"Don't," the man whispered. "You wanted Playing It Cool . Fine. Let's play."

"Look at him. All that charm. All that deflection. He's afraid to say the real thing, so he jokes. Sound familiar, Leo?"

He closed the laptop. Outside, the first real rain in three months began to fall. He picked up his phone, ignored the streaming apps, and dialed his mom.

Leo opened it with shaking hands. It contained one line, repeated a hundred times:

She answered on the fifth ring. "Hello?"

The screen went black. The download folder popped open. The file was gone. In its place was a single text document, timestamped 2:17 AM, titled:

Leo stared at the download queue. It had been stuck at 99.8% for three hours.

The file name glared back at him from the cracked screen of his laptop: