The Game - Chapter 5 – NPCs* Don’t Blink

The NPCs began watching me.

At first, it was subtle—heads turning a fraction too slowly, eyes tracking the screen’s edge. Then they started addressing me directly.

Not my character. Me.

YOU LOOK TIRED.

YOU SHOULD REST.

WE’LL KEEP PLAYING WITHOUT YOU.

Their dialogue boxes overlapped, stacking faster than the game could render them, until the screen became a mess of unreadable text. When it cleared, the town was empty.

I noticed something new in the silence: breathing.

Soft, rhythmic, slightly out of sync with my own.

I muted the TV. The breathing continued.

It was coming from behind the screen.

That was the night I finally tried to destroy the cartridge. I yanked it from the console and hurled it against the wall. The plastic cracked—but instead of circuit boards, something dark and fibrous protruded from the break, recoiling as if in pain.

My TV screamed.

The sound was high-pitched, distorted, layered with voices I almost recognised. The lights blew out. When they came back on, the cartridge lay intact on the floor, not a scratch on it.

A new message waited when the game rebooted itself.

YOU CAN’T DELETE A SAVE THAT’S STILL RUNNING.

I began to notice changes in mirrors. My reflection lagged slightly behind my movements. Sometimes it smiled when I didn’t. Sometimes it wasn’t there at all.

The game added a new area: THE EXIT.

It was locked.

*NPCs are non-player characters—characters in a video game (and sometimes in tabletop games or simulations) that are not controlled by the player. Instead, they’re controlled by the game’s programming or rules.

Source: Some or all of the content was generated using an AI language model