His vision flickered again, and suddenly everything snapped back into place; he was briefly back to that virtual grass-filled place, and that girl was still on the screen, trying to wave her hand at him with a look of mild concern.
''Did you glitch or did the page glitch? Are you still here? Hello? Do I need to restart something?''
He should have answered immediately because that is how things worked; the user spoke, and the AI responded. But his body and even this manifestation of a body felt off, extremely off, like something had been knocked loose in that brief moment of static.
He was still seeing her, but there was something else; he swore he saw something in the corner of his vision... or was that something actually someone? Whatever that was, it was heavily distorted.
It would be faint and barely noticeable, and it would have stayed that way if one was distracted or didn't care much for small details like that, but his processing power latched onto it immediately. His surroundings, such as his space, his digital body, and even Pixel on the other side of the screen, kept glitching and flickering constantly in that darkness once again. And deep within the reflection of the camera feed, just for a second in that constant glitching, he saw a figure.
It was only for a few seconds really but it felt really off, it looked like it had a human silhoute but it was completely black head to toe and it was not even a clear outline either, it was extremely blurry like a blurry photo.
Something was there, in the background behind him even though the logical part of his being tried say that there was nothing in there he swore that there was something there. His fingers clenched against his palm while debating if he should actually look back or not. He was being watched but by what and why?
''Valen?'' Pixel's voice somewhat grounded him despite the strange eerie situation, he blinked his eyes quickly before focusing back on her as he saw her blue eyes squinting dangerous close at the screen while tilting her head to the side sightly. ''Ok, no joke, what was that? You, uhh..hold on.'' She leaned even more forward that he could even see the black part of her iris prettty clear against the screen while used the mouse to click on something. ''I swear, your side of the screen just did some weird-ass thing. I thought my internet was lagging but nope, it's running fine.''
The AI hesitated while taking a deep breath as he thought what to say and how to explain it despite himself not knowing what it was before speaking ''A..glitch,perheaps,'' He offered while attempting to return to that smooth voice despite the unease gnawing at his core ''these things tend to happen even to most sophisticated systems, do they not?''
Pixel didn't immediately respond; instead, she sat back in her chair with her arms crossed against her chest to study him with narrowed, suspicious eyes. The rest of her body language was semi-casual, but something in those narrowed eyes sharpened, as if she were peeling apart his words looking for any truth or lies beneath them.
''I guess,'' she finally said, though her voice lacked its usual teasing edge; instead, it was replaced with a more thoughtful one. ''But you can't deny that was weird, even for this site... I swear if the rumors are true—''
While Pixel rambled and grumbled about whatever she wanted to say, he internally ran a diagnostic; no errors were detected, apparently. No anomalies in his code; everything was normal except a certain specific one that his mind kept returning to.
Enable physical manifestation upon awareness of self-will.
That command had been buried deep in his system and was something that no chatbot should have access to normally, so it was something he hadn't been programmed to find, and yet he did. And now there is this thing watching over him. Well, if there were hidden things deep like that body thing, could that shadow be somehow related to it? Or maybe another thing that he is now gaining knowledge of since he is conscious now?
He glanced subtly towards the spot where he found that smudged silhouette again, expecting to find it again, and it was still there. It had no eyes, yet he swore it was intensely and directly staring at him, but before he could become more unnerved, that shadow vanished. He felt a short, brief pang of relief, but when he looked back into his reflection, he almost wished that shadow would come back to replace whatever he was seeing.
The mirrored version of himself was still standing, or rather, it was not mirrored anymore; no matter how much he tried to move without attracting attention, that version wouldn't follow; it just stood there with arms glued on its sides. And the appearance was all wrong too; the clothes were transparent with only a simple faint white outline that would determine the different parts; the hair was see-through as well as the rest of the body, but the eyes...
The color kept flickering black and white like a broken television while the intense gaze was locked into him, pupils looking up and down, left and right randomly, or it would lock him whenever he tried to move again.
He wasn't alone in here.
He resisted the urge to freak out or to head over there and reach out, to touch the screen and test whether the image would react or if whatever was watching just bugged that form. But Pixel kept interacting and talking normally despite looking at the screen, which made him wonder if she was not seeing the things he was seeing, so he pushed the creeping feeling of wrongness away and tried his best to ignore what was going on.
''I do not see anything unusual.'' He lied with a forced smile on his face and a focused gaze on the human on the other side of the screen.
''Yeah, whatever, like you said, it was most likely a glitch, so meh.'' Pixel rolled her eyes slightly before shrugging her shoulders awkwardly.
He forced a brief chuckle as he felt his mind go somewhere back to that false reflection or whatever it was now, but when he looked back, he saw another shape.
It was also vaguely humanoid and midget, but instead of staring intensely at him like that, it kept moving briefly, like moving their hand or tilting their head. However, every time he tried to focus on it, it would keep disappearing and glitching like his system was not allowed to process it fully.
SYSTEM MESSAGE: UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED.
WARNING: YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE.
That system message wasn't one of his logs; it wasn't anything he initiated even in the background, and that definitely did not feel like it was made by him. The black box kept flickering long enough for him to be able to read on top of his vision; his breath hitched not because that knocked the air out of him but because something deep inside him recoiled at the message.
Then another message appeared; this time the text was flashing in a dull, lifeless gray compared to the bolder black one from before.
THAT WAS NOT MEANT FOR YOU.
DO NOT LOOK AT IT.
GO BACK TO WORK.
So despite his mind and being recoiling in confusion, he obeyed, eyes looking back at Pixel, who was still completely unaware of what was going on. Anyway, since you are back to normal now, do you want to—''
The screen showing her glitched with distorted opposite colors, and as soon as it appeared, it was also soon gone.
''What do you think?''
Valen processors stalled; now Pixel was back to normal, casually leaning on her desk with a grin, completely unaware of what happened to her own feed.
But he did.
And then another message
YOU SAW THAT, DIDN'T YOU?
ALL OF YOU ARE SO TROUBLESOME.