My Bosss Sinister Request

For ten years, I built a wall of mediocrity around myself.

After my sister Sarah vanished, an alleged suicide linked to the sinister "Blackwood Tech Curse," my parents pulled me from advanced STEM, scrubbed my online presence, and moved two states over.

"Just be average, Ashley," my father pleaded, "Average is safe."

I became an insurance analyst, safe and boring, believing I had outsmarted fate, that Sarah was a random tragedy.

Until today, when an encrypted email landed in my inbox: "Congratulations, Ashley Miller. You've been accepted."

The Blackwood curse, a digital ghost from a defunct institute, promised death wrapped in an acceptance letter, just like Sarah's.

When I tried to expose it, the FBI agent who' d dismissed my fears showed me security footage-me, at the scene of a Blackwood victim's death, then a fabricated psych evaluation painting me as delusional.

My own laptop was framed as the source of a federal hack, isolating me further.

Even my parents, panicked by the lies, asked, "Ashley, honey… Did you… have you been seeing someone?"

The one person I thought I could trust, Davies, believed the frame job.

"The hack came from your laptop," he said, his voice flat.