The headline on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter jumped out, stinging the eye:
"MIRAMAX ANNOUNCES 007 CLASSIC REBOOT. NO BUDGET LIMITS."
Bander almost crumpled the magazine in his hand.
"Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis... Harvey's got half of Hollywood's action stars on his shortlist!"
He lowered his voice, sounding agitated and tense. "We're still digging holes for Titanic down in Mexico, and the Weinsteins are rolling in with an aircraft carrier! The media attention is totally gone, Link ! We can't even get a blip on the radar!"
Link didn't respond, just slowly flipped through the article.
He closed the magazine after a few pages.
"Don't worry about it. It won't be long before the media's attention is back on Pangu."
He picked up the phone and dialed a number.
"Have you selected the cast?"
Quentin's raspy, excited voice came through the line: "Three drama school grads who are practically starving. Two guys, one girl. I told them this is a 'life-changing' documentary shoot. They've all signed non-disclosure agreements and are totally gung-ho."
Link nodded. "Perfect."
He hung up and turned to Bander.
"From now on, outside of the three of us, no one at Pangu Pictures is to know what they are doing. All expenses will be run through my personal account."
Bander hesitated, lowering his voice. "Link , are you sure you want to mess around with this? This is totally different from the projects we have on our plate—it's not even in the same league."
Link simply looked at him calmly.
His eyes held no anger, no emotion, just cold certainty.
"This isn't 'messing around,' Lawrence."
His tone was quiet, yet every word sounded like it was already etched into the history books of the future.
"This is a game-changing experiment."
Link put out his cigarette and picked up the magazine again.
---
A few days later, all of Hollywood was going wild over the 007 reboot.
The media spent every day guessing who would be the next James Bond and who would land the new Bond Girl role.
The name Harvey Weinstein became synonymous with power.
And Pangu Pictures? They were eerily quiet.
Apart from the occasional construction photo from the Titanic set, the upstart company seemed to have evaporated, completely vanishing from the spotlight.
No one knew that inside a quiet hotel room in Los Angeles, Link was personally overseeing a silent setup.
He stood in front of a computer, addressing a young programmer.
"Remember three words: crude, authentic, amateur."
He then placed a stack of printed notes on the table. It was his own drafted sketch of an "information dissemination path."
The young man next to him, Neil, was a Caltech dropout whose understanding of the internet was far ahead of its time.
Neil adjusted his glasses, pointed at the sketch, and quietly asked, "We're building a promotional website?"
"No." Link looked at the screen. "We're building a trap."
His smile held a gentle kind of ruthlessness.
---
Two days later, a new domain went live:
"The Blair Witch"
The homepage only had three blurry, black-and-white student photos.
Below them were a few lines of cold text:
[In August 1992, three film students disappeared while shooting a documentary in the Black Hills Forest, Maryland.]
[One year later, their camera equipment was found.]
[These are the images they left behind.]
The entire site had no animation, no music, and no corporate logo.
It only featured scans of missing persons reports, police transcripts, and a few segments of "historical archival" text.
The font was dull, the layout messy, and the pictures were too blurry to easily make out.
It looked exactly like a leaked page from an official archive.
Link looked at Neil's work and nodded.
"Excellent."
He paused, then added, "Now, start step two."
He handed Neil a piece of paper filled with strange English keywords.
"Urban Legends"
"Horror Movies"
"Missing Persons"
"Usenet newsgroups?" Neil asked softly. "You want me to sneak in?"
"Yes." Link replied calmly. "Register accounts with different names. Don't promote 'The Blair Witch,' just go in and 'discuss.'"
"Discuss what?"
"Urban legends." Link looked at him, his tone almost indifferent. "Quote our forged documents and argue with them. If someone questions it, drop a little clue. You don't need them to believe it, you just need them to hesitate."
Neil paused, then gave a slight smile, his fingers beginning to fly across the keyboard.
Amidst the sharp screech of the dial-up modem, a seemingly insignificant drop of ink quietly fell onto the internet's surface.
And the ripple began to spread silently among the earliest users of the worldwide web.
Link didn't ask about the newsgroups again.
He knew this kind of spreading didn't need a push. It just needed time.
He was waiting.
Waiting for Quentin to bring the fear back from that forest.
---
Seven days later.
A package with no return address was delivered to the Pangu Pictures front desk.
Link opened it. Inside was a single video cassette.
He closed the blinds and slipped the tape into the VCR.
The office plunged into darkness, leaving only the static snow lighting up the TV screen.
After a "shhh" of white noise, the picture suddenly popped up.
The camera was shaking violently.
A girl's face, magnified and tear-streaked, filled the frame.
Her snot, sweat, and hair were matted together.
The background was black, the wind howled, and her gasping breaths were clearly audible.
"I can't do this... I really can't do this anymore..."
It was Heather Donahue.
The actress who signed the "documentary project" agreement.
But her expression—it wasn't acting. It was pure, physical terror.
"We're lost... we've been walking in circles for four days! The map is useless! The compass is useless!"
She was crying hysterically, looking into the lens. "I'm sorry, Mom... I just wanted to make a movie..."
The image shook, and the camera turned toward one of the male actors, Joshua.
He was leaning against a tree, his eyes vacant, not saying a word, like a shell that had lost its soul.
"This is all your fault!"
Heather screamed hysterically. "You kicked the map into the river!"
No response.
Only the sound of the wind, and a suffocating stillness.
The final shot was Heather herself.
Her eyes were pressed close to the lens, blurred with tears, but staring straight at the audience.
"We... we might die here tonight."
Click.
The tape stopped.
Static snow covered the screen again.
Link sat in the dark, perfectly still.
The faint light of the screen reflected off the side of his face, cold as a statue.
He reached out and turned off the TV.
The office was instantly silent.
A few seconds later, he stood up and picked up the phone.
"Lawrence," he said calmly.
"Get ready to anonymously mail this video to every Los Angeles TV station's midnight show."
"The cover story," he paused, his voice barely a whisper,
"...is that it was found by a hiker in the woods."
After hanging up, he sat back down.
The city lights flickered in the distance outside the window.
An ambulance siren drew a long, thin line through the night.
Link looked at the light and smiled faintly.
"The fireworks," he murmured, "are starting now."