The name stayed with him longer than it should have.
[WELCOME, BENSON MORIATY].
His chest tightened the moment he read it.
Not because it shocked him, but because it felt too personal. Too intimate. Like someone had reached through the screen and whispered his real name right into his ear.
Not a username. Not some fake account. His actual name.
It was 6:18 a.m.
The city outside was slowly waking up, delivery trucks rumbling past, sleepy commuters clutching their coffees, the everyday grind beginning again. But Benson couldn't move. He sat frozen in his chair, heart beating a little too loud in the quiet room.
The laptop screen had gone dark, yet he could still see the faint ghost of his own face reflected there, eyes wide, mouth slightly open, looking more vulnerable than he wanted to admit.
He kept replaying the sequence in his head, stomach twisting with every loop.
The countdown ticking down.
The big "Accept" button.
The strange file download.
Those cryptic numbers.
And then… his name appearing like it already belonged to whatever this was.
It hadn't asked for anything. No email, no password, no confirmation. It just knew him.
His first reaction was a nervous laugh that died in his throat.
"This has to be a prank," he muttered to the empty room, voice shaky. "Some asshole from class messing with me. It has to be."
But the laugh felt hollow. Deep down, something cold and uneasy was already settling in his gut.
He stood up slowly, legs a little unsteady, and yanked the router plug out of the wall. Then he powered down the laptop completely, as if shutting it off could make the whole thing disappear.
He wasn't panicking. Not yet. But his hands trembled as he moved through the flat, turning on the kitchen light, pulling the blinds halfway so the morning light felt less exposing, and switching his phone to airplane mode with clumsy fingers.
The notebook on his desk was still open.
1113–1371
He stared at the numbers, a strange mix of confusion and reluctant fascination bubbling up inside him. They looked old. Medieval. Like something from a history book he'd barely paid attention to. A king's reign? A war? A life that began and ended between those years? He didn't know, and not knowing made him feel stupid and small.
He scribbled them again on a fresh page, then added the weird string he remembered flashing on screen:
A858DE45F56D9BC9
His handwriting was messier than usual. He hadn't imagined it. It had been right there.
He checked the time. 6:32 a.m.
Maybe he should check somewhere else. Just to prove it was fake. Just to make this uneasy feeling go away.
He plugged the router back in with a sigh and grabbed his older, slower laptop, the clunky one cluttered with random files and half-forgotten downloads.
Back on the forum, the original post with the mysterious link was gone. Completely erased. No replies, no archive, no trace it had ever existed.
Benson's stomach dropped. "Okay… that's not funny anymore," he whispered, rubbing the back of his neck.
He searched the URL on every search engine he could think of. Nothing. He even checked some shady Tor mirrors he'd heard about once, feeling ridiculous the whole time.
Still nothing.
At 6:41 a.m., he found the first crack in his "it's just a prank" theory.
In an old cybersecurity IRC channel he sometimes lurked in, one message appeared:
["Did anyone else see goatfile?"]
It vanished thirty seconds later.
Benson leaned back, heart racing now. Others had seen it too? Or was this part of the joke? The uncertainty made his chest feel tight, half fear, half a strange, unwanted thrill.
He reopened the tiny 3.2 KB ZIP file on his main laptop, hesitation making his finger hover over the trackpad. Just a text document. No obvious viruses. But when he opened it in a hex editor he barely knew how to use, he noticed weird invisible characters hidden between the lines, zero-width spaces and strange spacing.
He chewed his lip, a nervous habit he thought he'd outgrown. "This is stupid," he told himself, even as he copied the pattern and pasted it into a random online converter.
The result appeared:
56.4907 N
4.7870 E
Coordinates.
Benson's breath caught. Netherlands. Near Rotterdam.
He quickly pulled up a map, hands shaking slightly with a confusing mix of dread and curiosity. The pin dropped near an old industrial dock area, decommissioned warehouses, quiet and forgotten. A small public library sat nearby.
He wrote the location down, pulse fluttering. Why a library next to empty docks? It felt deliberate. Purposeful. And that scared him more than he wanted to admit.
"This is still a prank… right?" he whispered, but his voice lacked conviction now.
His phone vibrated.
Even though it was on airplane mode.
He frowned, anxiety spiking as he checked the reminder:
"9:00, Seminar: Criminal Liability & Intent"
He let out a shaky, humorless laugh. "Intent. Great timing."
Later, in the lecture hall, Professor Hargreaves spoke about mens rea, the guilty mind. Benson tried to focus, but his thoughts kept drifting back to the website, his pen scribbling nervously in the margins.
What if it wasn't a prank? What if it was something real… and dangerous?
The thought sent a wave of fear through him, mixed with something embarrassingly close to excitement.
At 8:04 a.m., his phone buzzed again, somehow slipping through airplane mode.
Unknown sender. No number.
Just that same string:
A858DE45F56D9BC9
Benson's heart slammed against his ribs. That was the exact code from the file. How did they have his number? His real number?
His hands felt cold as he yanked the SIM card out and set it on the desk, breathing faster than he liked. This wasn't funny anymore. Not even a little.
He slipped into a private darknet board he sometimes visited out of curiosity. A thread titled "GOAT?" was already active.
"SableRoot: Anyone else get coordinates NL?"
"MathKind: Yes."
"Orphic: Historical layer mention??"
"Seir: Stop posting specifics."
Then silence.
Benson didn't post anything. He just stared, a knot of unease and reluctant intrigue twisting in his stomach. Part of him wanted to run. Another part, the part that hated how ordinary his life felt, wanted to know more.
After a long, cold shower that did nothing to calm the storm in his head, he packed a small bag with trembling hands: his notebook, the old laptop, an external drive, and a printed map of Rotterdam he'd made on impulse.
Just in case. He wasn't actually going… was he?
Outside, London was fully awake, people rushing with clear purpose, laughing, chatting, chasing normal dreams. Benson walked among them feeling strangely detached, a quiet ache in his chest. Everyone here seemed to know exactly where they were going. Degrees. Jobs. Relationships. Simple, safe goals.
Would any of them drop everything for something mysterious and possibly insane?
He wasn't sure if he would either.
In class, he scribbled in the margin of his notes, hand unsteady:
"If a game makes you do bad stuff, whose fault is it really?"
He circled it twice, feeling a confusing swirl of guilt, fear, and curiosity.
Halfway through the lecture, his old laptop vibrated inside his bag even though it was offline.
He waited fourteen anxious minutes before slipping away to the bathroom stall, heart pounding.
A new file had appeared on the desktop.
He opened it with sweaty palms.
"Layer one closes in 68 hours."
"Those who travel will understand."
Below it, a clean black-and-white QR code.
Benson's mouth went dry. Travel? To Rotterdam? This was crazy. Terrifying.
Was this thing really expecting him to go there? Or was it still just some elaborate trick to mess with his head and watch him squirm?
He closed the file quickly, disconnected the battery with shaking fingers, and tried to steady his breathing.
Back in the courtyard after class, surrounded by chatting students, his primary phone, without the SIM, suddenly lit up on its own.
The screen displayed that same string, larger and more imposing:
A858DE45F56D9BC9
And beneath it, for the first time, actual words:
"THIS IS YOUR FIRST KEY."
Then the screen went completely black, battery drained in seconds.
Benson stood frozen in the middle of the busy courtyard, people brushing past him as if the world hadn't just tilted.
His heart raced with a messy storm of fear, confusion, and a strange, fluttering anticipation he couldn't quite suppress.
He looked at his dead phone's dark reflection and whispered, voice barely audible over the noise around him:
"Okay… what the hell do you want from me?"
Because even though every rational part of him was scared and wanted to walk away, a deeper, quieter part of him already felt pulled in.
And he wasn't sure he could ignore it.