Leo had mastered the art of looking busy. In Mr. Harrison’s computer lab, his shoulders were hunched, his eyes fixed on the monitor, and his fingers tapped the keyboard with the rhythmic boredom of a student writing an essay on the War of 1812. But the screen told a different story.

“Mr. Vasquez.”

But Leo had something they didn’t: desperation. His father had just lost his job. His mom worked double shifts. The only time Leo felt like he had any control was when he commanded his stick-figure army. When he tapped the screen to spawn a giant, when he watched a single, brave Swordwrath hold a chokepoint against ten enemies— that was power. That was order in the chaos.

“Come on, come on, come ON!”

Leo was the last of his kind. Every other student had given up. The school had rolled out a new firewall update last week called “FocusGuard 3.0.” It was supposed to block “unproductive time-sinks.” In reality, it was a digital guillotine. One by one, his classmates had been locked out. Their save files—some with maxed-out Speartons, others with endless waves of Magikills—were now ghosts in the machine.

The little Ethernet icon in the corner turned into a globe with a red X. FocusGuard was gone. Cerberus was blind. He opened the file.