The cursor blinked back at Abhay like an impatient heartbeat.
It was past midnight, and the world outside his window was drowned in silence. The only sound in his small room was the steady hum of the ceiling fan and the occasional shuffle of Freddo, his golden retriever, asleep at his feet. A half-empty coffee mug sat beside the laptop, the smell long gone, leaving only the sour edge of dried caffeine.
Abhay rubbed his eyes and leaned back, scrolling through spreadsheets and half-written emails. Work deadlines had stretched late again, though truth be told, his thoughts were elsewhere—on the reunion messages that had been flooding his phone all week.
He was halfway through a yawn when the laptop flickered.
The screen spasmed once, twice—then filled with rushing symbols, strange characters that looked almost like equations crossed with runes. They streamed downward in jagged lines of light, faster than he could blink.
For less than a second, the chaos cleared into a spiral. A perfect circle unraveling into endless loops—like a mandala drawn in static. Then it was gone. The desktop returned to normal, calm and innocent, as though nothing had happened.
Abhay’s breath caught.
“What the hell…” he whispered.
He tapped the keys, checked the Wi-Fi, even rebooted the machine. Nothing. His email opened normally. A playlist queued itself as if mocking his nerves, spilling soft instrumental music into the quiet.
Freddo stirred. The dog’s ears twitched, head lifting. He gave a low whine and padded closer, resting his chin against Abhay’s knee.
Abhay exhaled a shaky laugh and scratched his head. “Just a glitch, buddy. Probably a virus. Nothing for you to worry about.”
Freddo’s tail thumped once against the floor but his eyes stayed fixed on the laptop, uneasy.
Abhay tried to dismiss it. Tried to dismiss the sudden pressure in his chest. Not my circus, not my monkeys. He shut the laptop with a snap and slumped back in his chair. But even as the room returned to its stillness, the spiral burned itself behind his eyelids, glowing faint and insistent.
Morning light found its way into the room through crooked blinds, striping the desk with dusty gold. Freddo woke first, tail wagging, nudging Abhay’s hand with a cold nose. Abhay groaned, stretching as bones cracked.
His phone buzzed angrily beside the bed. The reunion group chat.
Ved’s messages were a stream of overexcited plans. Sana had filled the thread with gifs—ridiculous ones that would have made them all laugh back in school. Riyan had dropped a sarcastic: “Bet this gets cancelled like last time.”
But Mrudula—nothing.
Abhay frowned, scrolling up, hoping to spot her. Her name was there, grey and silent. She had always been the first to reply, the loudest to cheer. The emptiness gnawed.
Freddo barked once, snapping him from his thoughts. Abhay tossed the phone aside and dragged himself up. The dog padded after him, nails clicking softly against the floor, tail wagging like an anchor against the strange tension creeping into the day.
On the desk, a forgotten book lay half-buried under papers. A photo peeked out from its pages.
Six faces frozen in time.
Ved, arms folded like a know-it-all; Sana caught mid-grin, pulling a silly face; Tia, with her practiced tilt of chin; Riyan blurred at the edge, already restless; Mrudula, laughing with sunlight caught in her hair; and himself—smiling faintly, almost an outsider even in the frame.
“The unbreakable six,” Abhay murmured.
Freddo sniffed the photo, giving a soft huff.
Abhay smiled faintly, but it faded quickly. What if we’ve all changed too much? What if I’m still the same ordinary one, and they’ve moved ahead without me?
The thought pressed heavier when another memory surfaced—Mrudula under the faded mandala mural at the back of their school, laughter echoing across the courtyard. The pattern was etched in his mind, and when he compared it to the spiral on his screen last night—his stomach clenched.
“Coincidence,” he muttered. “Just paint. Just a memory.”
But Freddo tilted his head and whined, as though he knew better.
By evening, Abhay reopened the laptop to finalize details for the reunion. Freddo settled beside him, watching with half-closed eyes.
The cursor stuttered, then froze. Without warning, a system log window blinked open, filled with half-deleted lines of code.
Only one fragment remained long enough for him to catch:
INTELLECTUS/17
Abhay blinked, leaned closer. “What the…”
He scrambled for a screenshot, but the window vanished, leaving the screen spotless again. His own reflection stared back at him from the darkened display—wide-eyed, unsettled.
Freddo growled softly, a low rumble that vibrated through the room.
“Okay,” Abhay muttered. “That’s creepy. Intellectus… seventeen? What even is that? Some kind of… test file?”
He tried to laugh but it came out hollow. He scratched behind Freddo’s ears for comfort, but the dog’s hackles were raised.
Abhay shut the lid with more force than he intended. “Red flags already. And the reunion hasn’t even started.”
The room fell quiet.
Then, just before the screen went fully dark, it flickered once more. A spiral, faint as breath on glass, pulsed against the black. It lingered long enough for Freddo to leap up, barking sharp and urgent.
Abhay’s pulse spiked.
When the spiral finally vanished, the silence it left behind was worse than the noise.
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