The fans on his PC began to scream, spinning at a speed he didn't know they were capable of. The temperature in the room plummeted. Elias gripped the controller, his knuckles white. He wanted to Alt+F4, to pull the plug, but his hands wouldn't move.
Then, the torrent client on his real desktop pinged. A notification appeared: Upload Complete. 1 Peer Connected. Grounded v1.0.2.3926-P2P.torrent
He pushed the joystick forward. The character moved with a sluggish, sickening weight. Suddenly, the environment snapped into place, but it wasn't a game world. It was a digital recreation of a bedroom—his bedroom. The resolution was grainy, looking more like a police bodycam feed than Unreal Engine 4. In the center of the room, a tiny, low-poly version of himself sat at a desk, staring at a monitor. The fans on his PC began to scream,
A text box popped up in the corner of the screen, mimicking the game's tutorial prompts: Objective: Do not look behind you. He wanted to Alt+F4, to pull the plug,
Slowly, the low-poly version of Elias in the game turned its head. It didn't have a face, just a flat texture of static. It pointed toward the edge of the screen, toward the "real" Elias.