they stream the pain. you pay to watch. but this time, they chose the wrong victim.when college student heather holmes vanishes, her neighbor nick and his best friend jackson refuse to wait for the system to catch up. their search leads to retalion - a dark web game where masked hosts broadcast real torture for anonymous, paying viewers.the rules? no mercy. no escape. no survivors.as the clock ticks, the boys join forces with heather's father and grandfather, former special forces operatives, and a detective haunted by her own loss. together, they plunge into a world of encrypted depravity, where every clue leads deeper into a network built to stay hidden and where the cost of failure is death.this isn't just a rescue. it's a reckoning.because some games should never be played.