The Tampered Score

“F- hero finds buried life by listening to the echo.” Within half an hour, the clip hit number one locally. On the other side of Alliance Tower, Evan Rex saw the clip too. He did not laugh. He just paused the frame on Aiden’s face and let his expression cool. “This kind of person is the worst kind,” he said to the people around him. “Why?” “Because he doesn’t make people feel like they’re buying him,” Evan said. “If he keeps rising, fans will think they discovered him. That’s harder to monetize cleanly.” Nobody in the room answered. They all understood what he meant. A rough, unpolished, genuinely useful low-tier hero would make the usual extraction model harder to run. And at that moment Erin looked at the hidden score record again.