Eldridge was already on his phone, dialing campus security. Marlon stood there, bleeding onto the floor plan, wondering why the photo from a year ago showed a man wearing the exact same watch he had on his own wrist.
The printer went silent. The kiosk screen reset to the CPCC welcome page: PrintAnywhere. Release your documents. Release yourself.
Instead, a new line of text appeared:
Page three: a photograph. Grainy. Black-and-white. It showed the very printer Marlon was standing in front of, taken from above, as if by a ceiling camera. In the photo, a man in a gray hoodie was pulling out a stack of papers. The timestamp read 2024-11-15 22:14 —which was exactly one year ago, to the minute.
YOU ARE STANDING WHERE HE STOOD. DON’T PRINT THE REST. WALK AWAY.
“Stupid thing,” Marlon muttered, and clicked “Retrieve.”
Marlon looked up. The ceiling tiles were intact. No camera.
Page two: a list of names. CPCC staff. But next to each name was a bank account number and a schedule of when they took their lunch breaks.