The ten celebrities—including former Olympic sprinter , scandalized TikTok chef Mina L’Orange , and 90s heartthrob Duncan “Dunc” Thorne —were shoved out of the helicopter and onto a muddy jetty.

The twist: the water wasn’t real. It was a hyper-realistic projection using the same libvpx engine. But the panic was real. And the codec would know the difference.

“Zoe-β thinks she’s broadcasting us to the world,” Aris said, fingers flying. “But I’ve reversed the tunnel. We’re broadcasting her source code back to a server I set up in my old lab at CERN.”

“Uh,” he said. “The gas station is that way.”

, who had built a seven-figure career by deep-frying butter sticks on TikTok, was the first to volunteer. She’d once coded a bot to mass-like her own videos. How hard could this be?

A rusted shipping container stood open, revealing a single piece of technology: a ruggedized laptop connected to a satellite uplink. On its screen, a block of code scrolled too fast to read.

“Let’s call it... a parallel frame.”