They were about finding something real.
Leo tried to speak, but no sound came out.
“That’s the deal,” Viktor said. “Do you accept?”
DING.
A ball rolled towards him from the shadows. He trapped it under his foot. The weight of it, the scuffed leather, was perfect. He passed it. The ball arced through a hazy, golden light.
Viktor continued. “I hid one copy. The last real football game. Every time someone downloads it, I have to show up and explain the price.” He pointed a long, translucent finger at Leo’s chest. “You can’t pause it. You can’t restart. You get one season. One career. One hamstring pull that takes six weeks to heal, just like real life. And if you lose the final match… the game deletes itself. And a part of you goes with it. A memory. A love for the game you thought you had.”
The man in the trench coat was gone. His coffee cup was still full.
Viktor smiled, and his code-eyes flickered. “Then welcome home.”
“You shouldn’t be here, kid,” the silhouette said, his voice a dry rasp over the stadium’s silent roar. “My name’s Viktor. I wrote the Phantom Engine. Then the publisher deleted it. Said it was too real. Too hard to monetize. They wanted loot boxes for ‘sprint boosts.’ They wanted ads on the corner flags.”
On the screen, a new message appeared, glowing faintly:
Leo looked past Viktor at the pitch. The goalposts were crooked. The crowd was a blur of rain and muffled shouts. A dog ran onto the field. A silhouette keeper was arguing with a silhouette referee.
He was about to take a shot when a new silhouette materialized in front of him. It wasn't a player. It was the man from the coffee shop. Trench coat. Thick glasses. But inside the game, his eyes weren't shadowed. They were made of pure code, streaming with numbers.
He took a step forward. His real leg, in the real chair at the real internet café, didn’t move. But his game leg moved. The sensation was seamless. He was in two places at once.