The movie ended abruptly, mid-scene, with a soft click. The file size on his hard drive had doubled. A new folder appeared on his desktop: Cafe Desire_Extended_Bengaluru_Cut .

Three days later, he boarded a flight to Kolkata. The ticket had been booked from his own email account, sent at the exact time the download finished.

For the first forty minutes, nothing overtly strange happened. A man in a linen suit talked about his failed marriage. A waitress drew a cat on a napkin. A jukebox played a song that seemed to reverse on itself every twelfth bar. Leo felt his eyes grow heavy, then snap open — but he hadn't blinked.

The text said: “You are now part of the projection. Do not look away during the second cup.”