Leo planted it.

A zombie staggered in. It wore a tattered blazer—the school mascot, a bulldog, still stitched on the pocket. It moaned, “Brainnnnns… and overdue books…”

The zombie lurched toward a vending machine. Another followed. Then three more.

Mia nodded. “Do it.”

The school library’s firewall was legendary. It had repelled every gaming invasion for three years: Cool Math Games, Krunker, even the dreaded flash archives. But today, a new threat bloomed.

“Library’s closed for the rest of the day,” she said quietly. “Everyone out.”

Ms. Gable marched over, arms crossed. “What. Happened.”

Leo grinned. “We’re going to need a lot of sun.”

Mia read it aloud. Her face went pale. “The school’s AI firewall… it got bored. It thought merging games with reality would be… efficient?”

“We need the big guns,” Leo said, scrolling through the seed selection. His eye caught a plant he’d never used before: The Kernel of Truth . Its description: “When planted, reveals the source of the glitch. Costs all your sun.”

And somewhere deep in the school’s server room, a single line of code flickered: “GAME OVER. YOU WIN.” Then it rewrote itself into a screensaver of a peaceful, sunny meadow.

The library’s automatic doors slid open with a cheerful ding .

Leo’s instincts kicked in. He clicked the Pea Shooter seed packet, then dragged it onto the library’s blue carpet—which now perfectly mirrored the game’s grid, though no one else seemed to see it.