Chapter 2: Don't Lie to Them

Chapter 2: Don't Lie to Them

The sound was a single, dry pop, like a twig snapping underfoot. It was digital, synthesized, yet it echoed in the real-world silence of Leo’s apartment with the weight of a gunshot. His blood turned to ice. He sat perfectly still, a statue carved from fear, his eyes locked on the monitor. The game—his hallway—was static, a perfect, mocking diorama of his life. The jagged scratch in the plaster on screen was a searing brand, proof that this was no coincidence.

His desire, sharp and primal, was to pull the plug. To end this impossible intrusion. But his body wouldn't obey. He was trapped, a spectator in a nightmare built from his own reality. The obstacle wasn't in the game; it was in his own mind, a paralysis born of sheer, unadulterated terror.

He tried to press the W key again, to move forward, to confront whatever had made that sound. His virtual self remained frozen. He tried to pan the view with his mouse. Nothing. The game had seized control.

That’s when he saw it.

From the shadowed threshold of the digital front door, a figure began to resolve. It wasn't a smooth animation. It coalesced from the glitching pixels, a jumble of corrupted data snapping into a vaguely human form. It was a 3D model from a bygone era of gaming, all sharp angles and smeared, low-resolution textures. It was tall and gaunt, its limbs slightly too long. Its head was tilted at a curious, predatory angle, like a bird of prey studying a field mouse.

And it wore his face. Or a crude, nightmarish approximation of it. The same unkempt hair, the same pale skin. But the eyes were just dark, empty polygons, and the mouth was a static, unmoving line. It was a digital death mask.

This was The Echo. His reflection.

It took a step. Then another. Its movements were wrong—a jerky, unnatural gait that was less a walk and more a controlled fall, its limbs clipping through the floor with each step. It moved down the hallway towards his fixed point of view, its empty eyes seemingly locked on him through the screen.

Leo’s breath hitched, coming in shallow, ragged gasps. He wanted to look away, to break the connection, but he couldn't. It felt like if he blinked, the thing would be on him. As the pixelated doppelgänger advanced, the humming from his PC speakers intensified, rising in pitch until it was a painful, keening whine. The single lightbulb in his real-life hallway flickered in perfect sync with the buzzing fluorescent strip in the game, plunging his apartment into a strobe-lit horror show.

One foot in the game, one foot in reality. The line was dissolving.

The figure was halfway down the hall now. He could see the corrupted textures on its shirt, a distorted pattern that mimicked the faded band logo on the T-shirt he was wearing right now. It knew what he looked like. It knew where he lived. And it was coming for him.

This thing wasn't just a virus. A virus corrupts files, steals data. It doesn't build a perfect replica of your apartment and then walk down the hall to meet you. This was something else. Something intelligent.

The reflection stopped, just a few virtual feet from his position. It stood unnaturally still, its broken form a monument to his terror. For a long moment, nothing happened. The whining from the speakers dropped back to a low hum. The lights in his hall stabilized. Then, white, blocky text appeared at the bottom of the screen, typed out one letter at a time with agonizing slowness.

D O N ' T

L I E

T O

T H E M.

The message was a turning point, a crack in the icy terror that held him captive. Who was "them"? What lie? The sheer absurdity of the question, the impossible context, was enough to shatter his paralysis. A surge of adrenaline, hot and chemical, flooded his veins. He wasn't going to sit here and be interrogated by a ghost in his machine.

He took action. His hand flew to the mouse, slamming the right button, the left. He hammered the escape key. The screen remained unchanged. The pixelated effigy of himself stood there, watching, judging. The cryptic message glowed beneath it.

"No," he whispered, the word scraping his dry throat. "No way."

He wasn't asking for permission. With a guttural yell that was more frustration than fear, he shoved his chair back and lunged for the tower case of his PC. His fingers fumbled for the power button, pressing it, holding it down. The fans whined in protest for a few seconds before the machine gave a final, decisive click.

The screen went black. The speakers went silent.

The result was a sudden, deafening quiet. The only sound was his own frantic breathing and the pounding of his heart in his ears. The blue glow of the monitor was gone, leaving him in the near-total darkness of his room, the ambient orange glow of a distant streetlamp barely seeping through his blinds.

It was over.

He stayed crouched on the floor for a full minute, his hand still on the power button, as if the entity might try to force its way back on. When nothing happened, he slowly, shakily, rose to his feet. His legs felt weak, like he’d just run a marathon.

He had to be sure.

He crept out of his room and into the real hallway. It was empty. The poster was just a poster. The scuff mark was just a scuff mark. The jagged scratch on the wall was just a flaw in the plaster from his own carelessness. It was his home. It was safe.

His mind raced, desperately searching for a logical anchor. It was a hack. A deeply sophisticated, personalized piece of malware. It had accessed his webcam, scraped his social media for photos, maybe even hijacked his phone's camera to map the apartment. It was invasive, terrifying, but ultimately, it was just code. Malicious code he had foolishly invited in. He had cut the power. He had severed the connection.

He let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension beginning to drain from his shoulders. He felt foolish, but the relief was immense. He’d wipe the drives. A clean install from the ground up. He’d never visit that forum again.

He walked back into his room and, with a lingering sense of dread, plugged the power cord back into the wall. He needed to erase it. He needed to be sure it was gone.

He hit the power button. The fans spun to life with a familiar whir. The monitor flickered on, displaying the motherboard’s boot-up logo. Everything was normal. He waited for the Windows loading screen, for the comforting, familiar chime.

It never came.

The boot logo vanished, replaced by a black screen and a single, blinking cursor in the top-left corner, like an old DOS prompt. He hadn’t even gotten to the operating system yet. This was impossible.

Then, the text appeared. Not typed out, but simply there, in the same stark, white font from the game.

I KNOW YOU'RE ALONE.

Leo’s blood didn't just run cold; it evaporated. This wasn't the game. This wasn't an application. This was deeper. It was in the bones of the machine. The hard shutdown hadn't killed it. It had just made it angry.

He stared, unable to move, unable to breathe. The line on the screen was a death sentence, a final confirmation that the walls of his apartment were no protection. The entity wasn't just watching him through the game anymore.

As he watched, paralyzed by this final, horrifying surprise, the line of text vanished. In its place, the second part of the message appeared. The same warning from the distorted reflection in the hall, now an undeniable threat burned into the very soul of his computer.

DON'T LIE TO THEM.