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WELCOME TO THE FEDERAL DATABASE OF CLASSIFIED INTELLIGENCE.

UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS PUNISHABLE BY LAW.

CONTINUE? [Y/N]

A soft chuckle escaped Mykal's lips as he leaned back in his chair, fingers hovering over the keyboard. The warning flashed in crimson red, a futile attempt to intimidate him.

He had seen messages like this before—empty threats designed to scare off amateurs. But he wasn't just some curious kid poking around restricted sites. He was DescentMoon, a legend among his followers.

The chat exploded as soon as the message appeared on-screen.

xXDeadByteXx: WTF IS THIS???

NekoNyanUwU: BRO REALLY HACKING THE GOVT FOR FUN ☠️

CyberPunkDaddy: 💀💀💀 mans gon be on a watchlist by morning

$KingBounty$: $200 IF YOU ACTUALLY GET IN LMAO

Mykal smirked. His fingers moved with effortless precision, executing a series of commands in rapid succession. A proxy tunnel here, a backdoor exploit there—and just like that, the warning screen flickered. The red text distorted for a moment before vanishing entirely.

ACCESS GRANTED.

The chat went insane.

0mega_3clipse: HE JUST DID THAT IN 10 SECONDS WTF

GlitchHaven: bro's different 😭😭

DarknetDemon: ayo don't forget us when ur famous bro...by the fbi😂

Ghostline404: uhhhh, isn't this like… really illegal???

Mykal exhaled, adrenaline coursing through his veins. This was why people tuned in. Not for gaming. Not for memes. For this.

"Too easy," he muttered into the mic, his voice modulated to keep his identity hidden. "Come on, chat. Give me something harder."

He barely had time to bask in the moment before a new notification popped up.

$500 DONATION FROM Anomaly_404

Unlike the usual flashy alerts, this one came in silently—no sound effect, no animation. Just a message.

"If you're as good as you say, bypass the dark web's deepest layers and access THIS site. I wanna see if you can even reach it."

A link. No explanation. No details.

The chat slowed, as if his viewers sensed something was off.

T1ltedGod: ??? sketchy af

ZeroDay_Fox: nah bro this a setup 💀

CrimsonLullaby: THAT USERNAME IS SUS WTF

ByteCracker: lol do it

Mykal stared at the link. He had crawled through the deepest pits of the dark web before. Human trafficking rings, black market assassins, AI-driven chatrooms where people whispered secrets they shouldn't. He had seen things no one should see.

But this?

Something about it felt... wrong.

He hesitated for half a second. Then, he cracked his knuckles and typed in the first command.

The process was second nature to him—sandboxing the URL, checking for embedded trackers, running it through multiple layers of security. Nothing.

No malware, no red flags.

Just a black void of nothingness waiting to be opened.

"Alright," he muttered. "Let's see what we've got."

His fingers flew across the keyboard.

The moment he pressed enter, the entire room went dark.

Everything.

His monitors shut off. His WiFi router powered down. His keyboard stopped responding. Even the LED strip lights in his setup flickered before dying completely.

For the first time since he started streaming, he was cut off.

The only sound was his own breathing.

Then—one by one—his monitors flickered back on.

The stream was gone. His broadcasting software had shut itself down. The chat had vanished.

Instead, his main screen displayed a single open window.

The website.

The entire page was pitch black, except for a single line of text in white:

CONTRACT LOADED.

Below it, a signature box.

His mouse moved on its own.

The cursor hovered over the empty signature space, blinking.

A metallic taste filled his mouth.

Then—his speakers crackled, the silence broken by a distorted whisper.

"Welcome, DescentMoon. We've been expecting you."

His eyes darted back to the screen. The signature box had changed.

His name was already typed in.

MYKAL REYES.

His real name.

His breath hitched. He never—never—used his real name online.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard, pulse hammering.

Then the voice spoke again. Calm. Certain. Final.

"Sign. Now."

Mykal let out a dry chuckle, shaking his head. A virus? Seriously? What was it gonna do, throw some cheap jumpscare at him? He had dealt with far worse.

Without hesitation, he reached down and yanked the power strip, shutting down his entire setup in an instant. The monitors blinked off, the soft hum of his PC cut to silence, and the only light left was the faint red glow of his router struggling to reconnect.

"Nice try, whoever the hell you are," he muttered, plugging everything back in.

The reboot took a few minutes, but when his system came back online, everything looked normal. No weird website, no creepy whispers. Just his desktop wallpaper—a neon cyberpunk cityscape.

He opened his streaming software again, running a quick test to make sure everything was working. That's when he noticed it.

His face filter wasn't on.

His webcam feed showed his real, unfiltered face—black hoodie, tousled dark hair, sharp eyes staring back.

That was weird. His filter had never failed before. It was built into his setup, running separately from any browser-based exploits.

A slight unease crept in, but he quickly dismissed it. "Must've been that site messing with my settings," he muttered. "I'll just reformat everything tomorrow."

He glanced at the clock in the corner of the screen.

3:08 AM.

Damn. He didn't realize it had gotten so late.

A heavy wave of exhaustion hit him all at once. His body was begging for sleep, his head buzzing from staring at screens for too long.

"Whatever," he sighed, shutting everything down again. He'd deal with it in the morning.

He unplugged his entire setup just to be safe, then made his way to the bathroom. The overhead light flickered slightly as he stepped inside, but he didn't think much of it. His apartment was old. Wiring was probably messed up somewhere.

He turned on the tap, grabbing his toothbrush with one hand, phone in the other. He scrolled through a few messages while brushing his teeth, barely even looking at himself in the mirror.

Then he spit out the foam, glancing up.

For a split second, he felt something behind him.

A faint, almost imperceptible shadow near his shoulder.

His breath hitched. He spun around—

Nothing.

The bathroom was empty. The door still closed. The air still.

He exhaled through his nose, shaking his head. His mind was messing with him. Probably from staring at screens all night, running on low sleep.

He turned back to the mirror—

And paused.

For just a moment, something about his reflection felt... off.

Like the way it moved wasn't quite right.

His stomach twisted slightly, but he forced out a chuckle, shaking it off. "Damn, chat would be losing their minds if they saw me tripping over my own imagination."

Still, he avoided looking in the mirror again as he rinsed his mouth.

Something about it just didn't feel right.

Mykal finished up, drying his face with a towel before heading to bed. His body felt heavy with exhaustion, his muscles finally unwinding after hours in front of the screen. As he lay down, he let out a deep sigh, staring at the ceiling for a moment before turning his head toward the digital clock on his nightstand.

3:20 AM.

"Finally," he muttered, pulling the blanket over himself. Within minutes, his eyelids grew heavy, and he drifted off into a deep sleep.

A sharp breath.

Mykal's eyes snapped open.

His shirt clung to his skin, drenched in sweat. His chest rose and fell rapidly as he sat up, trying to shake off the suffocating heat that clung to the room.

He looked toward his window. The blinds were drawn, but through the small gaps, he could see the sky—dark, no hint of dawn yet.

Weird. It felt like he had been asleep for hours.

He turned his head to the clock.

3:20 AM.

His breath caught in his throat.

No minutes had passed.

He blinked, rubbing his eyes, then looked again. The glowing red numbers hadn't changed.

His body felt stiff, like he had been lying there for a long time. His mind swore he had dreamed—long, drawn-out dreams, but he couldn't remember any of them. The heat in his room was unbearable, making his skin clammy.

Maybe the air conditioning shut off?

Frowning, he reached for the remote and cranked the air conditioner to its max setting. The low hum of the machine filled the room, pushing out icy air.

"Probably just overtired," he muttered, flopping back onto the mattress.

Mykal woke up again, this time with a violent shiver running through his body.

The room was ice cold.

He groaned, not wanting to open his eyes yet, just blindly fumbling around his bed in search of his blanket. His hands moved over the mattress, the sheets, the pillow—but nothing. It was nowhere to be found.

His brows furrowed as he forced one eye open.

Then he froze.

Something was there.

A shadowy figure stretched across his ceiling, its mouth curved into an eerie, unnatural grin.

A sharp jolt of fear shot through his spine as his breath caught in his throat. His other eye snapped open, and he frantically rubbed them both, trying to clear his vision.

When he looked again…

Nothing.

Just the same old ceiling, a few patches of mold clinging to the corners. Maybe he had just mistaken the shapes for something else? A trick of his overtired brain?

He exhaled slowly, trying to calm his racing heart. Just a nightmare. That's all.

Shaking off the unease, his eyes landed on something else—his blanket.

It wasn't on his bed.

It was draped over his gaming chair, right in front of his streaming setup.

That's right… he had used it earlier while streaming and must've left it there.

Letting out a breath, he pushed himself up, shivering as the cold air bit at his skin. He crossed the room and reached for the blanket, eager to wrap himself in its warmth.

But the moment his fingers brushed the fabric—

His entire setup lit up.

All three monitors turned on at once, their glow flooding the dark room with an artificial white light.

Mykal yanked his hand back instinctively, heart pounding. He didn't turn them on. He didn't touch anything. He was sure of it.

But what was even weirder—

There was no startup screen. No desktop, no icons, no boot-up sequence.

Just a black screen.

And in the center of it, glowing in white letters—

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