I both gawk at the total.

“Five million,” I whisper.

“Five million?” she asks on the stream. “Are you guys serious? I... I can't believe it.” New tears roll down her cheeks, catching in her smile. “I can't thank you enough for forgiving me. I don't deserve it, honestly, but thank you. Thanks so much.”

Running my hands over my face from cheek to chin, I let out a groan. The relief doesn't last when a new wave of messages parades into the chat. They come out of the blue, all of them in full-throated caps-lock, their intent toxic.

:

THIS IS BULLSHIT

DONT FORGIVE HER

LIAR LIAR LIAR

SELLOUT!!!

SELL OUT SELL OUT SELL OUT!!

FAWN NEEDS TO DIE

GO AWAY FAWN

BOOOOOOO BOOOOOOOOOOO BOOOOOO!!!

:

Paige is going paleagain. I hate this, where is this new wave of angry viewers coming from? I scan their names for some hint. It doesn't take much effort, they all share a similar theme: CookieCrumbsFan205, COOKIEl0vr, Cookie_Crumbs4eva. Narrowing my eyes suspiciously, I do something I haven't done since working on Paige's VR suit.

Leaving the stream, I tab over and see that Cookie Crumbs is Live. There's an ominous feeling in my gut when I enter her channel. There she is, the cartoonified girl with long flowing hair and pitch black eyes that make me think of a spider.

She's in the middle of talking. “—like the audacity of pretending she's sorry for what she did,” Cookie says, shaking her head. “I don't want to be a bitch, I'm only pointing out that shedding tears is a cheap way to win people to her side. We all know what she did was wrong. And for the record I warned her not to do the review. She didn't listen, she really rarely does.” Sighing, she shrugs and brings up the video of Paige's stream.

A bolt of rage makes me grit my molars. I thought Cookie was Paige's friend? Why is she talking about her like this? Her fans are getting riled up, and I see them discussing more of them going over to Paige's stream to rush it with mean comments. They want to drag Paige through the dirt kicking and screaming.

I won't allow it.

Hesitating a mere second, I log in, then begin typing. Cookie looks plainly surprised when my tip of a single dollar appears. My text floats beside it: Paige/Fawn is a good person, she looks up to you, why are you bullying her?

Cookie leans into her camera, her cartoon eyes turning white as snow, then red as blood; they become a strobe-light that hurts to look at. “Excuse me? Bully? Who...” She freezes, then starts to laugh. “Mikel! How fun! You think I'm a bully? Let's ask Paige what she thinks.”

To my amazement Cookie pokes something on her desk. Her chat is full of people swearing at me, but I ignore it, wondering what she's planning. Suddenly Paige appears next to Cookie, their streams linked as they simul-cast together.

Paige waves uneasily. “Hi, Cookie, what's up?”

“Hiiiiii Fawn—sorry, Paige,” the cartoon girl giggles. She pokes her finger into her cheek while sticking out her tongue. “That's what you want to go by now that you're done being a VR streamer.”

“I'm not done,” she responds.

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