The hum of the server room was a song Arthur knew by heart. It was a low, constant drone, a white noise that filled the windowless space and bled into the hollows of his skull, a sound both comforting and maddening. He was the night technician, responsible for the labyrinthine network of cables and blinking lights that kept the company's data flowing. Most nights, his work was routine: checking logs, replacing drives, a silent, solitary dance with machines.Tonight was different. It began with a flickering light in Aisle 7, a minor glitch that should have been a quick fix. When he went to replace the bulb, the humming changed. A low, distorted vibration began to ripple through the floor, a new note in the server's familiar tune. He placed a hand against a server stack and felt it thrumming under his palm, a vibration like a living thing.He checked the diagnostics. All green. No red flags. The network was functioning perfectly. Yet the sound persisted, growing louder, more insistent. It felt less like a mechanical issue and more like a heartbeat, or the slow, rhythmic grinding of a jaw.Arthur moved on, trying to dismiss the sound as a minor electrical fluke. But as he walked past the rows of towering black servers, he saw something in his peripheral vision—a shadow, a flicker of movement.
He stopped, turning his head. Nothing. The dim, sterile light of the aisle was unbroken. He chided himself for letting the sound get to him, for letting his imagination fill the darkness between the machines.He continued his rounds, but the sense of unease clung to him. The hum felt wrong now, hostile. The lights in Aisle 7 flickered again, but this time, the shadows they cast were too deep, too solid. They clung to the corners of the room, refusing to dissipate even when the lights held steady. He was watching his own shadow, he realized, but it felt like a separate entity, a silent, lurking companion.Back at his console, he tried to drown out the sound with his headphones, putting on a podcast. But a moment later, the server hum pierced through the music.
And beneath that, another sound: a soft, scraping noise, like fingernails dragging across metal. It was coming from Aisle 7.He rose, his heart hammering against his ribs in a rhythm that matched the deep, primal thrum in the floor. He didn't want to go back there. Not with that sound. But it was his job. He grabbed a flashlight, its beam a weak, narrow cone in the vast, dim space.The scraping stopped as he rounded the corner into Aisle 7. All was silent, except for the server hum, which was now a deep, guttural growl. He swept the flashlight beam across the racks, the familiar shapes of the machines suddenly alien and threatening. The scraping returned, this time from behind a bank of servers.Arthur swallowed, his throat dry. "Hello?" he called, his voice thin and swallowed by the noise.There was no answer, just the renewed, amplified scraping. He crept forward, his feet making no sound on the anti-static floor. The sound was coming from a server tower—a small, older model that had been left in place for legacy purposes.
He peered around the side.The scraping wasn't from an external source. It was coming from inside the machine.His blood ran cold. He knew every part of this building, every system. Nothing should be inside the server. He ran a trembling hand along the cold metal, feeling the vibration and the scraping from within. Then, a new sound, a wet, smacking sound, like a tongue against teeth.He backed away, his breath coming in short, panicked bursts. This wasn't a mechanical failure. This was wrong. He stumbled, his hand hitting the reset button on a different server stack by mistake. The machine powered down with a soft click.In the sudden, unholy quiet, the sound from inside the legacy server was sickeningly clear. A soft, wet whispering.
It wasn't the server hum, and it wasn't the scraping. It was a voice, and it was chanting something low and relentless, like a lullaby being sung to something terrible.He is hungry. He is hungry. He is hungry.And then, in a voice that was his own, yet not his own, a final whisper.He is here.The lights in Aisle 7 flickered one last time and went out completely. The last thing Arthur heard was the sound of his own screams being devoured by the renewed, deafening hum of the servers.