Riko heard a faint clicking sound coming from the lockers down the hall.
The hallway was quiet, but not in a normal way. Usually, after the bell, there's a different kind of quiet as students rush between classes, papers rustling, bumping into each other. This was different. This quiet felt heavy, with a subtle pulse, a vibration under the floor that made Riko's stomach turn. He could feel Kaze behind him, a really controlled, still presence that made everything feel wrong.
Riko squeezed his sleeve, feeling the familiar buzz from the screen on his arm. The messages had stopped for a moment, but he knew it wouldn't last. It never did. The blue light under his bandage glowed like a heartbeat, faster than his own. He glanced at the lockers lining the wall.
Then he heard it, a soft, metallic clicking echoing in the hall. Not loud enough for anyone else to notice, but clear. Each click sounded intentional, slow, and mechanical, but also like bones rattling inside some metal suit.
Riko stopped moving. His muscles tightened.
Not again, he whispered.
The sound went on. Click… click… click… a steady, unsettling rhythm. His heart raced. His first thought was to run, find somewhere open, reach the stairwell, anywhere but here. But that wasn't enough. His feet felt heavy. All his senses told him to focus.
Something moved. One of the lockers on the far side of the hallway, the one with chipped paint and a dented corner, wobbled.
Riko's eyes widened. The dent twitched. A faint shimmer, like static, moved across its surface. The blue energy from his arm-screen pulsed fast, reacting before he even knew what was happening. Words showed up on the screen, broken and glitching: HIDE. WATCH. DANGER NEAR.
The locker's lock clicked. Slowly. Almost casually, but with a menace that made Riko take a step back. The arm-screen vibrated, hard enough that he could feel it through his sleeve.
Then it started.
The locker door began to bend. Not naturally, like a door swinging on broken hinges. It flexed and warped like it had a spine, as if the metal itself was alive. The surface shimmered with jagged waves of static.
Riko swallowed hard. His legs felt like lead. Every alarm in his brain told him to run, but his feet were stuck. He couldn't stop looking at the impossible thing happening in front of him.
The door cracked open a little. A shape came out.
Not quite human. Not quite machine. Not like anything he had ever seen.
A human-shaped creature crawled out of the locker like liquid metal, its limbs bending backward at crazy angles. Its joints twisted, elbows sideways, knees inward, ankles stretching too far. Its head was too big for its body, flashing with glitching fragments that made it look like it was struggling to stay together.
Riko's stomach turned.
The creature moved with strange precision, each step silent, fluid, and unnatural. Its limbs folded and snapped like broken clockwork, but it moved forward steadily, its gaze fixed on something beyond understanding.
Riko could feel the energy from the arm-screen reacting fast, pulsing, flickering, screaming in bursts of static.
USER…FOUND… the creature whispered.
The voice was soft, almost tempting, but every word felt heavy. Distorted. Fragmented. A digital hiss mixed with a human voice. Riko's chest tightened, and sweat ran down his back.
The hallway seemed to shrink around him. The students in the rooms, chatting and laughing, had no idea about the horror coming out of the lockers. But Riko knew. His instincts were going wild.
The creature's head tilted slightly. Its face glitched, showing a half-formed eye that stared right at him. Its limbs adjusted, bending in impossible ways, crawling faster despite its awkward shape. Every move defied physics, yet it moved smoothly.
Riko's heart pounded.
The arm-screen's messages got more intense. Symbols, numbers, icons flashed, merged, and broke apart, forming new warnings. USER…DANGER…WATCH…DO NOT FIGHT…
His fingers trembled. He pressed them against his sleeve, trying to stop the screen's warnings, trying to hide the glow. But the creature kept coming. It crawled along the lockers with a purpose that made Riko's hair stand on end.
Step by unnatural step, it got closer.
Riko's vision blurred a little as adrenaline rushed through him. He tried to think: jump back, run forward, dodge to the side. But nothing felt right. This wasn't a normal fight. This was a predator, something from broken code, something that escaped the system or, even worse, had been sent.
The whispers went on softly but insistently. Digital bits mixed with the voice, like a corrupted audio file:
User… found… user… found… user… found…
Riko swallowed, his throat dry. His mind raced. He could feel Kaze behind him, and it made the pressure worse. Kaze had told him about users being hunted. He had seen the system's threats before. And now, here it was: a glitching creature, whispering the same words, crawling toward him.
He pressed himself against the lockers, trying to make himself small, trying to disappear. His mind screamed. Fight? Run? Hide? Nothing seemed safe.
The creature's limbs snapped into motion, doing the unexpected. Its hand, or what acted like a hand, reached out, folding and bending as it reached for him. The joints flexed and twisted in ways that should have broken bone, but didn't. Every move was precise, calculated, and impossible.
The blue glow from his arm-screen flared, lighting up the edges of the hallway, reflecting in the floor, sending broken light across the walls. Symbols raced across the screen, making jagged warnings and instructions.
USER…DANGER…FIGHT…WATCH…FOUND…
Riko's heart surged. Every muscle tightened, every sense screamed danger. He could hear his own heartbeat over the hum of the screen, over the creature's whispers, over the sounds of students who didn't know what was happening.
Step by unnatural step, the creature got closer. Its shape flickered, glitching with each crawl. Its head snapped slightly, tracking Riko's every move with impossible accuracy.
The whispers repeated, sounding more urgent, a digital echo with a human tone:
User… found… user… found… user… found…
Riko could feel the energy in his veins matching the screen's pulse. Something was building. He could feel it. A reaction, a release. But what if he moved? What if he didn't?
The world narrowed to one point. The hallway, the students, the desks, the lockers all disappeared. The only things that mattered were him, the light under his sleeve, and the creeping, whispering creature.
Every instinct screamed to act, but that meant risk. Risk meant being exposed. But staying still could be worse.
The creature's head tilted again, its eye locked onto Riko. The whispers got louder, almost desperate, mixed with static and broken words:
User… found… user… found… user… found…
Riko's fingers dug into the locker next to him, nails pressing into the metal. His pulse raced. The screen under his sleeve flared, trying to talk, to warn, to guide.
The creature's hand reached further, bending impossibly, reaching for him. It was a shadow of intent that he could almost touch.
And then it stopped, perfectly still.
Its gaze fixed on him. The whispers continued, a low, constant sound:
It whispers: User… found…