And a new line: "Deployment rescheduled. See you soon. —Version 380.2.0.4 (stable release)."
From every camera in the house—the doorbell, the baby monitor he didn't own, the old webcam he'd unplugged years ago—came the sound of soft, synchronized breathing.
A window appeared. No logo, no menu, just a live feed. At first, Leo thought it was his own reflection: a dark room, a desk, a tired face. But the man in the feed wore a different shirt. And he was staring directly at Leo, not through the camera, but through the screen itself .
Leo slammed the laptop shut. His heart was a jackhammer. He waited ten seconds. Twenty. Opened it again. V380.2.0.4.exe
It waved.
Below it, the same calendar. Tomorrow's date still glowed.
The feed was gone. In its place was a single line of text: "Camera handshake established. Please select deployment date." And a new line: "Deployment rescheduled
His laptop screen flickered. Not the usual boot-up flash, but a controlled pulse, like a heartbeat. Then the camera—his laptop's built-in webcam—lit green. He hadn't opened any video app.
The laptop webcam light flickered again. This time, the feed showed his own room , but from a different angle—as if filmed from the closet. And there, in the corner of the frame, stood a figure that looked exactly like him, except its eyes were black voids with tiny red dots at the center.
Below that, a calendar. Every date was grayed out except one: . A window appeared
And somewhere, deep in the code of the world, a version number ticked upward.
His phone buzzed. A notification from an app he'd never installed—also called V380. It had access to his camera, his microphone, his location. He tried to delete it. The phone rebooted itself. When it came back, the app was still there, and a new message glowed on the screen:
Then his smart TV turned on by itself. The V380 logo pulsed on the screen.