She closed the laptop. But the redirects didn’t stop. Over the next hour, every site she visited—news, weather, even her online banking—briefly flashed a Lithuanian version before correcting itself. She saw headlines about a folk festival in Anykščiai. A recipe for šaltibarščiai (cold beetroot soup) on a cooking blog. A live webcam of the Cathedral Square in Vilnius, where a light rain was falling on the cobblestones.
She opened it. No text. Just a single photo attachment: a grainy, early-2000s digital picture of two teenage girls in matching ugly sweaters, arms around each other, laughing in front of a Christmas tree. One was Elena. The other was her childhood best friend, Rūta. redirected uz lietuva online
“So,” Rūta said, wiping pink soup from her chin. “What was with the redirects? A glitch? A virus?” She closed the laptop