He looked back at the computer screen. The .rar file was gone. The folder was empty. The air-gapped machine, which had no physical way to delete files on its own, was now showing a blank desktop.
The video cut to black. Elias sat in the humming silence of his office, his heart hammering against his ribs. He looked at his watch. It was 8:27 AM. The antique shop opened at 9:00 AM.
It was Elias. But the boy in the photo was wearing a pin he hadn't bought yet—a small, brass gear he’d only just seen in an antique shop window an hour before checking his email.