His heart hammered against his ribs. He didn't remember anyone being in the room. He didn't remember the air turning this cold.

Elias stared at the black screen, his reflection staring back. Underneath the file he had just opened, a new icon appeared, pulsing softly.

The file sat on Elias’s desktop, a stark white icon labeled .

Elias froze. In the video, he could see himself sitting at his desk, staring at his screen, just as he was doing now. But there was a three-second delay. He watched his past self reach for a glass of water.

He didn't turn around. He couldn't. He just watched the video as the shadow reached out a hand—long, grey, and translucent—and clicked "Record" on the video call interface. The video ended.

The screen stayed black for ten seconds. Then, the low-light camera grain flickered to life. It wasn't Leo’s face. It was his desk, cluttered with coffee mugs and half-finished circuit boards. In the background, the video call window on Leo’s laptop was visible.

Elias double-clicked. The extraction bar crawled across the screen with agonizing slowness. 98%... 99%... 100%.