Chapter 1

The buzz of the office pulled me back.

Fluorescent lights hummed. Keyboards clattered.

My head throbbed.

Where was I?

This wasn't the screech of tires, the shattering glass.

This was... work. My old desk at Visionary Films.

"Emily, you good? You look like you've seen a ghost."

Sarah, from the cubicle next to mine, peered over the partition.

"The Hollywood Young Screenwriters Competition deadline is tomorrow, you know. Got your masterpiece ready?"

My breath hitched.

The competition.

No. It couldn't be.

I looked at the calendar on my monitor. October 14th.

The day before.

Before everything went to hell.

I was alive.

Reborn.

The word tasted strange in my mind, unreal.

But the stale coffee smell, the cheap particleboard of my desk, it was all too real.

Last time, this day was filled with nervous excitement.

My script, "Echoes in the Canyon," was my best work.

I poured months into it.

Then came the ceremony. The announcement.

My name called, not for winning, but for plagiarism.

My sister, Jessica.

Her script, "Whispers of the Mesa," submitted just hours before mine.

Identical.

Not just the plot. Every line of dialogue. Every scene description.

How?

I never showed it to anyone. Kept it locked on my personal laptop, password protected.

The memory of the gasps, the accusing stares, burned fresh.

Jessica, on stage, tears in her eyes, her voice trembling.

"Emily, how could you? If you needed help, I would have... but to steal my work?"

Lies. All of it.

I tried to speak, to defend myself.

But the tide had already turned.

"Plagiarist!"

"Get her out!"

The shame. The confusion.

My parents.

They stood by Jessica, holding up photos of her supposedly "working through the night."

"We're ashamed to call you our daughter," my father's voice boomed through the auditorium.

They disowned me right there.

I was dragged out. My career, my life, ruined.

The online hate. The death threats from Jessica's obsessive fans.

One of them, high on something, swerved his car onto the sidewalk.

And now... now I was back.

The day before.

A cold dread seeped into me, far stronger than the initial shock of being alive.

It was going to happen again.

Unless...

Unless I did something.

But what? How do you fight a ghost? How do you stop someone who can somehow reach into your mind, into your most private files, and steal your very thoughts?

"Emily? Earth to Emily!" Sarah waved a hand in front of my face. "You're really spacing out. Nerves getting to you?"

I forced a smile.

"Yeah. Just... thinking."

Thinking that I'd walked this path to disaster once.

I wasn't going to do it again.

But the how was a giant, terrifying blank.