“I’m Tier 3 support,” she said. “But not for the reason you think. You’ve been flagged, Leo. Not for cheating—we don’t care about that anymore. Wallhacks, aimbots, cronus scripts… that’s small-time. No. You were flagged for curiosity .”

His desk chair lurched. The RGB strips on his walls bled together into a single, screaming white. For one endless second, Leo felt every byte of data he’d ever sent or received rip through his nervous system—his search history, his saved replays, the embarrassing rage-quit messages he’d deleted before sending, the whispered conversations in party chat about his mother’s illness. All of it. Harvested. Indexed. Known.

Leo blinked. Rubbed his eye. Blinked again. The link stayed, a translucent scar across his field of view, pulsing with the slow rhythm of his own heartbeat.

The world didn’t glitch. It folded .

The woman’s smile didn’t change, but the Excel spreadsheet in her right eye began scrolling again—faster now, adding a new row.

“You clicked it,” said a woman’s voice, tired and amused. “They always click it.”