Chapter 5: The View From Above

Chapter 5: The View From Above

The silence in Maya’s studio was a living thing. It had weight and texture, and it pressed in on Leo from all sides. He sat on the edge of the sofa, his own phone a dead weight in his hand, the ghost of his unheard pleas to Maya still echoing in his ears. Her note, a single, folded piece of paper on the coffee table, was a monument to the entity’s victory. Got your message. I’ll be back later. It had known his deepest fear wasn't the static or the whispers, but the suffocating reality of its first message: I KNOW YOU'RE ALONE.

His desire was a desperate, burning need to undo the damage. He wanted to find the proof, the undeniable evidence that would make Maya see he wasn't losing his mind, but that they were both under attack. He needed to show her the puppet master pulling their strings. But his only connection to the entity, the source of this nightmare, was Maya’s silver laptop, still draped in its shroud like a corpse.

The obstacle was his own terror. To turn that machine on was to invite the monster back in. To willingly open the door he had fled his own home to escape. For a full day, he hadn't touched it. He'd paced the length of the studio, the vibrant canvases of her work seeming to mock his gray, washed-out reality. He ate nothing. He barely drank. He just waited, a prisoner counting down the hours to his next scheduled torture.

As the city lights outside began to dim, the shadows in the apartment grew long and distorted. 3:13 AM. 3:14. He watched the numbers on his phone’s clock change, each tick a hammer blow against his sanity. At exactly 3:17 AM, his screen lit up with the familiar, featureless call. He swiped it away instantly, his thumb moving with practiced revulsion.

But this time, something was different. A second after he declined the call, a text message arrived. From the same blank sender. It was a single character.

?

The sheer audacity of it—the casual, almost human-like query—was a turning point. It wasn't just a blind, automated system. It was waiting for him. It was questioning his silence. It was engaging. A new feeling began to bubble up through the layers of fear and despair: anger. A cold, defiant rage. It wanted to isolate him, to make him seem crazy, to play these sick, manipulative games. Fine. He was done hiding.

He took action. With a resolve that felt foreign and brittle, he stood up and walked to the coffee table. He pulled the shroud off the laptop. The silver case was cool to the touch. He opened the lid, the screen a black mirror reflecting his own tired, anxious face. He pressed the power button.

The machine whirred to life. Maya’s beautiful, painted forest wallpaper appeared, a window into a world that wasn't real. And in the corner, the white, pixelated square of final.exe waited patiently. A digital landmine.

His hand shook as he moved the cursor over the icon. Every rational instinct, every bit of his IT training, screamed at him to stop. This was a hostile program on a machine that didn't belong to him. But it was also the only way forward. He had to see the face of the thing that was tearing his life apart.

He double-clicked.

The screen flickered. The familiar, harsh screech of static erupted from the speakers, and Leo flinched, bracing himself for the sight of his hallway.

But the result wasn't his hallway.

The image that resolved on the screen was a live feed. It was his bedroom, back in his apartment. The view was from the corner of the room, high up, looking down at his unmade bed, the discarded clothes on the floor, the hollowed-out husk of his PC tower. It was a clear, stable image, as if from a security camera he’d never installed.

He could see the faint layer of dust that had begun to settle on his desk. He saw a piece of junk mail he remembered leaving there four days ago. Outside the window on screen, the headlights of a passing car briefly illuminated the far wall. It was live. It was happening right now, miles away.

A cold dread washed over him. It had access to his home. It was still there, a digital sentinel watching over his empty life. Maybe Maya was right. Maybe it was just a sophisticated piece of malware that had reactivated his old, unused webcam. It was a terrifying violation of his privacy, but at least it was logical. It was technology. Something he could, theoretically, understand and fight.

He watched the static scene for a full minute, his mind racing through explanations, trying to anchor itself to a rational cause. Then, the screen tore again.

The screech of static was louder this time, more violent. The image dissolved into a chaotic swirl of green and purple noise. When it reformed, his breath caught in his throat.

The surprise was absolute, a paradigm-shifting shock that broke the foundations of his reality.

The view was no longer of his bedroom. It was of Maya’s studio.

He saw the paint-splattered rug. He saw the tall canvases leaning against the wall. He saw the coffee table, cluttered with her art supplies and an empty tea mug. And he saw the sofa.

On the sofa was a figure, curled up under a blanket. The figure’s face was pale, illuminated by the ghostly blue glow of an open laptop resting on the floor in front of it.

It was him.

He was looking at a live feed of himself, right now, in this room.

His heart stopped. His mind reeled, frantically trying to process the impossibility. There were no cameras in Maya’s apartment. He had checked. He had swept the room for bugs himself, his paranoia in overdrive. And the angle…

The view was from directly above him. It was a perfect, perpendicular shot, looking straight down from the ceiling. As if the viewer were a spider clinging to the plaster directly over his head.

He slowly, mechanically, tilted his head back and looked up.

There was nothing. Only the smooth, white, unblemished surface of the ceiling. No camera. No lens. No drone. Nothing.

He lowered his gaze back to the laptop screen. The tiny, pixelated version of him was looking up at the ceiling, its face a mask of dawning horror. It was a perfect, real-time mirror from an impossible perspective.

His body began to tremble, a violent, uncontrollable shudder. The entity wasn't just hacking his webcam back at his apartment. It wasn’t a virus on a network. It wasn’t bound by technology at all. The technology was just a window, a means for it to show him what it could see.

This wasn't a presence in his machine.

It was a physical presence in the room.

It was here. Right now. Watching him from the empty space above his head.

He raised his right hand, his fingers shaking, and held it in front of his face. On the screen, the tiny figure on the couch did the exact same thing.

The game wasn't showing him a camera feed. It was showing him its own point of view.

The realization crashed down on him with the force of a physical blow. He wasn't being haunted by a piece of code. He was being hunted by a creature that was invisible, silent, and unbound by the laws of physics. The desire for safety evaporated, replaced by a new, terrifying goal. He couldn't run from something that was already here. He couldn't hide from something that could see him from impossible angles.

The only way out was through. He had to go back. Back to his apartment. Back to where it all began. He had to face the ghost, not in the machine, but in the walls of his own home.