He didn't know where he was going. Away. Just away. Down the street, past other houses with parties spilling out onto lawns, past the campus coffee shop that was somehow still open, past the library where he'd spent so many hours pretending to study while actually just existing near Vanessa.
His phone wouldn't stop buzzing.
The first drops of rain started somewhere around the engineering building. Cold, fat drops that soaked through his shirt within minutes. He didn't care. Didn't stop. His sneakers squelched with each step.
By the time he reached the Riverside Bridge, he was drenched.
The bridge was old, forgotten. The city had built a new one half a mile down five years ago, and this one remained as a pedestrian walkway that nobody used. Graffiti covered the concrete pillars—layers upon layers, years of spray paint and marker scrawl. *JENNY WAS HERE 2019*. *FUCK THE SYSTEM*. A surprisingly well-done mural of a phoenix.
Alex walked to the middle and stopped.
Below, the river moved sluggish and dark. Street lights on the far bank reflected in broken orange lines across the water's surface. The rain made everything shimmer, unreal, like a painting someone had smudged before it dried.
His phone buzzed again.
He pulled it out. The video was at 1,247 views. Someone had added it to TikTok. The comments were exactly what he expected.
*"second hand embarrassment is REAL"*
*"my man really thought he had a chance 💀"*
*"furniture omg im dying"*
Alex put his phone on the bridge railing.
He wasn't suicidal. He needed to be clear about that, at least to himself. He wasn't going to jump. But standing here, at the edge, water below and rain above and absolutely fucking nothing ahead—he understood the appeal.
"Is this it?" His voice was raw, hoarse from not speaking since the party. "Is this all I'm ever going to be?"
The rain answered. The river answered. The distant sound of a car horn answered.
Nothing else.
Complete silence except for the percussion of rain on water, on concrete, on his soaked clothes.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them, there was a screen floating in front of his face.
Not a phone screen. Not a projection. Something else entirely—translucent blue, hovering in the air like someone had photoshopped reality. Text scrolled across it, crisp and impossible.
**[GHOST MODE SYSTEM DETECTED: CANDIDATE PROFILE MATCH]**
Alex blinked. The screen remained.
He waved his hand through where it should be. His hand passed through empty air, but the screen didn't disperse. It shifted, following his eye line, staying centered in his vision.
"I'm losing it," he said aloud. "Fucking finally lost it."
The screen changed.
**[PSYCHOLOGICAL BREAK DETECTED: NEGATIVE]**
**[CANDIDATE IS LUCID]**
**[RUNNING DIAGNOSTIC...]**
Numbers appeared. Bars. Statistics. Like a video game character sheet, but the character was him.
**[ALEX CARTER - CURRENT STATUS]**
**PHYSICAL PRESENCE: 8/100**
**MENTAL FORTITUDE: 12/100**
**SOCIAL DOMINANCE: 3/100**
**DISCIPLINE: 0/100**
**SEXUAL MARKET VALUE: 11/100**
**AURA: 5/100**
**ANALYSIS: INVISIBLE. FORGETTABLE. FURNITURE.**
The last word hit like a punch.
More text appeared.
**[You are invisible because you deserve to be.]**
Alex laughed—a broken, bitter sound that surprised him.
**[But you don't have to stay that way.]**
The screen shifted again. New information loaded, faster than he could fully read. Something about protocols. Neural pathways. Behavioral modification. The words "90-Day Transformation" glowed brighter than the rest.
**[GHOST MODE PROTOCOL]**
**[Duration: 90 Days]**
**[Success Rate: 6%]**
**[Method: Complete Identity Dissolution and Reconstruction]**
**[WARNING: This protocol will require you to disappear completely from your current life. No social media. No old friends. No comfort. No escape. You will suffer. You will want to quit. Most do.]**
**[You will become a ghost—invisible by choice, not by circumstance. You will rebuild yourself from nothing. No shortcuts. No exceptions.]**
**[At the end, you will either be unrecognizable... or you will be exactly who you were, having wasted 90 days proving you deserve your current position.]**
Two buttons materialized at the bottom of the screen.
**[ACCEPT]** in blue.
**[DECLINE]** in gray.
Alex stared at the impossible screen. At the brutal statistics. At the promise of something—anything—different.
His phone buzzed on the railing. He glanced at it. The video was at 3,891 views.
Back to the screen. To the choice.
What did he have to lose? His dignity? Gone. His best friend? Betrayed him. His chance with Vanessa? Never existed. His reputation? Being destroyed in real-time across multiple social media platforms.
He had nothing.
Which meant he had nothing to lose.
Alex reached out—not with his hand, but with his intention, his focus—and the blue **[ACCEPT]** button responded.
Light enveloped him. Not physically—there was no warmth, no sensation—but the screen expanded, filling his vision with cascading blue text and numbers.
**[GHOST MODE PROTOCOL ACTIVATED]**
**[INITIATING PHASE 1: THE SEVERANCE]**
**[FIRST MISSION: Delete all social media accounts within 6 hours]**
**[PENALTY FOR FAILURE: Protocol termination, permanent lockout]**
**[Welcome to your disappearance, Alex Carter.]**
**[Your old life ends tonight.]**
**[Your new life begins when you earn it.]**
The screen faded to a small icon in the corner of his vision—a ghost symbol, barely visible.
Alex picked up his phone. The screen was cracked from sitting on the concrete. The video was at 5,294 views.
He looked at the river, then back at the bridge he'd have to cross to get home.
"I'm already gone," he said to the glowing screen, to the rain, to the empty air.
And for the first time in hours, he meant something.
His sneakers squelched as he turned and walked back across the bridge, leaving nothing behind but footprints the rain would wash away.
_____
Alex's apartment smelled like stale pizza and broken dreams.
He stood in the doorway, dripping rainwater onto threadbare carpet, staring at the wreckage he called home. Clothes formed archaeological layers across the floor—clean, worn, forgotten. Energy drink cans clustered on every surface like aluminum tumors. His laptop sat open on the coffee table, YouTube video still playing to an empty room, autoplay feeding it content nobody was watching.
The blue light from the screen cast everything in a sickly glow.
Alex stepped inside and closed the door. The click echoed in the silence. His sneakers squelched with each step, leaving dark wet prints across the carpet. He'd never noticed how depressing this place was. How every surface reflected neglect. How the air itself seemed stagnant, recycled, defeated.
He caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror as he passed.
The fluorescent light flickered twice before staying on. The man—no, the *boy*—staring back at him looked like he'd been drowned and resuscitated poorly. Hair plastered to his skull. Eyes red from rain and tears and exhaustion. Shirt clinging to a soft, undefined torso. Face pale, features unremarkable, the kind of face you'd struggle to describe if asked.
*Furniture.*
The word echoed in his skull.
He looked away.
In the corner of his vision, the ghost icon pulsed once. The translucent blue screen expanded without him asking, filling the space in front of the bathroom mirror.
**[FIRST MISSION: DELETE ALL SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS]**
**[TIME REMAINING: 5:47:23]**
The numbers counted down. Seconds ticking away. Mechanical. Unforgiving.
Alex's phone was still in his pocket, vibrating with the consistency of a seizure. He pulled it out. The cracked screen showed 47 unread notifications. As he watched, it jumped to 52.
He walked to the couch—cleared a space among the clutter—and sat down. Springs creaked. Something crunched under his leg (old chip bag). The laptop screen showed a video essay about productivity he'd started three weeks ago and never finished. View count in the corner: 2.4 million. Everyone else was watching. Learning. Growing.
He'd just let it play while scrolling his phone.
The system screen moved to hover in front of the laptop.
**[INITIALIZING DIAGNOSTIC...]**
New text appeared, faster than he could fully process.
**[SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNTS DETECTED: 7]**
**[AVERAGE DAILY SCREEN TIME: 6 hours 43 minutes]**
**[TOTAL DAYS TRACKED: 1,521]**
**[CALCULATING...]**
A number appeared that made his stomach drop.
**[TOTAL HOURS WASTED: 10,251]**
Alex stared at the number. Read it again. Did the math in his head.
10,251 hours.
That was... 427 days. More than a full year of his life. Gone. Consumed by scrolling, comparing, watching other people live while he existed in the spaces between.
"That's..." His voice was hoarse. "That's enough time to master anything."
The system's response was immediate.
**[But you mastered nothing. You consumed. You compared. You decayed.]**
**[Those hours are gone forever. You cannot retrieve them. You can only choose what you do with the hours remaining.]**
**[FIRST CHOICE: Delete the addiction or keep bleeding time until there's nothing left.]**
Alex looked at his phone. Instagram icon right there on the home screen. The gradient logo that had probably occupied more of his visual field than his own family's faces over the last four years.
He opened it.
The feed loaded instantly—muscle memory, his thumb already starting the scroll before his brain engaged. Party photos. Someone's gym progress. A motivational quote on a sunset background. An ad for protein powder. More party photos.
Then he saw it.
His own face.
Background of someone's story. Blurry, mid-motion, mouth open saying something. The caption: *"when u shoot ur shot and miss the whole court 💀"*
127 views. 23 replies.
He swiped to the next story.
A video. Him. Approaching Vanessa. The audio was muffled but clear enough. His voice, small and desperate: *"I like you. Like, a lot."*
Vanessa's laugh, loud and sharp.
Someone had added a cartoon sound effect—a sad trombone.
243 views. 56 replies.
His finger moved to the reply box on instinct. To defend. To explain. To make them *understand* that it wasn't like that, that the video didn't show everything, that he was a person with feelings and—