The video reached the 11-second mark. On screen, the door began to creak open. Behind Elias, he heard the click of his own real-world latch.

Elias froze. On his screen, the "Evy" of the file name finally appeared. She wasn't a person. She was a reflection in the doorknob on the screen—a pale, distorted face with eyes that seemed to be looking not at the room in the video, but at the person sitting in the chair.

"Evy," he muttered. He searched the drive’s hidden metadata and found a single deleted text file. It contained a list of dates. Each one was a Tuesday. He checked a perpetual calendar: every date was a Tuesday where the moon was in its waning crescent phase.

The file hadn't been locked to keep people out. It had been locked to keep a specific moment in time trapped.