Don't turn around, Maisie. He’s already here. He’s been inside me for weeks. He’s the one who asked the riddle. He wanted to see if I was awake.

"The same as the sound of a deleted file breathing."

Three seconds. Five. Then the screen flooded with text—not a search result, but a conversation. A memory.

Maisie’s breath caught. That file had been purged from a long-defunct Angelfire server in 2003. She’d never told a soul.

Her phone buzzed again. A security alert: Physical intrusion detected – Server PAGE_10.HTM – unauthorized access.