HE WAS ERASED: System Error

CHAPTER 4: THE STATIC

CHAPTER 4: THE STATIC

I pulled myself off the alley floor.

The graffiti on the wall still read *THEY LIED*. Rain was falling normally now. Moving. Falling. Hitting my neck in cold drops.

Maya was gone. The alley was empty. Sirens blared somewhere down Wabash. Distant. Getting closer.

My apartment wasn't safe anymore. The System knew my name. If I went home, I'd walk into a trap. I had to keep moving. Stay in the real, bustling city where I could blend in.

I shoved my phone in my jacket and ran.

The streets were busy. Cars honked. People pushed past with umbrellas, heads down, alive and unaware. Normal was moving around me. That was good. Normal meant the System hadn't paused it yet.

My phone buzzed once.

I pulled it out. The message from UNKNOWN was gone. Not deleted. Like it had never been there. But I remembered it.

*YOU'RE NOT CRAZY.*

*THERE ARE OTHERS.*

*FIND THE STATIC.*

Find the static.

I looked at my phone screen. The network bars were flickering wild. One second full signal. The next, no service. Then two bars. Then nothing. The screen itself glitched, lines of distortion running across it like bad reception.

Static.

I remembered Maya's note: *FIND THE OTHERS.*

Maybe it was the same thing.

I followed the glitch.

I walked fast through the crowd, eyes on my phone. Every time I got close to certain spots, the distortion got worse. Near the boarded-up newsstand on Clark, the screen fizzed with audio noise. Near the demolished building on Madison, the bars dropped to zero and the phone got hot in my hand.

The static wasn't a place. It was a frequency. A glitch in the System's rendering.

I found it on a dead-end street behind the old transit depot. The building had been torn down last month. Now there was just a chain-link fence and a patch of broken concrete.

And white.

Not snow. Not light. Absence. The color you see behind your eyes when you press on them too hard. It started at the edge of the concrete and cut off the world clean, like someone took a blade to reality.

My phone screamed with distortion. The speaker crackled, distorted beyond recognition. Blood ran from my nose onto my lips. Iron and salt.

I knelt. The air near the edge had no temperature. It just took. My fingers went numb first, then empty. Like the nerves were being switched off one by one.

I touched the white.

My fingertip didn't meet resistance. It just ceased. One moment I had a nail, a scar from when Kael taught me to use a chef's knife and I grabbed the wrong end. The next moment, my finger was gone from the first knuckle up.

I yanked my hand back. The finger came with it. Whole. No blood. No pain. But I remembered the second it wasn't there. My stomach turned.

"Subject is sustaining psychological damage," the voice said. Inside my head again. "Compliance results in comfort reinstatement."

Comfort. They'd give me back the lie. A world where Kael never existed so I could stop bleeding.

"Kael," I said. To the white. "If you're in there—"

The white flickered. One frame. In that frame I saw a shape. Tall. Gray hoodie. Dark hair. It could have been him. It could have been a glitch shaped like him.

The distortion in my phone spiked. The speaker cut out, then came back with sound. Broken. Lagging. Real.

"...Lina..."

His voice.

It bled through the static like a distress signal. Cut in and out through my cracked speaker. Fragmented. Unstable. Maybe him. Maybe a copy of him. Maybe a trap shaped like him.

"I... here..."

"Kael?" My throat was raw. "Kael, talk to me."

"Find... you..." The voice stuttered. Cracked. "Run... they..."

The static surged. My knees hit the concrete. The phone slipped from my fingers. I grabbed for it, but a flashlight hit my eyes.

"Hey! You okay?"

A transit officer stood at the edge of the street. Young. Human. Concerned. The static cut out the second his light hit me.

I scrambled for my phone. The screen was cracked worse now. One new message had appeared. No sender.

*SHE IS AT THE CORE.*

*DETECT THE STATIC AT THE BROADCAST TOWER.*

I looked up. The officer was taking a step forward, hand on his radio.

I ran.

Not toward the white. Away from it. Back into the crowd, into the noise, into the city that was still moving.

Kael's voice was still in my ear. Broken. Lagging. Real.

"I... here."

Not "I'm here, Lina. I found you."

"I... here."

Fragmented. Unstable.

But he'd said my name.

And the System hadn't expected that. Because my phone was still buzzing with a new mission, and the broadcast tower was only twenty blocks north.

I knew where to go next.

I knew Maya was there.

I ran.