The message was gone.
Khaleed stared at the screen, blinking. ZapChat showed zero chats. No link. No contact named Unmasked. Just the familiar sterile emptiness.
He checked the file manager. No "Obey_002.wav."
Had he imagined it? The voice?
No — he remembered the way it wrapped around him. The words still echoed in his skull like a haunting he didn't ask for.
"You want to kneel, don't you?"
He sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on knees, heart knocking quietly. He wasn't scared. Not really. But something was off. The room felt different. More real. Too real.
The mirror caught his eye again. For a second, he thought he saw movement in it. He didn't check. He just threw a shirt over it.
He needed noise.
FL Studio came alive with the same lifeless beat. Four bars. No drop. But now he heard her voice in it, even though it wasn't there. She'd made the track whole for a second — then taken it with her.
He wondered if the message had been a prank. Or maybe he was finally breaking, just like everyone said he would.
Whatever it was, he saved the project file under a new name:
Obey_003.flp
Then he shut the laptop.
Flashback. Two years earlier.
The lecture hall was hot. The generator had tripped again and half the fans weren't working. People whispered, laughed, scrolled..
Khaleed sat in the middle row, bucket hat on barely revealing his eyes which were on the lecturer but mind elsewhere. He had aced this shit in secondary school. First class material, they used to call him. Gifted. Smart. Going Places.
But here?
Here, it didn't seem like it one bit. Everyone was loud. Social. Eager. What exactly do they think will happen after these 5 years exactly?... They studied in groups and talked like they were longtime friends. He didn't speak. He didn't belong.
The lecturer asked a question — something about data structures.
Khaleed knew the answer.
He didn't raise his hand.
Back to present.
He was in his room again. The sky outside had turned the color of rust. NEPA was still out. His mum had stopped knocking, probably gone to bed angry. Again.
He opened GhostLoop. Still zero notifications. Then Threadr.
A post caught his eye:
"Sometimes you gotta disappear to find the version of you they tried to bury."
He saved it. Then stared.
Then opened Notes.
Typed:
"I don't think I want to be Kade anymore."
Paused.
Backspaced.
Typed:
"I think I'm becoming someone else."
He saved it. Closed the phone. Lay back.
Sleep didn't come. But she did.
In fragments.
In sound.
In the weight of eyes he couldn't see.