Rain hammered the alley like gunfire on concrete, a relentless rhythm that swallowed everything else. Clyde Erenhart staggered forward, lungs heaving, each breath sharp like glass. His heart wasn't just pounding—it was thrashing, trying to tear its way out. Blood smeared the corner of his mouth, metallic and bitter, like rust scraped off a forgotten blade.
His bare palms slapped cold pavement as he dropped to one knee. Water soaked through his clothes, icy against skin flushed with panic. The alley stank of wet asphalt, old piss, and ozone—like the aftermath of a storm that didn't belong.
Where the hell am I?
He couldn't remember. Not how he got here. Not what he was running from. Not even what day it was. His memories were shards—scattered, stitched together wrong. He pressed fingers to his temples, but the pressure only made it worse.
Then—lightning.
A blinding crack tore across the sky, throwing jagged shadows onto the alley walls. For a moment, he saw them—not people, not quite—twitching shapes at the edge of his vision. They moved, but the movement was… off. Like skipping frames in a corrupted video.
And then came the hum.
At first, a whisper under the rain. Then rising. Sharpening. A frequency that slithered into his ears and stayed, vibrating down his spine like nails dragging along a nerve.
Clyde collapsed to both knees, clutching his head.
Make it stop—
Flashes hit him like static shocks.
Fire licking up walls.
Screams blurred by smoke.
A terminal glowing in the dark.
A single line of code blinking like a pulse:
> REWRITE_INIT
This isn't real.
Then—a voice. Calm. Low. Unforgiving.
"You were never meant to wake up."
Clyde's eyes snapped open.
He twisted around, adrenaline spiking—but the alley was empty. Just rain. Just silence.
And then…
Reality twitched.
A shimmer ran through the air—barely perceptible. Like heat haze over asphalt, but in the rain? And then the alley shifted, subtly but wrong. The angle of the walls, the sound of the rain, the smell of the air—it all went slightly sideways.
Something stepped through.
Not burst. Not appeared. Just... stepped. Quiet. Patient. Like it had all the time in the world.
At first, it looked like a man—tall, slim, human-shaped. But the longer Clyde looked, the more wrong it became.
Its body stuttered—frames skipping. Parts of it flickered, lagging behind the rest. The outline wasn't solid—pixels bled into the air like data failing to render. No face. No features. Just an impression. Like someone had described a person to a machine, and the machine got bored halfway.
Clyde's stomach flipped. His mind screamed to move—but his body froze.
Then, it tilted its head.
And he saw the eyes.
Twin points of crimson light. Sharp. Cold. Burning like error messages etched into flesh.
The voice came again—closer now. And absolute.
"Run."
The world exploded.
The alley fractured like a pane of glass hit dead center. Rain froze midair. Clyde felt himself split—literally—his body atomizing into white-hot data, every nerve ending screaming as he disintegrated into broken code.
Reality collapsed.
Time unraveled.
And then—blackness.
Pure, perfect, merciless black.
But just before the void swallowed him whole…
a sound.
Not a voice.
Not thunder.
Just the soft, mechanical click of a key pressed down.
>_