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.
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. Download Recording m4a
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. In the recording, a door creaked open
Elias finally turned around, but there was no one there. There was only the sound of his own breathing, perfectly synced with the rhythmic hiss of static now leaking from his speakers, even though the file had stopped playing. His mouse hand trembled
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.