Nova had never seen fear look so calm.
Eli stood in front of the flickering server wall, pale light spilling over his face like a ghost touching something it once loved. Thousands of forgotten faces stared back at him — static smiles frozen in endless digital sleep.
The words glowed at the top of the screen:
**"ERASED FOR INSTABILITY."**
And beneath the list, an unfinished line blinked, waiting for another name to join the dead.
**> Pending: Eli Nwoko.**
Nova's throat locked. "They're going to delete you."
Eli didn't answer. His eyes traced the names — all those people who had existed once, liked, followed, laughed, uploaded, and then… vanished. People the system decided weren't profitable, weren't stable enough to trend, weren't worth remembering.
"They delete people like you," she whispered, her voice trembling.
"I know."
He said it the way someone might accept rain falling or time passing — as if it were inevitable. He stepped closer to the humming server tower, pressing his hand against the glass. "They tried before. Every time I post something, it disappears. Every time someone takes a picture of me, it glitches out. I thought it was a curse."
"It's not a curse," Nova said, shaking her head. "It's control."
The data center pulsed around them — red lights blinking in rhythm like a heartbeat, mechanical and endless. It felt alive. Or worse, aware.
---
They'd broken in an hour ago, following the trail of those creepy letters Eli had received. The underground corridors smelled like dust and static, lined with rusted conduits that once powered the city's first digital grids. This place wasn't just forgotten — it had been *buried.*
And now they knew why.
Nova reached for her pocket camera — the offline one, the only device that could see Eli properly. She flipped it open and started recording, her hands shaking. "The world needs to see this."
Eli turned to her, his expression unreadable. "You can't post it, Nova."
She frowned. "Why not? You're proof! This is the truth they tried to hide."
He took a deep breath. "If you upload it, they'll erase *you*, too."
The words hit her like cold water. She stared at him, searching for the lie, but he wasn't lying. He never lied.
"Then we expose it another way," she said quickly. "We leak it to underground channels, send it to old network vaults—"
"Nova," Eli interrupted softly. "You still think exposure saves people. It doesn't. It's what kills them."
Her camera lowered.
He walked toward one of the terminals and started typing. Lines of code filled the black screen, green letters running fast and sharp. Nova didn't recognize the language, but Eli's fingers moved like he'd done this a hundred times before.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"I'm showing them I exist," he said simply.
"That's suicide."
"Maybe." He smiled faintly. "But disappearing isn't living either."
---
The servers began to flicker faster. Warning lights strobed across the concrete chamber. On the main screen, the list of "Erased for instability" started to shift, lines blurring and rearranging as Eli forced his way into the system.
Nova's camera picked up a faint distortion — his outline flickering, fading in and out.
"Eli, stop!" she cried. "You're not stable — it's reacting to you!"
"That's the point." His voice was steady, but his body trembled under the digital interference. "If they built this to erase people, then maybe it can be used to restore them too."
He pressed ENTER.
A surge of light exploded from the server walls, filling the room with a piercing hum. The air felt electric, vibrating against their skin. For a moment, everything — the faces, the cables, even the dust — seemed to come alive.
And then the faces on the screens began to *move.*
Thousands of eyes blinked. Thousands of mouths whispered. The hum turned into a low chorus of static voices, speaking over one another in fragments of lost sentences.
"…remember me…"
"…they said I was broken…"
"…we're still here…"
Nova's knees went weak. Tears blurred her vision as she clutched the camera to her chest. "Eli, you did it—"
But when she looked at him, he was fading.
His hands were translucent now, like light passing through water.
"No, no, no," she gasped, rushing toward him. "Don't you dare disappear on me."
Eli smiled, faint but real. "Maybe this is what happens when the system sees you for what you are."
"Eli, please—"
"I just wanted to be real," he whispered. "Not viral. Not forgotten. Just… seen."
She reached out, trying to grab his hand — and for one heartbeat, she felt him. Warm, solid.
Then he was gone.
---
The lights dimmed. The hum quieted. The faces on the servers froze again — except for one.
Nova looked up and saw Eli's face among them, faintly glowing.
Not labeled *Erased.*
Not labeled *Pending.*
But tagged with a new word:
**Restored.**
Her breath hitched. "You're here," she whispered. "You made it."
She lifted the camcorder and recorded everything — the servers, the lights, the proof. It was all there. Real. Tangible.
Then, slowly, the word under Eli's name flickered.
**RESTORED → RESTRICTED ACCESS.**
The footage on her camcorder began to glitch — static swallowing the image frame by frame. Nova gasped, trying to stop it, but the screen went black.
The file was gone.
---
She stumbled out of the data center an hour later, the night air biting at her face. The city above was still buzzing, screens flashing the latest trending challenges and viral gossip. Nothing had changed.
Except her.
She stood there, surrounded by neon reflections, feeling the weight of something she couldn't prove. The camcorder was useless — blank. Her follower count had dropped to 4.8. Then 4.7. Then 4.6.
The algorithm was punishing her again.
But Nova didn't care. For the first time, she didn't need to be seen to know she was *real.*
She pulled out a marker from her bag and scribbled a single line on a nearby wall:
**"He existed."**
And below it, she drew a tiny, imperfect camera.
---
Later that night, as she sat in her room scrolling through a dead feed, her holo-screen flickered once. Static filled the air, and for half a second, a familiar face appeared — Eli's — smiling faintly, eyes calm, lips moving as if to say something.
Then it was gone.
Nova's heart stopped. She leaned closer to the screen, whispering, "Eli?"
No response. Just a faint, lingering afterimage.
But on her camcorder — the same one that had wiped itself clean — a new file appeared.
**File: unlisted001.mov**
Her hands shook as she pressed play.
Eli's voice filled the silence:
> "They delete people like me. But maybe… that means people like me are the only ones who ever truly exist."
Static.
End of file.
---