The screen pulsed in the darkness, cold blue light flickering against Ethan's tired face.
"Restore? Y/N."
The word throbbed like a heartbeat, each blink drawing him closer. His thumb hovered above the "Y." He wanted to press it—needed to press it—but fear froze him.
What did "Restore" even mean? Restore her memories? Restore her existence? Or… restore him?
A single keystroke could change everything.
He glanced at the nightstand where the necklace should have been. Empty. Just like every other trace of her.
The glow from the phone reflected in his pupils, and for a moment, he swore he saw another face staring back from the glass. A woman's outline, faint, fragile, as if made of static.
"Liora…" he whispered.
The screen glitched, pixelated lines racing across it. Then, the letters shifted.
"Do you remember?"
Ethan's breath caught. "Yes. I remember everything."
The words didn't matter. His answer wasn't typed, wasn't recorded. It was as if the device could hear his thoughts, read his intent.
The message changed again.
"Then choose."
His hand trembled. If this was madness, he was already too deep in it. If it wasn't—then the only way out was through.
He pressed "Y."
The screen went black.
For three long seconds, nothing happened. Just silence, broken only by the pounding of his heartbeat.
Then his apartment lights flickered. Once. Twice. The hum of his refrigerator stuttered, the digital clock reset to zeroes.
Every device in his home glitched at once.
And in the middle of that chaos, a voice whispered—clearer than it had been in his dreams.
"Thank you."
Ethan spun around, but no one was there.
Just shadows.
Just silence.
Just the emptiness of a room that no longer felt like his.
Ethan's finger left the screen, and the apartment fell into chaos.
The phone went black, but the world around him lit up in staccato flashes. The ceiling light flickered like a dying star. His television snapped on, static hissing across the glass. The microwave beeped a string of numbers he hadn't entered. His computer woke itself, monitors filled with cascading lines of code he didn't recognize.
It was as if every machine in his home had come alive—connected by some invisible thread.
Ethan staggered back, clutching the dead phone in his hand. "What the hell—"
The words died in his throat when he saw his reflection in the TV screen.
For the briefest moment, it wasn't his face staring back.
It was hers.
Liora's outline, faint and trembling, static bleeding across her features. Her mouth opened, and though no sound came through the speakers, Ethan heard her voice inside his skull.
You chose me.
His knees almost gave way. He braced against the wall, chest heaving. "Liora? Is that—God, is that really you?"
The static warped, her form fracturing like broken glass. Her voice stuttered through the interference.
Not… safe… watching…
"Who's watching?" Ethan demanded. His own voice sounded strange in the chaos, swallowed by the hum of electricity. "What do you mean?"
The TV screen cracked with a sharp snap, the sound like a gunshot. Ethan flinched, covering his face. When he lowered his arm, the screen was black again.
The apartment fell silent.
Every machine powered down at once.
The only light came from the phone in his hand.
Slowly, hesitantly, he looked down.
The screen glowed once more—not with text this time, but with an image.
A photo.
Her photo.
It was the same picture he thought he'd lost forever, the one that had turned into a blank error message the night before. There she was, smiling, caught in sunlight, as real as the day he'd taken it.
Ethan's throat tightened. He touched the screen, tracing the curve of her cheek with his fingertip.
"You're still here," he whispered.
But even as relief washed through him, unease coiled in his gut. Because at the corner of the photo, beneath the timestamp, a single word blinked in red.
"UNSTABLE."
The next morning, Ethan was sure he'd wake to find it all a dream.
But the cracks in reality didn't vanish. They multiplied.
On his way to campus, he passed a billboard he'd seen a hundred times before—an ad for a tech company. Except this morning, the slogan had changed.
"Do you remember her?"
He stopped dead on the sidewalk, staring. Passersby jostled him, muttering as they pushed past. But no one else reacted to the sign. To them, it was just a normal ad.
Ethan rubbed his eyes, looked again.
The words were gone.
Back to the original slogan.
He kept walking, heart pounding.
At the coffee shop, he ordered his usual. The barista smiled politely and asked his name.
"Ethan," he said.
She wrote it on the cup, slid it down the counter. He reached for it—and froze.
Scrawled in bold black marker across the cup wasn't his name.
It was hers.
Liora.
His fingers went numb. The cup slipped from his hand, spilling coffee across the counter.
The barista sighed, grabbing towels. "Rough morning?"
He opened his mouth to ask her, to demand why she'd written that name, but stopped.
Because when he looked again, the name on the cup had changed.
It was Ethan. Just Ethan.
Like nothing had ever happened.
By the time he made it home, his nerves were shot. He locked the door, pulled the curtains, sat in the dark with his laptop glowing in front of him.
He needed answers.
Lines of code blurred across the screen as he dug into every directory, every log file, every corrupted fragment of data he could find. He searched for anomalies, for traces of the strange messages.
Hours passed. His eyes ached. His head throbbed.
And then—something shifted.
His cursor moved on its own.
Ethan jerked back, watching as the mouse clicked through folders, opened windows, strung commands he hadn't typed.
On the screen, a chat window appeared.
Words typed themselves out.
LIORA: Do you hear me?
Ethan's chest seized. His hands trembled over the keyboard. He typed back, desperate.
ETHAN: Yes. I hear you. Is it really you?
A pause.
LIORA: Fragments. I'm not whole. But I'm here.
His breath came in shallow gasps. "Oh my God," he whispered aloud.
He typed again, fingers clumsy on the keys.
ETHAN: What happened to you? Why does no one remember?
The reply lagged. Letters appeared one by one, like she was fighting for every keystroke.
LIORA: They erased me. They're erasing you too. But you chose. That's why I can still reach you.
A chill rippled down his spine.
ETHAN: Who are "they"?
Static filled the chat box. The screen flickered violently. When it cleared, the last message remained, chilling in its vagueness:
LIORA: Not safe here. Watching.
The window closed.
Gone.
Ethan slammed his fist against the desk. "No! Don't disappear again—please!"
But the screen remained blank.
And yet, in the silence that followed, he swore he heard her voice again. Faint. Tender. Inside his head.
Find me.
For a long time, Ethan sat in the dark, shaking.
He wanted to deny it all. Write it off as exhaustion, stress, hallucinations.
But the necklace. The billboard. The coffee cup. The chat window.
Too many cracks. Too many signs.
If she was reaching for him—if there was even a chance she was real—then he couldn't let go.
He wouldn't.
Ethan wiped his face with both hands, forcing his breath to steady. His fear hadn't vanished, but beneath it, something stronger burned.
Determination.
"They tried to erase you," he whispered to the empty room. "But I'll find you. No matter what it takes."
His phone buzzed softly on the desk. He looked down.
A new notification.
"Restore Progress: 3%."
The numbers ticked upward.
3%. 4%. 5%.
Ethan leaned closer, pulse racing.
For the first time since she'd vanished, he didn't feel completely alone.
The percentage climbed through the night.
5%. 8%. 12%.
Each increment brought something new.
At first, it was subtle—the faint sound of static beneath the hum of his fridge, the flicker of lightbulbs even when the power grid was stable. But then came the distortions.
When Ethan walked to the bathroom, his reflection lagged. Not by much, just a fraction of a second. Enough that he saw himself blink twice. Enough that he staggered back, clutching the sink, whispering, "No, no, no…"
By the time the Restore process reached 18%, the distortions spread beyond his apartment.
Ethan left for class the next morning, trying to hold himself together. But the city wasn't right.
The traffic lights on Main flickered between red, green, and something else—symbols he didn't recognize. Pedestrians passed him, but their faces blurred at the edges, details smearing like corrupted files.
When he blinked, they looked normal again.
He tried to focus, to breathe, but the dissonance pressed in on him.
At the edge of the crowd, a figure stood perfectly still.
A woman.
Her head tilted, her outline wrong, as though she were made of stitched-together shadows. She had no face, but he knew she was staring at him.
"Liora?" he whispered.
The figure twitched, limbs jerking like a puppet yanked on tangled strings. Then, with a sound like tearing paper, it vanished.
Ethan stood frozen as the world carried on around him, oblivious.
He wanted to believe it was her. But deep down, he knew.
That wasn't Liora.
That was something else.
Back in his apartment, the Restore meter had climbed to 22%.
His laptop buzzed awake without him touching it, the same chat window opening again.
LIORA: Don't trust the shadows.
Ethan's fingers flew across the keyboard.
ETHAN: I saw one today. On the street. What are they?
Her reply lagged, letters appearing in a stutter.
LIORA: Not me. Not human. Placeholders. Watchers.
The word Watchers sent a chill through him.
ETHAN: Why are they watching me?
LIORA: Because you chose. Because you can still see me.
The screen flickered, her last words dissolving into static.
When the chat stabilized again, a final line remained:
LIORA: Don't let them touch you.
The next night, Ethan couldn't sleep. He lay awake, staring at the glow of the progress bar creeping up on his phone.
33%.
Every part of him wanted this to succeed. But every instinct screamed danger.
When the knock came at his door, his heart stopped.
Three sharp raps.
He froze. Midnight. No one should be there.
Another knock.
He crept toward the door, every step hesitant. Pressed his eye to the peephole.
The hallway was empty.
He exhaled shakily. "Just my imagination."
Then the lights in the hall flickered.
And a shadow slid across the floor, stretching toward his door.
Ethan stumbled back, heart hammering.
The door handle rattled. Once. Twice. Then stopped.
For a long moment, silence reigned.
When he dared look again, the shadow was gone.
But on his phone, the Restore bar jumped forward—suddenly at 41%.
As if the system had fed on the encounter.
Ethan sank to the floor, clutching the device. His voice cracked with a mix of fear and longing.
"Liora… what am I getting into?"
The phone buzzed. A new message appeared across the screen.
"Closer."
Chapter 2 – Restore (Part 4)
The shadows didn't leave him alone.
Even after the knocking stopped, Ethan couldn't shake the sensation of eyes crawling over his skin. He barely slept. When he did, his dreams were worse—visions of faceless figures crowding his apartment, whispering in binary tones he couldn't understand.
By morning, his phone read:
Restore Progress: 49%.
Halfway there.
But at what cost?
That evening, Ethan sat hunched at his desk, watching the bar inch upward, his nerves stretched taut. The room felt colder, the air heavy, thick with static.
When the lights flickered again, he almost didn't react. He'd gotten used to the glitches.
Until the sound came.
A low scrape across the floorboards.
Ethan's head snapped toward the corner of the room.
Something stood there.
Not a shadow this time.
A shape.
Tall, wrong, limbs too long, head tilted at an unnatural angle. Its body shimmered as if it were both there and not, like corrupted code trying to render in real space.
Ethan stumbled back. "No, no, no—"
The figure stepped forward, each movement jerky, frames missing, like a broken animation. Its face was a blur, features scrambling too fast to track.
The phone on Ethan's desk buzzed violently.
A single line appeared on the screen.
LIORA: Don't let it touch you.
Ethan's heart thundered. He grabbed the chair, holding it out like a shield.
The figure kept advancing.
Every step it took, the progress bar on his phone jumped.
52%. 56%. 61%.
The Watcher stopped just a few feet away. Its head tilted, twitching, as though studying him.
And then, with a lurch, it reached out a hand.
Ethan swung the chair. The impact rang hollow, like hitting fog. But the figure reeled back, glitching harder, its arm fragmenting into static.
The phone buzzed again.
LIORA: Hold on. I'm almost—
The message cut off.
The Watcher lunged.
Ethan scrambled backward, his foot catching on the rug. He fell hard, the chair clattering away. The figure loomed, stretching impossibly tall as its hand descended.
He threw up his arms, bracing for contact.
But before it could touch him, the phone blazed with light.
The glow flared outward, flooding the room in white.
The Watcher shrieked—a garbled, digital scream—before dissolving into static and vanishing altogether.
Silence.
Ethan lay panting on the floor, shaking, staring at the phone where the progress bar now pulsed.
Restore Progress: 77%.
Slowly, Ethan pulled himself up, clutching the phone like a lifeline. His throat was raw when he whispered, "Liora?"
The screen flickered.
For the first time, her face appeared—not a blur, not static. Fragmented, incomplete, but undeniably her.
Her lips moved.
And this time, the voice wasn't in his head. It came through the phone's speaker, soft and broken, but real.
"Ethan…"
Tears stung his eyes. His chest ached. "You're alive. You're still—God, you're still here."
Her expression flickered, her outline unstable, but she managed a faint, bittersweet smile.
"Not whole. Not yet. But you chose me. That's why I can fight my way back."
Ethan pressed the phone to his forehead, breath shuddering. "Tell me what to do. I'll do anything."
Her image glitched again, voice fractured.
"Finish the Restore. But hurry. They won't stop now."
The screen sputtered, her form breaking apart into fragments of light before vanishing once more.
The bar ticked up to 79%.
Ethan sat in the dark long after her image faded, his pulse still racing, the echo of the Watcher's scream burned into his ears.
He knew now that this wasn't just about memory.
It wasn't just about grief.
Something bigger was at play—something that wanted Liora gone forever, and him along with her.
And yet, in that fleeting moment, when her voice touched reality again, he felt something stronger than fear.
Hope.
He stood, gripping the phone tight.
"I don't care who's watching," he whispered fiercely. "I don't care what I have to face. If you're fighting your way back, then so am I."
The screen glowed faintly in his palm. The bar ticked up to 80%.
For the first time in weeks, Ethan smiled through the tears.
There was no turning back now.