To anyone else, it was just a twenty-year-old racing game. To Leo, it was a time machine. He remembered the smell of his childhood bedroom, the hum of an old CRT monitor, and the legendary silver-and-blue BMW M3 GTR that had been stolen from him by Razor, the Blacklist’s most notorious cheat. The progress bar crawled forward. 88%... 94%... 100%.

He closed the game and looked at his hands. They were shaking slightly from the adrenaline. The "free download" hadn't just given him a game; it had given him back a piece of himself that knew how to go fast, take risks, and never look back in the rearview mirror.

It was 2:00 AM. He had finally found it: a forum thread titled

The rain-slicked asphalt of Rockport City shimmered under the orange glow of the streetlights, but for Leo, the only light that mattered was the flickering blue of his monitor.