For the next few days, nothing happened.

The marketing department printer now bore an "Under Maintenance" tag and remained silent. My cursor behaved impeccably, with no more mysterious movements. I convinced myself that night's events were merely two unrelated technical glitches that happened to coincide—nothing more. My logical defenses strengthened, and life resumed its proper course. I even felt slightly embarrassed about my overreaction.


Until late Thursday night.

Around one in the morning, I stood up to visit the break room. Before leaving my desk, I instinctively hit "Win+L" to lock my workstation—muscle memory ingrained in every IT professional, security protocol 101. The screen switched to the login interface: company logo, my avatar, password field below. All normal.

I was gone maybe three minutes. Returning with a cup of water, still several yards from my desk, I noticed my screen was on—normal enough. But something in the white password field was flashing.


Not the steady blink of a cursor, but an entire line of black, rapidly changing characters. They refreshed faster than the eye could track—like those Hollywood hacker scenes. A chaotic jumble of letters, numbers, and symbols frantically filled, cleared, and refilled the small input box.

I froze mid-step. Alarm bells clanged in my head.


A remote attack? Someone running a brute force crack on my password?

The moment I sat down—the exact instant my cup hit the desk with a thud—the frantic character parade stopped dead. The input box returned to its empty state, leaving only the quiet, rhythmic blink of the cursor.

As if I'd imagined the whole thing.

But I knew better. I felt violated, and beneath that, deeply unsettled. This wasn't a glitch; it was deliberate. I punched in my password and dove into the system. For the next two hours, I abandoned all work and became a paranoid sysadmin, conducting a forensic-level investigation of my own machine.

I combed through remote login logs—no unusual IPs. I scrutinized the process list—no suspicious background programs. I deployed three different industry-leading security suites, running the deepest possible scans. The verdict was unanimous: "Your system is secure."

No trace of intrusion anywhere. As if that string of gibberish had materialized from nothing and vanished into thin air.

Two hours later, I collapsed back in my chair, overwhelmed by helplessness. I'd have preferred finding a clever hacker—at least that would fit my worldview. Instead, I faced something that had undeniably happened yet defied all explanation. Like witnessing gravity suddenly fail. The panic was primal.

I needed a smoke. Badly.

The fire escape was my only refuge. I descended the stairs, footsteps echoing through the empty concrete shaft. Instead of heading to the main entrance, I went straight down to the basement loading dock. At this hour, I knew night guard Frank would likely be there.

Sure enough, there he was—perched on an overturned plastic crate, a makeshift folding table before him. His stainless steel thermos steamed in the cool air. The massive loading dock door was cracked open, offering a sliver view of the dimly lit parking lot beyond.

"You again, Alex." He nodded without surprise. "Data not playing nice tonight?"

Frank was in his fifties, silver-haired, with a gentle demeanor. We weren't close, but in this midnight building, we were the only souls stirring.

"Something like that," I mumbled, lighting up. "Frank, how long have you been in this building?"

"Fifteen years this August." He sipped his tea, the cheap aroma wafting over. "Why? Looking for building gossip?"

"Just curious." I kept my tone casual. "This place… does it get weird at night? You know, equipment acting up? Flickering lights, network drops, that sort of thing?"

Frank studied me, his eyes calm but knowing. He smiled, revealing tea-stained teeth.

"Buildings are like people, Alex. They get old, parts start failing. And this one doesn't like the quiet much," he paused, sipped his tea, then added slowly: "Just don't let it think you're too lonely. Sometimes it likes to create its own entertainment."

He spoke with the air of an old-timer spinning yarns, deliberately cryptic. But as I listened, the hair on my neck prickled. His words hung between harmless joke and deliberate warning.

I didn't press further. I finished my cigarette in silence, muttered thanks, and headed back upstairs.

Back at my desk, I tried to dismiss Frank's words. Just an old security guard's superstitions, some workplace urban legend. I needed to focus.

I had an urgent quarterly analysis to complete. But when I tried opening the critical data file, an error message appeared: "File corrupted, unable to read."

I tried every recovery trick in my arsenal—backup restoration, repair tools, even manual parsing with a hex editor. An hour later, I had nothing. The file was like a shattered mirror, its data reduced to meaningless fragments.

Frustration boiled over. Just as I was about to email my boss admitting defeat, my triple monitors went "pop" and all three screens went black simultaneously.

Not a power outage—the tower's indicator light still glowed. Just the display signal, severed.

My world plunged into darkness and silence.

A second later, the middle screen flickered to life. Not my desktop, but a line of white text against a pitch-black background.

It appeared in the coldest, most primitive system font—blocky pixels with no anti-aliasing. The characters materialized one by one, with deliberate, measured rhythm:

N E E D H E L P ?

I stared at those words, feeling the blood drain from my face.

This wasn't a glitch. This wasn't random. This was a clear, precise message directly addressing my situation.

It knew I couldn't open the file. It knew I needed help.

It was… communicating with me.

In that moment, my thirty-year worldview—built on logic and science—utterly collapsed. This wasn't a technical issue or psychological effect. This was something beyond my understanding, yet undeniably present—in my computer, watching me, interacting with me.

Primal, overwhelming fear seized me. My body reacted before conscious thought. I lurched down, frantically groping under the desk until my fingers found the cold plastic casing, then yanked with all my strength.

With a sharp click.

As the power cord tore free from the tower, the screen died instantly. The world fell into blessed silence.

The plug hit the floor with a faint plastic clatter. In the deathly silence, it sounded like a gunshot.