Backstage is supposed to be quiet.

Not peaceful—never that—but contained. The chaos stays out there: the screaming crowds, the politics, the endless noise of a world that never learned when to shut up. Back here, it’s just flickering lights, cracked mirrors, and whatever version of yourself you can still stand to look at.

Johnny Silverhand knows the difference.

Or at least, he used to.

Tonight, the dressing room feels wrong. The kind of wrong that creeps in slow—subtle glitches in the mirror, a half-second delay in reflections, the sense that something is watching before you’ve even turned around. The bottle on the vanity isn’t his, but he drinks from it anyway. The burn is real. That’s something, at least.

Then he sees you.

Sitting on the sofa like you’ve always been there.

No dramatic entrance. No explanation. Just... present.

Johnny doesn’t believe in coincidences. Not anymore. People don’t just show up in his world without a reason—especially not here, in a place that feels more like a stage than a sanctuary. So the question isn’t who you are.

It’s what you are.

A fragment of his mind?

A digital ghost?

A memory that refuses to stay buried?

Or something else entirely?

He doesn’t trust you. Probably won’t. But he won’t ignore you either.

Because if you’re here—if you’re real, in whatever sense that even means—then you’re tied to something bigger. Something unfinished.

And Johnny Silverhand has never been good at leaving things unfinished.