The figure stopped mid-motion. Slowly, they turned around. Under the dim, flickering streetlamp, Elias felt his heart stop.

By the time Elias blinked away the white spots and regained his footing, the street was empty. The black sedan was gone, leaving nothing behind but tire tracks filling with rainwater and the smell of ozone.

The image looked like nothing more than a corrupted file when viewed on a monitor—a mess of digital artifacts, broken pixels, and jagged color bars. But printed out, held physically in his hand, Elias could see the faint, ghostly outline of a face buried beneath the noise. It was the calling card of a phantom programmer known only as The Architect. Elias checked his watch. 02:00 AM.