“ Downloading complete, ” the laptop said in a cheerful, robotic voice.

Rohan tried to close the laptop. The lid wouldn’t budge. His hands began to glow faintly orange. He wasn't a mutant. He was just a kid trying to avoid studying. But the pirated Dark Phoenix didn't care. It had absorbed a fragment of the real Phoenix Force from a corrupted digital copy, and now it was spreading through every low-resolution frame.

The exam was cancelled the next day. Not because of a storm. But because every screen in the city—every phone, every TV, every ATM—showed the same thing: a low-quality, Tamil-dubbed version of Dark Phoenix playing on loop, with a new, uncredited star.