Aegis wasn't an anti-cheat. It was a sleeper node. Every copy of Nexus Obscura was a distributed zombie, waiting for that countdown to hit zero. The "Persistence Pointer" wasn't a bug—it was a synchronization beacon. When it reached zero, every instance of the game worldwide would simultaneously execute that hidden code.

Her phone buzzed. A blocked number.

Lena smiled grimly, cracked her knuckles, and whispered to her glowing violet pointer:

“Let’s cheat.”

“You’re looking at the wrong clock,” a flat, synthesized voice said.

She opened the payload builder module—a feature she'd never had to use before. She selected a single option: .