The girl sighed deeply, brushing her curled mocha locks out of her soft pecan eyes, as she stared at her laptop screen expectantly. Indeed, had it really been a year? No... it had been more than that now, four years since she'd started the Voltage games, and met the wonderful characters within. But her mind had run dry, and those gentle golden irises, had faded away, along with every other man that had been brought to life through her stories.

So why... why was her inspiration gone? It had been real, hadn't it? Breaking the code, bringing them into the real world...

She glanced up at her bedroom walls, which were lined with posters of dogs, wolves, and various handsome celebrities, before looking back to the screen, where the tauntingly blank page lay before her. Her phone vibrated, and she picked it up, unlocked it, then glared at the icon of Kissed by the Baddest Bidder, that sat there smugly on her home screen. Since her phone had changed, she'd lost her stories, and not willing to pay, the men that lived within them, had gone too. It didn't matter how many times the melodious tones of 'Take on me' rang out through her room, they weren't coming back.

Maybe this was a good thing. They had set her room on fire, shot at her, dragged her back into the game world, where reality had seemed like just a dream, and pulled her under. Then again, she missed the excitement of living with these bad boys, and she knew that no matter how hard she fantasised, real people just weren't going to compare to the magic that had been created within the code.

Her slender, dextrous fingers began to tap the keys on her keyboard, as she typed, 'Ota Kisaki, the angelic artist. He has golden eyes, golden hair, and a pet fetish. He refers to the protagonist as Koro.' She stared at the words for a moment, willing them to jump out of the screen and integrate into the man's toned frame, but they didn't. It wasn't enough. They had broken the code last time, by going against the rules. Just months ago, she had been with Eisuke, in his world, in his story, but now, she knew that it was only generic content, and she needed more.

Taking a deep breath, she continued to type, her fingers darting from letter to letter at speed, 'It has been four years since I indulged into the world of anime. Since then, my life has been... at a standstill. I don't work, I have left college, and honestly, I can't sustain being stood for more than ten minutes, without feeling tired and weak. There must be something else I can do with my heart, other than experience these damn symptoms. I lost my inspiration to write, and I feel as though I lost a part of myself. But now, it stops.'

A faint smile played across the girl's lips, and she nodded firmly, before continuing, 'There is a world where I feel no pain, where I am healthy, and where love is on my doorstep. All I have to do, is access it. This is not the world where I pay money, and get some generic content. This is the world where I break the rules of reality and summon the sentience of the characters to my life.' Pausing thoughtfully, she licked her lip, and picked up her phone once more, uninstalling the Voltage app. Then, the brunette took a deep breath, and wrote, 'As I opened my eyes, I found myself in a dark room, a barely flickering light in the corner, giving tiny strokes of vision on occasion, to glint upon the silver bars of the birdcage that I was trapped within.'

Might as well start from the beginning, she thought, there was no harm in entering the story at the most uncertain part. 'My hands were chained behind my back, and there was an ominous silence echoing throughout the empty room.' The girl continued, then sat back and groaned quietly at the familiar growl of her stomach. Well, food came first, so she set her laptop to one side, and got up to head downstairs.

Only when she opened the door, thick silver bars glinted outside the doorway, sealing her in. "Huh?" She took a step back, and felt the cold coils of chain, ensnaring her wrists, pulling her sharply onto her bed, which melted away the moment she touched it, landing her on a chilly, stone floor. The walls of her room, disintegrated, as though made of a thousand crystallised pixels that were being smashed from above, and as they piled on the ground, before de-materialising, the light in the room narrowed, until it was merely a tiny, dancing flame. "No..." The girl whined softly, shaking her head in disbelief, a tad hypocritical, considering she'd asked for this. It was only now, as she spotted the faded screen of her laptop, about to be enveloped in darkness, that she realised the story was writing itself, and it was writing what was happening now.

As the laptop vanished into the shadows, the pecanette watched vivid lights appear above her head, glaringly bright, revealing the audience that had been there the entire time, just hidden in the gloom until now. She saw the auctioneer step up, and she waited for the oh so familiar, 'Young Japanese girl' speech, that she'd heard many times before. Only this time, the speech was very different. It was personal. "We have for you tonight, ladies and gentlemen, a young girl, and boy, is she exotic! She's a quarter Caribbean, though born in England, and her family are from all over the world, so you're certainly getting a mixed bag here! You can name her whatever you want, but her name is..."

She gasped as she heard her name spoken, fighting to see past the harsh beams that illuminated her cage. This was wrong. This was all wrong. Even after breaking the code, it had been pre-written game statistics, Japanese girl, the name that she'd inputted, nobody knew anything else about her. But this... this was too detailed. He'd used her full name, which she knew she'd never given, and the background on her was another factor that proved she was in far too deep.

A sudden flash of blue light, caused her to focus on one spot in particular, and there, she saw a familiar face, holding a cell phone, which he'd used to attract her attention. It was Takuto, one of the Black Foxes. He winked at her, following this up with a rather wicked smirk. He was one of four people that were not wearing masks, and as she scanned the rest, she began to feel very uneasy. Miyabi was there, a silver card in his hand, poised and ready to bid, a playful smile on his lips. Kakeru sat at his side, an hourglass gently tilting from side to side in his fingers, and finally, Ota Kisaki was shown, a little brown puppy in his lap, and a look of disinterest in his eyes.

There was one thing she knew for sure.

The code was BROKEN.