He turned back to the basement door.

They sat in the basement, the only two people in the world watching a game that never happened, on a TV that had no business still working, in a signal that shouldn't exist. The players on the screen—ghosts in green and white—ran forever across a floodlit field. They never aged. They never tired. They never scored.

When he finally climbed the stairs, the sun had set. His phone was dark. Thirty-seven missed alerts. He didn’t open a single one.

“What?” Leo asked.

Then Cool TV did something impossible.

Below that, a single option: