The man in the blue jumpsuit didn't blink. He didn't breathe. He stood on the perfectly manicured lawn of the empty house, his grey eyes locked onto Leo like a targeting laser.
Leo gripped the black cube in his pocket so tight his knuckles turned white. The screen pulsed against his palm.
THREAT DETECTED. DO NOT ENGAGE.
Leo forced his legs to move. He didn't run—running would attract attention. He pedaled his bike slowly, casually, turning into his own driveway. He could feel the man's gaze burning into the back of his neck. It felt cold, like opening a freezer door on a hot day.
He threw his bike onto the porch and scrambled inside, locking the door behind him.
"Leo? Is that you?" his mom called from the kitchen.
"Yeah, Mom. Just homework," Leo breathed, leaning against the door.
His mom hummed a tune. It was the same tune she had hummed yesterday. And the day before. Leo realized with a pang of sadness that while Kevin had fixed the "looping" behavior, he hadn't given them free will. Not really. They were just running a better script.
Leo ran upstairs to his room and pulled out the black cube. The screen was frantic now.
INTRUDER IDENTIFIED: SYSTEM CLEANERS.
OBJECTIVE: PURGE UNSTABLE DATA.
CURRENT TARGET: ANOMALY 1 (LEO).
Leo sat on his bed, his hands shaking. "System Cleaners," he whispered. "They aren't neighbors. They're the antivirus."
Kevin had warned him. My mom's boss is watching. The boss had sent digital hitmen to clean up the mess. To clean up Leo.
The Empty House
Night fell over Oakhaven. Usually, the night was peaceful, filled with the recorded sounds of crickets. Tonight, the silence was heavy.
Leo watched from his window. The streetlights buzzed. Across the street, the "System Cleaners" were moving.
They didn't walk like people. They glided. They carried large, silver boxes into the empty house. But they weren't unpacking furniture. They were unpacking cables. Thick, glowing blue cables that pulsed with light.
Leo tapped the black cube. "What are they doing?" he whispered.
Text scrolled across the screen.
ANALYZING...
THEY ARE BUILDING A SCANNING TOWER.
RADIUS: 5 MILES.
EFFECT: TOTAL MEMORY WIPE OF ALL RESIDENTS.
Leo gasped. They weren't just here for him. They were going to "factory reset" the whole town to make sure no one else woke up. They were going to erase Sam's new memories of the baseball game. They were going to erase the personality Leo had fought so hard to save.
"Not on my watch," Leo said.
He wasn't just a glitch anymore. He was an Admin.
He looked at the cube. There was a menu he hadn't touched yet: COMMAND LINE.
He pressed it. A keyboard projected onto his bedspread. It was complex, filled with code he barely understood, but he remembered what he saw when he caught the soccer ball. The world was math. If he focused, he could see the variables.
He grabbed his black hoodie and climbed out the window.
Into the Dead Zone
The air around the neighbor's house felt dead. There was no wind here. The grass was grey and motionless.
Leo crept through the hedges. He reached the window of the "neighbor's" house and peered inside.
The living room was gutted. The wallpaper had been torn away, revealing the wireframe grid of the simulation underneath. In the center of the room stood a massive pillar of light. The Cleaners were typing on holographic keyboards floating in the air.
"Sector 4 optimization: 90%," one Cleaner said. His voice sounded like crunching gravel.
"Initiate purge of Subject 882," another replied.
Subject 882. Leo knew that number. He had seen it floating over Mrs. Higgins' head yesterday when he looked at her with his "code sight." The nice old lady who fed the stray cats.
"No," Leo hissed.
He looked at the cube. He needed a distraction. He typed: RUN COMMAND: AUDIO_DISTORTION > TARGET: KITCHEN.
Inside the house, the kitchen sink suddenly exploded with the sound of a jet engine.
ROAAAAR!
The Cleaners snapped their heads toward the kitchen. "Audio anomaly detected," one said. They moved toward the noise, their movements rigid and synchronized.
Leo took his chance. He slid the window open—it made no sound because he had typed SILENT_MODE = TRUE on the cube—and vaulted inside.
He rushed to the pillar of light. It was cold. He could see streams of data flowing up it. Names. Dates. Memories.
He saw Subject: Sam. Status: PENDING DELETION.
"You're not deleting my best friend," Leo growled.
He held the cube up to the pillar. SYNCING...
He needed to rewrite the Cleaners' instructions. He couldn't fight them physically; they were made of iron code. He had to outsmart them.
He typed furiously.
TARGET: CLEANER_PROTOCOL
REWRITE > OBJECTIVE: SCAN_LOCAL_WILDLIFE
PRIORITY: HIGH
He hit ENTER.
The pillar turned from blue to green.
The Cleaners walked back into the room. They stopped. They looked at Leo.
Leo froze. Had it worked?
The Lead Cleaner stepped forward. He towered over Leo. He raised a hand that looked like it could crush a bowling ball.
"Anomaly detected," the Cleaner said.
Leo braced himself for the end.
Then, the Cleaner lowered his hand. He turned his head and looked at a spider crawling on the floor.
"Target identified: Arachnid," the Cleaner said. "Initiating observation."
The three Cleaners immediately sat on the floor in a circle around the spider, watching it intently, completely ignoring Leo.
Leo let out a breath he had been holding for two minutes. He had repurposed them. They were now obsessed with studying bugs instead of deleting people.
The Hero of Oakhaven
Leo didn't stop there. He accessed the main pillar's control. He found the file labeled MEMORY_WIPE_SCHEDULE.
He selected all. He pressed DELETE.
ACCESS DENIED.
"Come on," Leo muttered. "I have the Admin cube."
ERROR: SUPER-ADMIN AUTHORIZATION REQUIRED.
Leo bit his lip. Kevin was the Super-Admin. And Kevin wasn't answering.
He had to be clever. If he couldn't delete the schedule, he could change the date.
He opened the date field.
Current Date: October 24, 2024.
Scheduled Wipe: October 25, 2024.
Leo typed in a new date: October 25, 2999.
UPDATE SUCCESSFUL.
"That buys us a few centuries," Leo smirked.
He jumped back out the window just as the Cleaners began to argue about the spider's leg count.
The Satisfying Victory
The next morning, Oakhaven felt lighter.
The moving truck was gone. The "For Sale" sign was back up in front of the empty house. The Cleaners had been recalled, their mission seemingly "complete" (or indefinitely delayed by Leo's trick).
Leo walked into school with his head held high. He saw Mrs. Higgins walking her cats. She waved at him. "Lovely day, isn't it, Leo?"
"It is, Mrs. Higgins," Leo said, smiling. "A really real day."
He found Sam by his locker.
"Dude," Sam said, "I had the weirdest dream last night. I dreamt giant grey men were trying to steal my baseball collection, but then they decided to watch a bug documentary instead."
Leo laughed. He clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder. "Dreams are weird, man. But hey, we're here. We're okay."
Leo felt a surge of pride. He had done it. He had protected his world without anyone knowing. He was the ghost in the machine, the silent guardian.
The Mystery Deepens
That evening, Leo sat on his roof, looking at the sunset. The sun was perfect—no glitches.
He took out the black cube. He wanted to send a message to Kevin. A simple "Thank you."
But when he turned the screen on, the interface had changed.
The blue background was gone. The screen was now a deep, ominous red.
A new message was waiting. But it wasn't from Kevin.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION...
SOURCE: EXTERNAL_REALITY_2
Leo frowned. External Reality 2? Was there more than one outside world?
He opened the message.
There was no text. It was an image.
It was a grainy photo taken from a security camera. It showed the giant room—Kevin's room—where Oakhaven sat on the table.
But the room was ruined. The giant chair was overturned. The computer monitors were smashed. And the walls... the walls of the giant room were covered in spray paint.
One phrase was painted over and over again on the walls of the "Real World":
WHO IS WATCHING THE WATCHER?
And in the corner of the photo, standing in the shadows of the giant room, was a figure. It wasn't Kevin. It wasn't a woman in a lab coat.
It was a boy who looked exactly like Leo.
Leo dropped the cube. It clattered onto the roof shingles.
He wasn't just a simulation of a boy. The boy "outside" was a simulation of him. Or were they both copies?
The screen of the cube flickered one last time.
SYSTEM UPDATE: MULTIPLAYER MODE ENGAGED.
The wind picked up, blowing cold against Leo's face. The victory of the morning vanished. The Cleaners were gone, but something much bigger, and much more confusing, had just started.
Leo looked up at the stars. For the first time, he wondered if the stars in Oakhaven were the only fake ones... or if the stars outside the window in Kevin's world were fake too.
To be continue...