His laptop’s fan, which had been quiet, roared to life like a jet engine. The screen flickered, and the paused video resumed on its own. The other Marco was now standing up, walking toward the camera, toward the edge of the screen.

His blood turned to ice water. The background was wrong. His apartment had a window and a faded poster of Blade Runner . This room had no window. Just a single, buzzing fluorescent light.

It read: “User_marco.exe – Download to return. Estimated time: Forever.”

Marco let out a shaky breath. A prank. A targeted virus. Someone had used a deepfake. He went to delete the file.

He tried again. “Cannot delete. File is in use by ‘System’.”

Ding.

A strange, cold relief washed over him. He unplugged his ethernet cable (you could never be too safe) and opened the file. The video player flickered to life.