She looked at the file path in the error box. It had changed.

She tried to shut down. The PC laughed—a wet, gurgling boot sound she’d never heard before. Then, softly, from her speakers:

The last log was from the lead programmer, dev_lynn.log : [FATAL] 05:43:12 – Runtime error 75 persists. The path to exit is gone. Mara, if you're reading this—don't mount the DLC. The error is a door. And you just knocked. Her screen went black. Then white text: