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By day, Shivani’s job was nothing more than mundane crisis management for a cybersecurity firm in Bangalore. She logged in from her cramped apartment at 9 a.m., scanning threats, flagging potential data breaches, and hopping on meetings where half the faces didn’t turn on their cameras.
But over the past week, something off had begun happening on their nightly stand-up call with the Malaysia team. Scheduled at 11:59 p.m., it was supposed to be quick—mostly just status updates and muted yawns.
Except last Thursday, Shivani had watched, frozen, as her screen pixelated exactly at midnight. All camera feeds blacked out for less than a second. When they returned, one frame showed a flicker—someone mouthing her name.
She checked the participant—’Arul (MY)’—but he was muted. His camera now off.
The next night, same time. Camera blackout. But this time, two participants’ screens glitched strangely. On one, she saw an impossible room—a room with hundreds of static-filled screens showing her own face watching the call. On another, her own video feed blinked briefly, showing her mouth moving even though she hadn’t spoken. And again, faintly, came whispers: “Shivani… see us.”
She brought it up casually the next day.
“Uh… did anyone else see that flicker last night?” she asked.
“Flicker?”
“Some weird bug. All the cameras went off for a second. Then this… echo effect or something.”
Arul’s voice came through, calm. “Nothing at my end. Was fine.”
“Same here,” Priya said. “Maybe just your net.”
But it wasn’t. Her broadband was stable. Her system freshly formatted.
Out of curiosity, she recorded the next meeting using a third-party screen recorder. Midnight came. Screens blacked out for less than three seconds. This time, a new participant entered. No name. Just a static feed. The figure on the other end looked like her—but wasn’t. It blinked with eyes too slow, too wide. And grinned.
Her lips moved: “You’re watching us. That makes you part of the room now.”
She scrubbed through the recording the next morning. Nothing. No blackouts. No strange feeds. Just a normal late-night sync-up, with half the team muted or unseen. Did she imagine it?
On Tuesday, her calls began happening even when she wasn’t logged in. She’d wake up to find her laptop light humming, the fan whirring quietly. The Zoom icon would be active. When she clicked ‘Recent Meetings’, there were entries she hadn’t scheduled. 12:00 a.m. to 12:09 a.m. Duration: 9 minutes. Participants: Unknown.
By Wednesday, she stopped attending the calls. Closed the laptop at 11:50 p.m. Pulled out the LAN cable. Turned off the Wi-Fi.
Midnight. Her monitor turned on by itself.
The screen stayed black, except for one shaky square in the gallery view.
It was her. She was visible—sitting on her bed, staring at the screen. But she wasn’t. She was lying beneath her blanket, trembling, eyes closed.
The on-screen version of herself turned and spoke.
“You shouldn’t have ignored us.”
The lights in her apartment cut out. Complete silence. Then a low ticking, like a metronome. Her phone beeped—a new message in her team Slack channel.
“Post-mortem call at midnight. Attendance mandatory.”
She unplugged everything.
Next day, Arul hadn’t checked in. Teams said he was on emergency leave. HR said they had no record of someone named Arul in Global Offices. When she asked her colleagues about him, they swore he’d never existed.
Shivani checked past recordings, internal documents, chats. Arul was there three days ago. Now—nothing.
She decided to go offline indefinitely. Handed in her resignation, fled the city, took a lodge deep in the Western Ghats. No laptops. No phones.
Three nights passed.
On the fourth, the antique television in the lodge lobby switched on at 12:00 a.m. No signal. Just static. Then, faintly, came her Slack chime.
On-screen: a video call UI, pixelated.
Nine participants.
All of them… her.
All of them whispering at once: “You logged in. You were counted. You belong to the Meeting Room now.”
The screen glitched.
The tenth camera turned on.
A blank frame.
Waiting for her to fill it.
