Elias tried to close the program. Alt+F4 did nothing. He pulled the power cord from the wall, but his monitor stayed lit, powered by a ghostly residual charge.

[SYSTEM]: You are the third observer. The air smells of ozone and wet copper. The others left at 04:00. You are late. Elias tried to type "Who are the others?" into the console.

He followed a flickering red light into a basement archives building. As he descended, the graphics shifted. The low-poly textures sharpened into hyper-realistic photos of real rooms—offices, bedrooms, and laboratories—stitched onto the 3D walls.