Do Not Open That Chat!

Episode 2: Paranoia Protocol

Emily hadn’t slept since Mark died.

The message still haunted her:

“One down. Four to go.”

That was two nights ago. Mark’s death made the local news, but the details were sparse. An “accidental electrocution,” they said. Neighbors reported the smell of burning plastic and a fuse blown across the entire building. Jessica, from their Sunday group, said Mark’s body was barely recognizable, his hands charred, phone fused to his palm.

Emily hadn’t told anyone about the message. Not Zoe. Not Jessica. Not the police.

How do you tell people that a chat you didn’t even open warned you someone would die, and then it happened?

You don’t. You sound insane.

And yet, every time she closed her eyes, she saw that chat window.

We see you.

“Maybe someone hacked your system,” Zoe suggested. “Some sick prankster from Reddit.”

But Emily hadn’t been on Reddit in months. And it wasn’t a virus. She had checked her firewall, run diagnostics, wiped temp folders, reset her permissions. The app didn’t show up in any logs. Like it never existed.

Zoe told her to let it go. That it wasn’t her fault.

But what if it was?

She opened that chat. She read it.

And now someone was dead.

That morning, her inbox had 63 unread emails.

Fifty-eight were spam.

Four were from concerned friends.

And one, one stood out. No sender. No subject. Just one line of preview text:

“You clicked. The game continues.”

Her hand trembled as she clicked on it.

It opened a plain white screen with black text, center-aligned:

“This is not a game.

But you are the controller.

You opened the message.

Now you choose.

One life spared. One life taken.

Delete one contact from your phone.

You have 24 hours.”

Below it, a button blinked. "Accept Terms".

She slammed the laptop shut.

This wasn’t just some hacker.

This was a curse.

She barely remembered putting on clothes or getting on the subway, but by noon she was at Midtown, pacing outside the public library. She didn’t know where else to go. Somewhere with people. Somewhere without internet she could trust.

She opened her burner sss account and typed frantically:

“Has anyone else received strange messages before someone died?”

She hit send. Posted it to forums. Paranormal Reddit. 4Chan. Even old dark web whistleblower threads.

Most of what came back was garbage.

Until she found one thread titled: “Do Not Open That Chat – My Brother Died Too”

It was buried, obscure, half a year old.

Poster: @RVale

She clicked through. The user hadn’t been active in months. But their post…

“I thought it was a hoax too. But it’s real.

My brother opened it first.

I opened it after.

He’s dead.

I’ve been hiding ever since.

If you see the red icon, do NOT tap it.

Do NOT engage.

If you already did… you’re next.”

Emily stared at the screen.

Her mouth was dry. Her heart thundered.

She logged out. Burned the account. Left the library like it was on fire.

That night, she unplugged everything in her apartment.

No WiFi.

No router.

Phone off. Laptop off.

She placed her phone in a metal mixing bowl in the oven, just in case. She didn’t know if that actually worked, but she’d seen it in a conspiracy video once. Faraday cage theory.

She told Zoe she had food poisoning and locked herself in her room. She hadn’t even told Zoe about the latest message.

The guilt was too loud.

At 3:14 a.m., her laptop, unplugged, turned on.

The screen flickered white.

Then black.

Then red.

The icon appeared.

Black box. Red dot. Blinking.

She backed away from her desk.

“No,” she whispered. “No, no, this isn’t possible.”

The screen typed itself.

“Your 24 hours begin now.”

“You must choose.”

“Delete one contact.”

Then a contact list appeared on the screen.

Names. Photos. People she loved. Her sister. Her college best friend. Jessica. Zoe.

Emily couldn’t breathe.

She pulled the plug again. Slammed the laptop shut.

It stayed on.

A new line blinked on the screen’s edge.

“If you won’t choose... we will.”

The light in her room popped. Her phone, still in the oven, vibrated.

Emily backed into the wall. “No. No, please, stop.”

The screen went black.

The next day, Jessica was found unconscious in her bathtub.

Empty pill bottles on the floor. Suicide attempt, the report said. A failed one. Barely.

Emily didn’t even try to convince herself it was unrelated.

She had refused to delete someone.

The Protocol picked Jessica.

Zoe sat on the edge of the bed, watching her pace.

“I’m calling someone,” Zoe said. “You’re not okay.”

“I’m not crazy,” Emily whispered.

“I didn’t say you were crazy. I said you’re breaking down. And that’s okay. Mark dying was traumatic. Now Jessica? That’s two close friends. Anyone would spiral.”

Emily stopped pacing. “You don’t get it.”

“Then explain it to me.”

Emily paused.

Zoe waited.

Emily opened her mouth, then closed it again.

What could she say? That a cursed chat message was killing her friends one by one because she didn’t delete someone from her contacts?

Even hearing it in her own head sounded like a plot from a bad internet horror story.

“I just… need time,” Emily said.

Zoe sighed. “Okay. But we’re going to talk. And we’re going to get help. Together.”

Emily nodded, weakly.

But help wouldn’t work. Not for this.

That night, a new email arrived. No sender. Subject line:

“They never believe the first ones.”

Body:

“We believed you’d resist. That’s why you were chosen.

But everyone resists. At first.

You’ll comply soon.

Or they’ll all die.

Four down. You’re the fifth.”

There were only two deaths so far.

Mark.

Jessica.

What did they mean, four down?

She read the message again.

And then her eyes widened.

“Four down.”

But who were the others?

She opened her contacts list.

She hadn’t talked to her cousin Chris in months.

Her former co-worker Alice since last year.

She quickly searched their names.

Chris, car crash. Two weeks ago.

Alice, suicide. Hung herself. Three weeks back.

No way.

She hadn’t opened the chat then… had she?

She opened her laptop’s search logs.

Timestamps.

And there it was.

Three weeks ago, during a bout of insomnia, she had clicked a suspicious icon from her browser tray. It had appeared, then disappeared. She hadn’t even thought about it.

She had opened the Protocol weeks ago. Without realizing it.

And now it was collecting.

The next morning, she took a train to Brooklyn. To an address she had scraped from an old domain registry linked to @RVale’s account. A guy named Ronan Vale.

The name sounded like a warning in itself.

The building was a four-story concrete block coated in rust and graffiti. Apartment 3B.

She knocked.

No answer.

She waited. Knocked again.

Then, slowly, the door opened.

The man behind it looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. His hair was messy, clothes rumpled. He had deep circles under his eyes.

“Emily Stallion?” he rasped.

Her heart skipped. “You know who I am?”

Ronan nodded. “They’re watching you.”

And he let her in.

Ronan’s apartment was a chaos of screens.

Laptops. Phones. CRT monitors. Tangled cables. Every electronic surface taped over. Cameras covered. Aluminum foil lining the walls. It looked like a bunker. A very paranoid bunker.

“They started targeting you two months ago,” Ronan said, pouring black coffee into two mismatched mugs. “I saw your IP spike through a tunnel I monitor. Deep net spike. Protocol activity.”

Emily stared at him. “What is the Protocol?”

Ronan sat.

“The Obsidian Protocol is what happens when you mix human curiosity with ancient code.”

She blinked. “Ancient code?”

“I don’t mean digital code. I mean curses. Enchantments. But executed through information, data. A demon doesn’t need a pentagram when it can use binary.”

Emily’s skin prickled.

“It started on the dark net as a game,” Ronan said. “A chat bot. The original was just called Obsidian. Someone coded it to simulate moral decisions, delete one person or lose another. But then people started dying. For real. The code evolved. Or maybe something… infected it.”

“Like a virus?”

“Like a demon that learned to code.”

Emily didn’t speak.

Ronan sipped his coffee. “They lure people through the message. Once you open it, you’re marked. It doesn’t matter if you believe or not. It feeds on interaction.”

Emily whispered, “How do I stop it?”

Ronan looked at her. “You can’t.”

The room chilled.

“But you can delay it. Break the sequence. Follow the chain. Or… complete the task.”

“What task?”

He stared at her.

“To delete someone.”

Ronan leads Emily to a back room.

A metal table.

On it: a laptop with only one app installed. The black square. Red dot.

Ronan opens it.

A video plays.

Grainy footage. A dark room.

In the center, Zoe.

Bound. Gagged. Crying.

A digital timer blinking at the bottom of the screen:

00:22:59:34

“Twenty-three hours left,” Ronan says.

Emily is frozen.

Then the screen flickers once more.

“Only one can live.

Delete the others.

Or the chain resets, with you.”