The screen went black. A loading circle spun lazily in the center. Leo held his breath.

The laptop screen abruptly flickered and died, plunging the room into total darkness.

He clicked another dead link, dodging a pop-up advertising a sketchy casino. He groaned and typed a hyper-specific string of text into his search bar: Watch www xrysoi se House S08E12 Chas .

Leo felt a chill shoot down his spine. He tried to move his cursor to close the tab, but the mouse was frozen. He reached for the power button on his laptop, but his fingers felt heavy, as if moving through water.

Chase was in the diagnostics lounge. He was staring at the whiteboard, marker in hand. On the screen, he suddenly stopped pacing. He didn't look at the symptoms on the board. Slowly, deliberately, Chase turned his head and looked directly into the camera. Directly at Leo.

Leo leaned in closer. The audio was strangely crisp, picking up the squeak of Chase’s sneakers on the linoleum and the heavy, rhythmic thud of a cane somewhere in the distance.

It was a mess of a search query—a Frankenstein’s monster of broken URLs, foreign streaming site names, and fragmented episode titles. Yet, to his surprise, the search engine yielded a single, blue link at the top of the page. It looked suspicious, but desperation got the better of him. He clicked.