Story code: ST-001640
Part 3: The Live Feed
The heavy iron deadbolt slid back with a sickeningly smooth, automated *clack*. Bryce watched, paralyzed, as the brass handle of the steel-core door slowly rotated downward.
The heavy door groaned on its hinges, swinging outward into the pitch-black hallway. For a terrifying second, there was nothing but the abyss of the upper house. Then, the shape stepped into the frame.
It blotted out what little ambient light remained in the stairwell. The entity hunched beneath the doorframe, a grotesque, towering silhouette of jutting pipes and asymmetrical bulk. The low, oscillating hum vibrated down the wooden stairs, accompanied by that rhythmic clicking. It was a sharp, grating sound-metal on wood now, scratching into the pine treads with every descending step.
Bryce’s gaze frantically darted around the dim, concrete-walled basement. His over-engineered fortress had failed. The cloud was dead. The local network was compromised. The physical locks were useless. He had absolutely nowhere left to retreat.
His eyes landed on the bright red fire extinguisher mounted to the concrete wall beside the server rack.
He lunged for it, ripping it from its metal bracket. The cold, heavy steel cylinder grounded him. It weighed a solid fifteen pounds. He gripped the neck with both hands, hoisting it to his shoulder like a club, his knuckles turning white. He was not going to die cowering in the dark behind a server rack.
The creature reached the bottom of the stairs. The glowing, mechanical lenses of its faceplate swiveled in the darkness, locking onto the pale green light of the server’s battery backup-and then locking onto Bryce. It let out a distorted, synthesized growl that rattled the loose tools on the workbench. It raised a horrific, biomechanical arm, thick with dark cables, reaching out toward him.
Adrenaline, pure and blinding, flooded Bryce’s system, overriding his terror with a violent, animal instinct.
“Get the hell out of my house!” Bryce roared, the sound tearing violently at his dry throat.
He charged.
He crossed the ten feet of concrete in a fraction of a second, swinging the heavy red extinguisher with everything he had. The solid steel connected squarely with the creature’s outstretched, cable-laced forearm.
Instead of a sickening crunch of bone or the heavy spark of dense machinery, there was a loud, hollow *snap*. Pieces of gray PVC pipe and black corrugated tubing exploded across the basement floor, scattering like cheap toys.
Bryce didn’t stop. His forward momentum carried him through the swing, and he drove his shoulder directly into the creature’s center of mass.
He expected to hit a wall of dense, immovable muscle and steel. Instead, the massive entity folded backward with the flimsy resistance of a hollow reed. They crashed onto the concrete floor in a chaotic tangle of limbs. Bryce landed on top, the breath knocking out of his lungs upon impact, but his survival instinct kept his hands moving.
The creature thrashed beneath him, shouting something muffled and distorted beneath the low, droning hum. Bryce dropped the extinguisher. It clanged loudly against the cement, rolling away. He grabbed the creature’s chest. It felt completely wrong. It was soft. It felt exactly like thick, spray-painted EVA foam layered over a heavy winter jacket.
Bryce scrambled higher, pinning the thrashing shoulders down with his knees. He grabbed the horrifying faceplate-the cluster of glowing Aegis security lenses nested in a nest of ripped wires-and pulled upward with all his might.
Industrial Velcro ripped with a loud, distinct tear. An elastic strap snapped sharply against the back of the creature’s neck. The entire biomechanical helmet came off in Bryce’s hands.
He threw it aside, his chest heaving, his fists raised and ready to strike the exposed, pale flesh beneath.
He froze.
Staring up at him, panting heavily and sweating profusely in the basement’s chill, was Mateo.
Mateo was sixteen. He lived exactly three houses down, at the corner of Maple Crest and Elm. He was the teenager Bryce paid forty dollars every other Tuesday to edge his driveway. Mateo’s dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and a smattering of teenage acne stood out starkly in the pale green glow of the server rack.
The oscillating, demonic hum was still playing. It was coming from a cylindrical Bluetooth speaker strapped to Mateo’s tactical belt.
“Holy crap, dude!” Mateo gasped, though he didn’t sound terrified. He sounded completely exhilarated.
Bryce couldn’t compute what he was seeing. He looked at his own hands, trembling violently, then at the scattered, broken pieces of the “monster.” The thick metallic cables were just painted pool noodles and split-loom wire conduit. The heavy, gouging claws were just bent metal brackets taped to thick gardening gloves. The highly advanced hacking device that had overridden the basement lock was a small, orange Flipper Zero dangling from a lanyard around Mateo’s neck-a relatively cheap gadget taking full advantage of the unpatched default admin protocols on Bryce’s incredibly expensive smart locks. In the eerie green glow of the night-vision camera, the different textures had blended into a terrifying organic mass. In the harsh light of the basement, it was just a kid in a plastic suit.
Before Bryce could form a single rational word, a harsh, circular LED ring light flared to life on the center of Mateo’s chest.
Nested inside the ring light, strapped securely to a specialized plastic harness beneath the foam armor, was a smartphone. The screen was alive with a rapidly scrolling wall of text and floating emojis.
“Chat, oh my god, he actually tackled me,” Mateo said, looking directly into the camera lens on his chest. His voice was perfectly calm, projecting the upbeat, practiced cadence of a professional streamer. “I told you guys the Aegis systems were fully bypassable with a basic replay attack. Over twenty thousand of you watching live right now, hit that subscribe button.”
Bryce remained kneeling on the teenager’s chest, absolutely paralyzed. He slowly shifted his gaze from Mateo’s widely grinning face to the glowing phone screen.
The live feed showed Bryce from a harsh, dramatic under-angle. He looked completely unhinged. His eyes were wide and bloodshot, his hair stood up in panicked, sweaty tufts, and he was looming over a teenager with his fists clenched, a heavy steel fire extinguisher resting ominously on the concrete just inches from his knee.
“Look at him, chat,” Mateo laughed, lifting a foam-covered arm to point directly at Bryce’s stunned face. “The neighborhood app is going completely crazy. Everyone on the block is watching this feed. Say hi to Maple Crest, Bryce.”
The chat on the screen blurred by at warp speed, a relentless cascade of skull emojis, laughing faces, and thousands of comments calling Bryce a psycho. The little red viewer count in the top right corner of the screen ticked past twenty-two thousand, climbing higher with every passing second.