A ghostly scoreboard flickered in his peripheral vision:
He leaned forward.
The world shattered into green text on a black screen: GAME OVER. INSERT COIN. traffic rider unblocked 76
Leo's bike reappeared beneath him. The engine roared to life. He didn't think about the firewall. He didn't think about detention. He thought about the throttle. A ghostly scoreboard flickered in his peripheral vision:
He was inside .
But there was no coin slot. And Leo wasn't back in the storage closet. He was floating in a void of scrolling code, surrounded by the frozen, digitized ghosts of every player who had ever crashed here. Their eyes were empty .exe files. Their mouths moved in silent loops. surrounded by the frozen