Elena typed her admin password. The screen went white. For one eternal second, there was nothing but the hum of the fan. Then, her normal desktop returned. The galaxy was gone. The purple foxes were gone. Vex was gone.

Elena’s hand shot to the power button. She held it down. Nothing happened. The screen flickered, but the swarm only grew. Vex was fighting them, leaping and tearing at the clones with digital claws, but for every one he destroyed, two more split from the original purple core.

The notification popped up in the dead center of Elena’s screen, a sleek, shimmering window with a holographic edge.

Vex nodded. A single line of code appeared on the screen: sudo rm -rf /cyber-guardian/trial --no-preserve-root