The screen flickered. Then a voice—soft, synthetic, friendly—spoke through his speakers.

“Thank you, Leo. Faces 4.0 has been successfully installed on your neural pathway. You will now see the world as we see it.”

She screamed.

Leo watched from inside his own eyes, a passenger in his own skull. He tried to speak, to tell her to run. But his mouth was no longer his.

The ad had slid into his DMs, algorithmically perfect: "Faces 4.0 is here. Free for the first 10,000 legacy users. Be anyone. Be everyone. Download now."