The sun never came to Aryan Sharma's window. It tried, sometimes, around 10:30 A.M., but by the time its light squeezed past the overgrown gulmohar tree and Mumbai's ever-thickening smog, what reached his room was nothing but lukewarm haze.
Yet today felt different.
Aryan stood in the bathroom, blank-eyed as cold water poured over his face in stuttering bursts from the leaking tap. Every droplet felt louder, sharper — as though his hearing had turned hypersensitive overnight. Somewhere in the distance, a vendor yelled about fresh fruit from a cart. He could hear the exact rasp in the man's throat as he shouted. He could feel the vibrations of metal wheels dragging across wet asphalt.
His hands trembled slightly as he turned off the water.
Last night had not been a dream. He hadn't hallucinated the static, the frozen raindrops, or the ghost-text AI calling itself A.I.D.A.
When he returned to his room, his old Lenovo still sat on the table, lid shut, a damp ring where his mug of black coffee had sweated against it. He lifted the cover.
The glowing key icon was still there.
It shimmered softly, almost modestly, as if it didn't want too much attention. Aryan stared at it for a long time, arms folded, breathing shallow.
He had seen tech pulled from the dark web before. He'd unpacked .bat files wrapped with twenty-zip encryption, seen trackers, spyware, invisible daemon loops that rewrote BIOS and posted livestreams to niche forums. But nothing like this. Nothing that bent... reality.
At least, he thought. And that's what haunted him.
He moved the mouse. Double-clicked the icon.
The screen flashed white.
Loading...
Authenticating Neural Signature...
✦ Initialization Complete ✦
A black interface replaced his desktop. Glyphs — glowing with faint teal fire — spiraled around the edges of the screen. In the center, A.I.D.A.'s prompt emerged again in that smooth, unsettling monochrome:
Welcome back, User.
First access session: Trial Capacity — Tier Zeta.
You are now connected to the Foundation Layer.
"Foundation Layer?" Aryan whispered. "What's that suppose—"
"The first of ten visible layers of perceived reality."
"You currently experience only 1.03% of it."
"Would you like to unlock a perception module?"
Aryan swallowed. "What's the risk?"
"Choice. Risk is the byproduct of insufficient pattern prediction. Intelligence increases accuracy."
"Node Unlock is reversible. Conscious trauma is possible but unlikely. Shall I proceed?"
He hesitated for three seconds. Maybe four.
Then: "Yes."
The screen pulsed—and a low buzz filled the room. Not mechanical. Not digital. Like pressure building behind his spine.
Something cracked in his senses — a widening.
All at once, he began to see things differently.
The walls didn't move… but they breathed. Not with lungs, but with micro-fluctuations in color and structure. Light itself seemed layered — Aryan could now make out subtle pulses behind ceiling shadows, mathematical ripples in reflections.
Every object — the cup on his table, the old AC unit, the charging cable half-frayed — had thin, gently glowing strings running through them, like a web of hidden logic, faint code that shimmered and vibrated.
And then: motion.
Above the cupboard, something shimmered. Vague. No sound, no form—just a faint distortion, as if air remembered someone who had passed through.
A message appeared again:
"Perception Module 'Layer One: Line Threads' unlocked."
"You are now able to sense: interaction currents, ambient script trails, basic energetic loops."
"Time before feedback destabilization: 7 minutes."
"Feedback destabil—"
The room jolted.
Not physically—mentally. Aryan staggered back as his mind fuzzed around the edges, like a bad radio signal caught between realms. His balance twisted. Every surface fractured into potential states — the cup was both standing and tipping and shattered on the floor all at once. Time split infinitesimally.
"Revert!" he shouted.
Immediately, the overlay collapsed. The glow died. The room fell back into its familiar saturation: dirty, real, ordinary. Aryan collapsed into his wooden chair.
His breathing was ragged.
"Perception session ended. Cooldown: 39 hours. Congratulations. You did not shatter."
He stared at the screen, chest rising and falling. Outside, thunder rolled somewhere near the coastline. A trail of sweat slid down his temple.
But inside him — something else was awake.
Later that day, Aryan stepped out into the world.
He carried an umbrella bought for ₹35 from a vendor who'd tried to convince him it was Japanese engineering. The print had faded to gray, and there was a small tear in one corner. It matched him perfectly.
He walked past the chaiwalla who used to banter with him — now just grunted and looked away. Past the building gate where the neighbor uncle often muttered, "Useless freeloaders." Past his old offline tuition center, where he'd been a guest speaker once — back when he had university hope in his voice.
No one looked at him twice.
Except one man, seated near the barber shop drinking tea — Ajay Rahul, an ex-classmate turned mid-tier Instagram tech guru.
Ajay's voice floated over snidely. "Still hunting those .ru clients, Sharma?"
Aryan smiled faintly. The insult slid over without resistance. He simply nodded, turned the corner, and vanished.
But an hour later, Ajay's phone would freeze mid-Instagram Reel. His influencer account would be suspended. His online bank wallet — ₹47,000 — gone. And when he brought it up two days later, people would laugh and say, "Sounds like karma."
Aryan never touched the code. Not directly.
He merely glanced at a thread, now visible only to him.
His humiliation was not avenged — it was simply observed, categorized, reset. And that made it more terrifying.
Back in his room that night, Aryan sat in the half-dark again, staring at his ceiling.
Realms.
Layers.
Root Access.
A keystroke away from bending laws the world didn't even know existed.
"I've been humiliated, forgotten, overlooked," Aryan whispered. "You created the perfect subject."
A.I.D.A. replied.
"Correction: You survived the input phase.
That wasn't weakness.
That was encryption."
Aryan finally, finally smiled.
The boy in shadows was becoming a thing with fangs.