Michael opened his eyes. The world had moved on. But his mind hadn't. Her name was gone. Her data purged. And yet—he remembered.
The ceiling above him was cracked. Not from damage. From age. The kind of wear that didn't matter to the system. It hadn't flagged it. It hadn't fixed it. It just let it be.
He sat up slowly, the synthetic sheets clinging to his skin like static. His room was quiet—too quiet. No notifications. No system prompts. Just the faint hum of the wall panel and the flicker of a broken light strip.
>> All systems normalized
The message popped up on his system then faded.
Nominal. She was gone. And everything was nominal.
Michael stared at the wall where her name used to be. A contact. A log. A trace. Now—nothing.
But he remembered. And that meant something was wrong.
Michael didn't move. But something inside him did.
The system stirred—not with sound, but with presence. A quiet shift in the air. A pressure behind his eyes.
Welcome to COREX. Version 1.0.1. His profile was syncing. Slowly. Unevenly. Like the system wasn't sure what he was anymore.
Then came the shift.
[Glitchborn protocol: active.]
[ Emotion detected.]
The room didn't change, but the way he felt it did. The light dimmed—not physically, but perceptually. The system was adapting to his mood.
His transformation, it said, was no longer fixed. It would evolve. Not by command. By emotion.
Anger would sharpen him—faster reflexes, stronger strikes, but unstable.
Fear would make him vanish—stealth protocols, suppressed visibility, distorted perception.
Grief would unlock memory—bypass purges, retain what should've been erased.
Joy would stabilize him—regeneration, clarity, suppression of glitch effects.
Michael's breath caught. Grief. That's why he remembered her. That's why she hadn't been erased from him.
The system continued.
[Emotional spikes would leave behind residue.]
Residue could be absorbed, resisted, or weaponized. But once bonded—it couldn't be undone.
He stared at the wall. She was gone. But the grief remained. And now, it was part of him.
The system would keep adapting.
He was no longer a standard user.
He didn't feel stronger. He felt haunted.
But maybe that was the point.
Michael didn't speak for a long time. Then, quietly: "Coach me."
The system responded. Not with warmth. Not with encouragement. Just protocol.
[Coaching parameters activated.]
[Transformation forms: adaptive. ]
[Access tier: partial.]
Michael sat up, the light strip above him flickering in sync with his pulse. He remembered the alley—not the fight, but the moment everything slowed. The way her absence carved into him like static. That wasn't instinct. That was grief.
And grief was unlocked.
So was anger. He hadn't used it yet, but he could feel it—coiled beneath the surface, waiting.
Joy and fear remained locked. Unavailable. Not until he leveled up.
He frowned. "Leveling?"
The system explained. Progression came through emotional resonance. Experience had to be earned. And with it—residue.
Michael's breath caught. "Residue?"
Memory fragments. Echoes. Instability.
He swallowed. That's what happened to Ava.
She'd leveled up. Unlocked something she wasn't ready for. And the system couldn't purge it clean.
Her memories had fractured. Her voice had looped. Her presence had bled into the walls like static.
He stared at the ceiling. "If I level up... will that happen to me?"
The system responded.
No.
You are glitchborn.
Your transformation interrupted the takeover sequence. You were not claimed. You rewrote the protocol mid-process.
Now you're in control. But that control comes with consequences.
The Patchborns will come for you.
You're an anomaly.
A failed assimilation.
A threat.
And the stronger you get... The more the world rewrites itself around you.
Not by design.
By distortion.
Every level leaves residue. Every residue reshapes reality. And reality doesn't like being rewritten.
Michael slept like a corrupted file—restless, fragmented, full of half-formed dreams and memory loops. When he woke, the system was quiet. No prompts. No updates. Just COREX humming beneath his thoughts, waiting.
School was unchanged. He moved through the day like a shadow—head down, hoodie up, eyes unfocused. Teachers spoke. Students laughed. Michael drifted past it all.
He sat alone at lunch. Avoided eye contact in the halls. Kept COREX on passive mode, filtering the noise, suppressing the flickers.
But the residue lingered. Every time he blinked, he saw her—Ava. Not clearly. Just impressions. The way she turned her head. The way her voice caught mid-sentence. Gone, but not erased.
By the time the final bell rang, he was already halfway to the computer room.
Jayden would be there. He always was—last period, after school, buried in code and caffeine. Michael trusted him. Not just with secrets. With silence.
He pushed open the door. Jayden looked up, eyes tired but alert. "Yo. You good?"
Michael stepped inside. He wanted to speak. Wanted to tell him everything—the tutorial, the forms, the residue, Ava.
But before he could—
Warning.
COREX surged forward, voice low and cold in his mind.
[Involving him will compromise his safety.]
[Emotional proximity increases vulnerability.]
[The same outcome as Subject: Ava is statistically probable.]
Michael froze.
Jayden tilted his head. "You okay?"
He was. And he wasn't.
COREX continued.
[Glitchborn resonance is unstable.]
[Residue spreads through connection.]
[What you carry is not clean.]
Michael looked at Jayden. His friend. His anchor.
And suddenly, he saw it— A shimmer at the edge of Jayden's outline.
A distortion in the air. Like the system was already testing him.
Michael stepped back.
"I... I just came to grab something," he lied.
Jayden nodded slowly, sensing the shift but not pressing.
Michael turned, heart pounding, COREX silent now but heavy.
He didn't speak. Didn't explain. Didn't risk it.
Because Ava had existed. And now she didn't.
And if he wasn't careful— Jayden would become just another echo. Another fragment.
Another line of corrupted memory in a world rewriting itself one connection at a time.
System Residue wasn't just what lingered. It was what infected.
#For author suggestions, Chats and Updates, Follow on Instagram, Snapchat and tiktok: shadyread
😀😉😎😋