Before Ryan could even fully process the impossible system password scrawled in his own mirrored handwriting, a crisp, heavy slip of paper caught his eye right at the edge of his mousepad. It was a fresh vendor invoice from an unfamiliar commercial logistics firm, itemizing thousands of dollars in high-capacity server cooling hardware and industrial-grade network switches supposedly destined for the derelict auxiliary site in Mascot. He stared at the line items in mounting disbelief, his breath catching in his throat. He had never ordered the equipment, had never even stepped foot near the facility, yet right there at the bottom of the authorization block sat his signature—executed with the precise slant, the characteristic loop of the 'R', and the heavy downstroke that he had practiced since his school days in Chiba.
Around him, the fourth-floor marketing pod hummed with the steady, oblivious rhythm of a Thursday afternoon winding down toward the evening commute. A colleague a few desks over laughed quietly at a shared screen, and the low rattle of an overhead air-conditioning vent punctuated the background noise. Nobody else noticed the invisible net tightening around Ryan’s desk. With hands that felt ice-cold against his palms, Ryan carefully lifted the incriminating invoice, sliding it deep into his leather portfolio alongside the growing archive of fabricated ghosts. The digital clock in the corner of his monitor ticked silently toward half-past four, leaving him stranded in a quiet panic with less than two hours left in the shift.