404: Exorcism Not Found
Byte stared at the CRT monitor, aggressively tapping her neon-green nails against the chassis.
BYTE.exe > DELETE UNKNOWN_PROCESS
ERROR: PROCESS IS NOT RUNNING
BYTE.exe > THEN WHY CAN I SEE HER
“Great. Fantastic,” Byte muttered under her breath, refusing to look directly behind her. “My cathedral server gets hit with phantom malware, and Task Manager is gaslighting me.”
The temperature in the cyber-gothic server room plummeted into freezing territory, far below optimal cooling specs. Frosty white sigils pulsed over Byte’s left eye, branching like pale lightning down her cheek and onto her wrist. It was completely unlike her usual glowing acid-green code—it felt cold. Ethereal.
Glancing sideways at the CAM_07 // LIVE_FEED monitor, Byte’s stomach dropped. Standing inches behind her was a glowing, translucent specter in pale white and icy blue, reaching out with slender, ghostly fingers.
“You’re uncalibrated data,” Byte insisted aloud, her usual snark masking a tiny spike in panic. “You’re a glitch. A corrupted driver. A really dramatic cache error.”
A whisper like static brushed past her ear, sending a chill straight down her spine. Byte froze. She can hack any firewall, overwrite any virus, and root-access any system in existence—but how do you delete something that died before C++ was even invented?
On the floor, Plushie Byte stared blankly into the dark, completely useless.
“Thanks for the technical support, plushie,” Byte whispered, keeping her eyes locked forward. “If I turn into a ghost, I’m wiping your hard drive first.”