He moved the .rar to a "sandbox" laptop—a machine with no internet connection and a wiped drive. He right-clicked and selected Extract Here .

He reached for his phone to call for help, but the screen only showed one prompt:

Suddenly, the room felt... thin. Elias looked at his hand, and for a split second, he saw the wireframe beneath his skin. He looked at his coffee mug; it wasn't ceramic anymore, just a collection of grey polygons waiting for a texture to load.