Chapter 3: The First Glitch

Chapter 3: The First Glitch

Four days passed in a haze of sterile routine. Ashfield operated with the frictionless perfection of a machine. The sun rose at 06:00, the subjects emerged from their identical houses at 08:00, and the low, ambient hum of the facility’s life support systems never wavered. For Chris, the days bled into one another, measured in patrol rotations and cups of stale coffee brewed in the security hub. The initial, gut-wrenching sense of being a zookeeper had dulled into a familiar, low-grade dread. This was the job. Watch the screens, log the data, collect the paycheck. Don't think about the cameras in the bathrooms. Don't think about McDonough's dead-eyed smile. Just get through the one hundred days.

He was beginning to believe he could do it.

The fifth day started like all the others. Chris was in the hub, nursing his first coffee of the morning, watching the town wake up on the monitors. On screen 12, Arthur was already up, sitting at his kitchen table, staring intently at one of his silver spoons as if trying to divine the future from his own reflection. The routine was almost comforting.

At 07:30 precisely, the radio on his console crackled to life. It was Baker, calling in the morning headcount from the East perimeter checkpoint.

“Hub, this is Baker. Morning count complete.”

“Go ahead, Baker,” Chris said, ready to tick the box on his daily log.

There was a pause. A beat of static-filled silence that was just a fraction of a second too long. “Uh… Hub, I’ve got a discrepancy.”

Chris sighed, leaning forward. “Count again, Baker. Someone’s probably in the john.”

“Negative, sir. I’ve counted twice. All subjects are accounted for. All forty… one of them.”

The words hung in the air, nonsensical and sharp. Chris’s hand froze over the logbook. “Say again, Baker?”

“I have a visual on forty-one subjects, sir,” Baker repeated, his voice tight with a confusion that had cracked his usual gruff monotone. “I don’t know how. It’s impossible. But I’m looking at them.”

A cold spike of adrenaline shot through Chris, sharp and unwelcome. He thought of the rules. Report any strange occurrences. This was more than strange. It was a fundamental breach in the experiment’s reality.

“Stay on the perimeter,” Chris ordered, his voice all business, masking the sudden tremor in his gut. “I’ll run the count myself from the hub.”

He pushed his coffee aside, fingers flying across the console. One by one, he began isolating the feeds, his eyes scanning, counting, cross-referencing. The Millers in House 7, arguing over who left the milk out. That was two. Arthur in House 12, now back to polishing his spoons. Three. The Garcias, sharing a silent breakfast. Five.

He was meticulous. He was thorough. He was a professional. And every time he ran the numbers, his heart hammered a little harder against his ribs.

Thirty-eight. Thirty-nine. Forty.

And then… one more.

In House 21, a residence he knew had been empty, a man was sitting on the edge of the bed, lacing up a pair of standard-issue shoes. He was nondescript, maybe in his early forties, with thinning hair and a placid expression. Chris zoomed in, his blood turning to ice. He didn’t recognize him. He had spent the last four days forcing himself to obey Rule 8, to remember their faces. He knew the face of every subject, every line on their brow, every nervous tic. This man was not one of them. He was an error. A ghost in the machine.

“Baker,” Chris said into the radio, his voice low and urgent. “Who the hell is in House 21?”

“No idea, sir. He’s not on my roster.”

Of course, he wasn’t. The roster listed forty names. Forty. Chris had checked it himself every single morning. This was it. The ‘strange occurrence’ McDonough had been so vague about.

He followed protocol. He opened a direct channel to Central Command—the faceless entity he’d been told to contact for emergencies only.

“Ashfield Security to Central. We have an unsanctioned presence on site. I repeat, an unsanctioned presence.”

The reply was instantaneous, a calm, synthesized female voice that held all the warmth of a morgue slab. “Central copies. Please clarify, Ashfield.”

“We have an unauthorized individual within the perimeter. My morning headcount is forty-one subjects. The official roster is forty.”

There was a pause, filled with a soft electronic hum. Chris imagined analysts scrambling, alarms blaring. He expected a lockdown order, a dozen questions. Instead, the voice returned, placid and utterly unconcerned.

“Chief Chambers, your information is incorrect. Please refer to your updated roster. The subject count is forty-one. There is no unsanctioned presence. Please maintain the established baseline.”

Chris stared at the radio receiver. “Central, I am looking at the roster I was issued on day one. The count is forty. There is a man here who was not here yesterday.”

“Your roster is correct, Chief Chambers. Population forty-one. Thank you for your report. Central out.”

The channel went dead.

For a moment, Chris couldn't breathe. It felt like the floor had dropped out from under him. Your roster is correct. He felt a dizzying wave of vertigo, the sterile, windowless room seeming to tilt around him. Was he losing his mind? Had the isolation, the stress, finally cracked him?

No. He trusted Baker. More importantly, he trusted his own eyes. He had counted forty people for four straight days.

He shoved himself away from the console, his chair screeching across the floor. The physical evidence. He needed the physical evidence. He stormed over to the file locker where he’d stored the hard-copy welcome manual and the personnel files on his first day. His hands shook as he fumbled with the key.

He pulled the thick binder out, the one with the stylized ‘A’ on the front, and slammed it onto his desk. He flipped it open to the digital roster he’d printed out as a backup. His finger traced down the list of names. And there, slotted between ‘Ross, Amelia’ and ‘Sanchez, David,’ was a new entry: ‘Silas, John. Subject #41.’

It was seamlessly integrated. The font was identical. The formatting was perfect. It looked like it had always been there.

A cold sweat broke out on his brow. His memory screamed that this was wrong, that the paper in front of him had fundamentally changed since he’d last looked at it.

With a growing, sickening sense of horror, he turned back to the first page of the manual. The welcome page. He remembered the words clearly, had even joked about the sterile corporate phrasing with Baker. Welcome to Ashfield. Population: 40. A controlled, simple number.

His eyes fell upon the page. The corporate logo was the same. The welcome paragraph was the same. But the population count…

It was different.

The text didn't read ‘Population: 40’. It didn't even read ‘Population: 41’.

Printed in crisp, black, undeniable ink were the words:

Welcome to Ashfield. Population: 47.

Chris stared, his mind refusing to process the number. Forty-seven. It made no sense. It didn't match the old reality, it didn't match the new headcount, it didn't match anything. It was a number plucked from a nightmare, a catastrophic system error made manifest on the page.

He was trapped. Trapped in a concrete fishbowl a hundred miles from anywhere, and the water was turning to poison. Either he was completely and irrevocably insane, or the very laws of reality he had built his life on were fraying at the edges, one impossible number at a time.