That was the first thought that crossed my mind as the image flickered into focus. The office was nearly empty, the late afternoon sun stretching long shadows across the floor. I had stayed late again, telling myself it was to finish paperwork, though deep down I knew it was because I didn’t want to go home to the silence. The building’s security monitors were usually nothing but background noise—empty hallways, locked doors, the quiet rhythm of a place winding down for the night.

I glanced up by accident, really. Just a habit, something I’d done a hundred times before. But this time, something was different. One of the screens showed movement where there shouldn’t have been any. The timestamp blinked red in the corner, confirming what my gut already knew: this was live.

At first, I felt only mild concern. It wasn’t unusual for cleaning crews to work late, and sometimes staff forgot to badge out. But as I leaned closer, my chest tightened. The person on the screen wasn’t wearing a uniform. They moved slowly, deliberately, as if they knew exactly where they were going.

I hadn’t seen it in years, but some things never leave you. The slight tilt of the shoulders. The way one foot dragged just enough to be noticeable. My hands went cold.

The camera shifted angles as the figure passed under a light. The face came into view for just a second, but it was long enough. Long enough for the world I had built over the last decade to crack straight down the middle.

The same brother whose name was etched into a headstone I had stood in front of, rain soaking my coat as I tried to understand how someone could be gone so completely. The same brother I had mourned, defended, and remembered as a complicated but ultimately good man.

My first instinct was denial. Stress does strange things to the mind. Grief rewires memory. I told myself it was someone who looked like him, someone who moved like him, someone who shared his face by coincidence. But the longer I stared, the more the excuses fell apart.

There was a scar above his left eyebrow. I remembered how he got it—falling off his bike when he was thirteen, refusing stitches because he “wasn’t a baby.” No stranger would have that scar in that place, shaped in that exact way.

I didn’t call security. I didn’t call the police. I don’t know why, except that some part of me needed answers more than justice. I grabbed my coat and took the stairs two at a time, my heart pounding so loudly I was sure he would hear it through the walls.

By the time I reached the lower level, the hallway was empty. The lights buzzed softly, indifferent to my panic. I followed the path I had seen on the screen, past storage rooms and locked offices, until I reached the server room door.

Inside, he stood with his back to me, staring at a monitor filled with data streams. He looked older. Thinner. The years had carved sharp lines into his face, but it was unmistakably him.

For a long moment, we just stared at each other. No dramatic reaction. No sudden movement. Just two people facing a truth that had waited far too long.

He explained in fragments at first. How he had gotten involved with people who didn’t give second chances. How disappearing was the only way out. How someone else had died in the fire that was supposed to kill him, and how he let the world believe it was him because correcting the truth would have put all of us in danger.