Arjun opened his mouth to scream. The Beast moved. Not fast—impossibly fast. He crossed the room and tapped Arjun gently on the forehead with one knuckle. The tap felt like a falling piano. Arjun’s vision doubled, tripled, splintered into a hundred mirrored fragments, just like the video glitch.
No sketchy countdown timers. No “verify you’re human” captchas. No ads for Russian dating sites or browser games. Just the button.
When he could see again, he was sitting back on the couch. The laptop was closed on the coffee table. The Beast was gone. The rain had stopped.
The Beast on the screen stepped through the laptop’s display. Not like a special effect—like a man stepping through a doorway. One moment he was pixels and light. The next, he was real: barefoot on Arjun’s carpet, smelling of cheap cologne and old sweat, his fists the size of small hams.
Arjun threw the laptop away from him. It landed on the floor, screen up, still playing. He scrambled backward off the couch, knocking over a glass of water. His heart was a piston.