The digital clock on Eva's dashboard blinked.
00:00.
Her phone was a dead brick. The radio was a wall of static. You'll be erased. Liam's words echoed in the suffocating silence of the car.
If the system could hijack her digital life in a matter of seconds, what were they doing to the physical source of her information?
Eva threw the car into drive. She didn't care about the speed limits or the black SUVs. She tore back down the highway, her heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She had left Elias Thorne's house less than an hour ago. He was an old man sitting on top of a twelve-year-old lie.
When she finally turned onto his quiet cul-de-sac, the streetlights were out. The entire block was submerged in darkness.
Eva slammed the car into park and ran up the concrete walkway.
"Elias!" Eva pounded her fist against the wooden door. "Elias, open up!"
Silence.
She grabbed the brass doorknob, preparing to throw her weight against it. But it turned effortlessly. The door swung inward with a faint, hollow creak.
Eva stepped inside, raising her flashlight.
As she crossed the threshold, a small red light blinked once... from the top corner of the ceiling.
Then it went dark.
Eva froze, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up. But the red light didn't return.
She swept the flashlight beam across the hallway, and the breath was punched out of her lungs.
The smell of pipe tobacco and turpentine was gone. It was replaced by the sharp, sterile stench of industrial bleach and stale dust.
The antique clocks were missing. The canvases were gone. Eva walked slowly into the living room. It was stripped down to the bare, scuffed floorboards. Even the wallpaper looked faded and peeling, as if the room had been abandoned to the elements for years.
"Elias?" Eva's voice trembled, a fragile sound in the hollow room.
"Excuse me?"
Eva whipped around, raising the heavy flashlight like a weapon.
An elderly woman stood on the front porch. She was wearing a thick bathrobe, looking at Eva with a mixture of concern and suspicion.
"Are you from the bank?" the woman asked, peering into the dark, empty hallway.
Eva slowly lowered the flashlight. "No. I'm looking for Elias. Elias Thorne. The art restorer who lives here."
The neighbor frowned, shaking her head.
"Elias? Honey, I've lived next door for twenty-five years. There's no one named Elias here."
The world seemed to stop spinning.
"I was just here," Eva insisted, desperation making her voice pitch higher. "An hour ago. We sat in that kitchen. We had tea..."
The neighbor looked at Eva with genuine pity.
"Sweetheart, you must have the wrong address. An overseas investment firm bought this property six years ago. It's been sitting empty ever since."
Six years.
Eva stared at the woman. She looked back at the rotting, empty hallway.
Slowly, Eva looked down at her own hands.
The faint, bitter smell of black tea... was gone.
She touched the fabric of her trench coat. She had stood on this very porch in a torrential downpour just an hour ago. She had run to her car in the rain.
Her clothes were perfectly, impossibly dry.
A wave of absolute, paralyzing terror crashed over her. The system hadn't just cleaned the house. It had cleaned her. It had surgically removed the physical evidence of her reality, leaving her trapped in a memory that the physical world now denied.
She didn't argue with the neighbor. She couldn't speak.
Eva stumbled backward, out of the house, and ran to her car.
She ripped open the passenger door. She needed the Polaroid. She needed the one piece of physical proof that she hadn't lost her mind.
She looked down at the passenger seat.
The photograph of the man with Target Acquired written on the back was gone.
In its place rested a single, pristine white card.
Eva picked it up. Her fingers trembled so violently she could barely read the elegant, embossed black font.
It didn't explain. It didn't threaten.
It simply stated a terrifying, absolute command.
WE SUGGEST YOU STOP.