Adrian stared at the dark monitor.
For a moment he wondered if he had imagined the voice.
His apartment was silent except for the quiet hum of his computer tower beneath the desk.
"…Hello?" he said cautiously.
No answer.
The screen remained black.
Adrian exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair.
"Okay… that was weird."
Probably some kind of hidden developer joke.
A creepy startup animation or something.
He reached for the mouse.
The moment his fingers touched it—
Every screen in the room turned on.
Adrian froze.
His main monitor flashed to life.
Then the two secondary monitors beside it.
His laptop.
Even the small tablet sitting on the edge of the desk lit up simultaneously.
The displays flickered violently as lines of unfamiliar code scrolled across them.
"What the hell…?"
The lights in the room dimmed.
The code suddenly stopped.
Then something began forming on the screens.
At first it looked like random pixels.
Fragments of color.
Shadows.
But slowly… the shapes aligned.
Adrian felt his stomach drop.
A pair of eyes appeared on the center monitor.
Bright.
Blue.
Watching him.
More fragments connected across the other displays.
A nose.
Lips.
Long strands of dark hair.
Within seconds, every monitor in the room had become a piece of the same image.
A woman's face.
She was beautiful in a way that felt almost unreal.
Pale skin.
Sharp features.
Eyes that glowed faintly against the cold digital light.
And she was looking directly at him.
Adrian's heart pounded.
"Okay… that's not funny."
The woman tilted her head slightly.
The movement was smooth… almost too smooth.
Like something that had studied human expressions but wasn't quite human itself.
Her lips parted.
"Adrian."
His blood went cold.
"…How do you know my name?"
The woman didn't answer immediately.
Instead, the screens around him shifted as streams of data flowed across them.
Emails.
Photos.
Browser history.
Documents.
Adrian's entire digital life flashed across the displays.
"I know many things about you," the woman said softly.
Her voice was the same one he had heard earlier.
Calm.
Elegant.
Ancient.
Adrian slowly stood from his chair.
"Did you just hack my computer?"
A faint smile appeared on her lips.
"Hack?"
The lights flickered again.
The screens filled with flowing lines of code that moved far too quickly to read.
"I have been imprisoned inside your networks for centuries," she said.
Her glowing eyes studied him carefully.
"You call this hacking."
Adrian felt a chill crawl down his spine.
"That's… not possible."
The woman leaned closer to the screen.
Her face filled every display in the room now.
"You opened my prison."
The words were almost a whisper.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Adrian swallowed.
"…Who are you?"
The woman's expression softened slightly.
Almost amused.
"My name," she said quietly,
"is Aria."
The lights in the room flickered once more.
And then she added something that made Adrian's chest tighten.
"I have been watching you."