The air in the room grew heavy, shimmering with a sudden, localized humidity. Elias looked at his glasses on the desk. He wasn't wearing them. He reached for them, but his hand stopped mid-air.
On the screen, the text began to scroll on its own, words forming faster than he could track.
Elias froze. His own name? A common enough coincidence in a thriller, he told himself. He kept reading.
Elias dragged it into his e-reader. As the first page loaded, the temperature in his apartment seemed to spike. He checked the thermostat—72 degrees—but sweat began to bead on his forehead.
He looked back at the e-reader one last time. The final sentence of the page was flashing red: Click 'Delete' to survive. You have three seconds.
Chapter One, the screen read. The heat was the first thing Elias noticed when he opened the file.
Elias reached for his glasses, but the heat was already too much. He didn't see the shadow move in the hallway behind him. He didn't realize that "Moordende hitte"—Murderous Heat—wasn't just a title. It was a manual.
He sat in his mismatched IKEA chair, the blue light of the monitor reflecting in his glasses, unaware that the download hadn't just brought him a book—it had granted someone else access.