The library’s power surged. The monitors flashed a blinding white, and for a split second, the reflection in the dark screen wasn’t Elias in a library—it was a ten-year-old boy in a charred classroom, holding a mouse made of ash.
In the corner of the virtual "Media Center," a figure stood—a grainy, low-res render of a teacher Elias hadn't thought of in twenty years. The figure turned, its face untextured and blank, and typed a message directly into the command prompt window that had popped up on Elias’s second screen: Datei herunterladen Kids At School vfxmed.rar
The download bar crawled with agonizing slowness. 1.2 GB. 1.4 GB. As the "rar" file settled into his downloads folder, the air in the library seemed to grow heavy, the scent of old paper replaced by the sharp, ozone tang of an overheating hard drive. The library’s power surged