The city had started to bleed neon.
Raindrops shattered across the windshield like broken glass, twisting the world into ribbons of colored light. Elijah sat motionless behind the wheel of his G-Wagon, engine purring low, eyes tracking the figure emerging from the café.
The waitress.
She didn't move like someone finishing a late shift. There was no exhaustion in her stride, no relief at escaping the smell of burnt coffee and customer small talk. Instead, she walked with purpose—measured steps, unhurried but deliberate. The same woman who'd smiled too brightly fifteen minutes ago, whose eyes had lingered too long on his laptop screen.
Now, under the drizzle's half-light, she walked with an umbrella angled to conceal most of her face. Still, Elijah caught glimpses—heels splashing through puddles in hypnotic rhythm, each step too precise to be accidental.
He pulled his cap lower and leaned forward, rain drumming a steady beat against the roof. Static whispered in his ear—his comm link running passive traces in the background. Nothing unusual registered, but his instincts screamed otherwise.
Something about her felt fundamentally wrong.
Not just trained. *Programmed.*
Elijah released a slow breath, fingers tightening around the steering wheel. "Let's see who's pulling your strings," he murmured into the empty car.
He eased forward, headlights dark, maintaining distance as he followed her down the narrow commercial strip. The sidewalks had emptied—only the occasional night worker or drenched pedestrian hurrying beneath glowing advertisements that rippled like they were underwater.
The rain thickened, transforming the street into a hall of liquid mirrors.
The waitress moved with unsettling precision, every step calculated, like she was following waypoints only she could see. Her umbrella's metallic ribs caught the streetlight as she passed—gleaming almost like antennae receiving invisible signals.
Then, as Elijah slowed near an intersection, something else demanded his attention.
The traffic light ahead blinked red. Then amber. Then red again.
Once. Twice. Three times.
A pattern.
His breath caught in his throat. "No," he whispered. "You can't be serious."
He watched the system cycle erratically—colors pulsing in sequences that defied normal programming. A heartbeat later, his dashboard sensors stuttered in sympathy, digital panels flickering in perfect sync with the malfunctioning light.
Then everything froze.
The red held steady, unwavering, bathing the entire street in warning glow.
Elijah's palm struck the steering wheel. "Tagged. They've tagged you..."
He looked ahead—the waitress continued walking, unaffected, her figure dissolving into sheets of rain.
He glanced back at the stubborn red light, then at her retreating form, mind racing through calculations.
*To hell with caution.*
Elijah killed the engine, stepped out of the G-Wagon, and pulled his hood up. Cold rain struck his face immediately, sharp as accusations. His boots splashed through shallow water as he moved after her, keeping to the storefront shadows.
The street stretched quiet except for rain's percussion and the distant rumble of a passing train. Above him, signs flickered—*Kanto Pharmacy, Noodle Heaven, CineLux Video*—their lights buzzing like dying insects.
He trailed her for nearly a block before reality began to fracture.
One screen after another along the store row started to distort.
Subtle at first—color bleeding at the edges, static crawling like digital fungus across glass. Then came the shapes. Faces. Blurred and unfamiliar, flickering too rapidly to process consciously.
Elijah slowed, pulse accelerating.
The waitress turned a corner ahead, umbrella tilting as she disappeared.
He passed a small tech repair shop—its wall-mounted display convulsed violently, pixelation bending into something that felt intentional. The glitching lines coalesced, forming an image that turned his stomach to ice.
A mask.
He stopped breathing.
The screen showed a pale, expressionless mask consuming a human face—no mouth, only void framed by a six-fingered handprint pressed against its cheeks. Inside the palm's outline gleamed a three-eyed triangle, each eye weeping slow, black tears that dripped like oil down invisible skin.
The longer he stared, the deeper that inverted spiral at the mask's center seemed to pull him in.
Consuming itself. Consuming *him.*
And then—one of the eyes blinked.
Elijah stumbled backward, blinking rain from his lashes. "No, no, no—"
The surrounding storefront screens began synchronizing, broadcasting the same symbol, the same impossible face.
Every screen in sight—convenience stores, gas pumps, vending kiosks—pulsed with that image. The mask's void-mouth seemed to stretch wider, though it had no shape capable of movement.
And then, barely audible through the rain:
*"...Eli…"*
The voice couldn't be real. Shouldn't be possible.
But it was his own voice, echoing through the empty street like a corrupted recording.
He spun sharply, scanning the deserted street. Nothing but rain and shadows.
*"...You built me…"* the whisper returned, softer now, almost playful. Childlike.
*"...Why run from what you created?"*
Elijah's breath hitched. He pressed his hand against his temple—that same static hum from the café had returned, louder now, burrowing into his skull like something alive.
He forced himself to look at the screen again.
The mask shifted—its triangular eyes rearranging themselves, and in the subtle play of light and shadow he saw it clearly now—his own face layered beneath, half-buried under the texture.
The Azaqor face.
The persona he'd constructed online. The myth. The killer everyone whispered about but could never prove existed. The same image he'd weaponized in early darknet operations to frighten syndicates into silence.
Now it stared back at him, breathing.
"Stop it," Elijah muttered, stepping backward. "This isn't real. It's interference. Cognitive splicing—someone's running a visual hack."
He gripped the side of his head—pain exploded behind his eyes, splitting pressure like needles driving deep into gray matter. The lights around him warped into swirling hues—blue, red, violet, bleeding together in nauseating succession.
Vertigo slammed into him like a physical force.
And suddenly, he wasn't standing in the rain anymore.
He was somewhere else entirely.
---
The world around him burned orange and red. A cabin—half-collapsed, engulfed in flames—crackled ahead. Smoke spiraled into a night sky scattered with sparks. He could feel heat against his skin, hear wood splintering and screaming.
A child's voice echoed from somewhere behind him. *"You shouldn't have looked, Eli."*
He turned slowly, dread crawling up his spine.
At the edge of the treeline stood a silhouette.
Tall. Motionless. Unclear—like someone caught halfway between shadow and substance.
The figure's skin flickered crimson—the hue of Creon fire, almost liquid, pulsing faintly as if something beneath was alive and writhing. The face—if that word even applied—bore the same expression from the screen: three eyes, the spiral, the silent grin that wasn't quite a grin.
It raised one hand, impossibly long fingers glistening red, and pointed directly at him.
"Who are you?" Elijah gasped, stumbling backward. "What the hell are you—"
A low hum filled the air—resonance so deep it made his teeth ache and his bones vibrate. The figure tilted its head in something like curiosity.
*"You called me once,"* it said, voice layered with static. *"Remember?"*
Elijah's chest seized. He fell to his knees, hands clawing at his scalp. That unbearable hum grew louder, merging with the hiss of rain until the entire world seemed to scream in one unified frequency.
Then—white noise.
Static.
He collapsed forward, hitting wet pavement hard. Consciousness dimmed to the rhythm of falling rain.
---
A voice cut through the blur. "Hey! You okay, man? Hey!"
Elijah groaned, forcing his eyes open. Rain still fell—heavier now, washing over his face in cold waves. A bystander crouched beside him, umbrella tilted overhead, genuine worry carved into his weathered features.
"You passed out or somethin'," the man said, shaking his shoulder gently. "You hit your head?"
Elijah blinked hard, breathing raggedly. His vision struggled to refocus—the street looked normal again.
The shop screens all played their regular loops: noodle advertisements, weather updates, movie trailers. No mask. No spiral.
No sign of the waitress.
He pushed himself upright, swallowing against the metallic taste flooding his mouth. "Did you see someone? A woman—black coat, umbrella, walking that way?"
The bystander frowned, genuinely confused. "No, man. You were the only one here when I came out."
Elijah scanned the intersection frantically, heart hammering against his ribs. Nothing. Just wet pavement gleaming under streetlights.
The traffic light, steady now, glowed a calm green.
He took a shaky breath, wiping rain from his brow with trembling fingers. His laptop in the G-Wagon would have logged every signal spike, every frequency shift, every anomaly. But deep down, in the part of him that understood how deep the rabbit hole really went, he already knew the data wouldn't make sense.
He stared once more down the empty street, rain turning the air crystalline.
Maybe the waitress had never existed at all.
Maybe the system just needed him to think she did.
"They're testing illusions now," he muttered under his breath, the words lost to thunder.
A flash of lightning cracked somewhere distant, echoing through the city's concrete veins.
Elijah turned, heading back toward the car with unsteady steps. But as he passed a store window, a faint flicker caught his peripheral vision—a screen in standby mode, almost black, reflecting his silhouette.
For a split second, just before it went completely dark, the reflection's eyes blinked back.
Not his eyes.
Someone else's.