The timer was wrong.
Not by much. Just three seconds. But I'd been watching the countdown for weeks now, and it had never been off before.
I refreshed the interface.
The number flickered. Jumped. Settled at a different value.
2:47:03
2:47:09
2:46:58
I sat at my desk, laptop open but ignored, watching the system's countdown timer drift like a broken clock.
Something was wrong.
It started small.
Labels shifting. A notification appearing twice. A trait description that read differently each time I opened it.
At first, I thought it was my phone. Or my connection. Something mundane.
But then Sienna texted.
Are you seeing this?
I didn't need to ask what "this" meant.
Yeah.
The system's glitching.
The word felt wrong. Glitching implied accident. Randomness.
This didn't feel random.
I met her in the library an hour later. Third floor, back corner. The kind of spot where you could talk without being overheard.
She had her laptop open when I arrived, screen angled away from the aisle.
"Look at this."
I leaned in.
The interface was... fractured. Tabs overlapping. Text bleeding into margins. A status label that kept cycling through options without input.
STABLE → UNSTABLE → EVALUATING → STABLE
Over and over.
"How long has it been doing that?" I asked.
"Twenty minutes. Maybe longer." She clicked something. The screen stuttered. "I tried to trigger a standard interaction. Just a proximity test. The system logged it three times."
"Three?"
"Same event. Three separate entries. Different timestamps."
I exhaled.
"It's breaking," Sienna said. She didn't sound worried. She sounded... interested.
That made me nervous.
"Don't."
She looked up. "Don't what?"
"Whatever you're thinking. Don't."
"I'm not thinking anything."
Liar.
I could see it in the way she was watching the screen. The way her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She was looking for an angle. A crack. Something to exploit.
"Sienna. If the system's unstable, that's not an opportunity. It's a trap."
"You don't know that."
"I know you. And I know this feels like a shortcut."
She closed the laptop. Slowly.
"You think it's bait."
"Yeah."
"You think the system wants me to try something."
I didn't answer right away.
Because yeah. That's exactly what I thought.
Claire texted that evening.
Have you checked the system today?
Yeah. Something's off.
Be careful.
I stared at the message.
Claire didn't send warnings lightly. If she thought something was dangerous, it usually was.
You seeing glitches too?
No. That's why I'm telling you to be careful.
I frowned.
What do you mean?
If the system's breaking for some users and not others, it's not breaking. It's sorting.
I read that twice.
Then I opened the interface.
The timer was stable again. No flicker. No drift. Everything looked... normal.
But that didn't make me feel better.
It made me feel targeted.
By the next morning, the glitches had spread.
Not to everyone. Just—certain people.
Sienna's interface kept fracturing. Someone I didn't know well mentioned on a group chat that their trait unlocks were showing negative values. Another user said their interaction log had entries they didn't remember triggering.
But my interface? Clean.
Claire's? Untouched.
The system wasn't breaking equally. It was breaking selectively.
I opened the interface again. Scrolled through every tab, looking for something I'd missed.
And then I found it.
A new panel. Tucked between two existing tabs. Barely visible.
INSTABILITY METER
I clicked it.
The screen filled with data. Graphs. User labels. Risk scores.
And then, as I watched, the entire panel disappeared.
Not closed. Not minimized.
Gone.
Like the system had shown it to me just long enough for me to know it existed, then taken it back.
I didn't tell Sienna about the meter.
Didn't tell anyone.
Because the moment I'd seen it, I understood:
The system wasn't breaking. It was demonstrating breakage.
Showing cracks. Letting certain users see instability. Watching who would try to exploit it.
And the users who reached for the cracks?
They were the ones the system wanted to identify.
That night, another message appeared.
SYSTEM NOTICE
Instability detected.
User behavior: monitored.
Corrective actions pending.
I stared at it.
Then I checked Sienna's last text.
I think I found a workaround. Testing it now.
I didn't reply.
Because I knew: she was doing exactly what the system wanted.
And whatever "corrective actions" came next, they'd land on her first.
I locked my phone.
The room felt too quiet.
I wanted to warn her. To tell her this was bait. That the system was waiting for her to make a move.
But I also knew: she wouldn't listen.
She'd see the cracks and think she was clever enough to slip through.
And the system would let her think that.
Right up until the trap closed.
The next morning, a new notice appeared in my interface.
SYSTEM NOTICE
Instability resolved.
Selected users flagged for review.
I checked the list.
Sienna's name was at the top.
And I realized:
The system hadn't been breaking at all.
It had been testing.
Offering cracks. Watching who reached for them.
And now it knew exactly who couldn't resist.