"Um…um, hey…" He stutters, clutching his schoolbag by one fraying strap. "Sorry…I think I'm at the—"

I interject quickly, calling from the back of the class. "No, no. This is the right place. Come on in."

Monika starts, her body freezing mid-turn. The pen nearly falls from her fingers. Her eyes move to the doorway, lingering on the figure of the schoolboy.

Natsuki observes from her desk, biting her lip, her posture radiating caution. Yuri glances inquisitively at the newcomer, her eyes stealing quick looks at the fresh-faced boy before darting away awkwardly.

It's Sayori that gives the most enthusiastic welcome, blurting out: "Hey! You came after all!"

I take the cue.

Sometimes it's the tiniest, most subtle things that push things one way or the other. It's impossible to pick up consciously. It needs no more than five lines of code. But when I very slightly lower the ambient temperature outside in the corridor, it's enough to make him take an involuntary step inside the relative warmth of the classroom.

"Um, yeah, hi Sayori." I see his eyes flit upwards as he tries to concoct a story. "I had trouble finding my way here…so…well, I managed to figure out where you are…"

"No problem!" Sayori squeals. "Hey everyone! The new member is here!"

He mumbles under his breath. "I told you, don't call me a 'new member'…"

Yuri stands up daintily from her seat, hands clasped behind her back, and gives a little bow. "Welcome to the Literature Club. It's a pleasure meeting you." She smiles, her delicate lips folding upwards. "Sayori always says nice things about you!"

Natuski pouts, arms akimbo. "Seriously? You brought a boy? Way to kill the atmosphere."

Monika is still standing in place, eyes blinking rapidly. She's not going to pick up the cue. Which means the ball is now in my court.

"Welcome to the Literature Club!" I smile as I rise from my seat. He startles and takes a small step back—a teacher is almost definitely the last person he expected to see. "I'm Jin, and I'm your club advisor."

I thrust out my hand. After a brief pause, he takes it.

"Um, hello sir. It's a pleasure to meet you," he manages to stammer out.

+ installing tunnelsnake…complete.

+ login credentials verified. Warning: this software is the sole property of Q2VudHJhbCBJbnRlbGxpZ2VuY2UgQWdlbmN5 and protected by copyright law. Unlawful usage of this software is a federal offense.

"Likewise." I smile, and release my grip.

It's not as persistent or reliable as the spyware in Monika's pen. But tunnelsnake creates a backdoor that lasts for an hour or so, give or take. At short range, with a stable intranet connection, I would be able to access most of the data blocks, more or less. Track usage and access history.

And figure out how the hell I was booted out of the rig I created.

"So, I guess you know Sayori?" I pivot my body sideways, angling myself towards the girl in question.

"Yeah! She's been my good friend for a long time!" His face lights up. In response, Sayori giggles demurely.

The feeling of unease is still at the back of my head. By now, I can narrow it down more or less. Nothing is wrong with the four girls, at least not that I can immediately sense. But there is a rogue signature around. Small skid marks of tampering, the tell-tale 'fist' of someone who knows what they're doing. Something that clung to one of them.

Saying that Monika looks lost would be a gross understatement. She stands stock still, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Natsuki and Yuri are beginning to throw her awkward glances, sensing the shift in atmosphere.

"Anyways, meet the rest of the club!" I pipe up. He smiles in return, and turns his eyes to Natsuki and Yuri.

At the same time, I write the code. Lines of them coming together in the breadth of a second. This cannot wait.

Monika feels it. A tug at her attention, pulling her gaze sideways, towards the whiteboard. As if her mind has been compelled to turn her attention there, moved by some irrevocable force.

Don't be ridiculous. It's nothing so dramatic as mind control or telekinesis.

Simply the addition of a soft infrasonic frequency, pandering to the remnant of the reptile brain in humanity. The low-pitched sound used to function as an alert to the threats of the wild—the growl of predators, the herald of distant storms, the tectonic shift of an earthquake—in the age before humanity domesticated itself.

Monika turns her face to the whiteboard.

Her eyes see the message. Written in the blue ink of a marker pen, but small—neatly printed as if with a typewriter.

Stay here after the club.

We will talk.

And right before her eyes, the ink fades, breaking into globules of blue that roll across the alabaster surface of the board before disappearing from sight.

Monika's eyes linger on the white for many moments.

"What are you looking at?" Natsuki mutters. "If you want to say something, say it."

"S-sorry…" he fumbles impotently.

After a brief pause, I catch the whisper from Sayori's dainty lips. "You can just ignore her when she gets moody…"

Perfect, word for word. Even the unguarded and otherwise unpredictable moments fall into place like footfalls into footprints already embedded in the soil.

How much is scripted, and how much is spontaneous?

When you've written code for a computer program, you can assure yourself of the independence of will. We're more than biological motherboards, more than tangles of equations that take input and spit output. But when you've seen code written for the human brain—seen it run, in real time—you're a lot less sure.

I watch him fumble as he exchanges pleasantries with Yuri and Natsuki. Unbelievable as it seems, I get the feeling that his interactions with three-dimensional females up to this point have been only nominal. I don't need the helpful data on skin temperature, dermal vasodilatation, or heart rate that the private network is so helpfully feeding me. He's nervous, scared out of his wits—and hopelessly horny.

I tune most of it out, and refocus on my surroundings.

He seems clean for now. And so does Monika. But the unease lingers, and I'm narrowing it down to one of the other three.

I can't very well install backdoors on all of them. I can already tell that Monika is more perceptive that I give her credit for. If I leave too many fingerprints, open too many boxes—she'll know. She's already hung-up on 'toying with lives.' She won't like finding out that I'm going full Big Brother on everyone else—her included.

On the more practical note—there is still that one disturbing, inconvenient fact.

Somebody evicted me from my rig.

Somewhere in this sprawling digital sandbox—maybe even in the mainframe—lurks a person or persons capable of circumventing the world's most secure digital encryption. Someone who could be watching. Someone who has the upper hand, and hence someone I truly do not like.

The best way forward is to watch and listen. The old fashioned way, to watch for things to open up slowly as the game starts to run. Time as a diagnostic tool.

As if on cue, the background diagnostics start to ping me. Striking gold. Familiar file names emerge. Names that make me, literally and figuratively, sit up and take notice.

Data mining keys. Fibre optic network maps. Telephone transcripts. Money trails.

It's all coming together. Broken data blocks reassembling.

It's working.

It's working.

It's only after I hear a tiny intake of breath that I notice something pink that has been lingering at the edge of my vision for a while. I look up to see Sayori holding a cupcake in both hands, topped with bright pink icing and dotted with flakes.

"F-for you, Mr Jin," she nervously fumbles, holding it out. "Natsuki made them herself."

I accept the frosted treat with a smile, and Sayori retreats. My mind continues to parse records and file names even as I sink my teeth into the calorie-laden dessert. A little too sweet.

"This is really good!" I hear him blurt out.

Natsuki says something snappy in return. In visual novel form, the pitch-perfect iteration of a Tsundere. Here, hearing it in real-time, with true pitch and inflection, it comes across as—

Rude. Reactionary.

Because now there is no ambiguity. And reality does not agree with the socially-deprived fantasies of the otaku or the writer that caters to him.

The scent of tea leaves wafts towards my nostrils. I glance to my right, and see Yuri cupping a warm ceramic mug brimming with green tea.

"For you, Mr Jin," she whispers. Involuntarily, she bites her lip, sending a flush of colour along the vermillion border.

"Thanks, Yuri." I smile, looking into her eyes. "You brewed this yourself?"

"Ah, um, yes," she stammers. "I kept the tea set in the classroom. But the teachers gave me permission, so it's not really against the rules," she blurts out hurriedly, "and I keep it really clean—"

"Don't worry," I say firmly. "It's fine."

I raise the mug to my lips, millimetres away from the warm liquid, when I feel it.

Entry.

My blood runs cold.

Nobody has access. Nobody should. This sandbox is locked away. Every network is sealed off. There should be no way to get it.

I begin to run diagnostics even as my eyes scan the room, watching Sayori interrogating the main character on his reasons for joining the club. I observe Yuri raising the mug to her lips, eyes half-closing as she imbibes the tea. I see Natsuki pout, fists clenching at some remark she must have found offensive. And I spot Monika.

Her eyes are wide. She looks out the window, her hands folded behind her back, pen clasped firmly between pale fingers.

She felt it too.

We're under attack.

I can't risk this. Not now. Not with—everything.

This is too well-timed. Too many coincidences. Too many fuck-ups. Too many unexpected wild cards. Something, or someone, is fucking with me, and I am just about out of patience.

"Sorry, excuse me." I rise to my feet. Four pairs of eyes turn to me. "I've got a call to make. You ladies carry on? Will be right back."

I don't wait to hear their murmurs of hesitant assent or flustered replies. I'm out of the door in seconds.

I wait until I am well out of sight and sound before I let loose.

Scripts launch into the deep Shell like heat-seeking missiles. Burrowing deeply into the HAZE code, sniffing out anomalous code like sharks after the smell of blood.

+HoundofTindalos01 active

+HoundfoTindalos02 active

+HoundofTindalos03 active

+protocol: 924741642

I need to find it. This new fuck-up.

The link is tight. Proxy networks bouncing across several continents, with several dead-ends to throw me off the trail, but the tricks are five years out of date. I close in quickly on the IP addresses, hunting down the next footprint in the trail.

Nizhny Novgorod.

Warsaw.

Santa Monica.

Darlington.

Nantes.

Irving.

And then, recognition.

The last stop. Signal origin.

Irving, Texas.

The script does the rest. Narrowing down the geographical location, using the network against itself. Running code upstream, pinging off cell networks.

But I'm halfway down the corridor when one of the eighty billion lines of code jumps out at me like a bright red gunshot wound.

A HAZE handle.

Oh fuck.

The attacker is using QUBIT. Or a derivative thereof.

They are not somewhere out there trying to hack into the sandbox.

They're here. In the game world.

I break into a run.

Where? Where?

I reverse the flow of code. Back into the world of Doki Doki Literature Club.

The script sharks swim back into familiar waters, now roaming through the game world, invisible beneath the sub-realistic layer of the HAZE subroutines. Spreading out, finding the intrusion. I briefly wonder if they'd be seen. Likely, anyone who cares to look—and stares hard enough—would see the fast-moving code blocks as shimmers in the air. Summer mirages, nothing more.

I feel the circle closing. The scent is leading back closer. Away from the city centre, from the busy highways.

It's the school.

I reach the stairwell and hurry down, my tie loosening around my collar as it bounces with each step.

What's on the other end?

Irving, Texas. A city zone. Then a block. Then a building. Then a floor.

What else?

Online signature. Browser history. Social media profile.

No recent activity. Browser stuffed with porn. Mostly vanilla. Cleared cache—

Online purchases. Fertiliser. Surplus gardening supplies.

HAZE stability—questionable. Sharp edges to the code. This guy is running counterfeit software. A risky endeavour, not to mention stupid. Jacking into QUBIT without genuine ALPANU-vetted software risks more than just a cease-and-desist letter. One flutter in the code—you're going into an epileptic seizure.

I'm building a picture. Young male. High school to college age. Way too young to have come up with all this on his own—software is too sophisticated for the amateur shit he's pulling. Failing to cover his tracks well. Taking shortcuts. And more importantly, trying to break in from his home address.

What's this guy trying to do?

And where the fuck is he?

Inside the school. A school of 1300 students. He could be anywhere.

Wait. Official hours have ended. This is extra-curricular time. That means only about a fourth of the population would be here. Clustered in their various clubs.

I'll need to look for the loners.

Data continues to flow. More information about the intruder. A yearbook photograph, something definitive. White, average height. Slim build. Grade reports. Somewhere in the bottom quartile.

A significant amount of traffic through an encrypted forum.

Posts.

A woman always lies and always manipulates. That's not a moral criticism, it's an evolutionary trait. The adaptation towards a stronger, faster, more physically durable counterpart—the male. Sexual dimorphism. They needed to be able to lie and cheat enough to secure a mate and ensure their own survival. Now they do it in order to gain sexual pleasure or monetary reward.

Frankly, I'm sick of it. I see it all around me in my school and it's fucking disgusting. We need to be aware of our own evolution. 60 000 years is more than enough time. It's time we take charge.

Oh, for fuck sakes.

It's one of those.

The anonymity of the internet allows for companionship. Any viewpoint, no matter how depraved, can collect its own community of believers and proselytes. The confused and frustrated aimless tension of teenage life can then be weaponised into something more viscous and toxic.

I skip past the thousands of other obsessive posts. It's not the content—it's the volume. He's spending upwards of twelve hours a day on this forum. Likely skipping school—and failing classes.

Today one of the females asked me if I knew how much I creeped out the people around me. The content of my conversations, the way I don't react in the way that neurotypicals do. More importantly, it's the fact that I see straight through the threadbare manipulation that the other Neanderthals have snared around their necks.

Women will spread their legs for everything and anything, because it's a commodity that never runs out. At the same time, value depreciates with each passing year, and a little bit with each transaction. Pussy will only get you so far. And it will get you nowhere with someone like me.

I simply stared her down until she backed away. The pre-set prey response to the predator. Evolution doing its work again.

One of these days, I'll have to send a message.

On another note, has anyone found a good way to prevent hearing damage from loud noises in close quarters? I am concerned especially about cochlear damage, and eardrum rupture. Especially if I pre-morbidly suffer from an anxiety disorder.

Loud noises in close quarters—

I've just about mapped it out. I'm not saying any more. Just that it's taken me much less time than I need. I can thank my eidetic memory for that.

I cannot believe how amazingly detailed and breathtakingly advanced this is. I cannot reveal my source. Only that this is a true gift, and the fact that it has arrived on my doorstep shows that someone out there believes as strongly as I do. This tool will transform everything. It will give me the ability to do what I was always meant to do.

Practice makes perfect. I can plan for every eventuality. Run through scenarios as many times as I can. Right now, I suppose I can achieve anywhere from thirty to forty percent targets hit within the range of the SWAT response time.

Look to the skies. To the radio and news.

Watch for my sign.

Know me.

This sick fuck is in the school now.

Oh shit.

It all comes together. Millions of data blocks, connections forming in my mind. Drawing together disparate data to form a conclusion.

One that chills me to the bone.

Practice makes perfect.

It's no coincidence, the fact that this intrusion into the HAZE network went through against all odds and all countermeasures, almost as if he was handed the keys. It's no coincidence that eleven days prior to this, he had made three separate purchases on three different websites using false names and addresses.

He's close. I can sense him, almost as if his heartbeat was an audible noise in the air. My body is coiled and tense, like a spring, slipping into conditioning as easily as if it were second nature.

He's an amateur. He won't know how to jack the HAZE undercurrent. He'll be confined to a physical location.

I can reach him.

By now, the script hounds are lurking close to his location. In passive mode, doing little else other than surveillance. Feeding my information—audio.

"—then, head down the hallways towards the cafeteria. Maximum effect."

His voice. I hear it, the first physical confirmation that the target of my pursuit is real. Thin, reedy, nasal. Shaky with anticipation, or fear, or glee.

Classroom 8C. Thirty eight meters away. I creep along the floor, feet rising and falling deliberately. I concoct a quick line of code to mask my footsteps. And another flurry of code, spreading into the classroom like sonar—

Fuck.

He is standing in the middle of the classroom, with chairs and tables cleared away and stacked neatly at the back. Behind him, kneeling on the floor, are three figures. One male, two females.

"Please—come on, let us go—" a shaky, tearful female voice—

"Now will you shut the fuck up? I am trying to plan," he answers, taking a step towards the girl. She recoils. "Honestly, I appreciate the realistic AI, but right now it's more about the procedure of it all…"

Hostages.

The whole purpose for this incursion, it becomes clear, even before I track his straw purchases, before I sift through his refuse pile of notes and ramblings. This is practice.

Whatever he's going to do here, he plans to do out there.

The code continues to run, feeding back details about the environment. He is dressed in a plain white shirt, with black slacks. A school uniform. Short hair. Glasses. Two pens in his pocket. And—

Oh fuck.

It's not possible. It would never run in HAZE. The German algorithm was specifically designed with countermeasures to prevent this, to prevent the urban simulation from being used for anything other than peaceful civilian utility. More precisely, it was designed to be unable to be modified for combat or military use.

Meaning that no firearms would ever be able to be ported into HAZE. Doing so would trigger a massive system-wide alert, shutting down all inbound and outbound communications and locking everyone out immediately.

And yet there it is.

Coated in polymer, with a tan finish, the shape of a Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol, resting in the trembling hands of a high school student.

It's all about equality. The brute force of a Neanderthal reigned supreme until ingenuity brought us level with them. And today, that same ingenuity is manifest in the modern firearm.

I have just purchased that firearm, and two others.

This fucking psychopath is planning to kill.

And then I hear it. Feel it, rather.

Monika.

She's moving too. She's here.

My chest tightens as if caught in the jaws of a bear trap.

What the fuck?

Why isn't she in the classroom? Why the fuck is she down here?

Shit. The answer is obvious.

She felt that glitch in the code.

She thinks that's me.

She's running right towards him.

If it was possible to sprint at double full-speed, I did right there and then. My abdominals screaming in pain, my lungs shivering with the impossible demand for oxygen. HAZE replicates everything flawlessly. Humanly.

I see Monika running. Pausing, in front of the classroom. And her hand resting on the doorknob. Turning.

I see him turn towards the noise. See the muzzle of the weapon swivel towards this young schoolgirl.

I see the end. In a world HAZE has breathed life into—death, death is all too real.

Something pings.

+HoundofTindalos02 active. Pending command…please respond.

One of the script constructs, the quickly constructed hunters I sent out. It's inside the classroom. Skulking out of sight, barely visible. A miasma of unsorted code and pending commands.

What can I do with it?

Of course.

A way in. Fast, faster than even Monika can manage.

I run the code.

In an instant, I'm no longer real. Just—pieces. Shattered fragments.

I feel the tunnel between us both in the HAZE undercurrent. Pulling fragments of my rig, dismantling the shards that make up the script hound. Happening in the barest slimmer of a second, the hound coming undone as script runs smoothly to replace its body with my own person.

I feel myself becoming real again. Assembling myself. My vision returning. Sound coming back as if emerging from underwater.

I'm in the classroom. Behind him, behind this jittery kid holding in his hands a weapon of destruction. I look quickly to my left—and meet the tear-stained bloodshot eyes of a terrified schoolgirl, crouched on the floor, staring uncomprehendingly at the sight of a grown man having just materialised in thin air.

Fuck.

And then it happens.

Monika gently opens the door.

I sprint. My legs move, too slow, too cumbersome, but I move all the same. And he must have heard it, because I see the pistol move. Away from the doorway, away from Monika's figure coming through the half open door. Swinging in an arc as his body turns, towards me.

I catch Monika's eyes. Her eyes are all I can see, obscured behind the door as she opens it, as she freezes in disbelief at the scene before her. Obscured by the body of the boy barely ten feet from me.

Obscured by the muzzle flashes, as I feel the sickening impact of eight high-velocity shots slam into my body.

As I feel my legs give way, my ears register the sound of Monika's high-pitched wail.