File: Jackerman_lab_experiments_1080p_30fps.mp4... Instant

Elias tried to push back his chair, but his legs felt heavy, like lead. He looked down and saw his shins were pixelating, turning into jagged blocks of green and black code.

Elias hadn’t downloaded it. It had appeared after the power surge, a digital ghost born from a lightning strike that had nearly fried the university’s main server. He hesitated, his finger hovering over the mouse. The filename felt wrong—clinical, yet personal. Dr. Jackerman had been missing for three years, his lab sealed by a court order that no one dared to challenge. He double-clicked. File: Jackerman_Lab_Experiments_1080p_30fps.mp4...

On the screen, the empty chair in the corner was no longer empty. A figure was sitting there, wearing Elias’s favorite grey hoodie, staring at the back of Jackerman’s head. Elias tried to push back his chair, but

Elias reached out to touch the monitor, but his hand didn't meet glass. It slid right through the surface, plunging into a cold, digital void. The last thing he heard before the room went silent was the sound of a mouse clicking, somewhere far away, as a new file appeared on a different desktop across the city. If you’d like to continue the story, tell me: Should we follow the who finds the file? Do we go inside the digital void with Elias? It had appeared after the power surge, a

Elias leaned closer, his heart hammering against his ribs. As the video reached the ten-minute mark, the camera began to pan slowly to the left, revealing a second chair in the corner of the lab. It was empty.