The young man’s back is to us, still taut and awkward, but now Carly is also rigid. Her key is in the lock, but that’s as far as she’d gotten. He’s walked all the way up onto the stoop and set his body close to the door’s handle, though not quite blocking it—a threat with a built-in plausible deniability that buys time with her doubt.

She’s backed away a little to preserve a cushion of personal space, though it meant giving up the easy reach to the door. She’d have to nearly touch him now to finish getting inside. She plucks at the hem of her T-shirt, shedding nervous energy in the repetition. His shoulder twitches. He says something. She shakes her head and glances at the empty intersection, so close and useless to her.

The young man looks down and shuffles back a half step, and Carly either misinterprets the maneuver or takes the only chance she can count on. She dives for the key and the threshold. He lets her get past him. He also looks to the intersection. It’s still empty. He doesn’t even have to hurry to stop the door as she scrabbles to slam it closed behind her.

The last part of the video is shot from the back of the foyer, by a camera marked Interior_1. The light off the paint gives a vague green hue to the indoor footage. Carly is slapping at a control panel on the wall. He pushes her away from it. They both trip and scuffle over her fallen backpack. She shoves with all her woefully inadequate might and gains less than an arm’s length from him.

Instead of pulling her in, the young man locks his forearm across his body and drives them on, plowing and pinning Carly into the corner next to her own front door. Her back hits the wall hard enough that the edge of the painting in the foreground jumps and quivers on its nail. Her knees let go, and his surprise topples him into the blank space where her body should have been to receive him.

On elbows and heels, Carly scrambles backward toward the camera, toward the quarter of a million viewers (and each new one, as they come) holding their breath, rooting for her, willing her a way out. She makes it into the sharpest focus yet, her long hair swinging around her shoulder in a sheet of blue-sheened chestnut cascading from the strong side part that’s almost close enough to stroke.