Arjun stepped out into the frozen rain. Somewhere, a villain who called himself The Encoder was rewriting the city frame by frame. And the only weapon that could stop him was a man who'd never done anything riskier than clicking "Download Anyway."
It was 3:47 AM when the download finished.
Just another pirated movie. Or so he thought.
The laptop emitted a deafening ZAP . Arjun felt his bones realign. His t-shirt stiffened into Kevlar. A holster materialized around his shoulder, though the gun inside felt like it was made of compressed code.
"Virus," said the reflection, now standing beside him. "Corrupting the source code of reality. Every pirated movie you watched, every torrent you seeded—you invited it in. The anti-piracy warnings weren't threats. They were quarantine alerts ."
Arjun stared at the file name on his laptop screen: