Elias froze. He didn't turn around. He looked at the real monitor, then back at the video feed. The figure in the video leaned down and whispered into the ear of the "Elias" on the screen.

: It contained a single line: "The subject is aware of the cursor."

The signature at the bottom of the page read: "Archive Complete. Commencing Upload of Subject."

Panicked, he smashed the power button. The screen went black, but the audio from the archive—the heavy, mechanical breathing—didn't stop. It wasn't coming from the speakers anymore. It was coming from the hallway.

: A low-frequency hum that sounded like a heavy machine breathing.

But in the video, there was something else: a tall, thin silhouette standing directly behind his chair.

: A primitive executable that refused to open, claiming "Hardware Interface Missing."

The next morning, the computer was gone. In its place was a physical manila envelope. Inside was a printed screenshot of his desktop, the cursor hovering over a new file that hadn't been there before: .