Elena grabbed a fire axe from the wall—not for the servers, but for what was crawling out of the mainframe core. A Possessed Engineer, its back fused to a server rack, twisted its neck 180 degrees and grinned with USB cables for teeth.

From the Los Angeles end, Jesse’s voice crackled over an open mic. He wasn't screaming. He was laughing.

“We’ve got a dimensional bleed,” Elena called over the emergency frequency. “The ‘update’ isn't installing on the Switch. It's using the Switch's network as a beacon. A triangulation.”

THE SLAYER COMES. BUT FIRST, THE GULF.

“It’s not a patch,” he said, the sound of demonic growls rising behind him. “It’s a sequel. And the first level is Earth.”

She pulled up a map of the United States. Three other locations flickered with the same red signature: A server farm in Dallas. A distribution warehouse in New Jersey. And a residential address in a suburb of Los Angeles—where the game’s lead playtester, a nineteen-year-old speedrunner named Jesse, lived.

Then the seams of reality began to fray.

It moved to 2% as the first Imp landed on the roof of the Pentagon.