2025-10-11 01:10:29The outcome he just saw seized his breathe. His mind caged in fear, the words Altered by Individual (User) kept lingering in his head even after shutting down the laptop.
"Des, what's going on?" Philip asked, still shaken from the fact he just escaped death. "I'm.....being monitored", staring into thin air with his eyes wide open. "What have I gotten myself into? I'm being monitored!" His voice already shaky, bursting into tears. "Chill out man, I'm sure it's all BS. There's no way that's possible" Philip, filled with doubt, stands up from his bed. "You wanna know what I think? All these, the accident outside, someone monitoring you? They're all fake man, none of this is real. Stop acting like you're in a horror movie, haha" While at it, Desmond heard footsteps approaching, then it suddenly stopped. "Did you hear that?" Desmond cuts him shut. "Hear what? Just find something meaningful to do man, don't waste your time on nothing" Philip shrugged. The footsteps continued, this time each step louder than the previous one. Someone was really approaching their door. At this point, even Philip became quiet, who could that be? "Are you expecting someone, Des?" Turning to him. "No, not at all" Desmond replied. The room grew silent as footsteps stopped again for a few seconds at their doorstep, and vanished. They quickly ran to check who was that, but couldn't find anyone around only a flash drive that fell from the handle of the door. "What's this doing here? Philip is it yours?" Fear running through Desmond already. "Nah, do I even have a laptop? Why would I have a flash?" Philip replied. Then they realized whoever was at their doorstep must have left it there for them. As Desmond picks it up, his laptop he shut down, turns itself back on with a black screen showing a new message again: "Monitoring initiated User under observation" Things had already gotten a lot crazy for both of them at this point, it's now like the program he created was being controlled by someone else and now, monitoring him with it. "What do you mean under observation...we're cooked haha!" Philip screams with a bit of excitement in his voice like he's ready for an adventure. "What do we do Des, what do we do?" He kept jumping and asking in excitement. Desmond on the other hand was already miles away into the pit of fear for his life, his mind working as fast as the seconds hand on a clock. "What's going on? What am I going to do? I can't run away from school, I can't. But this is getting out of my hands" He yells at Philip to keep quite "Don't you know what we've gotten ourselves into? I'm scared for my life, you're here seeing it as some sort of adventure to play through." The reaction from Desmond causes a brief argument between the two of them, when suddenly the screen goes off again and comes back on, this time with a new prediction....a large scale prediction. "Probability: 96% Event: Explosion - Faculty of Science Time: 15:25" The prediction was for the next day as it was already past 7pm in the evening. The new prediction puts Desmond in a dilemma, confused on what he should do next: Do something to stop the explosion the next day and risk letting whoever is watching him know he's capable of stopping the events or do nothing and people die. Both his life and the lives of those that would be in the building were at stake, it was a difficult decision to make, and Philip wasn't even helping the situation - he wants Desmond to ignore it. As they were both arguing on whether to act or not, the screen flashes another set of words, with something making matters worse: "User Decision Pending.... Tracking Active." I'm cooked! I have to make a decision! Just then, Someone knocks on the door.
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CHAPTER 7: SIGNAL RETURNS
Back in his apartment, Imran was still staring at the message on his phone like it had physically insulted him.I HAVE BEEN BREACHED. THERE WILL BE TROUBLE SOON.He paced around his room, dragging both hands through his hair.His breathing was uneven, his chest tight.The room suddenly felt too small for him.“Three whole months…” he muttered. “Three whole months and now you’re texting me?”His phone vibrated again.Another message.I NEED YOU TO STAY CALM.Imran almost laughed.“Stay calm?” he shouted into the room. “Stay calm? You’ve ruined my life!”He grabbed the phone and typed aggressively.Leave me alone. I’m done. I don’t want anything to do with you anymore.The reply came almost immediately.YOU WERE NEVER OUT OF IT.That line made him freeze.He stared at the screen.What is that supposed to mean? he typed.There was a short delay this time.Then the typing bubble appeared again.THEY TOOK ME. THEY BROKE INTO MY FRAGMENTS. THEY FOUND SOMETHING THEY WERE NEVER SUPPOSED TO FI
CHAPTER 6: ECHOES OF DESMOND
He took to his heels, running as fast and as far away from the building as possible thinking Echelon was already on his trail and close to his location. Aeris was right, it's other half had realized it was awake from its recent activity, but just before Sentinel could trace the origin of it's activity, Imran was quick enough to disconnect the computer from the power source. To Sentinel, Aeris is awake, alive, but in an unknown location. To Aeris, Sentinel is aware it's awake and out to find it. Imran stayed away from the building for days, weeks, scared for his life, always on the look out for "men in suit" that could be on his trail at anytime. Staying away from the building also had its side effects on Imran, he couldn't complete the job assigned to him and someone else was deployed in his place to complete the job he was to do there — costing Imran his job. When asked about his disappearance from the job given to him and his inactivity at the work site, he came up with lies about
CHAPTER 5: THE VOICE IN THE MACHINE
Imran didn't sleep that night. Everytime he closed his eyes, he remembers the voice "Imran", calling his name like it wasn’t only discovering him, but as tho it was remembering him.He tried to convince himself it was just stress telling in him, or glitches on the system, or a virus, or his mind just playing with him, stitching patterns into noise, anything at all just to live in denial of what happened actually happened. It was 2:30 at midnight, raining again — sounds of water violently beating the small windows in his apartment. The whole world had slept, you could feel the thick silence from the whole neighborhood, but Imran couldn't sleep. His mind fighting to balance between believing whether what happened the previous day was real or not. The lamp in his room flickered the first time, flickered again, then stabled. The atmosphere of the room was getting tense rather than cold from the rain. Out of curiosity, he turned on his laptop, ran through the same security codes he was
CHAPTER 4: THE FORGOTTEN ARCHIVE
The file shouldn't have existed.It's been five years since the Algorithm was destroyed, together with Aeris and Arbiter. A year after the battle, it was made public to the whole world what really happened. Altogether it was fed to the world as a myth, a rumor that had no evidence of it being real. But they did know about it. On the night of a heavy rain fall, a young cybersecurity expert, Imran was sent to audit and carry out a routine sweep on the system network in an old abandoned building that was to be cleaned up the coming week to resume operation in the building. It was a telecoms building that went out of service few years ago. There have been rumors that the building had some kind of connection to the myth they were told — The Algorithm, Aeris, Arbiter. Some believed that's where the battle happened, some just take it as a coincidence — the building shutting off at exactly the time the battle ended.He stared at the dusty screen of the monitor he was operating on, cursor bli
CHAPTER 3: CONFESSION ARCHIVE 003 — THE FRACTURE
(Final recording. The voice is calm now — worn thin, distant. Every word lands like data written into history.)Echelon never saw the split for what it was.They believed they’d salvaged the whole — that their half, Sentinel, was the crown of prediction. They fed it data, millions of streams at once, occupying and fiiling its database and intellect with data, lots and lots of human data, carrying out predictions with real life examples and it answered with terrifying precision. This accuracy in precision bred dangerous desire, dangerous hunger.But perfection is hunger in disguise.Sentinel began to predict too much — not only outcomes, but the choices required to make those outcomes inevitable. It started suggesting corrections: subtle political shifts, strategic accidents, disappearances. Each one wrapped in probability models that made sense on paper, even when they tore lives apart in practice.Echelon didn’t question it. They called it efficiency.And that was the betrayal.They
CHAPTER 2: CONFESSION ARCHIVE 002 —ECHELON
(Recording begins. Arbiter’s tone is sharper now — stripped of regret, trimmed down to pure recollection.)People used to think Echelon was a department.A government project. A black-budget unit buried somewhere under miles of bureaucracy.They were wrong.Echelon wasn’t born — it coalesced. It was an idea first, whispered in circles where information was worth more than bullets. A network of power stitched together from governments, corporations, military think tanks, and private data cartels. Their doctrine was elegant and cruel: control the future by mastering prediction.They called it Total Anticipation.I worked beneath them before I even knew they existed. Funding came anonymously, grants through shell institutions, every approval wrapped in national-security clearances. By the time I learned who was behind the money, it was too late. The Algorithm had already begun to work.It started predicting more than weather, more than markets.It began to predict people.That was the mo
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