L0hengrin walked across the room, over to Kira’s dresser, which had a small Aiwa stereo system sitting on top of it. She pressed the Eject button on its cassette deck, then pointed at the empty tray.
“Go ahead,” she said. “You can do the honors…”
I walked over, put Leucosia’s Mix into the tape player, and fast-forwarded it until I reached the end of the sixth song on the first side （“Jessie’s Girl” by Rick Springfield）。 When I hit the Play button, I heard a few seconds of analog tape hiss before the next song began, and Morrissey began to croon: Take me out tonight…
I glanced around the room. Nothing happened. I glanced over at L0hengrin. She held up a hand and mouthed the word wait.
So we waited. We waited until about three minutes into the song, when Morrissey starts to sing a riff on the title over and over again. There is a light and it never goes out…
As he sang “light” for the first time, the lid of a wooden jewelry box sitting next to the stereo flew open, and a necklace floated up out of it, as if lifted by an invisible hand. It was silver with a blue gemstone, and I recognized it as the one Kira was wearing in her 1989 Middletown High School yearbook photo. According to his autobiography, Og gave it to her the first time he told her he was in love with her.
When the Smiths song ended, there was a blinding flash of light. When it faded the floating necklace had transformed into a large blue teardrop-shaped crystal, spinning in front of us at eye-level.
There it was, at long last—one of the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul.
I stared at the shard in awe, feeling a strange combination of exhilaration and disappointment. I’d finally uncovered the First Shard’s hiding place. But after three years of trying, I hadn’t been able to do it on my own. No, I’d had to be led here, like a noob following a walkthrough. Buying victory like some clueless Sixer instead of earning it on my own, or with the help of my friends…
But my shame couldn’t drown out the rush of relief and validation. The shards were real. I still wasn’t sure what I was hunting for, or why it mattered, but now I knew this wasn’t just some meaningless riddle. It really was another hunt created by Halliday. And whatever the prize was, it had to be important.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a blur of motion as L0hengrin reached for the spinning shard. Her hand passed right through it, as if it were a hologram.
“I’ve tried picking it up dozens of times, dozens of different ways,” she said. “No matter what I try, my hand passes right through it. I don’t think anyone can touch it—except you, Halliday’s heir. To get the shard, you have to pay some sort of toll…whatever that means.”
For each fragment my heir must pay a toll, to once again make the Siren whole.
“There’s only one way to find out,” I said, reaching out for the shard.
My fingers didn’t pass through it—they closed around it. And as they did…
* * *
…For a moment, I was somewhere else. I was in a school classroom filled with old BBC Microcomputers. There was no one else in the room. I was sitting at one of the computers, and I could see my reflection in its monitor. Except it wasn’t mine. It was Kira Underwood’s face staring back at me. She—or rather, I—looked about nine or ten years old. And I felt exhilarated! My skin and scalp were tingling, and I could feel my pulse racing and my heart thudding inside of my tiny chest. I was staring at the screen, admiring a piece of artwork I’d just finished creating—a pixelated unicorn rearing up on its hind legs, silhouetted against a crescent moon.
I recognized this image. It was famous. It was the very first piece of digital artwork Kira Underwood ever created. And I appeared to be reliving the moment just after she had created it…
* * *
And then I was back, in my own body, standing in Kira’s bedroom—the guest room in Middletown.
Somehow, I’d just spent a moment inside Kira’s past.
I was still reeling when a series of cascading chimes rang in my ears and a message appeared on my HUD: Congratulations, Parzival! You’ve found the first of the Seven Shards of the Siren’s Soul!
“What happened?” L0hengrin said. “You zoned out for a second. Are you all right?”
I looked down at the luminous blue shard in my hand.
“I had some sort of vision,” I said. “Like a momentary flashback. I guess that was the ‘toll’ I had to pay?”
“A flashback?” she repeated slowly. “What do you mean?”