Chapter 2 - The Phantom on the Monitor
The glare from the ceiling monitor cast a sickly greenish hue over Maya’s face as she stared at the grid of tiny video feeds. On the upper-right quadrant, camera four showed the secondary stairwell leading up from the basement. A tall figure clad in a dark tactical jacket stood motionless directly beneath the lens, staring straight into the glass with an unsettling, deliberate stillness.
“Bryce?” Marcus called out from inside the server room, his voice echoing off the metallic panels. He lowered his smartphone camera, stepping toward the doorway. “Who’s Bryce? Did you invite someone else?”
“No,” Leo said, his mischievous demeanor completely vanishing. He stepped up beside Maya, his eyes locked on the monitor. The color drained rapidly from his face. “Bryce shouldn't even be in the building. He transferred to the West Campus three months ago after the hardware theft incident.”
“He’s not supposed to have keycard access to this sector,” Maya said, her voice dropping to a harsh whisper. She pointed at the monitor as the figure on camera four slowly raised a gloved hand and tapped the glass of the stairwell lens. “Look at him. He’s waiting for us.”
“This has to be a prerecorded loop or a glitch in the security feed,” Marcus insisted, though his hand trembled as he gripped his phone. “The system was fried during the firmware update yesterday. Right, Leo?”
“I... I don't know,” Leo stammered, stepping backward. The bold red 'N' on his jacket seemed to mock him under the flickering fluorescent lights. “The firmware update was supposed to secure the mainframe, not open up legacy loopholes.”
“You didn't secure anything,” Maya said, turning on him with sharp, accusatory eyes. “You opened a backdoor, didn't you? You wanted to prove you were smarter than the district cybersecurity team, and you invited Bryce in to help you, or to frame him.”
“I didn't invite him!” Leo raised his voice, the sound bouncing sharply down the empty hallway.
“Keep your voice down!” Sarah hissed from inside the server room, her phone light cutting a harsh beam across the polished floor. “If security hears us, we’re all facing expulsion. Or worse.”
“Expulsion is the least of our problems,” Maya whispered, pointing back at the monitor.
May you like
The screen flickered. The figure on camera four was no longer standing in the stairwell. The feed cut to black for a fraction of a second, and then camera two, which covered the hallway just ten feet behind them, clicked on. The shadow of a tall person stretched across the linoleum floor, creeping slowly toward them.
---
