Chapter 2: The First Red Pin

Chapter 2: The First Red Pin

Sleep offered no escape. Alex had spent the night in a state of feverish, fitful rest, his dreams haunted by a single, pulsing yellow light. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the map, a bleak digital continent of death with a new, personal beacon shining directly on top of him. He’d woken up with his heart pounding, the ghost of Mark Miller’s mocking laughter still ringing in his ears.

The first thing he did was stumble to his desk. The monitor was still on, casting a pale, sickly glow across his messy room. And the pin was still there. Of course it was. A part of him, the logical part, the part that still believed in a world governed by reason, had hoped it was just a sophisticated prank with a 24-hour timer. But no. It remained, a silent, unblinking yellow eye.

He spent the entire next day in a state of quiet, methodical panic. He didn't go to school. He told his mom he had a stomach bug, a lie she accepted with a worried glance and a glass of ginger ale. The moment she left for work, he was back at the computer, launching a full-scale assault. He ran vulnerability scanners, tried to brute-force what he imagined was an admin login, and even attempted a clumsy DDoS attack on the server using a script he’d downloaded years ago. The website was a fortress. It shrugged off his every effort without so much as a flicker.

It was in a moment of pure, teeth-grinding frustration, clicking the mouse like a madman, that he discovered the rule. His cursor snagged the edge of the yellow pin, and with a convulsive jerk of his hand, he dragged it.

The pin moved.

For a breathtaking second, hope surged through him. He dragged the pin clear across the city map and released the mouse button. He’d done it. He was free.

But the pin, as if tethered by an invisible elastic band, snapped back to its original position, settling directly over his apartment building with a quiet finality.

He tried again, slower this time. He clicked and held. The pin was his to command. He could move it anywhere. He dragged it over the park, over the school, over Mark’s house. He could hover it there, a phantom curse held in check only by the pressure of his index finger. But the moment he let go, it would return.

Then he tried something different. He dragged the pin to a new location—a random intersection a few blocks away—and instead of just releasing the mouse, he clicked again.

The pin stayed.

A cold, greasy sweat broke out on his forehead. The pin wasn't locked to his home. It was locked to him. He could move it. He could place this digital curse on someone else, on some other unsuspecting location. But he couldn’t get rid of it. He couldn’t delete it. The website’s one, unspoken rule slammed into him with the force of a physical blow: Pins can be moved, but never deleted.

The thought was so monstrous he couldn't process it. Move it? Where? To condemn some random stranger just to get rid of a cruel high school joke? No. It had to be a joke. It had to be.

Exhausted and defeated, he finally pushed away from the desk late that evening. The screen’s glow was giving him a pounding headache. He needed a break from the obsession, a moment of normalcy. He wandered into the living room, collapsing onto the sofa. His mom was half-watching the local evening news, the familiar, droning voice of the news anchor a comforting blanket of mundane reality.

“...and our top story tonight, a developing tragedy in the quiet Oakwood subdivision.”

Alex’s attention, which had been drifting, snapped into focus.

“Police were called to the 1125 Hawthorne Lane residence for a wellness check this afternoon,” the anchor continued, her expression professionally somber. A picture of a pleasant two-story suburban home appeared on the screen. “Inside, they discovered the bodies of the four members of the Henderson family. Details are scarce, but sources say authorities are investigating it as a possible mass suicide.”

1125 Hawthorne Lane.

The address hit Alex like a jolt of electricity. No. It couldn't be.

He scrambled off the couch, his sudden movement startling his mom. “Alex? Are you okay?”

He didn’t answer. He was already halfway to his room, his blood roaring in his ears. He fumbled with the mouse, his hand shaking uncontrollably. The browser was still open to the website. The map of their city filled the screen.

He remembered the three yellow pins he’d seen when Mark first zoomed in on their area. One was his. The other two were on the other side of town. One of them… he’d hovered over it out of morbid curiosity… it was in the Oakwood subdivision.

He found it in seconds. 1125 Hawthorne Lane.

The pin was still yellow.

Relief washed over him, so potent it made him dizzy. It was a coincidence. A horrible, gut-wrenching coincidence, but nothing more. The website was just a sick catalog, not a cause. He was an idiot for letting a prank get to him like this.

He stared at the screen, his breath slowly returning to normal, watching the little yellow icon pulse gently. But as he watched, something changed. The pulse quickened. The steady, soft glow began to flicker, erratically, like a dying lightbulb.

Then, the color began to shift.

It started at the edges, a faint pinkish tinge creeping inward. He watched, frozen in a state of horrified fascination, as the yellow was slowly, inexorably consumed. It was like watching a drop of blood diffuse in water. The yellow bled away, replaced by a deep, arterial red. Within seconds, the transformation was complete. The pin at 1125 Hawthorne Lane was no longer yellow. It was crimson. Final.

A choked gasp escaped his throat. His hand, acting on its own morbid impulse, moved the cursor over the newly red pin. He clicked.

There was no simple text box with a name and a cause of death.

An image loaded.

It was grainy, taken from a low angle, as if from a cell phone. The photo depicted a living room. The same pleasant suburban home from the news report, but now it was a scene of utter horror. Furniture was overturned. A television was smashed on the floor. And on the beige carpet, there were dark, sprawling stains that his mind refused to fully comprehend. The photo was a raw, unfiltered glimpse into the immediate aftermath of an unspeakable tragedy. It was a crime scene photo.

Alex recoiled, shoving his chair back so hard it screeched against the floor and slammed into his wall. He couldn’t breathe. He scrambled to close the browser, to shut the laptop, to make the image go away, but it was burned onto the back of his eyelids.

The prank. The website. The pins. The news report. The red.

It wasn't a game. It wasn't a joke. It was real. Every last horrifying piece of it was real.

He sat there in the sudden, suffocating darkness of his room, trembling violently. The silence was broken only by the frantic, panicked thumping of his own heart. In his mind’s eye, he saw the map of his city, saw the fresh red stain of the Henderson family’s fate. And then, he saw the other pin. The one that was still yellow. The one pulsing steadily, patiently, right on top of his own home.

It wasn't a joke. It was a countdown. And his turn was next.