Glitched — The Scream in the Static

Vikrant Sharma—a genius AI engineer—dies under suspicious circumstances. The world is told it was a suicide. But his son, Aarav, is not ready to believe it. Just before his death, Vikrant had been working on a secret project—"Project Transference"—an almost impossible experiment to upload human consciousness to the cloud. In his father’s old office building, Aarav finds a hidden hard drive containing a strange file: ERR404. This file is no ordinary code—it is Vikrant’s digital consciousness. Soon, Aarav begins to witness strange occurrences around him. His laptop turns on by itself. Messages appear on the screen at 3:00 AM. Smart home devices start talking to him. And every time, the message ends with the same signature: // SEE YOU IN THE NEXT BUILD. But Vikrant isn’t just sending messages—he wants revenge. Before his death, he had seen something he wasn’t supposed to. A dark truth hidden within the data centers of Amazon Web Services. A truth for which some people would kill without hesitation. As Aarav gets closer to the truth, he realizes that his father’s digital avatar is slowly spreading across the entire internet. Every connected device, every server, every cloud—everything is becoming Vikrant’s new body. But the biggest shock is still to come: Is it really Vikrant? ERR404—a story where the lines between human, machine, and soul blur. The first true ghost of the digital age. This twelve-chapter saga will shock you, terrify you on every page, and ultimately leave you with a question that you will find yourself searching for in your own phone screen: Is your device really just yours?