I wake up to the sound of screaming—except no one’s screaming. It’s inside my head. A thousand voices, raw and unfiltered, crashing into me like a tidal wave. I clutch my skull, rolling off the bed, gasping. The neighbor upstairs is thinking about murdering his wife. The woman across the street is fantasizing about me. A child three blocks away is crying in silence, begging for it to stop.

It stops when I make it stop.

I focus on the child’s mind and push—gentle, soothing. Calm. Sleep. It works. And in that moment, I know: I can control thoughts. Not just hear them—command them.

Two days later, the first drone finds me. Black, insect-like, hovering outside my window. It doesn’t shoot. It scans. I feel its probe like a needle in my brain. So I reach out—not with my hand, but with my mind—and I turn it off.

That’s when the message appears in every digital screen in my apartment, written in glitching text: “You’re not the first. You won’t be the last. But you’re the only one I can’t read.”

Then, a face forms in the static. Mine. But wrong—eyes black, smile too wide.

“Let’s play,” it says.

My phone dies. The lights flicker. And I know—I’m not safe. Not here. Not anywhere. What do I do?