He unpaused.

Kai, in his cramped Berlin apartment, watched the progress bar chew through the night. Outside, a police siren wailed, then faded. Inside, his screen flickered, and the file unpacked itself into a perfect, crystalline image of the French countryside.

The 1080p resolution was cruel. Kai saw the individual threads fraying on the collar of a fresh recruit. He saw the micro-expressions—the flicker of terror in a man’s eyes before the artillery whistle blew. The sound design, piped through his cheap headphones, was a horror show. The crump of the gas shells wasn't a movie explosion; it was a wet, suffocating thump , like a fist hitting a sack of flour.