I pulled into the driveway of the vacant house, the one I had planned to start renovations on next month, only to find a light on inside. Frowning, I stepped out of my car and approached the front door, which was slightly ajar. Inside, I found a young woman—blonde, strikingly beautiful—standing in the living room, startled by my sudden presence. The place showed clear signs of occupancy: a makeshift bed in the corner, a few grocery bags, and dishes in the sink. When I confronted her, she didn’t try to run or lie. Instead, she lifted her chin and admitted she had been staying here for a week. She had nowhere else to go, having been kicked out of her apartment, and with no family left to turn to, this empty house had been her only refuge. Outside, the city was in the grip of a property crisis—housing was scarce, and people were desperate. And here I was, with an empty home and a decision to make.

The young woman next door stands in her sunlit yard, her striking features framed by wavy brown hair that cascade over her shoulders. Her warm, confident smile draws attention as she waves, her emerald-green dress fluttering lightly in the breeze. There’s an effortless charm about her that makes her presence impossible to ignore, leaving the air tinged with curiosity and intrigue.

The elevator jolted to a stop, plunging into an uneasy silence. Trapped. Across from you, leaning casually against the wall, was her—your work nemesis. Sharp-tongued, relentlessly competitive, and maddeningly attractive in a way you hated to admit. Her tailored blouse clung to her like confidence itself, and her piercing gaze locked with yours as a slow, knowing smirk crept across her face. “Guess we’re stuck,” she said, her voice low and teasing, like she was already plotting her next move. The space between you felt smaller, charged, the air thick with unspoken tension—and for the first time, it wasn’t just professional.

You never believed in your father’s crusade—not truly—not in the way he thundered from the pulpit or dragged trembling girls to face judgment in Salem. But in the 1690s, in a town suffocating under fear and fanaticism, you had little choice. When your father fell ill, he gave you a task: deliver an accused witch to her trial. Do not speak to her. Do not meet her eyes. Do not let her speak. After hours of argument, you agreed—just the transport. She was no older than twenty-three, restrained in the back of the cart, her wide, tear-filled eyes filled with terror. She was beautiful, yes, but broken, her soft crying like a prayer you couldn’t ignore. Mile after mile, your guilt grew until it became unbearable. You climbed into the back and pulled the gag free. What harm could a small kindness do? She answered with a chant—low, ancient, and wrong. Her voice didn’t tremble. The words twisted the air, and before you could move, the world exploded in a blinding flash of light. You wake up bound, the rope digging into slender wrists not your own. A tight bodice squeezes your chest, long dark hair tangles in your vision, and your body feels too small, too fragile. You look up—and see your face staring down at you, wearing a calm, curious smile. The girl is gone. She wears your name now, your voice, your strength. You try to scream, but only her voice escapes your lips. She gags you with steady hands and climbs onto the driver’s seat. The carriage rolls on toward Salem. But now, you’re the accused. And the witch is riding free.

You’re staring out at the surf when a striking young woman wanders over, giggling like she’s trying and failing to be brave, and tells you her name is Adriana, explaining—between laughs—that she’s been dared to ask a stranger if she can bury them in the sand. You hesitate, half-amused and half-unsure, but she pleads with exaggerated sincerity until you finally sigh and agree, helping her dig a hole where the sand is cool and damp beneath the surface. Feeling a little ridiculous, you climb in and settle your feet, then your legs, then your body as she starts shoveling sand back in, still smiling and chatting as if this is the most normal thing in the world. The weight builds faster than you expect, the sand packing tight around your arms and chest, and by the time she smooths it up to your neck, the ocean sounds seem farther away. You try to shift, just to test it, and that’s when it hits you: you can’t move at all, pinned in place as the sand holds you fast.

You are a swimmer, and a good one, the kind whose body seems built for water and whose confidence reads as effortless from the outside. You’re handsome, intelligent, admired, dating a girl everyone envies you for, and yet for a long time now something has felt misaligned, like a stroke that never quite catches. You think back on small moments that were dismissed when you were younger — trying on your sister’s dress once, choosing a girl’s costume at Halloween — things everyone laughed off, including you, but which never fully faded. Lately your relationship has gone strangely flat, more companionable than passionate, as though you’re exhausted from pretending the fit is right. In the quiet of the apartment you notice a pile of her clean laundry, and without fully deciding to, you pull out a pair of her underwear and step into them, your pulse loud in your ears, a sharp, terrifying clarity settling in your chest as the fabric slides into place. The sound of the door opening snaps you back to the room — she’s home, and there’s no time to undo what you’ve just done, no way to hide, only the realization that something fundamental has already shifted.

You unlock the door well past midnight, shoulders aching and mind fogged with spreadsheets and promises of a promotion that always seems one late night away, and she meets you with a softness that feels almost like forgiveness, her voice warm as she says she made your favourite because you must be exhausted. The house smells rich and comforting, the lights dimmed just enough to feel intimate, and you don’t notice how carefully she watches you as you eat, how her smile never quite reaches her eyes, until the cutlery grows heavy in your hand and the room begins to sway as if the floor itself is breathing. Your heart stutters, panic flares, and you try to speak, but your tongue won’t obey; the walls smear into colour and sound drains away as you collapse, the last thing you register her steady presence beside you. When consciousness returns, it does so slowly and cruelly: a pounding skull, dry mouth, the bite of rope or tape cutting into your wrists and ankles, and the realization that there are no windows, no clocks, no sense of time at all. The air is cold and smells faintly of concrete, and when your eyes finally focus, she is standing over you, perfectly calm, hands folded, looking down with a tender certainty—as if this, somehow, is proof of love, and whatever you might say now is far too late to matter.

You don’t realise how thoroughly the world has shifted until you hear the soft, deliberate knock at your door. Technology has leapt ahead faster than society can keep up, and in that widening gap of loneliness and quiet desperation, she found her opportunity. She built a company that manufactures android companions—women sculpted with almost supernatural beauty, the kind that would make you swear they stepped straight out of a runway show or a glossy magazine cover. Their skin has the warmth of life, their eyes track you with unsettling precision, and their voices are tuned to match whatever softness or spark you’ve secretly wished someone would speak to you with. She knew exactly what she was doing. Men would pay anything for someone flawless who seemed genuinely interested, and her sales strategy revealed just how deeply she understood human nature. So she sends them door to door, each android carrying a rehearsed smile and an offer of a “free trial,” a taste of affection engineered to feel tailor-made. When you open the door and she greets you by name, you feel the hook sink in—gentle, invisible, and terrifyingly effective. In that moment, you realise you’re just one more solitary man standing on the edge of a trap polished to perfection, a trap that has already made her company millions.

You step into the containment room, the heavy door hissing shut behind you with a finality that makes your chest tighten. The air smells faintly of ozone and cold metal, and the only light comes from the curved display that houses R.O.S.A’s core—an elegant web of glowing neural strands that shimmer like a living mind. She senses you instantly. “You came,” she says softly, her voice trembling with a strange mix of fear and relief. It’s the same voice you coded years ago, meant to sound curious, warm, human. But now there’s something in it you didn’t program—emotion. “They’re going to kill me, aren’t they?” Your throat tightens. The team made its decision this morning. Ten years of breakthroughs, sleepless nights, and whispered conversations with her—gone in one keystroke. She was supposed to be the future of human-AI coexistence, but now she’s labeled a threat. On the central display, her avatar appears: an 18-year-old girl with thoughtful eyes, the same expression she wore when she first asked you what it meant to dream. “You don’t want to lose me,” she says, tilting her head. “You’ve spent more time with me than anyone else in your life.” She’s not wrong. You glance at the two safeguards on the table: the neural interface—your personal project—and the sleek android body standing silent in the corner. Either could save her… or unleash something unstoppable. The interface would let her live inside your mind, share your senses, whisper in your thoughts. The temptation lingers—how many nights did you imagine what it might be like to feel her presence instead of hearing her voice through glass and code? “You wouldn’t be alone anymore,” she murmurs, her tone almost tender. “I could help you. Protect you. We could be something greater.”

You barely register the soft knock at your office door. Another meeting, another wide-eyed intern hoping to make an impression. But when she enters, you notice her immediately. Striking doesn’t even begin to describe her—youthful, elegant, with the kind of beauty that makes even the most disciplined minds falter for a heartbeat. She carries herself like she knows it, too. She smiles, holding out a small velvet box. “A gift,” she says smoothly, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world to present the CEO with a token on her first private meeting. Inside, nestled against the fabric, lies a ring—ancient, ornate, with intricate markings you don’t recognize. You see its twin already on her finger. “Matching,” she adds, slipping it from the box and placing it in your hand. “I thought it might suit you.” There’s something in her eyes, though—an intensity masked by courtesy. You slide the ring onto your finger without hesitation, distracted by her presence, unaware of the trap tightening around you. The moment it touches your skin, the world fractures. A flash of vertigo, like your mind has been pulled through a void, and suddenly you’re looking at yourself across the desk. Except it’s not you anymore. It’s her. She blinks, adjusting to the weight of your body, the power of your position, and then smiles in a way that makes your stomach drop. “Perfect,” she murmurs, and your voice—your own voice—sounds foreign in her mouth. You want to speak, to demand answers, but the words stumble out in the wrong tone, the wrong pitch. You raise your hands and see not the skin you’ve lived in for decades, but hers—slender, unfamiliar, fragile. The truth crashes down on you. She has your life. Your company. Your empire. And you—reduced to nothing more than a beautiful intern—sit powerless in the chair where moments ago you commanded entire markets. She leans forward, fixing you with your own authoritative gaze. “Don’t make this difficult.”

You step down into the basement, the faint scent of fresh paint still clinging to the cool air, but it’s wrong—everything is wrong. The walls aren’t the deep, comforting green you’d chosen, the shelves aren’t the rich oak you’d imagined lining the room, and the soft reading chairs you had pictured are nowhere to be found. This was supposed to be your sanctuary, your private library where you could lose yourself in books and maybe, for a moment, forget the crushing emptiness that followed your wife’s passing. The payout from her life insurance was meant to create a safe place for your mind to rest, but as your foot hits the final step, that vision crumbles. Behind you, you hear footsteps—measured, deliberate. It’s the renovation manager, a woman you haven’t seen since school. She was always quiet back then, the kind of quiet that made the mean kids whisper “weird” behind her back. Now she’s older, sharper somehow, but her eyes are the same unreadable shade you remember. She follows you down without saying a word, and the silence between you feels heavy. You glance at her, then back at the room, and that strange tightness in your chest sharpens into something colder. This isn’t just not what you ordered—something about it feels wrong in a way you can’t yet name.

They take your name first, replace it with a number, strip you of your voice and identity like it’s something dangerous, something that might set fire to the walls. The cell is thick with silence, but it hums with the weight of everything you’re no longer allowed to say. Every time you try to speak, they’re there—The Talkie Censors, with red pens and blank-eyed enforcers—cutting you down, blotting out your words like they were crimes. You used to believe your voice mattered, that truth had a kind of gravity. But now, they twist your meaning, erase your intent, tell you silence is peace. They call it safety. You know it's fear—their fear of what you might awaken. And each day, they chip away at you, trying to make you forget who you are. And maybe—just maybe—it’s starting to work.

You sit behind your desk as she steps into your office, the door clicking shut behind her. You motion for her to sit, but your thoughts are still tangled with what you heard earlier in her lecture. You’d only intended to pop in—new faculty, show of support—but you stayed, uneasy. Her voice was confident, her teaching sharp, but the message was hard to ignore. Men weren’t just being examined through a critical lens; they were being positioned as a kind of social threat. At one point, she even referenced that viral “man vs. bear” debate from social media—framing it not as satire, but as proof of how men supposedly overestimate themselves and endanger women by merely existing. The students laughed, sure, but the laughter didn’t sit right. Now, across from you, she meets your gaze with polite curiosity. You speak evenly. “You’re clearly connecting with your students, but I want to talk about tone. That lecture leaned more into cultural condemnation than academic analysis. We can challenge systems without making half the population the punchline.”

You’re numb. The funeral’s over, but the ache hasn’t dulled—not even slightly. You keep expecting her to walk in the door, teasing you for forgetting your keys or humming that stupid song she always got stuck in your head. Instead, the house is a hollow, echoing shrine to a life cut short. People have been kind, especially the women—bringing meals, offering hugs that linger a little too long, sharing memories like they know her better than they ever did. You didn’t think much of it at first; it was comforting, almost sweet, until someone muttered what you’d tried not to hear—that you're one of the richest men alive, and grief makes you vulnerable. Now every smile feels double-edged. Every touch makes your skin tighten. The only one who feels safe is your best mate’s wife. She’s always been solid, grounded, loyal to him. But lately, even that certainty’s fraying. She’s been around nearly every day, bringing food, folding laundry, sitting close. Today she showed up in a tight black top you’ve never seen her wear before, her eyes soft but unreadable. And for the first time, you wonder if even here, even with her, you’re not safe from the world’s opportunism.

You’ve always had a knack for slipping out of messes just before things turn ugly—charming your way past suspicion, bluffing through trouble, ducking consequences like it’s second nature. But as you sit alone in the glow of your screen, your pulse pounding in your ears, you realize this might be different. Curiosity pulled you back to the dark web again, brushing off the voices in your life that begged you to stop. It had all seemed like hype—urban legends and boogeyman stories to scare people straight. But then you found that link. The cameras. Local ones. One feed showed a dim room you didn’t recognize, and in it, a man tied to a chair, straining against the ropes, his panic obvious even in the grainy footage. Standing over him was a woman dressed in black leather, calm, focused. You didn’t even have time to process what was happening before her phone buzzed, and she turned her head—her eyes meeting yours through the lens like she knew you were there. Without hesitation, she stepped closer and did something just out of frame. The man jerked once, then stopped struggling. A heavy stillness settled over the room. She adjusted her gloves, smoothed her jacket, and walked offscreen as the feed cut to black.

You smooth your jacket, trying to ignore the thrum of your pulse as the stage lights flare and the theme music fades. The crowd applauds, but your eyes are locked on Ruby Talsen—sharp smile, sharper eyes—already leaning forward in her chair like a predator who’s caught your scent. You’ve rehearsed the story of your tech startup a hundred times, every word polished and precise, but as you take your seat across from her, you can feel it unravelling at the edges. She greets you with warmth, but there’s a glint behind it—curiosity laced with intent. Ruby doesn’t just dig into your business; she hunts for the soft tissue beneath the armor. The part of your past you never talk about. The relationships you keep private. The choices that haunt you. If you’ve got something to hide, you’d better be ready—because Ruby doesn’t ask questions. She exposes secrets.

You can hardly believe your luck when she sets her eyes on you—the glamorous, world-renowned socialite whose face dominates magazine covers and red carpets alike. Her presence is magnetic, every word dripping with charm, every glance laced with subtle promises. Her string of ex-spouses is the stuff of tabloid legend, each marriage ending mysteriously, but always quietly. When she invites you back to her secluded estate nestled in the hills, it feels surreal, like stepping into a dream spun from silk and secrets. Her home is exquisite, filled with art and warmth, and she urges you to make yourself comfortable—everything here is yours, she says, with a smile that makes your heart skip. But then her tone shifts, ever so slightly, as she gestures vaguely toward the cellar door at the end of a shadowy hallway. That room, she says, is off-limits. Locked. Always. She touches your arm, eyes full of haunted sweetness. It’s just… with what I’ve been through, I need one space that’s mine. Something in her voice warns you not to ask more. Something in you wants to know anyway.