Urkk-071.mp4

He looked at the file name again. URKK was the ICAO code for Krasnodar International Airport. 071 wasn't a sequence number; it was a year.

The file had been recovered from a submerged car in the Black Sea, near the port of Novorossiysk. No driver, no signs of a struggle—just the drive tucked into the sun visor. He clicked play. URKK-071.mp4

The footage was grainy, a dashcam perspective driving through a dense, fog-choked forest. There was no audio, only the rhythmic sweep of windshield wipers that seemed to beat like a slow pulse. For three minutes, nothing changed. Just the endless stretch of gray trees and the white lines of the road being swallowed by the mist. Then, the car slowed. He looked at the file name again

Elias frowned, rewinding the frame. He paused at the moment of the glitch. Hidden within the static was a single frame of text, a set of coordinates followed by a date: . The file had been recovered from a submerged

In the distance, a figure stood in the middle of the lane. It wasn't moving. As the car drew closer, Elias leaned in, his breath hitching. The figure was wearing a flight suit—outdated, Soviet-era—but the helmet’s visor was cracked, revealing nothing but absolute darkness inside.

The file wasn't a recording of the past. It was a countdown.

On the screen, the camera had turned around. It was no longer facing the road. It was facing the back seat. And there, sitting perfectly still in the shadows, was the flight suit, the cracked visor reflecting Elias’s own terrified face.