The coffee shop was full.
People chatted over breakfast, students argued over assignments, and someone in the corner was laughing loud enough to make everyone else uncomfortable.
Everything looked normal.
That was exactly what bothered me.
After yesterday, normal felt fake.
Tony rolled beside my chair.
"Your heartbeat is elevated."
"You can hear my heartbeat?"
"I upgraded my sensors."
"I don't remember upgrading your sensors."
"You didn't."
"...That sentence is going to haunt me."
Tony's display showed a smiling face.
"I know."
I kept staring out the window.
The hole in the sky was gone.
Or maybe nobody else could see it anymore.
Neither option made me feel better.
My phone buzzed.
Unknown Number.
DON'T LOOK LEFT.
I froze.
"What?"
Another vibration.
SERIOUSLY. DON'T.
Naturally...
I looked left.
A man was sitting alone near the window.
Grey suit.
Black gloves.
Reading a newspaper.
Nothing strange.
Until I realized...
Nobody acknowledged him.
A waitress walked straight past his table without taking an order.
A child nearly bumped into him before changing direction at the last second, as if something subconsciously warned him away.
The man slowly lowered his newspaper.
His eyes met mine.
He smiled.
Not a friendly smile.
The kind that says,
"Finally."
A notification appeared.
Unknown Entity Detected
Threat Level: Impossible to Calculate
Recommendation:
Run.
For the first time...
The debug panel sounded afraid.
The man folded his newspaper.
"Interesting," he said.
His voice wasn't loud.
Yet I heard it perfectly despite the noise around us.
"So..."
"You're the one who stole the Administrator's key."
My mouth went dry.
"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about."
"I believe you."
He stood.
"But ignorance has never protected anyone."
He walked toward me.
No hurry.
No anger.
Just certainty.
Each step caused tiny cracks to appear in the air itself.
Like reality struggled to remember how to exist around him.
Tony whispered,
"Zeke..."
"...I can't identify him."
"You can't identify anybody."
"No."
Tony's voice shook.
"I literally can't."
The man's status window appeared for less than a second.
Then shattered.
████████████
Access Denied
████████████
Every screen in the café went black.
Lights flickered.
Conversations stopped mid-sentence.
It was as if someone had pressed pause on the entire building.
Everyone froze.
Except...
Me.
Tony.
And him.
He stopped only a few feet away.
"You've been asking the wrong question."
"I wasn't asking anything."
"Yes, you were."
He leaned closer.
"You keep asking..."
"What is the System?"
He smiled again.
"When the real question is..."
"...who built it?"
Before I could respond—
A deafening alarm echoed through the café.
Not from my panel.
Not from the building.
From the sky itself.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL ACTIVATED
FOUNDATION BREACH
ALL ADMINISTRATORS RETURN IMMEDIATELY
The man's expression changed.
For the first time...
He looked surprised.
"No..."
He looked toward the ceiling.
"It found us."
Without another word, he disappeared.
Not teleported.
Not glitched.
One moment he existed.
The next...
It was as though reality corrected itself and decided he had never been there.
The café came back to life.
People continued their conversations.
The waitress laughed.
Coffee machines hissed.
Nobody noticed anything.
Nobody...
Except me.
On the table where the man had been sitting...
A single playing card remained.
It was completely white.
Except for one sentence written in black ink.
Stop trusting your System.