On screen, a message appeared in chunky, red letters:

Leo ignored her. He turned Peppino around and ran back through the level, but faster. Desperation is a kind of fuel. He found a hidden passage behind the water fountain—a secret room full of floating pepperoni slices. He collected three. The pizza score ticked up to 75%.

“Leo,” Maya hissed, kicking his chair. “She’s coming.”

The site was called .

Leo pressed the right arrow key. Peppino sprinted. He slid under a janitor’s cart, crashed through a door marked “Principal’s Office,” and found himself in the cafeteria. But the lunch lady wasn't serving sloppy joes. She was a giant, floating pizza slice with a face, and she was crying.

It looked fake. The URL was a jumble of letters and numbers, and the homepage was a pixelated GIF of Peppino Spaghetti, the tower’s frantic, mustachioed protagonist, spinning endlessly. There were no ads, no “download now” buttons—just a single, glowing red button that said .

He collected a . The counter went from 0 to 1.

Leo didn’t look up. He couldn’t. In the game, Peppino had just picked up a shotgun. A pizza shotgun.