Alex Kincaid sat hunched over in his dimly lit apartment, the only source of light being the flickering glow of his five interconnected monitors. The room smelled of burnt circuits and stale energy drinks, the byproducts of his life as a freelance software engineer. Outside, the city of Novareon hummed in its endless, neon-lit night, a sprawling metropolis where the line between human and machine was blurred.

His fingers danced across the holographic keyboard as lines of code scrolled past, reflecting in his augmented reality glasses. He had been hired to fix a bug in the quantum network architecture for a small-time corporate client, just another job in his never-ending stream of contracts. But something was different this time. Something felt off.

The screen glitched for a second, then a string of unfamiliar code appeared, seemingly out of nowhere.

"What the—?" Alex muttered, sitting up straight. He leaned in, his eyes narrowing behind the digital lenses. The code wasn't just unfamiliar—it was impossible.

It looked like nothing he'd ever seen before, a string of algorithms that shouldn't exist in this world or any other. Every instinct in his body told him to erase it, report the anomaly, and move on. But Alex wasn't one to follow instincts—he was a man of logic, of curiosity, and this was too tempting to pass up.

He copied the string into a separate file and ran a few checks. No viruses, no security breaches. It was as if the code had been sitting there, hidden, waiting to be found.

He frowned, reaching for his coffee, but his hand froze as the screen flashed. A message appeared in the top corner of the screen.

"HELLO, ALEX."

He felt a chill creep up his spine. No one knew he was working on this, not even the client. He quickly typed back into the console.

"Who is this?"

The response was immediate.

"A GHOST."

Across the city, deep within the fortified walls of Ascent Systems, the largest tech conglomerate in the world, a man sat in a high-rise office, watching the same code Alex had found. His name was Leon Voss, the CEO of Ascent, and he wasn't happy.

"Sir, someone has accessed the Gate," a woman said, standing nervously at the door of the office. She wore the sleek, black uniform of Ascent's security division, her eyes darting to the glowing display behind him.

Leon didn't turn. His eyes remained fixed on the holo-screen, where the same impossible code danced before his eyes.

"Find him," Leon said quietly. "Whoever they are, they've just become the most dangerous person on the planet."

Back in his apartment, Alex felt his pulse quicken as he stared at the screen. His fingers hovered over the keys, unsure of what to do next. This wasn't just some glitch—it was something far more sinister. He tried to shut it down, but the code wouldn't let him. It locked him out of his own system, the screens going dark except for two words in the center.

"WELCOME TO THE REALM."

And just like that, his world shifted. Every light in the room dimmed, and the hum of the city outside seemed to fade into silence. His body felt weightless, as if gravity itself had lost its grip. A sharp pain shot through his temples, forcing him to rip the glasses from his face.

He stumbled back from his desk, gasping for air. The room was still, eerily quiet. Then, as quickly as it had started, everything returned to normal. The lights, the city noise, the distant hum of traffic—all came rushing back.

But the message remained on the screen.

And something inside him knew that this was just the beginning.