The phone's camera light flickered once, twice, and then stayed on, pointed directly at his face.
When he clicked "Extract," his fans began to whine—a high-pitched, metallic scream. The progress bar didn't move in percentages; it moved in words. Reading your hardware... Mapping your room... Hello, Elias. File: hack_me.2.zip ...
He let out a long, shaky breath, leaning back in his chair. "Just a trick," he muttered, trying to convince himself. "Just high-end AR or a projection." Then, his phone vibrated. The phone's camera light flickered once, twice, and
The air in the room chilled. Elias grabbed his mouse to kill the process, but the cursor moved on its own, sliding away from his hand. Reading your hardware
The zip file hadn't just unpacked data; it had unpacked a presence.
He reached for the power cable, but a window popped up, filling the screen with a live video feed. It took him three seconds to realize he was looking at the back of his own head. The camera angle was impossible—it was coming from his wall-mounted bookshelf, where no camera existed. In the video, a figure stood in the doorway behind him.
"Okay," Elias whispered, his heart hammering against his ribs. "Cute."