Elias sat at his desk, his laptop humming softly in the stillness of the room. The cluttered workspace—filled with scattered sketches, crumpled papers, and half-empty coffee mugs—felt oddly quiet tonight. He stared blankly at his inbox, the usual sea of automated rejections and junk emails staring back at him like a digital monument to mediocrity.

He sighed, clicking through the tabs on his screen without purpose. His mind wandered, lost in the haze of a day that felt like a blur. Maybe it’s time to call it a night, he thought, his hand hovering over the laptop lid. Nothing’s happening anyway.

But just as he began to close the screen, a notification popped up, a faint ding breaking the silence. His inbox refreshed, and a new email appeared at the top of the list. The subject line made him pause:

"We’ve Been Watching."

Elias frowned, his stomach twisting. The sender’s address was strange, almost nonsensical: [email protected]. No name, no company, just a jumble of letters and numbers that felt more like a code than a legitimate sender. He stared at the subject line again, unease creeping up his spine.

"Spam?" he muttered, though his curiosity was already gnawing at him. Against his better judgment, he clicked on it.

The email opened with a jarring brightness, the background completely black, the text a sharp, sterile white:

From: AX43-Initiative | Observer

To: Elias Veran

Subject: We’ve Been Watching

Elias Veran,

For some time now, we have observed your work. Your creations are not just designs; they are insights, fragments of a deeper understanding that most cannot see. You build not only structures but possibilities—an ability both rare and necessary.

The world is fractured, Elias, and we are searching for those who can see beyond its cracks. You have shown potential. You are one of the few.

A meeting has been arranged for you:

Location: Glasslight Tower, 12th Floor

Date: Monday

Time: 10:00 AM

We urge you to attend. This is not an opportunity you can afford to ignore.

Your acceptance of this invitation is your consent to confidentiality. Do not share this with anyone. They will not understand.

Time is running out.

There was no signature, no closing statement. Just a single attachment at the bottom of the email: "Blueprint_43_Axiom.dwg". The name sent a chill through him, though he couldn’t explain why. He stared at the email, his heart pounding in his chest as a strange tension filled the air around him. The words were sterile, yet they felt too personal, too targeted, like whoever had written this had been looking straight into his head.

This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"We’ve been watching," he muttered under his breath, rereading the line. The words clung to him like static, a haunting echo that refused to fade. Who’s watching? Why?

The email’s tone wasn’t just cryptic—it was unnerving. The way it referred to him as if they already knew him, as if they’d been following his work for some undefined period of time, made his skin crawl. And that line: Time is running out.

Elias hovered the cursor over the attachment, hesitating. Every rational part of him screamed not to open it. It could be a virus. Or worse, it could be some elaborate scam designed to prey on desperate people like him.

But he couldn’t shake the pull. Whoever had sent this knew about his designs. They had singled him out, called his work "fragments of a deeper understanding." No one talked about his sketches like that—not his professors, not his family, not even Charlie. The thought was unsettling, but it also filled him with a strange, hollow sense of validation.

Finally, curiosity won. He clicked the attachment.

The screen flickered for a moment, and then a blueprint filled the screen. It was unlike anything he had ever seen—an intricate web of geometric shapes and impossible curves that seemed to shift and distort as he stared at it. His breath caught in his throat as the lines pulsed faintly, almost imperceptibly, like the entire design was alive.

The longer he looked at it, the more disoriented he felt. His vision blurred, and for a moment, he thought he saw shapes forming within the blueprint—figures moving, shadows stretching. He blinked hard, shaking his head, and the image returned to its static form. But the feeling didn’t go away.

"What the hell is this?" he whispered, his voice trembling.

His hand moved to close the email, but he stopped himself. His eyes returned to the words: We urge you to attend.

He couldn’t explain it, but something about the email—about the blueprint—felt like a thread he was supposed to follow. It wasn’t just curiosity. It was compulsion, a gnawing need to understand what this was and why it had been sent to him.

But beneath that compulsion was fear. The kind of fear that lingered in the back of your mind, whispering things you didn’t want to hear.

----------------------------------------

Monday, 9:45 AM

Elias stood at the base of Glasslight Tower, his bag slung over his shoulder and his heart hammering in his chest. The building loomed above him, its mirrored facade gleaming in the sunlight like a monolith. For a moment, he just stared at it, his feet rooted to the sidewalk.

The air felt heavier here, as if the building itself was pressing down on him. He adjusted the strap of his bag and stepped inside, his reflection fragmenting across the mirrored glass doors as they slid open.

The lobby was cold, quiet, and eerily empty. A single receptionist sat behind a sleek black desk, her face unreadable. Elias approached hesitantly, giving her his name.

Her expression didn’t change. She simply nodded and gestured toward the elevator bank. "Twelfth floor," she said, her voice flat and emotionless. "They’re waiting for you."

Elias swallowed hard, stepping into the elevator. The doors slid shut with a quiet ding, and he was left alone with his thoughts. The faint hum of the elevator filled the silence, but it did nothing to calm him. His mind raced, replaying the email, the blueprint, the pulsing lines that had refused to stay still.

When the doors opened, he stepped into a long, sterile hallway. The walls were a stark, gleaming white, and the floor was polished to a mirror shine. At the end of the corridor was a single frosted glass door, the words Axiom Project etched into its surface.

Elias’s hands felt clammy as he reached for the handle. His heart thudded loudly in his chest, the sound almost drowning out his thoughts.

And then he stepped inside.