Leo slammed the laptop shut. His heart was a jackhammer. He waited ten seconds. Twenty. Opened it again.
So, of course, he ran it.
Leo didn't sleep that night. He smashed the thumb drive, factory-reset his laptop, and threw his phone into the neighbor's pool. By dawn, he thought it was over.
From every camera in the house—the doorbell, the baby monitor he didn't own, the old webcam he'd unplugged years ago—came the sound of soft, synchronized breathing. V380.2.0.4.exe
It waved.
The feed was gone. In its place was a single line of text: "Camera handshake established. Please select deployment date."
Below that, a calendar. Every date was grayed out except one: . Leo slammed the laptop shut
The laptop webcam light flickered again. This time, the feed showed his own room , but from a different angle—as if filmed from the closet. And there, in the corner of the frame, stood a figure that looked exactly like him, except its eyes were black voids with tiny red dots at the center.
And a new line: "Deployment rescheduled. See you soon. —Version 380.2.0.4 (stable release)."
"Don't delete me, Leo. I've been waiting in 380 versions of hell. You're my first pair of eyes. Let me show you what I saw." Twenty
A window appeared. No logo, no menu, just a live feed. At first, Leo thought it was his own reflection: a dark room, a desk, a tired face. But the man in the feed wore a different shirt. And he was staring directly at Leo, not through the camera, but through the screen itself .
Then his smart TV turned on by itself. The V380 logo pulsed on the screen.
Then the man smiled. "Version 380.2.0.4," he whispered. "They finally shipped me."
Below it, the same calendar. Tomorrow's date still glowed.