Chapter 4: An Audience with Glitter

Chapter 4: An Audience with Glitter

The ABI slate on my table was a tombstone. INQUIRY PROHIBITED. Two words that carried more weight than a thousand chains. The system hadn't just closed the case; it had declared the very act of asking questions a crime. They were building a wall around the truth, and on the other side of it sat Glitterati.

My desire was no longer about professional duty. This was personal. The monochrome man, Dapper Dan, had chosen his end, and the obsidian stone Lux had given me proved it. The question was no longer who killed him, but why. Why would a concept, an idea, choose to be deleted? And what kind of being had the power to grant such a wish? The answer was waiting in a penthouse that scraped the smoggy sky.

Operating in the shadows wasn't a choice; it was my natural state. My trench coat was less a fashion statement and more a piece of camouflage for a man who felt perpetually out of place. Without a badge or a mandate, I was just another ghost in the machine, and ghosts don't need permission to haunt the living.

Glitterati’s residence was officially called the 'Aevum Spire,' but everyone knew it as 'The Now.' It was a nauseatingly sleek needle of chrome and shifting light panels that defied the city's weary, neo-deco grime. Belief didn't just power its lights; belief was its architect, its mortar, its foundation. Its shape was rumored to subtly change from hour to hour, morphing to align with the city's most fleeting aesthetic whims. It was a fortress of pure, weaponized popularity.

The main obstacle began at the street level. There was no door, just a velvet rope of pulsing energy guarded by a doorman who looked like he was carved from raw arrogance. His suit was so sharp it could cut you, and his face was a handsome, hateful mask of judgment. He wasn't a man; he was a construct of exclusivity. He decided who was 'relevant' enough to enter.

He looked me up and down, his lip curling at my worn coat and the exhaustion etched into my face. "We're full," he sneered, his voice sounding like a dismissive social media comment.

This was the first trap. It was powered by desire. The more you wanted in, the more the bouncer would reject you. It fed on ambition and desperation. My Lítost could feel the pathetic waves of need from the hopefuls lined up down the street, each one making the bouncer stronger.

I, however, had nothing he could feed on. I didn't want to be at this party. I wanted to be in a quiet bar with a cheap whiskey, mourning things he couldn't even comprehend.

I just stared at him, my gaze flat and empty. I let the full weight of my cynicism, my grief, and my utter lack of interest wash over him. "I'm not here for the party," I said, my voice as gray as my coat. "I'm here for the hostess. It's about a death."

The construct flickered. The words 'death' and 'grief' were discordant notes in its symphony of relentless positivity. It couldn't process them. My genuine lack of desire to be part of its world was a logical paradox it couldn't resolve. The velvet rope hissed and dissolved into mist. The doorman shimmered and stepped aside, a look of profound confusion on his perfect face. I walked through.

The action of navigating her home was like walking through the internet's collective subconscious. The lobby was a cathedral of blinding white, the walls lined with screens flashing a rapid-fire montage of trending products and influencers with predatory smiles. The air itself buzzed with a million whispered hashtags.

I followed a hallway that began as brushed steel and minimalist art but, fifty feet later, violently reconfigured itself into a lurid, neon-pink passage pulsating to a brain-dead beat. The floor tiles lit up in a sequence I vaguely recognized as a viral dance challenge. To proceed, one was meant to follow the steps. A misstep, my Lítost warned, would cause the floor to drop away into a pit of public shaming—a vortex of angry comments and down-votes given physical form.

I didn't dance. I walked a straight line, ignoring the flashing tiles. The floor groaned and shuddered, threatening to give way, but my utter refusal to engage, to participate in its stupid game, seemed to starve it of the energy it needed. It was a trap made of public opinion, and I was a private citizen.

The next chamber was worse. The space was filled with small, fluttering creatures that looked like a cross between paper birds and angry blue checkmarks. They swarmed around me, chirping in synthesized voices, spitting out fragments of algorithmic outrage.

"...problematic... cancelled... cringe... you're doing it wrong..."

They were Meme-Golems, tiny constructs of pure, context-free judgment. One of them, shaped like a cartoon cat pointing an accusatory finger, landed on my shoulder. "Your coat is dated," it hissed. I brushed it off like a piece of lint. It fell to the floor and dissolved into a puff of static.

They were distractions, designed to provoke a reaction, to pull you into an argument you could never win. My Lítost, usually an agony, was my guide. It allowed me to see past the noise, to perceive the single, coherent narrative thread of my own purpose leading me through the chaos. I followed that thread, a grim pilgrim in an unholy land. I was an island of authentic misery in an ocean of manufactured emotion.

Finally, the cacophony faded. The shifting architecture settled. I found myself in a quiet, circular antechamber. In the center was a single, elegant door made of polished black marble. This was it. The eye of the hurricane. The inner sanctum where the goddess held court.

The surprise was the silence. The entire fortress was a screaming defense mechanism, a testament to a deep and profound insecurity. All that noise was designed to keep people away from this one quiet place.

I pushed the door open.

The room was vast and starkly empty, with floor-to-ceiling windows showing a panoramic view of Aethelburg glittering below. In the center of the room, on a simple, throne-like chair, sat Glitterati.

She was nothing like her public image. The holograms sold a vibrant, ever-smiling goddess of pop. The woman before me was a ghost. She was painfully thin, dressed in a simple white shift, her bare feet tucked beneath her. Her face, famous for launching a thousand brands, was pale and devoid of makeup. Her eyes, which could command the loyalty of millions with a single televised glance, were empty, staring at the city below with a profound and terrifying vacancy. The immense power I had felt throughout the building wasn't radiating from her; it felt like it was imprisoning her, a cage of light and fame.

She didn't seem to notice me at first. I stood there for a long moment, the silence stretching between us. The truth I had felt from the obsidian stone—the willing suicide of Dapper Dan—now seemed to click into place with this silent, empty woman.

I took a step forward, my worn shoes making a soft sound on the polished floor.

"Glitterati," I said.

Her head turned slowly. Her eyes, hollow and haunted, finally focused on me. There was no surprise in them. No anger. Only a flicker of something I never expected to see in the face of a god.

Recognition. And a sliver of desperate hope.