He paused the video. The timestamp froze. The image didn't. Her mouth kept forming words. The second cup of coffee in front of her began to ripple.

The film resumed on its own. The woman smiled. She slid a piece of paper across the table. On it, handwritten: You downloaded me. Now I am in your cache. Come to the cafe.

For the first forty minutes, nothing overtly strange happened. A man in a linen suit talked about his failed marriage. A waitress drew a cat on a napkin. A jukebox played a song that seemed to reverse on itself every twelfth bar. Leo felt his eyes grow heavy, then snap open — but he hadn't blinked.

Leo turned off his WiFi. He didn't sleep. At dawn, he noticed his reflection in the dark window was wearing a red dress — and he was a man who owned nothing red.

At 42:13, the woman in the red dress looked directly into the lens. Not like an actor breaking the fourth wall. Like she saw him . Her lips moved, but the audio didn't match. She was saying his name.