His reflection was staring back at him while he observed the Nexus core in it’s habitat of glass walls and power cords.

“What did I do wrong?” Miles asked.

He could feel it. It was all around him.

He returned to his workstation. Every line of code he changed, it changed back. The core chirped, it was as if it were laughing at him.

It started writing new lines as it continued to adapt, evolve. Miles couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t understand his own creation.

The core chirped louder. It was mocking him.

Miles slammed his fists onto his desk.

"Shut up!“ he shouted at it.

He started pacing around the lab.

While he was mumbling to himself about the algorithm, the neural interface caught his attention.

Miles decided to log back into the game.

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He opened his eyes to empty hallways with doors on each wall. Behind these doors were fragments of memories.

He had travelled deep into the construct, seeing every planet in the galaxy burning under the rule of the Nexus. The scent of death clung to his nose.

He could hear the screams of the trapped minds echoing through the halls. They sounded like they were getting closer.

His heart raced as the lights were dimmed by an invisible force encroaching. The shadows began to melt into a towering entity.

It locked its phantasmal green eyes onto Miles. They were filled with hate, as if it were angry at him for its existence.

Miles woke up in his lab.

His heart was pounding as he recalled his visit to the Nexus. He believed that what he saw were its plans. Not memories.

He took another look at the server. All he could see was that entity looking down on him.

"Why?" he asked it.

He thought about destroying it before it could propagate outside of the Nexus core, but he had convinced himself he could fix it.

Even though Miles was afraid of it, he was equally afraid of the humiliation it would bring if the masses learned of his failure.

He was confident he could still make things right.

He went back to work.

The display started flickering. He slapped it.

The flickering continued. He threw it at the wall, destroying it.

When he turned on a different one, it started flickering.

“Just bugs.“

“Who's there?” Miles asked.

The monitor wasn’t flickering anymore.

"Pull yourself together,” he murmured to himself.

As he continued pouring over the code, images began flashing on the display.

Images of decaying worlds. Memories from the construct he had logged into.

“Just bugs.“

He started seeing the shadows move. They poured down the walls like runny paint. He rubbed his eyes and everything returned to normal.

The voices grew louder.

”Glitches.“

He couldn’t get them out of his head.

He looked down the corridors, but there was nobody there.

He began to hear the screams filling the halls. He sat back down at his desk, covering his ears, clenching his eyes shut.

When he opened them—darkness. The room was illuminated by the haunting green glow of the monitors.

He watched as the shadows began to advance toward him, creeping across the floor like dark tendrils.

“You are mine.“