The Flaw In His System

Never alone

I always knew someone was watching me before I had proof.

Not in the dramatic, horror-movie way. Nothing moved. Nothing made noise. The curtains weren’t swaying. My door was locked. My phone lay face down beside me, silent.

But the air in my apartment felt… aware.

And it's not recent I've always felt this way for as long as I can remember.

Like I wasn’t alone inside my own life.

I told myself it was just stress. Too much coffee. Too many late nights chasing a story that didn’t want to be caught.

Since I was in highschool I've always wanted to be a journalist, it's been my passion for so long some may say. But it's way more stressful than I expected.

I reached over and flipped my laptop shut.

The small click sounded louder than it should have, I flinched.

“Get a grip,” I muttered while massaging my temple.

My reflection in the black screen looked tired. Glasses hung loosely on my face.Eye bags darker than usual. Hair twisted into a lazy bun that had given up hours ago. The kind of face that said you work too much.

I used to like that about myself.

Now it just felt like a weakness.

Lara my best friend would say I was spiraling again.

Lara believed in balance. In “maybe don’t poke billionaires with god complexes for a living.” In normal jobs with normal bosses who didn’t own satellites and private islands.

We used to sit across from each other in that suffocating newsroom, feet bumping under the desks, whispering jokes and giggling while pretending to work. She still worked there. Still complained about the coffee machine that wheezed like it was dying.

I miss that.

But I left.

Adrian Voss had offered me a job two months ago.

No interview. No small talk. Just an email from a nameless address with a contract attached and a number at the bottom that made my chest tighten.

I should have deleted it.

Instead, I signed it. I knew it was my only chance.

I told myself it was access. Proximity. The chance to finally understand the man I’d spent a year writing about. The ghost billionaire who built a predictive tech empire so powerful even governments pretended not to be afraid of him.

The press always talked about him like he was a god, the most eligible bachelor in los Angeles women fell at his feet. But I saw through him.

I told myself I was brave.

But brave and reckless are cousins.

I heard a notification.

I flinched again.

Stupid. It was just my phone lighting up on the table.

Lara 💛

I exhaled and answered.

“You’re alive,” she said immediately, no hello.

“Barely.”

“You sound weird.”

“I always sound weird.”

“No,” she said, softer now. “You sound like when you used to stay up all night before publishing something big. Like your brain won’t shut up.” That made me giggle.

I stared at the ceiling. A faint crack ran across it, thin as a vein.

“I just keep feeling like I’m missing something,” I said.

“About Voss?”

I hesitated. “About everything.”

She sighed. “I still don’t like that you work for him Bria.”

“I don’t work for him.”

“Okay. You just mysteriously joined the inner circle of a man who doesn’t exist in public and expects me not to think that’s serial-killer energy.”

I laughed, but it came out thin. “You watch too many documentaries.”

“Whatever, Just promise me something.”

“What?”

“If it starts feeling wrong, you leave. No pride. No proving a point. Just leave please.”

I hesitated a little before I answered.

“That’s not reassuring,” she said.

“Its okayy lara,I can handle him.”

That was the problem.

I wasn’t scared of Adrian Voss.

I was curious about him.

After we hung up, the apartment felt quiet again. Too quiet.

I opened my laptop.

The screen glowed back to life, my half-finished document still open.

Draft: The Illusion of Choice -Inside Predictive Power Systems

I’d written that title before I even met him.

Before I knew how calm his voice was. How he never raised it, even when I challenged him. How his eyes didn’t dart around like most people’s did when they lied.

Adrian didn’t lie.

He just didn’t tell you things.

There’s a difference.

I started typing again.

Adrian Voss built a system designed to anticipate human behavior with terrifying accuracy-

My laptop lagged.

Then froze.

My fingers hovered over the keyboard wondering what was wrong.

A second later, the sentence deleted itself.

I blinked in disbelief.

“What the..”

New text appeared. Like typed itself out.

Not in my font.

Not in my writing style.

Correction: 87.3% predictive accuracy in controlled environments. 82.4% in live behavioral modeling.

I stared the screen.

My heart didn’t race at first. It just… slowed. Like my body was trying to understand something my brain couldn’t yet process.

I hadn’t researched those numbers.

They weren’t public.

I checked my internet.

Connected.

I checked my files.

Nothing new.

I deleted the line.

It came back.

82.4%

My heart began to beat fast.

“This isn’t funny,” I whispered, though I lived alone.

I moved the cursor and Typed:

Stop.

The word sat there.

Then another line appeared beneath it.

You’re using the wrong data set.

My sank and my throat went dry.

I didn’t call Lara.

I didn’t shut the laptop.

Because deep down, under the fear, under the rising cold in my stomach…

I knew exactly who this felt like.

Calm. Precise. Watching.

A new message appeared.

Check your email.

And just as my screen flickered,

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Unknown Number

You misquoted the model again.

I stopped breathing.

Another message came.

We should correct that. In person.

And then:

Tomorrow. 9 a.m.

I hadn’t agreed.

I hadn’t responded.

But somehow, it didn’t feel like a request.

I looked back at my laptop screen.

One final line had appeared.

You wanted the truth. Now come get it.

And for the first time since taking the job…

I felt like I had stepped into something that had already decided where I would land.

It felt exciting at the same time scary.