Not from the Olympia spaceship, and not from the mind-wipe of Arishem the Judge. No—they escaped from a 2.3-gigabyte file labeled Eternals.2021.720p.10bit.WEBRip.6CH.x265.HEVC-ETERNAL.mkv .

Druig tilted his head. "No. We're a file . A copy of a copy of a copy, transcoded by a stranger in Belarus. We've lost 68% of our original data. I can feel it." He pointed at Kavi's router. "That device. It connects to a world of originals. We need to go upstream. Find the master. Demand a better codec."

"Do it," he said. "And for the love of the Celestials—use a slower preset."

The movie played fine for the first forty minutes. Sersi turned a statue into birds. Ikaris floated like a smug marble bust. Then, at exactly 00:47:12, the video stuttered.