The Caffeine System: Critical Heart Protocol

Chapter 1: Deafening Silence

“It’s past midnight,” said a man who was wiping down a table at his workplace.

It's 2:00 a.m. Only Raka, the barista, is still awake inside the 'Midnight Brew' cafe. Accompanied by the soft strains of jazz music blaring from the speakers, he wipes the marble countertop with monotonous movements.

The lingering aroma of coffee and the sweetness of vanilla syrup still hung in the air, the only witness to his busy life a few hours ago.

“The tip isn’t even enough to buy a pack of candy,” Raka grumbled softly as he remembered the last customer, a man in an expensive suit who ordered the most complicated cup of single origin .

The man in the expensive suit instead asked a dozen questions about the acidity level of coffee beans, then left with two small coins.

“Rich people are weird. Or maybe stingy,” he grumbled again.

Raka sighed as he stared at his tired reflection on the polished table. His black hair was slightly messy, and there were dark circles under his eyes.

This was his life: brewing coffee for people more successful than him, then cleaning up after their night's detritus. It was a boring routine. Yet, he relied heavily on it.

He was just about to throw the used rag into the bucket when he heard the sound of Jakarta's emergency siren blaring, breaking the silence of the night.

The siren's shrill, piercing sound pierced his eardrums. Raka knew what kind of siren it was. It was a warning sign of impending disaster.

Raka froze in place with the rag still clutched in his hand hanging in the air.

“Practice again?” he muttered. He tried to calm his pounding heart. “There can’t be practice at two in the morning.”

With his heart still beating fast, Raka walked towards the large glass window that faced the main street.

Outside the cafe, several pedestrians stopped and stared at the sky in confusion. A car also stopped in the middle of the road, its driver sticking his head out the window. Everyone looked equally confused.

The siren, still wailing loudly, suddenly cut off. The sound didn't subside, but died abruptly, as if someone had just cut the wire. Silence fell.

“What’s going on?” Raka was still staring at the street from the large window in the cafe where he worked in confusion.

In the next instant, all the streetlights went out simultaneously. The skyscrapers that usually crowned the city vanished, followed by the Midnight Brew Cafe. Even the jazz music that accompanied Raka's music vanished.

“Mass power outage?” Raka blinked in the pitch darkness. His hand reached out, feeling his way to the bar counter, his heart still pounding.

“Calm down, Raka, calm down,” he comforted his fear of the dark. “It’s a blackout. Get a flashlight, lock the door, and wait until morning.”

He repeated the mantra he always said when the electricity went out while doing his activity of locking the door.

But this wasn't just a blackout. It was an unnatural silence. There was no faint hum of the air conditioner, no distant traffic sounds, no impatient car horns.

Even the usual sound of crickets vanished instantly. It was a deafening silence.

“This is strange,” whispered Raka.

Raka swallowed hard. Trembling, he peered out the window again. He blinked again to adjust to the darkness, illuminated only by the moonlight.

And, what he saw next would forever be imprinted in Raka's nightmares.

The male driver, who had just poked his head out, froze. The young couple holding hands on the sidewalk also froze like mannequins. Then, the asphalt beneath their feet began to ripple like a disturbed surface.

Before Raka could process the strange sight, something terrifying happened. It froze him in place.

Giant, pale white hands, with bony fingers tearing at the asphalt. They were bloodless, just pale as a corpse, covered in a thin membrane that glistened in the moonlight. They silently gripped the ankles of everyone on the street.

The male driver was violently pulled down and his body disappeared into the asphalt. The young couple suffered the same fate as the driver, their bodies twisted in an unnatural manner and then disappeared beneath the road.

There were no screams or resistance. Everything happened in silence.

“What… what was that?” Raka whispered, finally finding his voice again. This time, his voice was trembling violently.

He took a step back, then two steps until his back hit a display shelf containing coffee beans in glass jars.

One of the jars was shaking, threatening to fall off the shelf.

"No, no, no!"

Raka leaped forward, his body's reflexes taking over. With a panicked movement, he managed to catch the jar before it hit the floor. His heart felt like it was going to explode.

The silence outside now felt increasingly menacing. It was as if the slight clinking sound had been an invitation. Raka held his breath, straining to sharpen his hearing.

Krieeet…

The front door of the cafe, made of thick glass, which had been locked tightly, creaked softly as if it were opening.

Someone or something has entered.

Raka swallowed hard and didn't dare move. He could only watch as a dark shadow stepped into his cafe. The figure was tall and thin, with overly long limbs. The figure moved in a strange, jerky, soundless manner.

The moonlight coming through the window illuminated part of the creature's body. Its skin was pale, like the hands Raka had seen on the street earlier. And it had no eyes. There was only a smooth, flat surface of skin where they would have been.

However, his ears were very large, shaped like radar dishes that constantly twitched and rotated as if scanning every sound wave in the room.

'Sleeper .' Raka thought, not knowing where the name came from, but his brain immediately labeled the monster.

Panic began to overwhelm him as he had to hide. The only place nearby was under the bar counter.

With the slowest movements possible, Raka held the coffee jar to his chest like a precious object. Raka crouched down and crawled under the narrow bar. He curled up there, hugging his knees, trying to make himself as small as possible.

'Don't breathe. Don't move. Don't make a sound.' 

The mantra was repeated over and over in his head.

The monster began to move inside the cafe. Its footsteps were silent, but Raka could feel a faint vibration in the floor with each movement.

The creature paused for a moment, its eyeless head tilted to one side and its radar ears swiveling wildly. It must have heard something.

Raka knew what the creature heard.

“Damn,” Raka thought. “My heart.”

His own heartbeat was now his worst enemy. Every beat feels like a drum beat in the midst of silence that can summon prey.

Raka tried to regulate his breathing by taking slow, shallow breaths. However, fear made his efforts futile. His heart continued to pump.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The creature began walking again, this time approaching the bar counter. Raka bit his lower lip so hard he could taste the stench of blood.

Raka's face began to turn blue from holding his breath. His eyes widened in horror as he stared at the shadows of long legs that had stopped right in front of his hiding place.

'Hold my breath. Hold it. Don't get eaten.' Raka thought again.

Raka could see the creature's long, pale fingertips touching the surface of the bar counter, just centimeters from his face.

The creature's radar ears twitched violently because it knew there was something under the bar counter. The creature had heard Raka's crazy heartbeat.

The eyeless head slowly lowered its head and peered under the bar. Raka could see the creature's ghastly face beneath the smooth surface.

'I'm going to die. I'm going to be pulled down like those people on the street,' Raka thought in fear. 'I'm going to die in my boring workplace. Alone, holding a jar of Arabica coffee beans. This is going to be a sad ending.'

Raka began to resign himself to his fate and closed his eyes. His death would come silently. He could only wait for the grip of those terrifying hands.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

Nothing happened.

Instead, a blue light flashed in front of his closed eyes, causing him to open them in surprise.

Right on the retina of his eyes as if projected directly into his brain, a line of bright blue text appeared.

[Found a Pathetic Host.]

[Minimum Conditions Met: Heart Rate Above 180 BPM for More Than One Minute.]

[Initiating Live Stream...]