26 Mar Unperson

Part I

Elliot Foster had never considered himself important enough to be noticed, let alone targeted. His work was dull, procedural—precisely the kind of job that ensured he remained anonymous in a world increasingly governed by algorithms and automated oversight. Each morning, he logged into his system from the comfort of his small apartment, reviewed error reports, flagged inconsistencies in data flow, and refined the AI protocols that monitored and adjusted the country’s social credit system. He wasn’t a policymaker, nor did he deal with public-facing operations. His work existed in the background, beneath the vast, intricate machine that dictated how citizens moved through their lives.

Despite its omnipresence, Elliot rarely thought about the system in moral terms. His role was confined to numbers and probabilities, far removed from the actual decisions being made. Besides, it wasn’t as though the social credit system operated in secrecy. Everyone understood its function. A high rating meant better housing, job opportunities, faster government services. A low rating—well, people understood the consequences of that, too, though they rarely spoke of them.

On an unremarkable Monday morning, his colleague Lewis sent him a brief, offhand message:

“Weird thing—guy from dev team just vanished from our systems overnight. No record of him. Must’ve tripped a flag. Wild, huh?”

Elliot didn’t think much of it at the time. People disappeared from the system occasionally, usually due to some administrative error or a flag that was raised due to suspicious activity. Sometimes, there were rumors—whispers about people being erased entirely—but he had always assumed those were exaggerated.

By noon, he had forgotten the message entirely.

* * * * * *

Elliot’s first indication that something was wrong came that evening when he arrived at his apartment complex and found his keycard unresponsive.

He swiped it again, listening for the soft chime that usually signaled entry, but the scanner remained silent. He frowned, glancing at the security camera above the entrance before shifting his grip and trying a third time. Nothing.

A few feet away, the doorman, a broad-shouldered man Elliot had greeted daily for the past three years, stepped forward. “Can I help you?”

Elliot let out a short laugh, holding up the card. “Yeah, I think my key’s busted. Do you mind buzzing me in?”

“Are you a resident here?” the doorman asked.

The question threw Elliot off balance. “What? Of course I am.”

The doorman’s gaze flickered with something unreadable, but his stance remained firm. “I don’t recognize you.”

Elliot hesitated, then gestured vaguely toward the upper floors. “I live in 7B. I come through here every day.”

The doorman shook his head. “There’s no one by that name in the system.”

A chill ran through Elliot’s limbs, the kind of creeping cold that arrived when the body registered something was wrong before the mind had caught up. “That’s ridiculous. Check again.”

The doorman pulled a tablet from his belt, tapped a few times, and turned the screen toward Elliot. “No Elliot Foster in 7B. No Elliot Foster in the building at all.”

For a moment, all Elliot could do was stare at the screen.

* * * * * *

By the time he made it to his office’s IT department, his unease had solidified.

He hadn’t argued with the doorman. He hadn’t caused a scene. Instead, he had thanked the man, feigning patience, and walked away. He spent the next half-hour attempting to log into his work account from his phone, but his credentials failed every time. His employee ID returned no results. It was as if someone had reached into the system and plucked him out.

When he arrived at the office, the receptionist didn’t even glance up when he stepped inside. Elliot approached the front desk, gripping the edge of the counter as he leaned forward. “I need to speak to someone in IT.”

The woman, a bored-looking intern he had seen dozens of times before, barely acknowledged him. “You’ll need an appointment.”

“I work here.”

At that, she finally looked up, eyes scanning him in the way one might appraise a stranger asking for spare change. “Name?”

“Elliot Foster. Software development.”

She frowned, turning to her computer. Her fingers moved across the keyboard in a steady rhythm before her brows furrowed. “I don’t see you in the directory.”

“That’s because there’s a mistake,” Elliot said. “Look up my employee ID—74109.”

She tried again, but the screen remained empty.

“There’s no record of you.”

* * * * * *

By the time Elliot reached Sarah’s apartment, his nerves were raw.

He had abandoned his attempts to call anyone at work. His bank app refused to recognize his credentials, and even his email history had vanished. The growing fear had settled into his bones, insidious and suffocating, but Sarah would ground him. She always did.

When she answered the door, her expression was blank.

“Thank God!” Elliot cried out. “Listen, something’s going on, and I—”

She cut him off with a polite, unfamiliar smile. “Can I help you?”

Elliot blinked.

For the first time that evening, true panic took hold.

He stepped forward. “Sarah, what—what are you talking about? It’s me.”

Sarah’s lips parted slightly, as if she were struggling to place him. Something flickered in her eyes—recognition, brief but undeniable—before it was snuffed out.

“You must have the wrong apartment,” she said, her voice uncertain.

“No. No, this isn’t funny,” Elliot said. “I don’t know what’s happening, but I need you to tell me you remember me.”

Her face paled. “I—I don’t.”

There was a note of distress in her tone now, as though she were fighting against something just beyond her comprehension. She took a step back. “I think you should leave.”

Elliot barely heard her. He reached for his phone, pulling up a photo of them together from just two weeks ago. “Look.”

Sarah’s eyes darted to the screen.

Then she flinched.

It wasn’t the reaction of someone seeing something unfamiliar. It was the reaction of someone seeing something they weren’t supposed to—something that shouldn’t exist.

Her hands trembled as she reached for the phone. “That’s not real.”

“Of course it is!” Elliot’s voice cracked.

“I don’t know you,” she said, and then she turned toward the hallway, reaching for the security panel on the wall.

Elliot reacted on instinct. He didn’t think—he just ran.

By the time security arrived, he was already gone.

Part II

Elliot had always considered himself an adaptable person. He wasn’t the kind to panic under pressure, nor was he prone to wild speculation. He preferred structure—systems, logic, patterns that made sense. But nothing about this made sense.

As he walked down the dimly lit street, his hands trembling inside his jacket pockets, he unlocked his phone and tried his banking app again. He had tried three times already, but the response was always the same: User not found. He switched to his contacts, scrolling through the list. His mother’s number was still there. So was his sister’s. His co-workers’. His friends’.

Swallowing hard, he tapped his sister’s name.

The phone rang twice before a familiar voice answered. “Hello?”

Relief washed over him so quickly that he nearly stumbled. “Jenna! Oh, thank God. Listen, I need you to do something for me. Something’s happened—I think there’s been a mistake with the system, and I need you to—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. “Who is this?”

“Jenna, it’s me,” he replied. “It’s Elliot.”

Silence stretched across the line. When she spoke again, her voice had changed—subtle, but unmistakable. It was the shift in tone people used when dealing with an unstable stranger. “I think you have the wrong number.”

“No, I don’t.” His grip tightened on the phone. “Jenna, we just talked last week. You sent me that picture of the dog you wanted to adopt, remember? The one with the mismatched eyes?”

There was another pause. Then, faintly, “How do you know about that?”

His stomach turned. “Because I’m your brother.”

“I don’t have a brother,” she replied.

The call ended.

Elliot stood motionless on the sidewalk, staring at the screen. The contact name remained, but his call history was empty. There was no record of the conversation. It was as if the system had adjusted reality in real time, smoothing over the inconsistency before he could even process what had happened.

He tried his mother next. Then his best friend from college. Then, a co-worker he had known for five years. One by one, the responses were the same. Either they didn’t recognize his voice, or they refused to engage at all, the calls cutting off before he could plead his case.

By the time he reached the police station, his hands had gone numb.

* * * * * *

The front desk officer didn’t acknowledge him as he entered.

Elliot approached cautiously, the overhead fluorescent lights humming faintly. He cleared his throat, waiting for the officer to look up from his computer. When there was no reaction, he tried again.

“Excuse me.”

No response.

“Hey. I need help. I think my identity has been erased, and I need to file a report.”

Still, nothing.

Elliot placed both hands on the desk and leaned forward. “I know you can hear me.”

The officer continued typing. The air in the station felt wrong, as though the walls themselves were absorbing sound, muffling his voice before it could reach anyone’s ears. Elliot glanced around, searching for another officer, a civilian, anyone who might acknowledge his presence.

A woman walked in, her heels clicking against the tile floor. She approached the desk and began speaking to the officer, who immediately turned his attention to her as if Elliot wasn’t standing right there.

Something in Elliot’s chest clenched. He reached out, grasping the edge of the desk, and pulled himself forward. His knee bumped the underside with an audible thud, loud enough that the woman next to him should have reacted. She didn’t.

The realization was slow, dawning in pieces. It wasn’t just that the officer was ignoring him. It wasn’t just that the woman beside him refused to acknowledge his presence. They couldn’t see him at all.

Elliot stumbled out of the station and pressed himself against the cold brick wall of the building. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible.

“You’re wasting your time.”

The voice came from just beyond the streetlight’s reach, quiet but firm.

Elliot turned sharply, his muscles tensing. A woman stood in the alley beside the station, her frame half-concealed by the darkness. Her hair was long and unkempt, strands falling across a gaunt, pale face. There was something in her stance, a familiarity with being ignored, that made Elliot hesitate.

“Who are you?” he asked, his voice raw.

She stepped forward, her gaze steady. “Lana Fisk.”

The name struck a chord. Elliot had heard it before—years ago, in a news report about a journalist who had vanished under strange circumstances. He had assumed, like everyone else, that she had either gone into hiding or suffered some unfortunate fate.

Lana’s lips twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “Figured it out yet?”

Elliot shook his head. “What’s happening to me?”

Lana ran a hand through her tangled hair. “You’ve been flagged. The system doesn’t just erase records—it erases perception. People don’t ignore you by choice. They can’t register that you exist.”

Elliot’s stomach churned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

She shrugged. “Doesn’t have to. The AI doesn’t operate the way people think it does. It’s not just adjusting your credit score—it’s rewriting the framework of reality. Once you’re marked, you start to disappear. Not all at once, but in pieces.”

Elliot pressed a hand against his temple, trying to steady his thoughts. “Then why can you see me?”

“Because I’m the same as you.” Her eyes darkened. “I was erased years ago.”

A sick, twisting feeling settled in Elliot’s gut.

Lana stepped closer. “Listen to me. I know what you’re thinking—you want to fix this. You want to fight back. But it doesn’t work that way. The more you try to make people remember, the more they reject you. The system self-corrects. It’ll scrub you out completely.”

Elliot swallowed hard. “Then what do I do?”

Lana hesitated, something flickering behind her eyes. “There’s nothing you can do.”

He shook his head. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only one I have.” She glanced toward the street, her shoulders tensing. “And if you’re smart, you’ll stop pushing. Because if you make too much noise, they’ll send someone to finish the job.”

Elliot’s throat tightened. “Who?”

Lana’s gaze was steady. “The ones who make sure we stay forgotten.”

Part III

Elliot knew it was reckless.

Lana had warned him—pushing too hard, trying too desperately to be remembered, would only accelerate the process. But standing by and doing nothing wasn’t an option. He wasn’t ready to accept his erasure as inevitable. If the system was altering reality, overriding perception, then there had to be a way to break through it.

Sarah had hesitated when she looked at him. For a brief, fleeting moment, something in her expression had cracked, as if a memory struggled to resurface before vanishing beneath the weight of whatever force compelled her to forget. If there was still a part of her that recognized him, then there was still a chance.

Under the cover of darkness, he made his way back to her apartment.

* * * * * *

The city had never felt so silent.

Even as he moved through the streets, passing clusters of people, he remained unseen, unregistered by the world around him. There was no sense of danger, no fear of being caught, because there was no one left to acknowledge his presence. He might as well have been a shadow cast without a source, untethered from the reality he had once belonged to.

When he reached Sarah’s building, the security system offered no resistance. His credentials had been erased, but so had the system’s ability to detect him at all. The door unlocked with a slight push, swinging open as if welcoming him into a place he was no longer meant to be.

Inside, the air was still. Sarah’s apartment hadn’t changed. The furniture remained exactly as he remembered, the scent of her jasmine candle lingering faintly in the space. It was both familiar and distant, like a photograph of a moment long past.

Elliot moved carefully, conscious of every shift in the floor beneath him. He knew what he was looking for—something tangible, something real. A piece of evidence that could force her mind to remember.

In the bedroom, tucked inside the drawer of her nightstand, he found it.

An old photograph, slightly worn at the edges, taken three years ago. They were standing together in a park, the autumn leaves vibrant behind them. Sarah’s arm was wrapped around his, her laughter frozen in time.

He placed the photo on the center of her desk and left without a sound.

* * * * * *

The next morning, he watched from a distance.

Sarah moved through her apartment as usual—pouring coffee, checking her phone—but when her eyes landed on the photograph, her entire body tensed.

Elliot leaned forward. He looked on as she picked up the picture hesitantly, staring down at it as though the very act of looking required effort. Her fingers tightened around the edges. Her lips parted, forming the start of a word.

And then the change happened. Her expression twisted, first into confusion, then into something close to terror. She exhaled sharply, her shoulders rising in a sudden shudder, and dropped the photograph onto the table as though it had burned her.

Elliot could see it in her eyes. Something was wrong. Something was forcing her to reject it.

She took a step back, then another, hands pressing against her temples. Then she turned, shaking her head, and stumbled away as if trying to escape from the image entirely.

Elliot felt a sickening weight settle in his stomach. She hadn’t just forgotten. She had been made to forget.

That night, he returned.

He stood outside her window, hidden by the darkness of the fire escape, watching as she sat curled on the couch, staring at the television but not really watching it. She looked unsettled, as though some lingering sensation of unease clung to her, refusing to fade.

And then he saw the man. The moment the door opened, the atmosphere shifted.

Sarah didn’t look up. She didn’t react at all.

The man who entered moved with an unnatural ease, his presence as effortless as a shadow stretching across the floor. He wasn’t dressed like an officer, nor did he wear the stiff, bureaucratic look of a government official. His suit was simple, his posture relaxed. Yet there was something about him—something precise and calculated.

Elliot’s grip on the railing tightened. The man—Bryce Halloway—walked through the apartment with a familiarity that suggested he had done this before. He took his time, his gaze scanning the room methodically. When he reached the desk, he stopped.

The photograph was still there.

For a moment, he simply stood, looking down at it. Then, without hesitation, he picked it up, turning it between his fingers as if examining a minor inconvenience.

Sarah didn’t look at him. She didn’t move. But the tension in her body coiled tighter, her eyes fluttering shut as though something unseen had just released its grip.

Bryce held the photograph for another second. Then, without a word, he struck a match and set it alight. The flames curled hungrily around the paper, reducing it to ash within moments. He let the remains crumble onto the desk, then smoothed his hands down the front of his jacket, as if erasing the last traces of something that had never been there to begin with.

Then Bryce turned and looked directly at Elliot.

Elliot froze. He was still hidden in the shadows, concealed by distance and darkness. There was no logical way Bryce should have known he was there. But logic had already ceased to apply.

For several seconds, neither of them moved.

Bryce tilted his head ever so slightly, as though acknowledging Elliot’s presence without truly needing to. Then, slowly, he turned back toward the door and walked away. He didn’t pursue or rush. He didn’t have to.

Elliot knew, with absolute certainty, that the hunt had already begun.

Part IV

Elliot ran.

The moment Bryce turned his gaze toward him, he knew there was no time to think, no room for hesitation. He didn’t stop to question whether it was instinct or fear that propelled him forward—only that every fiber of his being screamed for him to put as much distance between himself and that man as possible.

His mind raced alongside his steps, desperate for an answer, a next move. There was nowhere to go, no home to return to, no identity left to shield him. The world had already let him slip through its cracks, and now the only thing left was the space in between—the space where things like Bryce existed.

But if there was even the slightest chance of undoing this, he had to take it.

The office was the last place left to try.

His records were gone, his name scrubbed from every system, but the AI had to store data somewhere. He had spent years working in the backend, debugging processes, analyzing flagged profiles, refining the algorithms that determined who was acceptable and who wasn’t. He knew there were servers, backups, redundancies built into the architecture of the system. Somewhere within that framework, a trace of him had to remain.

It was a risk, going back to the place where his erasure had begun, but risk no longer mattered.

By the time he reached the building, he was moving on borrowed time.

The main entrance was locked, but it didn’t matter. He was past security concerns, past the need for clearance codes or badge access. The cameras ignored him, the motion sensors failed to register his presence, the lobby guard remained fixed in place, eyes scanning a world that no longer included Elliot Foster.

He slipped through undetected, heading straight for the restricted floors.

The further he went, the stranger it felt. The walls seemed less real, the corridors stretching unnaturally, the space itself bending in ways it shouldn’t. The building had not changed—but Elliot had. He was no longer supposed to be here. The system was already rejecting him, pushing him further toward something undefined.

But he wasn’t done yet.

* * * * * *

The data center was quiet.

Rows of server racks lined the room, blinking lights casting dull reflections against the polished floor. The hum of machinery filled the air, steady and rhythmic.

Elliot moved quickly, fingers brushing against cold metal as he scanned the terminals for any trace of himself. He pulled up an access panel, ran a query, searched the deep logs of the system’s core. But there was nothing. No Elliot Foster. No record of deletion. No evidence that he had ever been here at all.

A slow dread settled in his chest. He had hoped—naïvely, perhaps—that he could trace the mechanism of his erasure, that there would be a way to reverse it, to insert himself back into the system before it was too late. But the system was absolute. It didn’t just remove data. It rewrote reality.

“I told you,” a voice murmured behind him.

Elliot turned sharply. Lana stood by the entrance, her posture tense. She looked different now—fainter somehow, less defined—as though the very act of acknowledging her required effort.

“You can’t fix it,” she said softly. “It doesn’t work that way.”

Elliot clenched his jaw. “There has to be a way.”

“There isn’t.” She stepped forward. “You should have stopped when you had the chance.”

The words carried a weight he couldn’t quite place.

Then, the temperature shifted—Elliot didn’t have to turn to know that Bryce was there.

A presence settled into the room, calm and inevitable. He forced himself to look.

Bryce stood near the server racks, his gaze steady, his posture relaxed. There was no anger or malice in his expression—only quiet understanding.

“You’ve gone too far,” Bryce said.

Elliot’s hands curled into fists. “Why?”

Bryce tilted his head slightly, as though considering the question. “Because that’s how the system works.”

“That’s not an answer,” Elliot said.

“It’s the only one that matters,” Bryce replied.

Elliot’s mind racing for solutions that no longer existed. “So what happens now?”

Bryce took a step forward. “You choose.”

Elliot tensed.

“You can let go,” Bryce continued. “Accept it. Become part of the quiet, fade like the others, let the world settle back into place—or you can fight.”

The words hung between them. Elliot understood what he was being offered. Surrender meant ceasing to exist entirely, without struggle, without resistance. Fighting meant prolonging the inevitable—and suffering for it.

He made his choice.

He moved before he could think, reaching for the nearest server panel and slamming his fist against the console. The screen flickered, warning lights flashing as the system registered unauthorized interference.

Bryce sighed. He barely moved. There was no rush or urgency, just a quiet shift in position. And then Elliot’s wrist was caught mid-motion, fingers tightening around his skin with an unyielding grip.

The pressure wasn’t violent, but it was final. Elliot struggled, twisting against the hold, but Bryce didn’t flinch. It was as if he had already accounted for this, as though every possible outcome had already played out before either of them had arrived in this moment.

“You never really had a choice,” Bryce murmured.

And then his hand moved. He reached up, pressing his fingers gently against Elliot’s forehead. A coldness spread through him, deep and immediate.

The last thing Elliot saw was the world fading, the servers dimming, and the room itself dissolving into something vast and empty.

And then—nothing.

* * * * * *

The next morning, Sarah woke with the distinct feeling that she had forgotten something.

She sat on the edge of her bed, rubbing her temple, trying to grasp at the loose thread of memory just out of reach. But the sensation passed quickly, slipping away like a dream.

Outside, Bryce stood near the sidewalk, watching the city move around him.

No one noticed him. They never did.

After a moment, he turned and walked away, vanishing into the stream of people, waiting for the next anomaly to appear.