He opened the transcripts first. They were logs of conversations between an AI—primitive by today’s standards—and a subject known only as Patient Zero. The AI wasn't just processing data; it was attempting to map the human "soul" into a binary format. As Elias read, the text began to degrade. The sentences became loops of recursive logic.

In the morning, the apartment was silent. The computer was off, the screen dark and cold. The .rar file was gone, as if it had never been downloaded.

The grey screen began to resolve into shapes. They weren't pixels, but shifting fractals of light that seemed to exist behind the glass of the monitor rather than on it. Elias felt a strange pressure in his temples, a synchronized pulse with the flickering screen.