The words on the laptop screen seemed to burn with a cold, blue light, a digital testament to a crime the world knew nothing about. JUSTICE. The final word hung there, a demand, a command, a curse. The frantic energy that had possessed my hands was gone, but a different kind of energy now filled the room—a heavy, static charge of purpose. The ghost attached to my soul wasn't some sad, lingering phantom. She was a victim, crying out for vengeance.
My initial, selfish terror about my own expiring contract felt shallow, almost obscene, in the face of this. A woman named Jessica Miller had been murdered, her life stolen by a man in an expensive suit, and the system designed to handle these things—both the earthly and the seemingly ethereal—had dumped the case on the desk of a broke, terrified, 23-year-old data-entry clerk. I was no detective. I was no hero. I was the furthest thing from it. And yet, I was all she had.
I stared at the name on the screen. Harold Finch. Project Director at Innovate Solutions. A murderer.
For a moment, a wave of righteous anger surged through me. I would go to the police. I would tell them everything. I would march into the nearest precinct, slap my laptop down on the sergeant's desk, and show them this ghostly confession. Justice would be served. The system would work.
But even as the heroic fantasy played out in my head, the cold, harsh reality of my situation smothered it. I pictured the scene with painful clarity. Me, wide-eyed and frantic, babbling about a haunted app and a ghost communicating through my keyboard. The police officer's expression would shift from confusion to pity, then to concern for my mental state. The "confession" on my laptop? It had no author, no signature, no metadata. I had typed it. As far as any sane person was concerned, I had simply typed out a bizarre, accusatory fantasy. My proof was not only inadmissible, it was a one-way ticket to a padded room. They wouldn't investigate Harold Finch; they would commit me.
Okay, so the police were out. What next? Confront the man himself? The thought sent a jolt of pure, undiluted fear through my system. I imagined walking up to Harold Finch, a man who had tampered with a car's brakes to silence a subordinate, and saying, "Excuse me, Mr. Finch? The ghost of the woman you murdered told me everything." I wouldn't even make it to the end of the sentence before his security guards were escorting me to a black van for a one-way trip to a landfill. Finch had already killed to protect his secret. He wouldn't think twice about eliminating a second, even more unstable-sounding loose end.
I was trapped in an impossible position, caught between two worlds and powerless in both. The mundane world, with its laws and logic, would dismiss me as insane. The supernatural world, governed by the cold bureaucracy of Eternity, Inc., had given me an assignment with a death penalty for failure but had provided zero tools, zero support, and zero guidance. I was a lone, unarmed soldier sent to take down a fortress, with my own soul as the only ammunition I stood to lose.
I slumped back in my chair, rubbing my temples. The countdown on the black phone was still ticking, a constant, nagging reminder of my own mortality. But now, it was flanked by a second, more pressing threat. Jessica's rage, which I could still feel as a low, humming vibration in my chest, was not aimless. It was focused, with a name and a face. If I did nothing, if I let the clock run out, would she simply consume my soul as the app had warned? Her anger was justified. In her position, I'd probably do the same. My damnation would be her only justice.
"Okay," I whispered to the empty room, my voice hoarse. "Okay, Jessica. Plan A, the cops, is a no-go. Plan B, confronting him, is suicide. I need a Plan C. And for that, I need more information."
The key was in her message. I HAD PROOF. EMAILS. ON MY WORK COMPUTER.
That was it. The smoking gun. Digital evidence. In the modern world, emails were as good as a signed confession, full of timestamps and server logs that couldn't be easily faked. If I could get those emails, I wouldn't be a lunatic with a ghost story. I would be a whistleblower with undeniable proof.
But the obstacle was monumental. Innovate Solutions was a major tech firm on the 34th floor of a downtown Chicago skyscraper. They would have top-tier digital and physical security. A dead employee's work computer would have been collected, wiped, and reissued, or locked away in an IT storage closet, collecting dust. Getting to it would require a heist worthy of a Hollywood movie. I couldn't just walk in and ask for it.
I needed the ghost's help again. The keyboard method was exhausting and felt… uncontrolled. I needed a more direct way to get answers. "Jessica," I started, feeling slightly less crazy talking to the air this time. "I can't just type out questions and hope you answer. I need a simpler system. Can you... can you do something with the cold? The feeling in my chest? Can you make it stronger for 'yes' and weaker for 'no'?"
I waited. The familiar, low-grade chill was constant. I took a breath. "Are you there, Jessica?"
The cold intensified sharply. It was like a spike of ice driving into my sternum. I gasped. It worked. It was a crude, painful, but functional communication system.
"Okay. Good. Okay." I paced the room, my mind racing. "The computer. Your work computer with the emails on it. Is it still in the Innovate Solutions office?"
The icy spike shot through me again. Yes.
"Is it locked? Password protected?"
Yes. The cold was sharp, affirmative.
"Damn it. Do you know the password?"
The cold fluctuated, then faded almost completely before returning to its baseline level. No. Or, more likely, I don't remember. Her memories were probably fragmented, centered on the trauma and the rage.
This was getting more complicated. Even if I could somehow get my hands on the machine, I wouldn't be able to access it. My plan was hitting a brick wall before it even began. There had to be another way.
"Alright, new topic," I said, thinking fast. "Let's talk about Harold Finch. The man himself. Let's forget the computer for a minute. Let's focus on the killer."
I returned to my laptop and positioned my hands over the keyboard. "Tell me about him," I urged. "What was he like? Did he have weaknesses? Was he smart? Was he sloppy? Anything you can remember."
I closed my eyes and focused, inviting the strange, disembodied intelligence to flow through me once more. The connection was easier this time, less jarring. My fingers began to move, not with the frantic rage of before, but with a more measured, contemptuous rhythm.
ARROGANT. HE THINKS EVERYONE ELSE IS AN IDIOT. HE'S NOT AS SMART AS HE THINKS HE IS. HE GETS LAZY. ESPECIALLY WITH HIS PERSONAL SECURITY. HE ALWAYS USED THE SAME PASSWORD FOR EVERYTHING. COMPANY STUFF, PERSONAL EMAILS, SOCIAL MEDIA. EVERYTHING. HE SAID IT WAS EASIER TO REMEMBER.
I stopped, my eyes flying open. A password. A single password for everything. This was the kind of idiotic, arrogant mistake that brought down empires, or at least, project directors.
"What was the password?" I typed into the document with my own hands.
SOMETHING STUPID. HIS DOG'S NAME AND HIS BIRTHDAY. I SAW HIM TYPE IT ONCE WHEN I WAS IN HIS OFFICE. THE DOG'S NAME WAS... DUKE? OR KING? SOMETHING REGAL. DUKE. AND HIS BIRTHDAY IS IN AUGUST.
Duke. August. It wasn't the full password, but it was a hell of a starting point. This was a crack in the fortress. A way in. Forget breaking into the office to steal her old computer. The new plan was far more dangerous, far more illegal, but also far more direct. I needed to get to Harold Finch's data. If he used the same password for everything, I didn't need his work computer; I just needed to get into any of his accounts. His personal email. His cloud storage. Something that might contain a digital breadcrumb, a confession, a hint of the crime.
The task shifted in my mind. It was no longer a ghost story. It was a hacking mission.
A new wave of terror washed over me. I was not a hacker. My most advanced computer skill was successfully connecting a printer to a Wi-Fi network. But the alternative was to do nothing, to wait for my 30-day clock to run out, and to serve my soul up as a final, desperate meal for a vengeful spirit.
I looked at the black phone, then at my own laptop, where the ghost's words still glowed on the screen. I was out of my depth, out of my league, and out of time. But for the first time since this nightmare began, I had something I didn't have before.
A target. And a sliver of a plan. My life, what was left of it, now revolved around a single, terrifying objective: I had to ruin Harold Finch.