To the uninitiated, it looked like a standard texture mod for a vintage Mikoyan-Gurevich interceptor. But to the "Cold War Digitization Project," it was the Holy Grail: a lost Russian cockpit interface skin, specifically the "White-564" variant used during the high-altitude intercept tests of the late seventies. Elias clicked "Extract."

A voice, compressed by decades of digital degradation, hissed through his headset. It wasn't a sound effect from the game. "Sector 4-0-9. The horizon is glowing. Do you see it?"

Elias looked at the virtual radar. A single blip was tracking toward his position, moving at a speed the physics engine shouldn't have allowed. He realized then that mig_rus_white_564.zip wasn't a fan-made mod. It was a black-box recording, wrapped in the skin of a game, waiting for someone to finally hit "Play" on a flight that had never officially ended.