1.00.1: Prologue

  Kazuya knew he shouldn’t be here.

  The office was too quiet… unnatural. The hum of fluorescent lights overhead seemed thinner tonight, like they were fighting to stay alive. His monitor cast a cold glow over his desk, and reflected in its corner was the headline he’d been trying not to look at:

  Rash of Mysterious Murders and Computer Thefts Continues

  He swallowed hard, forcing down the st bite of his convenience-store sandwich. Two floors above, three bodies had been found st month. Completely intact, except for their faces twisted into expressions no coroner could properly describe. And their computers—gone. Not stolen, exactly. Just… absent.

  His manager didn’t care. Of course he didn’t.

  “Don’t read garbage tabloids during work hours,” the man had muttered earlier, swatting the newspaper off Kazuya’s desk. “They print those stories to make the weak panic.”

  Easy for him to say. He was the one who’d threatened to fire Kazuya if he didn’t accept this te shift. “Work ethic builds character,” he’d cimed. “Besides, I’m staying too. You think I’d send you into danger alone?”

  Now the man sat across the room, hunched over a pile of documents, muttering to himself as he hammered numbers into his workstation with mechanical precision. Kazuya gnced up at him again. His manager wore a pair of cheap orange foam earplugs. He always did that when he wanted to “focus.”

  No wonder he hadn’t noticed anything…

  ... not the stories,

  ... not the faint screams from the stairwell,

  ... and not even the little clicking noises interrupting the rhythm of papers being sorted.

  That clicking again. A faint, uneven tick–tick… tick.

  Kazuya froze.

  His fingers stiffened around the stack of reports he was digitizing. The clicking continued, louder this time, like something tapping the underside of his desk.

  He startled so violently that he sent half the stack fluttering to the floor.

  From across the room came an annoyed sigh.

  “Kazuya. Your shift ends faster if your hands keep moving. Not shaking.”

  “S-sorry, sir…”

  His manager didn’t bother looking up.

  Kazuya’s heartbeat thudded against his ribs. Sweat gathered under his colr. He could feel the pressure of the empty office around him… an oppressive atmosphere, thick as humidity before a storm. The fluorescent lights flickered once, twice, then steadied.

  He couldn’t breathe here.

  “J-just getting some tea,” he whispered, standing abruptly. His manager only waved a dismissive hand.

  The break station was barely ten steps away, but it felt like a different world. He filled his cup from the hot dispenser, gripping it with both hands as steam fogged his gsses. His nerves felt frayed, his senses stretched thin like old wires.

  That was when the shadows shifted.

  They didn't flicker.They didn't darken.They shifted, like fabric being pulled on.

  Something... someone... stood in the center of the office.

  Kazuya’s breath caught sharp in his chest. His tea sloshed, burning his fingers as he staggered backwards behind the copier machine.

  The figure was tall. Human-shaped, but it felt off.Its edges bled into the air like ink dispersing through water. Wisps of smoky darkness trailed from its robes, lifting and fading in glitching little squares. Not organic smoke… more like corrupted data, a broken video feed trying to render.

  Kazuya cpped a hand over his mouth, forcing down the scream cwing up his throat.

  The figure drifted toward his manager’s desk, movements smooth as liquid shadow.

  His manager didn’t look up.

  The lights flickered again. This time, they dimmed so low that the entire office looked underwater. A faint electrical whine filled the air—modem-like, distorted, as though a dozen dying hard drives were trying to sing in unison.

  Kazuya’s hand slipped on the copier casing. He ducked lower.

  The entity reached the workstation. Its hand… assuming that it actually was a hand… it pressed against the manager’s monitor.

  Sparks spat across the desk. The LCD screen brightened, warped, then colpsed inward with a sound like a sucked-out breath. Lines of corrupted pixels crawled across the bckening dispy, then vanished entirely.

  The monitor went dark.

  The machine tower beneath it trembled. The entity bent forward, wrapping both arms around the computer case. Its form wavered, then it simply… consumed it.

  No door opened. No hinges creaked. It just wasn’t there anymore.

  The cords snapped in the wake of its pull, whipping against the desk, leaving scorch marks on the minate.

  And still Kazuya’s manager didn’t look up.

  He had turned a page.

  He was adjusting his gsses.

  He was completely, suicidally oblivious.

  “Sir…” Kazuya whispered. It came out strangled.

  The manager finally noticed the smell of burnt pstic.

  He looked up.

  “WHAT THE HELL—?!” His chair scraped backwards violently. “HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE?!”

  The shadow did not answer.

  It reached for the second computer.

  The manager lunged forward, as though brute force could make sense of the nightmare before him.

  “It’s some kind of a tech illusion!” he barked. “Some hacker trick! Get away from my equipment, you!”

  He leapt onto his desk with startling agility, swinging a kick toward the entity’s head. For a heartbeat, Kazuya thought it might actually work—

  —but the foot sank into the shadows.

  The entity wrapped around his leg.

  The manager’s shout cracked into a terrified gurgle. “Kazuya—! Do something! I’m stuck! HELP ME!”

  Kazuya tried to move.

  He couldn’t.

  Every muscle locked as if the entity had already reached him.

  Shadow climbed the manager’s leg, devouring flesh and fabric alike. He cwed at the thing, punching into its body, but his arms sank into it as though into wet cy. He managed one desperate heave, trying to lift the creature’s weight…

  …but the effort only drove him deeper inside it.

  In the next instant, the manager vanished into the roiling darkness.

  Something thudded onto the floor.

  It was his gsses.

  Kazuya’s breath turned to ice.

  The entity hovered a moment longer, its form pulsing faintly, as though digesting. The lights dimmed further, bathing the office in a sickly green glow from the emergency exit sign.

  The copier whirred quietly beside Kazuya, as if it, too, was afraid to make noise.

  Then the entity’s head… or whatever passed for one… tilted menacingly.

  Not toward the door. Not toward the destroyed desks.

  … Toward him.

  Kazuya squeezed his eyes shut. His heartbeat roared in his ears. He cmped his hands together and prayed… prayed to gods he’d forgotten since childhood… that the thing hadn’t truly seen him.

  Something shifted.

  A whisper, soft as electricity dying in a cable, filtered through the room…

  “Hun… gry…”

  Kazuya’s breath hitched.

  But the shadow drifted away… toward the hallway, dissolving into the air like corrupted data breaking apart frame by frame.

  When he finally dared to look, the office was seemingly empty.

  Only the scorch marks remained.

  And his manager’s gsses.

  And the faint smell of pstic, ozone, and death.

  Kazuya didn’t move until the lights flickered back to full strength.

  He quit the next day, never returning to that office again.

  Relwing