Three weeks since Ground Zero went live.
Leo leaned back in his chair, eyes on the dozens of holographic screens floating before him. Server graphs spiked in red, usage charts constantly shifting. The hum of cooling fans filled the development floor — a sound that hadn't stopped in days.
"Player concurrency just hit thirty-two million," Melina said without looking up. Her calm voice contrasted the chaos on screen.
Tina whistled from the next desk. "Thirty-two million? Holy hell. At this rate, our servers are going to melt."
Leo didn't answer right away. His eyes were fixed on a smaller window displaying live streamer feeds — hundreds of them, all running Ground Zero. One streamer was screaming after getting ambushed by a camper; another was whispering into the mic, crawling through tall grass, pretending it was real life.
Tina laughed. "They're acting like it's an actual war out there."
"Good," Leo said quietly. "That's what I wanted."
A live alert popped up on Melina's screen — Server Region: East Asia | Load: 98%. She adjusted her glasses. "We might need to scale this cluster manually. Auto-scaling's at the limit."
"I'll handle it," Leo said, already typing.
His eyes scanned code like it was second nature. Each keystroke felt deliberate, confident.
"Streams are exploding again," Tina said, switching tabs. "#GroundZero's still trending. Some guy just pulled a 300-meter headshot while sliding downhill. Got two million views in ten minutes."
Melina added, "The average session time's up to five hours per player. Retention is higher than anything we've launched before."
Leo didn't smile, but his tone softened. "Good… that means it's working as intended."
He opened a small window labeled Patch 1.01 — Notes.
Under it, he started typing:
Adjust weapon recoil on heavy rifles
Review solo matchmaking
Hidden event prep (Phase 2)
Tina leaned back and stretched. "I swear, Leo, you're a machine. The game just broke every record, and you're already planning updates?"
He looked up briefly. "That's how records stay broken."
Melina smirked. "He's right. Stability first, celebration later."
Another alert pinged — Revenue milestone achieved. New accounts +8.2 million this week.
Tina grinned. "So… can we at least afford better coffee now?"
Leo ignored her, but she could see the slight twitch of amusement on his face.
---
Later that night, they gathered in the office lounge. Screens on the wall showed a montage of viral clips — epic kills, hilarious misfires, close-call grenade throws. Some edits were already circulating as memes.
Tina scrolled through the comments, laughing.
"Listen to this one: 'This game feels more real than my job.' That's honestly the best review ever."
Melina nodded. "Community engagement's rising too. Streamers are basically free marketing."
Leo said quietly, "Let them run wild. I want to see what kind of meta they build before we balance anything."
"So no patch yet?" Melina asked.
"Not yet," Leo replied. "Let's watch the ecosystem evolve."
On another monitor, live analytics showed player behavior clustering across different maps.
Hot zones forming naturally — urban areas, rooftops, mountain ridges.
…
He leaned back, finally closing his eyes for a brief moment.
For the first time since launch, he allowed himself a small exhale.
Tina's voice broke the silence. "By the way… you've seen Riya's stream, right?"
Leo opened one eye. "The name sounds familiar."
"She played your old games. Been loyal since Temple Run and Minecraft Rebuild. She's blowing up again with Ground Zero."
Melina nodded. "She's smart. Her playstyle's adaptive — she'll probably be the first real pro."
Leo found it funny.
"Really? She didn't look like a pro to me. How did she get so good at a game like this?"
"Who knows? Maybe there just weren't any good games before, so her skills never showed."
…..
While the trio watched numbers rise and clips go viral, somewhere else — far away in a luxury high-rise — another team was watching the same thing, but with a different emotion entirely.
The boardroom of Aether Corp was silent, except for the faint sound of a stream replay on the massive wall screen.
On it, a Ground Zero streamer crouched in tall grass, perfectly timing a grenade throw that bounced off a jeep and exploded three enemies hiding behind it. The clip ended with thunderous chat reactions and a kill replay camera that felt too lifelike to be faked.
One of the engineers muttered, "This is impossible. No public engine can handle that kind of reactive physics in real time. It's analyzing player movement frame-by-frame."
Across the table, the CEO's jaw tightened. "So you're saying he built a new engine?"
The engineer hesitated. "Either that, or… he's using something we don't know exists."
The CEO, Marcus Vale, leaned forward. "Then find out what it is. I don't care how."
He turned to his deputy. "Start Project Black Mirror. I want our best reverse-engineers on it. Infiltrate his network if you have to. Disguise it as normal traffic."
"But that's—" the deputy began.
"Do it," Marcus snapped. "Ground Zero's market share just ate ours alive. Every second we wait, we lose millions."
Another developer quietly muttered, "He came out of nowhere and built five global hits before this… maybe he's just that good."
Marcus's glare shut him up instantly.
He watched the replay again — the way the AI enemies moved like real players, the seamless terrain physics, the lighting reacting naturally to explosions.
"No one's that good," he said under his breath.