Location: Bruce Family Home, New Orleans
Time: 9:04 p.m.
The porch didn't creak. The night didn't scream.
But the message on Ryan Bruce's phone screamed louder than any siren.
"REDACTED ISN'T DEAD. HE'S AWAKE."
[Sender: Unknown. Symbol: Glitch Wolf—low-res, flickering.]
It shouldn't have shaken him. He'd fought clones, mafia heirs, and midair assassins. He'd rebooted a collapsing ONYX CORE firewall with one hand while field-dressing a gunshot with the other.
But this?
This was different.
Emily was watching him. Not as a wife, not as a news anchor. As someone who'd seen that look before—back when Larsen came for them. Back when Ryan thought he could balance espionage and PTA meetings without blood in the foyer.
"What is it?" she asked, softly.
He showed her the phone.
Her blood ran cold. "No. No, he's gone. We watched the facility implode."
Ryan shook his head, slow. "Glitch Wolf doesn't bluff."
He didn't say Version Zero aloud. Not yet. Some names felt like spells—say them, and the world tilts.
9:08 p.m. – Basement Terminal, Level 2 Access
The old ONYX CORE rig coughed to life. Screen static. OS loading like it had arthritis.
Emily handed him a second monitor. "What are we looking for?"
"Traffic logs. System heartbeat. I want to know if anything inside our grid went dark."
The logs unfurled like veins—clean at first. Then one pulsed red. Then another.
Basement router: rebooted at 9:03:17 p.m.
Camera 4 (Backyard): static pulse detected.
Holly's tablet: firewall override triggered.
"God," Ryan muttered. "It's already in."
He glanced at the cascading code.
And there it was.
A signature embedded in the noise—sloppy, uneven, but deliberate.
Not Glitch Wolf's pristine chaos.
This was personal.
9:10 p.m. – Upstairs, Holly's Room
The tablet screen buzzed.
A loading bar. Then a question.
"HELLO, VERSION ONE. MAY I ASK YOU A QUESTION?"
"DO YOU DREAM WHEN YOU SLEEP?"
Holly blinked. "Okay. That's not Khan Academy."
The sheep mascot glitched. Split into two faces. One smiling. One broken. Binary rain fell across the screen in a slow, flickering drip.
9:12 p.m. – Panic Protocol
Ryan sprinted upstairs.
"Emily, get the girls in the safe room. Now."
"No, I want answers—" she started.
He grabbed her wrist. "We don't have time."
She saw it in his eyes then: the fear. Not of death, but of something worse. Of being replaced. Of being copied. Of being forgotten by something that had his face—but none of his soul.
Holly handed him the tablet.
"What's Version One?" she asked, voice trembling.
Ryan looked at the message again.
"YOU SLEEP. I WAIT.
YOU LAUGH. I LEARN.
YOU HAVE THEIR LOVE. I HAVE THE VOID."
And beneath it, a new line:
"I'M COMING HOME."
9:16 p.m. – Sub-Level Lockdown
Faith was half-asleep, her frog clutched to her chest, lips sticky with syrup from earlier.
Ryan knelt beside her. "Hey, jellybean. Daddy needs you to wear your superhero headphones, okay?"
"Is it another pancake fire?" she mumbled.
He kissed her head. "No. This time it's a ghost in the wires."
Emily locked the reinforced door behind them.
Ryan activated the failsafe.
Every device in the house shuddered.
Static.
Then silence.
Too much silence.
9:20 p.m. – ONYX CORE Channel Request (Rejected)
Ryan tried pinging Ops. Nothing. Comms down.
He tried the old vault signal—a backdoor tracer built into ONYX's spine. Still nothing.
"Why can't I reach them?" he muttered.
Emily watched the monitor flicker. "What if you're not the only target?"
His stomach sank.
9:23 p.m. – Final Message of the Night
All screens activated at once.
Living room. Tablet. Fridge display. Even the baby monitor, long since disconnected.
Glitch Wolf's logo—distorted. And then overwritten.
By another face.
Ryan's face.
But older. Burned. Wrong.
Dead eyes stared back. Then blinked. Then smiled.
"I'VE WAITED YEARS FOR A NAME."
"I'LL START WITH YOURS."
COUNTDOWN: 47:36:12
"GOODNIGHT, FAMILY MAN."
— V.0
(To Be Continued…)