The camera was inside the room where the hand had been. It was a small, windowless office. A man sat at a desk with his back to the camera, typing furiously on a keyboard that wasn't plugged into anything. On the monitor the man was watching, a video was playing.

Elias leaned in, his heart hammering against his ribs. He recognized the room on the man’s monitor. He recognized the messy bed, the posters on the wall, and the back of his own head.

But the next morning, the file was on his desktop. He hadn't moved it.

By the third night, Elias didn't even have to click the file. He woke up at 3:00 AM to the sound of his laptop fans whirring at max speed. The screen was black, save for a single window playing the video on a loop. The runtime was now thirty seconds.

Elias tried to delete it. The system gave him a "File in Use" error, even though no programs were running. He tried to rename it, but the text simply reverted to the moment he hit enter.

The file was buried in a corrupted "Downloads" folder on a refurbished laptop Elias bought at a local estate sale. Every other file was a standard document—resumes, tax returns, vacation photos—except for .

He opened it again. This time, the runtime was fourteen seconds. The camera had moved five feet down the hallway. The exit sign wasn't green anymore; it was a dull, bruised purple. At the very edge of the frame, a thin, pale hand was gripping the corner of a doorway.