The Riddle of Midnight Internet

Maya's fingers flew across her keyboard at 2 AM, her Discord server blowing up with notifications. The Sphinx — this legendary, uncatchable hacker who'd been tormenting her gaming group for weeks — had just dropped another cryptic message in their general chat.

"Your cable's been pulling data for hours," the Sphinx taunted. "Impressive for someone who claimed they were logging off at 10."

Maya's stomach did that thing — the same flip-floppy sensation she got when Jason, the cute junior who sat behind her in AP Bio, made even indirect eye contact with her. The Sphinx knew. They all knew. She'd been telling her friends she was done with gaming before finals, focusing on "self-care" and popping those massive vitamin D gummies her mom kept buying because "teenagers don't get enough sun."

In reality, she'd been grinding this ridiculous ARG the Sphinx had created, a scavenger hunt across the internet that had somehow become her entire personality. Her catfish persona — 'Nightshade_X' — had become the only place she felt powerful, confident, worth listening to. Maya Chen who sat in the back of classes and overthought every text message? Couldn't relate. Nightshade_X, who'd solved three of the Sphinx's impossible riddles and earned their grudging respect? That was her.

But now the Sphinx was threatening to expose her. And worse — they'd figured out she'd been running on three hours of sleep, sustained entirely by caffeine and those stupid peach-flavored vitamins that tasted like regret.

Her phone buzzed. Jason.

"Hey, u good? Haven't seen u in class all week lol"

Maya stared at the message. This was it — she could keep chasing digital validation from some mystery hacker who probably lived in their mom's basement, or she could actually show up to school tomorrow and maybe work up the courage to say more than three words to Jason.

She typed back: "Yeah! Just dealing with some stuff. See u tomorrow (:"

Then she opened Discord one last time.

"Hey Sphinx," she wrote. "I'm done. Find someone else to play your games."

She closed her laptop, finally let her ethernet cable go slack, and actually slept through the night for the first time in weeks. The vitamins could wait until morning.