|top|: Emwbd.com

Elias sat on the floor, breathing hard, sweat soaking his shirt. The monitor flickered one last time. The black page vanished, replaced by a simple notepad file that had opened on its own.

Localhost. The IP address 127.0.0.1 meant the server was his machine. The domain was resolving to his own computer. emwbd.com

The cursor blinked for a long time. Then, the return came. PING emwbd.com (127.0.0.1): 56 data bytes Elias sat on the floor, breathing hard, sweat

The email had no subject line. The sender was a randomized string of numbers. The body contained only seven characters, underlined in blue: Localhost

The screen froze.

Elias scrambled backward, knocking his chair over. The monitor glowed with an intensity that hurt his eyes. He grabbed his laptop from his bag, intending to Google the domain from a different device, but he stopped. His laptop screen was black, save for white text in the center.