Leo froze. Slowly, he looked up at his webcam. The tiny white light, which should have been off, was pulsing a rhythmic, deep crimson. He tried to shut the laptop, but the hinge wouldn't move. On the screen, a video began to play.

As the download bar crept forward, the air in his room felt heavier. When the .rar file finally landed on his desktop, he right-clicked and hit "Extract Here." A single executable file appeared: Recorder.exe .

The file size was suspiciously small, and the uploader’s username was just a string of random numbers, but Leo was desperate. He clicked.

When he looked back at the screen, the shadow in the video was leaning in, its hand reaching toward the "back" of the screen from the inside. A notification popped up in the center of his display:

The screen went black. The laptop was cold. Leo never recorded another video again, but sometimes, when he passes a dark window or a powered-down monitor, he still sees the faint red glow of a recording light reflected in his eyes.