Aubrey's hands would not stop shaking. As she stacked the files on her desk, her coffee cup rattled a frantic tattoo against the steel edge. The fluorescent lights hummed a dull, migraine thrum, and the office chatter around her felt muffled, as if she were submerged.
"Hey… you okay?" A coworker leaned over the cubicle partition, her sharp brown eyes narrowed with concern.
Aubrey forced a nod, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "I'm fine," she murmured, the lie ash in her mouth.
From near the coffee machine, a voice cut through the haze. "Yo, Aubs. You need a chill, for real." It was Leo, drowning in a wrinkled hoodie, his body a constant, jittery performance of gestures. He waved a hand in a loose, swirling motion. "Bathroom. Water. Breathe. You know the drill."
The office walls seemed to press in. Muttering a thanks, she grabbed her bag and escaped into the hallway, the click of the restroom door a lock of temporary relief.
Inside, she braced herself against the cold porcelain of the sink. Her reflection in the mirror was pale, haunted. She splashed water on her face, the shock of the cold a desperate anchor to reality. The water dripped, distorting her image in the rippling surface.
And then the ripples stilled.
The face in the mirror was not hers.
A young woman, features contorted in a silent scream, stared back. Her eyes were wide voids of terror, a trickle of blood dark against her temple.
Aubrey recoiled, her back thudding against the stall door. A gasp tore from her throat.
"Aubrey? Are you okay?"
She spun. Sarah from accounting stood there, a hand outstretched, concern etched on her face.
Aubrey's trembling finger pointed to the mirror. "It—it's not me."
But the reflection was normal. Just her own wide, frightened eyes, and Sarah's puzzled frown.
"You need a break," Sarah said softly, resting a hand on her shoulder. "Seriously. Go get some air."
Aubrey didn't argue. She fled the building, the cool outside air doing little to calm the frantic beat of her heart. Her Polestar 2 sat in the lot, its sleek lines a promise of control she no longer felt. She slid inside, the door thunking shut with a sound of finality.
Then her phone buzzed.
A video message. The feed showed her own home—the familiar front walk, the backyard at dusk. Her breath hitched.
A shadow moved. A hooded figure, moving with predatory grace. Emblazoned on his chest was the Negasign: the inverted spiral, the three weeping eyes, the grotesque six-fingered hand, all encircling that central, absolute void.
He paused at her living room window, then turned. He was looking directly into the camera, through the lens, right at her.
The feed cut to a new angle. Inside. Her mother, Marlene, asleep in her favorite armchair, a book open in her lap. Peaceful. Unaware.
No. Aubrey's fingers fumbled, dialing her mother's number. It failed. A text. Failed.
The Negasign logo flashed on her screen,its central void seeming to pulse, before it warped into a devilish, pixelated grin.
A new message appeared: "Your calls have been intercepted." —Witnessing of Hollow.
Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel. A low whimper escaped her. The phone buzzed again. A call. She accepted.
"My precious Abby… how are you?" The voice was a synthetic horror, deep and layered with a staticky crispness, like corrupted data given sound.
"Why are you doing this?!" she screamed into the receiver.
A metallic chuckle. "My, my, Aubrey… I just want to play. Like the good old days."
"Come to me! Leave my mother out of it!"
"Why call me he?" the voice asked, its tone dripping with sarcastic malice. It shifted, smoothing into a feminine, lilting cadence. "I might be a she."
"I don't want your mind games!"
"Oh, but you were always my favorite, Aubrey," the voice purred, now flickering between the deep bass and the higher feminine pitch. "So direct. Never one to beat around the bush." The voice stabilized back into its primary, chilling tone. "So, Abby… solve a riddle for me. It's been on my mind. Do you want to be invited to solve it?"
"If I solve it, you let my mom go?" Aubrey's voice was tight, a wire about to snap.
A giggle, now the high, doubting tone of a little girl. "Maybe… maybe not. Who can say?"
"You're a monster!"
The voice laughed, a dissonant chord of multiple personas. "Fine. Here it is:
What is bought with silver, but costs a soul?
What seems to make one person whole,
While ensuring another's story is never told?
To save the hand that took the fee,
You must speak this truth to me.
"You have thirty minutes."
The screen shifted. Her mother was now tied to the chair, the hooded figure capering before the camera, a grotesque marionette of menace.
Aubrey slammed the car into drive and peeled out of the lot. "An education! She sold everything for my education!"
"No." The voice was ice.
"A sacrifice! Her life for mine!"
"No." Deadlier.
She merged onto the highway, the Polestar's electric motor whining as she pushed it. Red and blue lights flashed in her rearview. "Damn it!" Nineteen minutes left.
She swerved through traffic, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs. The police closed in, boxing her in. The hooded figure on her phone screen mimicked her panic, twirling in a macabre dance.
"Guilt! It's her guilt!" she screamed, memories surfacing—her mother's averted eyes, a whispered confession about cutting corners, a legacy built on a compromised truth.
The clock bled to zero. Cornered by a wall of police cars, she slammed her fists on the wheel.
"It's a lie!" The words tore from her, a raw, agonized realization. "The answer is a lie!"
The voice returned to its sarcastic, staticky drawl. "Aubrey… you never disappoint. The brightest mind in Ever Thorne… but too bad your past hasn't taught you." The tone hardened, all playfulness gone. "I am not a person of my word."
Her phone screen lit up with a final image. Marlene. A crimson line etched across her throat.
Aubrey's scream was a raw, dying thing, swallowed by the wail of sirens. Hands dragged her from the car, cuffing her, but her eyes remained locked on the phone, on the horror stamped forever into her mind.
As the world collapsed into noise and violence, a final, synthetic whisper echoed in the depths of her consciousness.
"The game has only just begun, my dear Abby."