Dexter Stone

Prologue

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The Uninvited Guest.

After nearly a decade of being a villain, Dexter Stone was well-accustomed with the process. He had started off with a belief that he could overcome the coding and defy the developers. Now he just hoped the blood wouldn’t stain his gloves again. Leather was hell to scrub clean.

The autumn air bit through Dexter's trench coat, sharp as the blade tucked against his hip. Newmont Field’s streetlights hummed a sickly yellow hymn above him, their glow pooling on cracked sidewalks still warm from daylight’s lie of normalcy. He counted each step—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen—as his boots scraped concrete in a faltering rhythm. Always nineteen steps between the fire hydrant and Mrs. Whitaker’s rose bushes. Always this hour, this street, this script.

KILL THE MAILMAN.

The migraine hit like a reboot sequence. Dexter staggered, swallowing a groan as his vision fractured into pixelated static. His skull throbbed in tandem with the code’s pulse.

A porchlight flickered ahead. Dexter’s breath fogged the air as he leaned against a picket fence, its white paint peeling like sunburned skin. Nineteen steps. Always nineteen. Exactly as the mailman was coded.

“Don’t,” he muttered to no one, to the algorithm curled like a tapeworm in his brain. His left eye twitched, tracking the countdown burning neon-bright in his mind.

00:00:30.

The numbers dripped crimson, synaptic static buzzing louder. He’d tried gouging his head once. Woke up twelve hours later in his bed, head back to normal.

00:00:10.

A shadow detached from the alley. The mailman’s uniform glowed unnaturally white, crisp. Dexter’s knife slipped free from his pocket, its weight foreign and familiar. Muscle memory propelled him forward—five strides, pivot left. The mailman repeats this routine with every day started. He recited the way it was supposed to go under his breath–

The mailman would turn to look at him.

The mailman’s head swiveled to him, hand raising in greeting.

He would say hel–

“-lo Mr. Stone! It’s a lovely night isn’t it?”

He would drop his mail and drop to his knees, back turned, to gather it all.

“--Oh I’m terribly sorry! I just have too many mail today, busy writers this–”

“Season.” Dexter finishes, that wasn’t part of the code though. Cobblestones beneath the protagonist’s boots flickered between asphalt and pixels, the air itself buzzing with the static of a corrupted save file. The mailman stood frozen mid-stride, eyes wide and unblinking — not with fear, but the hollow stare of an NPC realizing its script had collapsed. His uniform bled color, edges unraveling into chromatic aberration. He had to end this, put the game back on its regular routine or else the developers will get suspicious. Try to fix the bug that was Dexters remaining consciousness.

He moved as glitches sparked across his knuckles. First step — the crunch of gravel that wasn’t there. Second — the weight of the knife materializing in his palm. His migraine tightened like a vice made of firewall warnings, pressure building behind eyes that burned brighter with each system alert. The mailman’s mouth opened. No scream emerged, just the warble of a corrupted audio file.

When the blade plunged, it met no resistance. The body buckled to the ground. Over and over the knife fell until the migraine released its grip. Blood covered his hands and clothes dripping from the ends of his trench coat. Coding completed.

Static cleared from the air as the mailman laid there. For a few glorious seconds, his mind felt clean — no error messages, no cascade failures chewing through his mind. He wasn’t fighting the system anymore, he was doing exactly as they wanted.

HIDE THE MAILMAN IN PLAYERS TRASHCAN.

Dexter bent his knees, hoisting the corpse over one shoulder. Blood seeped through his clothes in viscous pulses. He wouldn’t get that smell out of his mind ever. His boots left bloody footprints in the gravel as he dragged the trash container forward, its rusted hinges screeching. With a grunt, he heaved the body upward. The trash container swallowed his body with a hollow thud, its maw streaked red. He didn’t blink as the lid slammed down, the clang reverberating through his molars.

GET INSIDE PLAYERS HOUSE.

His least favorite part. The only relief he got was knowing the player was just as much code as the rest of the NPCs. He had to follow his same route, show up in the window to scare the player, leave blood drops as hints, then finally...

The lockpick trembled in Dexter’s grip as he jammed it into the backyard door’s rusted keyhole. One twist—click. The door groaned open to an open layout downstairs. No lights. No movement. Just the thud of his own pulse as he stepped inside, the knife’s serrated edge biting into his palm.

Every creak of the staircase beneath his boots sounded like a gunshot. Second step from the top, the wood screamed. He froze, breath hitching—but no footsteps answered. The bedroom door waited ahead, chipped paint glowing faintly in the streetlamp haze bleeding through curtains. His throat tightened. Locked meant failure. Locked meant they’d outsmarted him, sealed themselves away like a secret and completed all the player tasks. If it was unlocked...

He wins.

KILL THE PLAYER.

KILL THE PLAYER.

The migraine struck like a screwdriver to the temple—a hot, relentless twist that stole his breath. His palm flattened against the stairwell wall, fingers clawing at peeling paint as if he could physically anchor himself. The knife slipped from his shaking hand. He sank to his knees, teeth sinking into his lower lip hard enough to taste copper. Ignore the code. Ignore the code. The mantra fizzed uselessly in his skull, drowned by the static rising like black water in his ears.

It wasn’t pain anymore. It was rewiring—a sensation of veins threading, synapses snapping one by one like overstretched rubber bands. Red seeped into his vision. His body moved before he registered standing, legs pistoning upward with the jagged precision of a puppet on strings. The knife was back in his grip, no longer shaking. He’d reached the top, the bedroom was on the left. Player was there.

Every step down the hallway echoed. His boots dragged then stuttered, heel catching on warped floorboards as competing impulses tore through him—ignore the code– kill the player– ignore the code– kill the player–. Player. The word bloomed in his mind. Player lost. The bedroom door loomed ahead, moonlight from its cracked frame pooling on the carpet like spilled code.

When his hand closed around the brass knob, the last frayed thread of resistance snapped. His mind retreated as the bugs fixed themselves momentarily. The bugs that let him still have his own conscious.

KILL THE PLAYER.

The door groaned as Dexter eased it open, the sound like a rusted hinge protesting. Pale moonlight sliced through the gap, illuminating motes of dust that swirled like static between him and the figure at the window. His eyes widened a bit— a split-second malfunction that left afterimages of the room burned across his vision. Error. Error. His mind flashed in jagged crimson text. Subject designation: PLAYER. Expected position: kneeling, hands bound by subroutines 5.81-5.83. Current position: upright. Facing glass. Right palm pressed to the fogged pane. This wasn’t right. The moment's confusion dissipated as bloodlust filled him again. He closed the distance and raised his knife–

Wait.

This wasn’t player.

Dexters coded bloodlust broke apart in complete confusion, clarity finally breaking through. What was going on? Who was this person? The developers didn’t add any new characters. Plus they were standing where... his breathing came out heavily, eye twitching as the knife dropped between him. He staggered back to the doorway, the darkness hiding his expression. He wore a white mask, an accessory the developers let him have so he didn’t have to face himself in the mirror.

“...who... are you...”

The player didn’t have any glitches despite acting out of code. Did that mean... he reached out, turning the player around without caring about social boundaries. The face was completely different.

“Are you...?” From up there? From the life he hasn’t seen in nearly a decade? A real person amidst the glitches? Like him? His hands resting on their shoulders squeezed harder than they should’ve.