His mouse hand trembled. He moved the cursor to the file, desperate to delete it, to erase the evidence of what was happening. But when he right-clicked, the option wasn't there. Instead, the filename had changed. It now read: Uploading Reality m4a.
He didn't turn around. He couldn't. His eyes were locked on the monitor as the waveform spiked. In the recording, he heard the sound of a chair spinning around—the very chair he was sitting in. The audio ended with a sharp, digital pop.
Elias stared at the black screen of the player. In the reflection of the monitor, he saw the door to his office, which he was certain he had closed, standing wide open.
A new notification flashed in the corner of his screen: Upload 99% complete.
The blood drained from his face. The voice was his own, but the tone was wrong—hollow, as if spoken by someone who hadn't breathed in years.
The file sat on the desktop, a generic icon labeled Download Recording m4a. Elias didn't remember clicking a link or hitting save. He had spent the afternoon cleaning up his cluttered downloads folder, and there it was, wedged between a PDF receipt and a blurry screenshot.
He hovered his cursor over it. The metadata was blank—no date, no size, no source. Curiosity, sharp and cold, nudged him to double-click.
In the recording, a door creaked open. He heard the heavy thud of boots on hardwood—a cadence he recognized instantly. It was the exact sound his own front door made when the hinges needed oiling.
