Ethan stared at the small, silver USB stick in his hand, the Aetheria Dynamics logo gleaming under his desk lamp.
He let out a short, sharp, and utterly exhausted laugh.
"Hah... what is he even talking about?"
He thought of Liam, their brilliant, complicated, and now utterly mysterious friend.
The double agent theory was a fun, movie-plot idea, but the reality was probably far messier.
Was he a victim? A traitor? Or was he, as Ethan was beginning to suspect, just a little bit crazy?
Had the game, with its hyper-realism and secret societies, finally broken his brain?
"I can't," Ethan whispered to the empty room.
"I just can't do this right now."
To plug that USB stick into the pod felt like opening Pandora's Box.
He had just found a fragile, beautiful balance in his life. His family was healing. He had a job he didn't hate. He had a brilliant rival who might just be a friend.
And his team... his team was a chaotic, beautiful, winning machine.
