Elias leaned closer, his heart hammering against his ribs. He realized the "noise" they were talking about wasn't audio interference. It was the visual snow at the edges of the frame. He paused the video and ran a steganography filter over a single frame.
As the screen turned a blinding, sterile white, the last thing Elias saw was the file name changing one final time. ND0-E1i4sM.mp4. The archive had found its next component. ND0-Ju5t1nM&@ndr3wM.mp4
As Elias watched, the timestamps at the bottom of the screen began to behave erratically. They didn't count up; they counted toward a specific coordinate in time that hadn't happened yet. Elias leaned closer, his heart hammering against his ribs
The video feed froze. The two men on the screen stopped their mechanical task and turned their heads in perfect unison to look directly into the camera. The grainy quality vanished, replaced by a clarity so sharp it felt like looking through a window. "Hello, Elias," Justin said. He paused the video and ran a steganography