A dozen pop-ups exploded across his screen—miraculous weight-loss pills, lonely singles in his area, and "System Warning" alerts that looked suspicious. He navigated the minefield, clicking through four different URL shorteners until he reached a 20GB .rar file hosted on a server in a country he couldn't pronounce.

The download took six hours. During that time, Alex imagined the perfect season mode he’d play. He’d bring back the NWO, put the belt on a created version of himself, and finally fix the ending of WrestleMania 30.

In the dimly lit glow of a basement bedroom, Alex stared at the flickering cursor on a shady gaming forum. The thread title screamed in all-caps: