GHOSTS OF THE MACHINE
Chapter 3“ The Fractured Line
New York City December 23, 2026
Ellie Carter awoke with a violent gasp.
Her body was sprawled across the cold subway platform. Her hands, scraped raw. Her heartbeat, hammering against her ribs.
The subway car was gone.
So were the other passengers.
She pushed herself up, her limbs weak and shaking. A thick, metallic scent clung to the air something like burnt wires, but off, like it had seeped into the concrete itself. The station was abandoned, its walls cracked with black veins that pulsed faintly under the flickering fluorescent lights.
No trains. No voices.
Only silence.
Her breath formed pale clouds in the frigid air. She staggered toward the platform edge, peering into the tunnels darkness. No movement. No sign of the thing that had worn her mothers face.
Had she blacked out? Had someone pulled her out of the train?
Her hands trembled as she reached for her phone. The screen was shattered, its edges warped as if it had been partially melted. Still, she pressed the power button.
The screen blinked on.
Her stomach dropped.
The same black-and-white photo stared back at her. The one from the subway.
Dead eyes. Open mouths. And something standing behind them in the shadows.
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Then, at the bottom of the screen, a message appeared:
YOU ARE NOT WHERE YOU THINK YOU ARE.
Ellies breath caught.
The words flickered once. Then the screen glitched—the text scrambled, letters breaking apart, rearranging.
GET OUT.
A sound echoed through the station.
Not footsteps.
A dragging noise. Slow. Heavy. Something wet scraping against concrete.
Ellie spun toward the tunnel.
At first, she saw nothing. Just endless black.
Then, deep in the void”two pinpricks of pale light blinked open.
Eyes. Watching her. Unmoving.
The dragging sound grew louder.
Ellie backed away, heart slamming against her ribs. She turned, sprinting toward the nearest exit sign, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts.
She reached the stairwell only to freeze.
At the top of the stairs stood a man.
No something shaped like a man.
Its skin was wrong, too smooth, stretched unnaturally over its bones. Its head twitched at an impossible angle as it stared at her. Then its mouth split open—wider than it should have, lips peeling back like a glitching video file, exposing jagged teeth that werent shaped for human flesh.
The hum returned.
Low. Insidious. Vibrating in her skull.
Ellies body seized. Her vision blurred. Her mind fractured
A sudden snap
And then she was somewhere else.
Washington, D.C. 11:47 PM
Detective Sam Grayson stepped onto the street, the cold biting through his coat.
The city felt wrong.
The blackout had triggered panic, but this was something else. The air had an eerie weight to it, as if the entire world had tilted just slightly off balance.
FBI had been all over the situation. A cyberattack, they claimed. A massive infrastructure failure. But the reports coming in didnt add up.
Mass hallucinations. Missing persons. Glitches in reality.
Grayson had seen a lot in his years as a detective, but this—this was something new.
He pulled out his phone, scrolling through the photos an anonymous tipster had sent.
The images were disturbing grainy CCTV stills from different cities across the country.
In every shot, the same thing appeared.
Tall. Emaciated. Eyes like hollowed-out pits, standing in the background of crowded streets, inside homes, behind unsuspecting people.
Always watching.
His phone buzzed. A new message.
“They are rewriting the world.
Graysons pulse quickened. He typed back.
Who is?
No response.
A gust of wind swept through the streets, carrying a faint hum beneath it. The streetlights above flickered once, twice.
Then the shadows beneath them moved.
Not from the wind.
Graysonâs hand went to his gun. He turnedâ
And for the briefest second, he saw something standing right behind him in the reflection of a storefront window.
Too tall. Too thin. Its head tilted at an unnatural angle.
Watching.
His pulse spiked. He whirled around
Nothing.
But the hum was still there.
Growing louder.
Unknown Location “ Time Unknown
Ellie Carter stood in the middle of a street that should not exist.
One second, she had been in the subway station. The next here.
She turned in slow, shaky circles.
The city around her was silent. Empty. The buildings looked like New York, but something was off. Their windows were too dark. Their edges too sharp, like digital models half-rendered.
The sky was wrong, too.
It wasnt black it was an empty void, a nothingness so deep her mind recoiled from it. No stars. No clouds. No moon.
Just absence.
A glitching streetlamp flickered nearby. For a brief second, she saw something at the edge of the light
A person.
Or what used to be one.
Its skin flickered, shifting between states of decay and normalcy, as if reality couldnt decide which version was true. Its eyes were blank, its lips trembling like it was trying to speak but had forgotten how.
Ellie took a step back
And every light in the city shut off at once.
A whisper scraped through the dark.
You are already dead.
End of Chapter 3
This chapter pushes deeper into the eerie, reality-breaking horror of the blackout. Ellie is slipping between dimensions, Grayson is uncovering terrifying truths, and something unnatural is rewriting the world.
Hows this pacing for you? Anything you want to see expanded or adjusted?