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It had appeared in his "Downloads" folder overnight, nestled between a PDF receipt and a software update he didn't remember clicking. There was no sender, no subject line, and no metadata once he right-clicked it. The date in the string—sent a cold shiver down his spine. That was the day of the blackout, the forty-eight hours where the entire city of Oakhaven simply went dark, and everyone’s memory of that Tuesday became a blur of static.

The figure was tall, impossibly thin, and wearing a coat Leo recognized instantly. It was his own heavy wool overcoat—the one he’d lost during the blackout and never found. But it wasn't the coat that froze his breath; it was the timestamp burned into the bottom corner of the image in glowing red digital ink: Download IMG 20221116 102948 648 jpg

At that exact second, according to every official record, Leo had been three miles away, trapped in a stalled subway car with fifty other witnesses. It had appeared in his "Downloads" folder overnight,