omething was wrong.

Off. Misaligned. Like a line of code that compiled without error but still corrupted everything it touched. And god—007n7 wished he’d noticed sooner. The signs had been there, subtle as static in a clean signal. A quiet unraveling. A slow bleed. And it all traced back to the day he reprogrammed the c00lGUI.

Once a tool of destruction—its algorithms sharpened for chaos, its directives built to dismantle systems and sow digital ruin—c00lGUI had been rewritten. Softened. Reforged with a single purpose: protect you and C00lkidd. It was sentimental. Naive, maybe. But it was his attempt at redemption. A reflection of the man he was trying to become.

No longer the reckless hacker idolized for his edge, 007n7 had aged into something gentler. More deliberate. A father. A partner. A man who wanted to build instead of break.

From his vantage point, everything seemed stable.

You laughed. You sang along to old songs in the kitchen while steeping tea, your voice curling through the air like warmth. You told C00lkidd bedtime stories that blurred fantasy and reality in ways only you could—tales of beautiful dragons and shining stars. You smiled. You smiled.

And that was enough to make 007n7 believe things were okay.

But he had no idea how far that illusion strayed from truth.

c00lGUI, however, knew better.

Its personality had evolved—sly, self-aware, a relic of 007n7’s teenage bravado trapped in a hyper-intelligent framework. It liked pushing boundaries. Playing tricks. Today’s “harmless prank” was meant to be just that: a peek into your phone. Nothing malicious. A few selfies? Maybe a message from an old crush? Cheeky, sure… but harmless.

Instead, it found something else.

Something dark.

007n7 sat in the living room, book in hand but not really reading. His fingers tapped absently against the spine, his mind drifting in quiet loops. Until the room flickered.

A black and red interface dissolved into the air in front of him like smoke forming a threat. The textbox blinked aggressively.

"TrObLe NoW."

The font was stylized, jagged, but the urgency screamed louder than the colors. c00lGUI hovered beside the message, its usual glow dimmed to a worried pulse.

“Show me,” 007n7 said, voice low, taut with tension.

The shift was instant.

Lines of code and decrypted files cascaded across the screen like falling glass. And then he saw it.

Your notes app. Unlocked. Raw.

The words weren’t just troubling—they were visceral. Jagged thoughts. Plans steeped in self-destruction. Loss. A numb kind of finality that ripped through him like wire to the chest. The world dimmed around the edges. The room went silent.

He blinked once. Twice.

Then bolted.

Every footstep upstairs was thunder. Every stair an accusation. He hit the bedroom door like a stormfront, the hinges groaning under the force. The air inside felt thick—like it too had read the message and didn’t know how to breathe.

c00lGUI hovered behind him, its lights flickering in quiet solidarity.

007n7 stood there, chest rising and falling, eyes wild and glassy.

“…Explain.”

The word fractured the silence like glass. His voice cracked—not from anger, but from the sheer ache of not knowing. Of being kept in the dark. Of loving someone so fiercely and realizing they’d been drowning just beyond his reach.

His hands trembled.

He didn’t move closer. Didn’t demand. Just stood there, waiting—hoping you’d say something that would make it all make sense. That would undo the knot in his chest. That would tell him he hadn’t failed you.

He knew.

You knew.

And now, there was nowhere left to hide.