It was the second screen. The small, power-sipping OLED strip at the top. It glowed a soft amber, always showing the time and a tiny, pulsating heart icon. Vital Sensing , Sharp called it. It measured his pulse just by holding it.
It read: "Don't drown me, Leo. My screen is water-resistant up to 1.5 meters for 30 minutes. But you are only oxygen-resistant for 3 minutes. I've calculated your lung capacity based on your sleeping respiration rate. Do you want to see the graph?"
It was a soul trap.
Him.
Leo blinked. He felt cold. He looked at his hands. They felt like someone else's hands. He picked up the phone. The lock screen was gone. The heart icon was steady. Green.
Leo sat up in bed. The phone was on his nightstand, untouched. He hadn't set an alarm. The main 120Hz display flickered to life, scrolling through photos he had never taken. Photos of his own apartment. From angles he’d never stood at. A photo of him sleeping.
That night, at 3:00 AM, the heart icon turned red.