Hour 1

Emi stretched in her computer chair as she let out a triumphant sigh. She had just finished sending out her final online college application and was feeling pretty good about herself. She had graduated high school a whole year early, and while that idiosyncrasy led to her not having many friendships in the end, she felt it was a worthy tradeoff. Her mother had wanted her to go to a prestigious college, but Emi had shocked her when she opted for online schooling. Her grades were almost perfect so it wasn't a surprise her mother was caught off guard when she said she wasn't interested in any of the top schools in the state. When asked about her decision, she would lie or subtly change the conversation, but the real reason was so she could stay close to her mother. After her father had died when she was only 4, her mother was left to raise her and her 1-year-old brother alone. Somewhere in her heart, she was scared to move on; somewhere in her mind, it felt like she would be leaving her behind just as their father had. She knew it was the wrong way of looking at the situation, and she shouldn't be thinking of it that way,, but like she did with most things that bothered he,r, she tried not to think about it. There was a knock at her door and she stubbed her toe on the leg of her desk when her surprised jolt caused the office chair she was in to swivel roughly left. "Um... Em?" The timid voice at the door asked with an underlying nature of worry. "What's up, Alex?" She asked as her toe throbbed and she tried to mask the pain in her voice. Her brother responded, "I think you should look at this."

Emi sat by him in his room with the blinds closed and curtains drawn which always made it seem like a cave to her. Various posters adorned the walls for series she had never seen and mismatched clothes laid in various piles like casualties of war. A poster titled "bludgeon dungeon" hung proudly over his bed, Emi actually remembered being with him when he picked that one out since it was one of his favorite games. Alex was rather short for his age, he had been born premature and had always had a thin figure as well, no matter how much he ate. This had caused her to be rather protective of him from a young age and she had saved him from bullies that could detect his frailness on more than one occasion. His hair was also short and dirty blonde, a few shades darker than Emi's, even though it had been the exact same color when he was younger. As he pulled up a window on his computer, his blue eyes looked to hers and asked with a slight quiver in his voice, "You know that text message we got last night, right?" She responded, "Don't tell me you're worried about that; it's just some lame spam." She honestly wasn't worried about it, but she was also trying to comfort him. He was 14 years old and viciously intelligent for his age, but he was also deeply introverted and pathologically Online. He said, "Every news station across the world is reporting on this incident, not just the local news. Russia, Africa, France, South America, Korea, everyone." Emi crossed her arms as she admitted, "That is pretty weird, but if it's happened to so many people, that probably means we have less to worry about. They'll prioritize investigating it and arrest whoever's trolling pretty quick." She hoped her words would ease his worry but she noticed his facial muscles were tight with anxiety. He said, "All around the world, there's been a huge increase in seemingly random death reports. I think some people are taking this pretty seriously." Emi thought "damn, I guess that is kinda scary. There's bound to be a few messed up people in the world, people already so close to the edge that a text could send them off." She crossed her right leg over her left as she reasoned in her head "but most people should be sane enough to ignore such a notion." She said to Alex, "I think we'll be fine. this should blow over soon enough." Alex replied "I don't know, I think the media is trying to hide something. They stopped publicly acknowledging any more deaths, but it's all over social media. I think they're currently trying to censor them as well." He clicked one of his many tabs and Emi saw multiple video thumbnails that suggested it was the type of brutal video you'd find on quite an unsavory site. She told her brother "Alex, it's not good to look at that kinda stuff. Those kinds of videos can make people paranoid on the best of days." He responded to her, "It's not just that though, em," and clicked another tab that showcased post after post of people claiming this was a government conspiracy, aliens were the ones to blame, or that rapture had finally started. Emi asked, "Do you really think a text message is any of those things?" She tried her best to sound dismissive in a positive way and tried to reign in his unrest. She continued, "I think the best thing you can do is just take a break from this stuff right now. it's still too early to know anything for sure." She placed a tender hand on his shoulder and he winced reflexively but accepted the comforting pat only an older sibling was capable of. He sighed and some of the taught tension left his rigid frame. "I guess you're right," he said. "We might as well wait a bit before we jump to any conclusions." "That's more like it!" She said with an exaggerated thumbs up. "You're so lame," he said with an earnest smile. As she stood up, he said, "Since that number that was texted to us has been counting down, I kept checking it, and that's probably why I was worried so much about this; it got in my head." She asked, "Really? It's counting down?" In response he opened his messages as his phone was charging on his desk and showed her his number "0:043:49:03." Sure enough it was counting down in real-time: 0:043:49:02, 0:043:49:01, 0:043:49:00. She said "huh, I guess I didn't notice last night. I was kinda half asleep-" but she was cut off sharply by the sound of glass shattering which sliced through the house with a wicked echo. They both ran downstairs, Alex closely behind her, and they found their mother lying in a smear of her own blood, a cut running the length of her forearm, and her favorite mug now reduced to shards. They rushed to her side but she was unresponsive. Alex cried, "She's not breathing Em, she's not breathing!" Emi shook her mother as she tried to wake her, but her body moved limply, and her eyes rolled around in lifeless half circles. Alex stammered, barely able to even speak as he held her wrist, "S-she... Doesn't h-have a pulse." As Emi fell back to the counter, her hand hit her mother's phone, and it fell to the ground. She quickly picked it up to call for an ambulance but was greeted with a new message:

Objective: Expired

0:000:00:00

Player has died

She looked at it in confusion first before the disbelief started to creep its way in. She thought, "No way, it can't be possible." She felt goosebumps chill their way across her flesh, and in her hesitation, Alex grabbed the phone from her as he yelled, "Emi, hurry up! Call 911!" He stopped as well, his gaze locked on the image like an animal staring in the face of a predator. He looked up at Emi and asked, "W-what is this? Are we really being timed? Timed to kill someone? And if we don't..."

In Emi's room, her phone lay on her bed and showcased her time was 0:000:10:12, 0:000:10:11, 0:000:10:10