He typed HELP and pressed Enter.

Leo shivered. The file size hadn't increased. All this data—the visuals, the audio—was somehow already compressed into the 28 kilobytes.

The file was no longer on his computer.

It was on him.

Below it, a blinking cursor.

The grey dissolved into a grainy, first-person perspective. He was looking through someone's eyes—or a camera bolted to a head. The room was a concrete bunker, lit by a single bare bulb. In the center of the floor was a wooden chair. Tied to the chair was a mannequin.

The dummy's painted smile did not move. But a voice came from it anyway. It was the voice of a child, clear and sweet, saying a nursery rhyme out of order:

Then it turned its mismatched eyes directly toward the camera—directly toward Leo, through the screen, through time itself. Its painted smile widened. The corners of its lips cracked the latex skin.

"You are the test, Leo."

No. Not a mannequin. The figure was a person, but their skin had the texture of old latex, and their joints were simple ball-sockets, like a ventriloquist's dummy. Their mouth was a painted-on smile. Their eyes were two different sizes.