Chapter Three – The First Fracture
387 Words
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Elena’s screen froze at 4:17 p.m.
Rows of numbers blurred, then vanished, replaced with an error message. She frowned, tapping the keys. Nothing. She rebooted, but when the system came back, the report she’d been building for three weeks was gone.
Vanished.
Her stomach knotted. That file wasn’t just work—it was her one chance at proving herself to the new manager who had taken over last month. A report that could’ve gotten her noticed for something beyond the endless grind.
She flagged down IT. Ten minutes later, the tech leaned over her desk, squinting at her monitor. “Looks like it was deleted manually,” he said.
Elena blinked. “That’s not possible. I didn’t—”
He shrugged. “Records show your login was used. Yesterday evening.”
Yesterday evening she had been at the bar. With Marissa.
Her pulse quickened. “There has to be a mistake.”
But when he walked away, leaving her screen empty, the thought rooted in her chest: someone had used her account. Someone who knew her well enough to slip into her world without tripping alarms.
By the time she left the office, rain was falling again, harder this time, hammering the sidewalks in relentless sheets. She pulled her coat tight and hurried through the crowd, every sound amplified—the hiss of tires on wet asphalt, the buzz of neon signs, the footsteps that seemed to echo just behind her own.
She turned once, sharply. The street was crowded, faces blurred by umbrellas, but for a moment she swore someone was there—just beyond the flow of people—watching her.
Her phone buzzed. A message from Marissa.
> Dinner? I have something to celebrate.
Elena typed back slowly, fingers trembling: What are we celebrating?
The reply came instantly: New beginnings.
Her throat tightened. For the first time, she wondered if her best friend’s smile wasn’t a shield at all, but a knife.
And in the glass of a storefront beside her, she saw it again. Not her reflection—not exactly. A shadow with her shape, but taller, darker, eyes burning faintly as though lit from within.
When she blinked, it was gone.
But the feeling remained. Something was watching. Waiting.
And cracks in her world were beginning to split wide open.
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- Writer
