From the corners of the white room, shapes emerged. Not enemy players. They were entities made of pure error—jagged polygons, missing textures, limbs that bent backwards. Their nametags were not usernames. They were IP addresses. MAC addresses. Hard drive serial numbers. And above each one, a status: .

With shaking hands, Leo clicked it. The code on his screen unwound like a spool of burning film. The white room shattered. His desktop returned—clean, slow, factory-reset. All his files were gone. His three years of hacked leaderboard stats: gone.

For the first time in three years, Leo aimed down the sights himself. He missed every shot. Died seventeen times. Lost the match.

Leo ripped the power cord from his surge protector. The screen went black. For a moment, he breathed. Then his monitor flickered back to life, powered by nothing—just the residual charge in his GPU. The terminal reappeared.