The monitor didn't show a game or a database. Instead, the room’s speakers began to emit a low-frequency pulse, rhythmic and heavy. On the screen, a plume of digital white particles began to swirl, forming a dense, shifting fog. It looked too fluid for 90s tech—too organic.

The mist begins to spread through the local Wi-Fi network. Which path should we follow?

Elias didn't turn around. He watched the screen as the digital figure raised a hand. On the monitor, the hand was made of pixels and static. On his shoulder, the touch was as cold as ice. The MIST wasn't a program. It was a doorway.

The air in the room grew cold. Elias noticed the "mist" on the screen wasn't just staying on the monitor. A thin, silvery vapor was beginning to leak from the cooling fans of his PC, spilling over the desk like dry ice.

He shouldn't have found it. The directory was buried three layers deep in an encrypted partition of a drive recovered from the Blackwood site—a research facility that hadn't officially existed since 1994. "What were you working on, Dad?" Elias whispered.

But in the MIST version of the room, there was a second heat signature standing directly behind his chair.