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Every Wednesday, the product team at Eclisys Software held a virtual meeting at 11:30 PM sharp. It was strategic—overseas partners, time zones. A few employees grumbled about it, but they showed up, faces flickering in tiny squares across a dim grid.
That night, six screens glowed: Aryan, Rachna, Vivek, Maya, Preeti, and Sanya. It was Sanya’s last day. She’d resigned spontaneously the week before, citing burnout, but agreed to join one final sync-up. Her square looked pale, backlit by a single flickering tube light.
“Thanks for being here, Sanya,” Maya said awkwardly.
Sanya only nodded, then typed in the team chat: “Just wanted to say… sorry if I was ever rude.”
Odd, but not alarming. She was known for being sharp, abrupt.
After the meeting, her name vanished from all channels—Slack, Teams, even shared documents. Aryan tried checking her previous Git commits; her ID didn’t exist. It was like she had never been onboarded.
They wrote it off. HR mess-up. Happens.
Three nights later, Aryan saw a notification from an archived Slack channel: #orientation-june21. That channel had been dead for months.
Someone had typed: “Where do the shadows go when the power cuts out?”
The sender: Sanya.
He blinked.
He clicked into the channel. No user photo. No profile. Just the name, SANYA, in all caps. He hovered—no contact card popped up.
At 2:13 AM, another message: “It’s so cold under the chairs.”
Aryan replied cautiously: “Is this some joke?”
No reply. He archived the channel again.
The next morning, Vivek messaged him. “Bro did u see??? #orientation-june21 is acting up.”
Aryan lied: “I left that channel. What happened?”
Vivek sent screenshots. More Sanya messages. Times like 3:09 AM, 4:47 AM. All echoing strange questions:
“Why do mirrors forget the people who leave?”
“Where did everyone go after the Friday lunch?”
“She said I was sitting in her lap, but I wasn’t.”
Aryan rejoined the channel. All messages were deleted. Not by a user—by the system. Automatically.
Preeti posted in the team group: “Did anyone just get a pop-up from the old HR form? Sanya’s name is filled in. And I didn’t touch it.”
Maya screenshotted her Google Calendar. Sanya had been re-added to a meeting the following day, 11:30 PM. No host.
That evening, they logged into the meeting room out of morbid curiosity. Five squares lit up.
The sixth square remained blank.
Then it filled.
It was Sanya. Her camera grainy. Face behind glass? A shimmer? She wasn’t blinking.
No one spoke. Her mic was muted.
The chat feed activated: “Why did you forget me?”
Rachna left the meeting mid-way.
Messages followed in the team Slack: “She walked out of the apartment and started shouting about drains and wires.”
Each remaining team member noticed different side effects. Vivek’s screen glitching, revealing faces behind his own reflection. Preeti’s smart speaker whispering lines from Sanya’s last chat. Maya’s inbox filled with corrupted onboarding confirmations—stamped with tomorrow’s date.
Aryan tried contacting the HR lead. But her email bounced.
He visited the office at daybreak. It was sealed shut. Yellow tape across the entrance.
Construction work? No. The building was abandoned.
He pulled out his phone. Reopened Slack. The #orientation-june21 channel had a pinned message. “You were not supposed to leave me in between.”
Behind him, the door creaked.
Someone—or something—had unlocked it from the inside.
He turned around. The lobby was empty. Dust-covered chairs. A video monitor blinked to life showing the last completed onboarding.
SANYA.
Timestamp: Tomorrow.
And below it, beneath her name: “Stage 3 Induction: Recapture Phase.”
His screen shook violently.
His Slack logged him out.
Aryan never made it home.
The others began receiving onboarding notices of their own the next day. Digital summons. Same time: 11:30 PM. Same channel.
Attendance was mandatory.
The camera never lies. But it never tells everything, either—especially not when the person on the other side stopped living days ago, and yet keeps showing up… waiting for someone to finally ask why she never logged out.
