Elias stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. In his headset, he heard the exact sound of the chair scraping, delayed by a few seconds.
He walked to the window and pulled back the curtain. The street was empty, bathed in the pre-dawn gray of Pensacola. But as he looked down at his monitor, the image in the folder had updated. Download File 32987.rar
Elias realized then that he wasn't just downloading a file; he was documenting his own disappearance. He reached for the mouse to delete it, but his hand moved on its own, clicking the new file. The cycle began again. Elias stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor
Against his better judgment, he ran the executable. His speakers didn’t emit music or static; they emitted the sound of breathing—his own breathing. Through the headset, he heard the rhythmic click of his mechanical keyboard from thirty seconds ago. The street was empty, bathed in the pre-dawn