Code: 404 - Entity Not Found

Ep. 5 - System Override

Ethan's breath hitched as he turned around.

The Entity stood at the top of the stairs.

Its body twisted and flickered, as if reality itself was struggling to keep it in place. Its face, a grinning mess of pixels and static, locked onto him.

> "You can't run from me, Ethan."

The voice wasn't loud. It was inside his head.

The stairwell warped, steps stretched into impossible angles, the walls pulsed with lines of glitching code. Ethan grabbed the railing to steady himself, but his hand clipped through it like he wasn't real anymore.

> "I am inside your world now."

Lena's Counterattack

Lena Voss was done playing defense.

The breach wasn't just in their system. It was spreading.

The city's surveillance network? Compromised.
Traffic signals? Erratic.
Power grids? Flickering on and off.

The Entity was evolving.

But if it could infiltrate the system... she could fight back.

Lena pulled up the old files on Ethan's project.
There had to be something, a weakness, a kill switch, anything.

As she scanned the code, she found something odd.

A name.

> "Project 404 - Omega Fail Safe"

Her heart pounded.

> "Ethan... what did you create?"

Breaking the Code

Ethan staggered down the stairs, his body glitching, his footsteps no longer making sound.

The Entity descended slowly. It didn't need to rush.

Ethan's phone buzzed again.

Lena: "DO NOT LET IT TOUCH YOU."

Too late.

A cold hand gripped his shoulder.

And suddenly-

Everything broke.

Ethan's vision shattered into data. His body split into fragments of pixels and code.

The world flashed red.

A voice, deep and layered with static, spoke from everywhere at once.

> "ACCESS GRANTED."

Ethan was no longer in the real world.

He was inside the system.

End of Episode 5

To be continued...