Chapter 7

Sixty seconds.

The countdown burned red in the corner of Isabelle's screen, relentless and final. Carmen's bar held at ninety-five percent, a fortress of small donations and fan loyalty. The chat had become a victory lap, Carmen's supporters already composing their taunts for the loser's punishment.

Isabelle sat still. The pen rolled between her fingers, click-click-click against the plastic desk mat.

Then the screen went dark.

Not crashed. Prepared. The chat vanished, wiped by administrative privilege, and the animation began. Gold code assembling into form, pixel by pixel, until a dragon of pure light filled her vision. It rose, roared, dissolved into text that burned against black:

Emperor A.C. has gifted the encrypted dragon!

Fifteen thousand dollars. Single transaction. The kind of money that bought cars, surgeries, freedom from certain kinds of lives.

Isabelle's eyebrow rose. "A.C.," she read aloud, letting the syllables stretch. "Thank you for the dragon."

The bar moved. Forty-seven percent. Not enough to win, but enough to matter. Enough to prove that the game had changed.

Carmen's chat exploded. Betrayal, confusion, accusations of blindness and bad taste. Ambrose read none of it. His finger found the emperor's privilege, the function that silenced all voices but his own.

Twenty thousand viewers went mute.

The chat window emptied, a digital wasteland where communication had been. Only three names remained: Izzy_the_Inflatable, Carmen_Dominguez, Emperor A.C.

Isabelle looked at the clean screen and smiled. "Much better."

Ambrose typed three words. They appeared in gold, floating, undeniable: Continue singing.

Isabelle's smile sharpened. "I'm not a jukebox, A.C." She let the pause build, let the intimacy of the empty chat create false privacy. "And we're in the middle of a competition. I might be about to lose, remember? Punishment and all."

She emphasized the last word, reminder and challenge.

Ambrose's jaw tightened. He hated obstacles. Hated negotiation. Hated anything that stood between himself and what he needed. His eyes found the percentage gap-ten points, maybe twelve-and calculated.

Two more dragons. Thirty thousand dollars. The bar surged past one hundred, past Carmen's maximum, into territory of absolute dominance.

He typed again: Now you win. Sing.