“Download 4K,” he whispered to the empty room.

The last thing Ethan saw before the world went white was the search bar, still blinking at the bottom of the screen.

Not in a choppy, low-frame-rate way. But smoothly, as if she had always been a living thing trapped behind the glass. Her brown eyes, now no longer fixed on a distant camera, looked directly at him. Through him.

He paused before hitting enter. It was the same sequence he’d typed every night for a week. A ritual. He knew the results by heart: the red carpet gowns, the streetwear poses in front of the blacked-out Escalade, the bathroom mirror selfies that seemed to capture a private galaxy of product and perfection. But he hit enter anyway.

Ethan tried to look away. He couldn’t. The cursor on his screen moved on its own. It dragged the trash bin icon into a folder. It opened his photo library. It began deleting every other wallpaper he had ever saved.

She reached out. Her hand did not break the screen, but it came through it—a flawless, manicured hand made of light and code, colder than any winter. It touched his cheek.