Elias froze. He looked at the bottom right of his own monitor. The Paradox Loop

As he watched, the woman in the video—his successor, or perhaps a version of himself from a timeline that had already failed—pointed toward the server rack behind her. In the video, the rack sparked and began a meltdown sequence.

The file was gone. The queue was empty. But as Elias stood in the dark, he noticed his own skin was beginning to pulse with a faint, violet light.