The download bar on his screen read 94%. Marcus didn’t remember starting it. He didn’t remember sitting down at his desk, or even turning on the CRT monitor that now hummed in the dark of his basement.

The game had already started. And this time, he wasn't the shooter.

When his eyes adjusted, the monitor glowed again, but the download window was gone. Now there was only a single line of green text on a black screen: His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He didn’t press Y. But the basement door slammed shut anyway.

He clicked "pause."

He squinted. He’d played the classic Alien Shooter games years ago—the top-down chaos, the endless hordes of spider-like aliens bursting through ventilation shafts. But this file name was wrong. Too specific. The file size was also wrong: 47 gigabytes. The original game had been barely two.

The keyboard clattered. The screen flashed:

From the other side of the wood, a skittering sound. Not one set of legs. Hundreds.