Elias found it in a corrupted "Recovered Files" folder on an old external hard drive. Most of the drive was digital graveyard soil, but 6209 was intact. He clicked download. The progress bar crawled with a strange, heavy hesitation, as if the data itself didn't want to be moved. When the file finally opened, it wasn't a sunset.

The file was named —the standard, soul-less label assigned by an iPhone to a five-second clip of a sunset or a blurry concert video.

He reached for the mouse, his hand shaking. The breathing in the speakers grew louder, matching his own heart rate. He knew he should delete it. He knew he should unplug the machine. But the cursor was already hovering over the icon.

It read: