“I know.” He didn’t touch her. He just sat there, his presence a warm, steady weight in the silence. “You don’t have to be on for me.”

And then she started to cry.

Leo had seen Mike’s work. Six feet two, chiseled jaw, the calm confidence of a man who knew he was good at his job. But feeling him through Peta’s senses was different. When Mike walked onto the set, he didn’t swagger. He walked up to Peta and said, quietly, “Hey. You okay? You look tired.”

Mike Adrian nodded. “Most people do. Until they feel the weight.”

Mike smiled, sad and knowing. “Yeah. She is.” That night, Leo didn’t go back to Gutter Creek 2 . He deleted the project file. Then he wrote a letter to Peta Jensen—not fan mail, but a real letter. He addressed it to her agency, marked it “Personal for Peta.”

First, there was the body . Leo had never known his own skeleton could feel so light. His— her —breath was deep, filling lungs that seemed to touch her ribs with a silken ease. He flexed a hand. Small, strong, with chipped turquoise nail polish. A thin, silver scar ran across the thumb.

But the sender’s name made him pause: Mike Adrian, Director of Immersion, AuraTech.

The last thing Leo heard before the world dissolved was Mike’s quiet voice: “Be gentle with her.” Waking up as Peta Jensen was like being born inside a beam of sunlight.

“You’re here for the highlight reel,” Mike said, attaching a cool, silver disc behind Leo’s ear. “Everyone is. They want the scenes, the applause, the champagne. But the bridge doesn’t filter, Leo. You get the whole tape. The laughter and the splinters.”

And somewhere in a small apartment, a former editor smiled, closed his laptop, and went outside to feel the sun on his own face for the first time in years.

Peta didn’t reply. She just breathed.