It started with a barcode.
Eli noticed it on the back of one of the letters — tiny, almost invisible unless you tilted it toward the light. Nova scanned it with her offline tablet, and instead of opening a link, it spat out a string of coordinates.
"Under the city?" she muttered, zooming in. "That's like… industrial zone territory. Nothing there but old infrastructure and dust."
"Maybe whoever sent this wants us to find it," Eli said.
"Or maybe they want us to disappear there."
Nova was half joking, half serious, and Eli couldn't tell which half scared him more.
Still, that afternoon they ditched their last class and took the metro to the edge of town — the kind of forgotten part of Nova Lagos where the skyline faded into smoke stacks and the streetlights blinked like dying stars.
The coordinates led them to a fenced compound with a rusted sign that read:
**CITYNET DATA STORAGE – DECOMMISSIONED 2089.**
"Great," Nova said, kicking at the chain-link. "We've officially become the kind of people who break into abandoned tech facilities."
Eli gave a small smile. "You're enjoying this."
"Maybe a little."
They found a gap in the fence and squeezed through. The air smelled like metal and static, and the building loomed ahead — concrete, silent, and somehow *watching.*
Inside, their footsteps echoed through hallways lined with old server racks and tangled wires. Nova switched on her camcorder. The screen flickered for a moment before stabilizing — still working, still offline.
"Looks like a cyber graveyard," she whispered.
Eli brushed dust from a control panel. The lights sputtered weakly as if remembering their purpose. "This place used to hold data for the old CityNet system. Before they upgraded to the Algorithm Cloud."
Nova tilted her head. "You sound like you've been here before."
He hesitated. "I haven't. I just… remember reading about it."
But the truth was stranger — the corridors felt *familiar*. The hum of dormant servers, the faint vibrations underfoot — it all stirred something inside him, like déjà vu in his bones.
They reached the central core, where a circular room housed a single terminal still powered by an emergency generator. The screen glowed faint green, text scrolling in slow, deliberate lines.
> *ACCESS REQUEST DETECTED.*
> *IDENTITY: UNKNOWN USER.*
> *QUERY: ELI NWOKO.*
Nova's eyes widened. "It knows your name."
Eli stepped closer. "Type something," he said.
Nova hesitated, then keyed in: **WHO ARE YOU?**
The screen paused — then responded.
> *I AM THE RECORD KEEPER.*
> *THIS FACILITY STORED ALL ORIGINAL USER HISTORIES BEFORE THE RESET.*
> *ELI NWOKO DOES NOT EXIST IN THE CURRENT INDEX.*
Eli's throat tightened. "What do you mean 'does not exist'?"
Nova typed again, hands trembling: **BUT HE'S RIGHT HERE.**
> *INCORRECT. ELI NWOKO WAS FLAGGED FOR REMOVAL IN 2089.*
> *STATUS: UNREGISTERED ENTITY.*
> *NOTE: YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO EXIST.*
The last line blinked over and over until Nova slammed the keyboard. "This is insane."
Eli backed away, breathing uneven. "Flagged for removal? From what? A database?"
The monitor flickered, and a faint image appeared — a corrupted file, maybe a photograph. It was him. Younger. Standing with other kids in school uniforms. Only his face was blurred out, pixelated like censorship.
"Eli…" Nova whispered. "What if they didn't just delete you *online*?"
The building groaned as if responding. Somewhere in the distance, metal shifted.
Eli stared at the distorted image — the empty space where his face should've been.
"Someone erased me," he said quietly.
–––
They powered down the terminal and ran.
By the time they reached the street, the sky had turned a bruised gray. Nova's hands were still shaking. "Okay," she said breathlessly. "We need to tell someone. The counselor, maybe—"
"No," Eli interrupted. "She already knew something. What if she's part of it?"
Nova frowned. "Then who do we tell? The police? 'Hi, my friend's been deleted from reality'?"
He didn't answer. He was staring at his reflection in a shop window — and for half a second, there was *nothing there.* Just the street behind him. Then it flickered back.
Nova followed his gaze and froze. "You saw that too?"
He nodded slowly.
They didn't talk much after that. Nova walked him home, camera in hand but not recording. The silence between them buzzed with fear and static.
When they reached his street, Eli turned to her. "If something happens—"
"Don't say that."
"—if something happens," he continued, "promise me you'll keep the footage safe. The offline stuff."
"I promise," she said, her voice trembling. "But nothing's going to happen."
He smiled faintly. "That's what people say before it does."
–––
Later that night, Nova plugged the camcorder into her editing rig. She watched the footage from the data center — the flickering lights, the screen's green glow, Eli's reflection in the glass.
Then she paused.
In one frame, when Eli turned toward her, his face was clear — perfectly lit. But in the next frame, there was only static where his head should've been.
She rewound. Played again. Same result.
The system wasn't glitching. It was *erasing him in real time.*
A chill crawled down her spine. She opened a new project file and titled it: **"The Boy Who Never Went Viral — Backup Copy."**
Then she turned off her Wi-Fi.
–––
Across the city, deep in the abandoned facility, the terminal came back to life on its own. The green text reappeared, line by line:
> *USER TRACE CONFIRMED.*
> *TARGET REACTIVATED.*
> *BEGIN RESTORATION SEQUENCE: 12% COMPLETE.*
And for the first time in years, somewhere inside the dark servers, Eli Nwoko's name started to reappear — letter by letter — like a ghost trying to be remembered.