Instead, his finger hovered over the silver star icon. The matchmaking timer had already started.

"Easy Account," a voice whispered. Not from a headset. From inside his skull. "You have 17 minutes. Every kill adds a minute to your real-world life. Every death… subtracts one."

Tonight, he added the number "17" as a kind of superstitious chant. The 17th try.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. The game that had defined his teenage years. Now, at 26, stuck in a dead-end logistics job, he wanted it back. Not the fancy new battle royales with their dancing skins and loot boxes. He wanted the raw, clunky, perfect chaos of Crossfire at 3 AM.

But then he got sloppy.