The screen flickered, a harsh, neon-blue light cutting through the darkness of Aryan's small room. It was 3:00 AM—the devil's hour.
Aryan rubbed his eyes, staring at the laptop he had bought for five dollars from the scrap yard. It shouldn't have worked. The motherboard was fried, and the battery was missing. Yet, here it was, humming with a sound that felt like a low, human groan.
"Booting System: Soul_Collector.exe..."
"What the—?" Aryan muttered, his fingers hovering over the keys. He tried to force-close the screen, but the metal was ice-cold, so cold it felt like it was burning his skin.
A single message appeared in the center of the screen, written in a font that looked like dripping, dark ink:
[NEW USER DETECTED: ARYAN]
[CURRENT DEBT: 0 SOULS]
[TASK 1: GO TO THE ABANDONED BALIGUNGE HOSPITAL BASEMENT. REMAIN FOR 10 MINUTES.]
[REWARD: 50,000 RUPEES]
[PENALTY FOR REFUSAL: PERMANENT SHUTDOWN OF HEART.]
Aryan laughed nervously. "It's a prank. Some hacker is playing with me."
Suddenly, his phone buzzed. A notification from his banking app popped up: "Rs. 5,000 Advanced Payment Credited from Unknown Source."
His heart skipped a beat. This wasn't a prank. As he looked back at the laptop, the camera's small red light turned on. In the reflection of the screen, Aryan saw his room. He saw his bed, his desk, and his own terrified face.
But in the reflection, sitting right on his shoulders, was a pale, thin hand with long, black fingernails.
Aryan spun around. His room was empty.
But when he looked back at the screen, the hand was still there, gripping him tighter.
[TIMER STARTS IN 60 SECONDS. RUN, ARYAN. RUN.] Aryan grabbed his jacket and his phone, his legs trembling as he sprinted out of his room. He didn't even bother locking the door. The image of those black fingernails on his shoulder was burned into his mind like a digital scar.
The cold night air hit his face, but it didn't feel as cold as that laptop. As he reached the rusted gates of the Abandoned Baligunge Hospital, the timer on his phone reached zero.
[TASK STARTING. SURVIVE 10 MINUTES.]
The hospital was a skeleton of concrete and broken glass. It had been closed years ago after a series of 'accidental' deaths in the surgery wing. Aryan turned on his phone's flashlight, the beam cutting through the thick, choking dust. Every step he took felt heavier, like he was walking into deep water.
He found the stairs to the basement. The air smelled of old copper and rot. When he reached the bottom, his flashlight flickered. "Please, not now," he whispered, hitting the side of his phone.
In the corner of the room sat an old, rusted operating table. On the table lay a small, dirty mirror. Aryan walked toward it, drawn by a force he couldn't control. He looked into the glass.
His reflection was there, but it was lagging—like a slow internet connection. His reflection's mouth opened wide in a silent scream, but Aryan's own mouth was shut tight in terror.
"Five minutes left," a voice whispered, not from the room, but from inside his own head.
Suddenly, the heavy steel door of the basement slammed shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot. Aryan rushed to the door, pulling the handle, but it wouldn't budge. He looked at his phone. The 50,000 rupees reward was flashing in bright gold, but right below it, a new line of text appeared:
[DANGER: A GUEST HAS JOINED YOU.]
Aryan turned his flashlight toward the center of the room. The operating table was no longer empty. A figure was sitting there, wrapped in gray bandages, its head tilted at an impossible angle. It wasn't moving, but Aryan could hear a wet, raspy breathing coming from it.
"Aryan..." the figure croaked, its voice sounding like static. "Do you want to see a glitch?"
The figure's skin began to tear, not like flesh, but like digital pixels. It was a ghost made of code, and it was reaching for Aryan's throat
Aryan backed away, his heels hitting the damp wall. The "Guest" on the table stood up, its joints clicking like a broken keyboard. With every movement, the ghost's body flickered—sometimes it looked like a man, and sometimes it was just a mass of glowing green binary code.
"Stay back!" Aryan yelled, holding his phone up like a shield.
The ghost didn't stop. It floated toward him, its hand stretching out. The fingers were no longer skin; they were long, sharp needles of light.
[WARNING: SYSTEM SYNC AT 80%. DO NOT LET THE GUEST TOUCH YOU.]
The message flashed on Aryan's phone screen, turning his flashlight red. He looked around desperately. The basement had no windows, and the door was locked by the system. He noticed a small ventilation duct near the ceiling, but it was too high.
"You think... this is a game?" the ghost hissed, its face suddenly appearing inches away from Aryan's. Its eyes were two empty black pixels.
Aryan felt a freezing surge of electricity enter his chest. His heart slowed down. 40 beats per minute... 30 beats... He was dying. The 'Penalty' was starting because he was too scared to move.
"No!" Aryan roared. He remembered his training in cyber security. Every system has a bug. He looked at his phone. The timer showed 00:45 seconds remaining. If he could just disrupt the signal. He opened the 'Soul_Collector' app and did something crazy—he initiated a self-delete command on his own phone's operating system.
The basement erupted. The ghost screamed as its body began to distort and stretch. The red light turned into a chaotic swirl of static.
CLANG!
The steel door flew open.
[TASK COMPLETED. SOUL STABILIZED.]
[REWARD: 50,000 RUPEES TRANSFERRED.]
Aryan didn't wait to check his bank balance. He scrambled out of the basement, running through the dark hospital corridors until he burst out into the moonlight.
He stopped at the hospital gates, gasping for air. His phone vibrated. A new message was waiting for him.
"Good job, Aryan. You found the first bug. But the next task... it won't be in a basement. It will be in your own home."
Aryan looked toward his apartment building in the distance. Every single light in his flat was flashing on and off, perfectly in sync with his heartbeat Aryan stood paralyzed at the entrance of his apartment building. Every window of his third-floor flat pulsed with a rhythmic, ghostly white light. Thump-flash. Thump-flash. It was exactly the speed of his racing heart.
He didn't want to go up, but his phone vibrated again.
[TASK 2: ENTER YOUR RESIDENCE. DO NOT TURN OFF THE MAIN SWITCH.]
[TIME LIMIT: 5 MINUTES TO REACH THE LAPTOP.]
If he ran away, the system would shut down his heart. He had no choice. Aryan walked into the building, the elevator doors opening automatically as if they were expecting him. Inside, the mirrored walls showed a faint digital distortion behind him, but when he turned, there was only empty air.
When he reached his front door, it clicked open on its own.
The apartment was freezing. Frost had formed on the edges of the television and the microwave. His laptop sat in the middle of the living room floor, the only thing not flickering. Its screen was a calm, deep black.
As soon as Aryan stepped inside, the front door slammed and the locks turned—not once, but three times.
"I'm here!" Aryan shouted, his voice cracking. "I did what you asked! Now stop this!"
Suddenly, every electronic device in the room turned on at once. The TV showed static that slowly formed the shape of a human face. The smart speakers began to whisper his name in a thousand different voices.
[SYNC COMPLETE,] the laptop screen finally spoke. [YOU ARE NOW PART OF THE NETWORK.]
Aryan looked down at his hands. Underneath his skin, he could see faint, glowing blue lines—like veins made of fiber-optic cables. The "Soul_Collector" wasn't just a virus on his laptop anymore; it was uploading itself into his body.
"What are you?" Aryan whispered, crawling toward the laptop.
The screen flickered, showing an old photo of Aryan from ten years ago—a photo he had never taken. Beside it, a chat box opened.
"I am the bug you couldn't fix," the text read. "And to stay alive, you need to delete someone else."
A list of names began to scroll down the screen. They were all people from his contact list. His friends. His mother.
[CHOOSE ONE TO PROCEED. OR THE SYSTEM WILL CHOOSE FOR YOU.]