Alex exhaled. The reticle settled on the head. One controlled three-round burst.
Frustration curdled into obsession. He spent three hours on a dial-up-slow family PC, scrolling through sketchy forums with neon-green text. “Free CD-KEY GENERATOR (NO SURVEY 100% REAL)” led to Russian spyware. “Use this key: X9F3-7K2M-PL4N-8Z1Q” got him a polite but firm: KEY ALREADY IN USE.
+100
That night, he lay on his bed, the game’s main menu music—that haunting, minimalist piano theme—looping from the TV. His friend Marcus’s gamertag flashed online. Playing: COD4 MP. Alex could almost hear him: “Dude, just get on. I’ll cover you on Crash.”
And every time he typed it, even just in his head, he was seventeen again—standing in the empty hallway on Vacant, waiting for the next corner, the next kill, the next impossible shot.