The desk, the dual-monitor setup, even the half-empty caffeine can he’d set down five minutes ago—all of it was there, rendered in the grainy, high-contrast style of the Source engine.
He tried to stand up, but his limbs felt heavy, as if his own "physics" were being recalculated. He looked down at his hands. They were becoming smooth. The lines of his palms were fading into low-polygon edges.
In its place was a perfect render of a man sitting at a desk, frozen in terror. The man looked exactly like Elias.
He booted up SFM and loaded the map. The screen stayed black for a long time, the loading bar pulsing like a dying heart. When the view finally snapped into focus, Elias frowned. It wasn't a stage. It was a perfect, digital recreation of his own room.
He double-clicked. The extraction bar crawled across the screen with agonizing slowness.