I stared at the white playing card for a long time.
Tony floated next to my shoulder, sensors quietly humming.
"You're not going to touch it, right?"
"Obviously not," I said.
Then I touched it.
Because of course I did.
The second my fingers made contact, the card pulsed once — like a heartbeat — and a new window forced itself open in front of my eyes.
> [FOREIGN OBJECT DETECTED]
> [WARNING: This item is not registered in the System]
> [Recommendation: Discard immediately]
> [Secondary Recommendation: Discard yourself]
Tony's display flickered.
"Zeke… the System just tried to recommend you throw *yourself* away."
"I noticed."
I turned the card over. Still blank on the other side. No symbols. No numbers. Just that one sentence burned into my brain:
**Stop trusting your System.**
I tried to put it in my inventory.
> [ERROR]
> Item cannot be stored.
> Item refuses to be stored.
> Item is judging you.
"…Did the card just judge me?"
Tony nodded. "It has attitude."
Great. Another sentient object. Just what I needed.
I shoved the card into my jacket pocket anyway. The moment it disappeared from sight, every screen in the café flickered back to normal. People kept chatting like nothing had happened. The waitress walked past the empty table again without even glancing at it.
Nobody remembered the man in the grey suit.
Except me.
And apparently Tony.
We left the café in silence. Outside, the sky looked perfectly blue. No hole. No cracks. No emergency alarms.
Just a normal Tuesday.
Which somehow felt worse.
Halfway down the street, my debug panel opened by itself.
> [New Quest Available]
> Title: "Don't Trust the Card"
> Objective: Figure out what the card wants before it figures out what *you* want.
> Reward: Possible survival
> Failure Penalty: Undefined (but probably bad)
I dismissed the quest. It reappeared two seconds later with a sticky note attached:
> [Please take this seriously for once.]
> – Management
Tony floated in front of my face.
"Zeke."
"What?"
"I think the System is scared of that card."
"Yeah."
"And I think the card is scared of something else."
I stopped walking.
"…What makes you say that?"
Tony's screen showed a recording of the café from thirty seconds ago. In the corner of the frozen frame, just before the man vanished, something else had been standing behind him.
Something tall.
Something that didn't have a face.
Something the System had completely failed to render.
Only a single line of corrupted text remained where its name should have been:
> [DATA EXPUNGED – AUTHORITY LEVEL: ABOVE ADMINISTRATOR]
I looked up at the clear blue sky.
For the first time since this whole mess started… I wasn't sure who I should be more afraid of.
The System that wanted me deleted.
Or whatever was powerful enough to make the System itself nervous.
Tony's voice was quiet.
"So… what now?"
I pulled the white card out of my pocket again. It felt slightly warmer than before.
"Now," I said, "we do what we always do."
"What's that?"
I grinned, even though my hands were shaking a little.
"We poke it with a stick and see what happens."
Tony sighed.
"I was afraid you'd say that."