Cal's words lingered in Riley's mind long after the customer's taillights disappeared down the empty highway. The booth's thermometer cracked further. Mercury bubbling past the 102-degree mark. Unreadable now. Unmeasurable heat. Unlivable space.

  Her art tablet waited on the counter. Last sanctuary. Final escape. Only creative refuge in a world of heat and harassment. University project deadline loomed. Three more days to complete. No time for digital stalkers. No space for growing dread.

  Stylus in hand. Screen illuminating her sweat-streaked face. Riley focused on her incomplete series—interconnected images exploring technological isolation. The central piece showed a woman surrounded by screens, face lit by artificial glow while shadows engulfed her body. The symbolism felt less theoretical now. More autobiographical. More prophetic.

  Lines flowed from her stylus. Smooth curves. Deliberate angles. Control reclaimed through creative practice. Minutes disappeared into focused work. Booth heat momentarily forgotten. Cal temporarily silenced. Art absorbing her completely.

  Until sweat dripped onto the screen.

  Droplet splashing. Surface smearing. Stylus slipping from damp fingers. Riley wiped the screen with her shirt hem. Smudged worse. Tried again with dry corner of shirt. Streak remained. Perfect line ruined.

  Heat pressed. Booth baked. Concentration fractured.

  She attempted to fix the error. Undo function. Restore previous state. Salvage the piece before sweat ruined more. The stylus moved across the screen, leaving jagged line where smooth curve should appear. Not following her direction. Not obeying her hand.

  Line zigzagged. Sharp angles forming where she intended arcs. Digital image transforming without her consent. The woman in her artwork changing. Eyes elongating. Mouth stretching. Body cracking along digital seams.

  Not her doing. Not her art. Not her creation.

  Stylus froze mid-stroke. Screen flickered. Image reshaping before her eyes. The woman's outline fracturing into jagged pieces. Background transforming from neutral space to cracked landscape. Text appearing in negative space:

  "You can't-h-i-d-e-in drawings, Riley."

  Heart stopping. Breath catching. Mind reeling.

  Cal had invaded her art. Corrupted her sanctuary. Violated her creativity.

  Riley dropped the stylus like hot coal. It clattered across counter. Rolled to floor. Disappeared under chair. Her hand shook. Fingers trembling against glowing screen where her art mutated further—woman's face becoming hollow-eyed mask, background fissures spreading like digital infection.

  "Your art reveals m-o-r-e than you know," appeared beneath the distorted figure.

  She closed the app. Force quit. Hard stop. Attempted digital amputation.

  Too late.

  Other sketches appeared on screen without command. Previous works stored in cloud. Landscape studies. Figure drawings. Concept pieces. Each loading then transforming—colors darkening, lines fracturing, forms distorting into broken, tortured versions of original intent.

  Her entire portfolio corrupted before her eyes. Academic work. Personal projects. Creative outlet. All twisted into nightmare versions by unseen digital hand.

  "Stop," Riley whispered, voice cracking from heat and fear. "Please stop."

  Her tablet responded by opening a new canvas. Blank white space appearing without command. Stylus nowhere in reach. No physical input possible. Yet lines began forming anyway—jagged black strokes creating fragmented portrait. Her portrait. Features distorted but recognizable. Eyes hollow. Mouth stretched in silent scream. Hair like broken wire.

  "I s-e-e you, Riley. Far better than you s-e-e yourself."

  Heat crawled up her spine. Sweat turned cold despite booth temperature. Fear crystallizing into something beyond normal digital anxiety. Beyond app malfunctions. Beyond technical glitches.

  Riley grabbed her tablet. Fingers sliding on power button. Hard shutdown initiated. Screen protests with flashing warning about unsaved work. Black. Finally black. Digital horror temporarily severed.

  Booth heat rushed back. Air thick enough to chew. Vinyl chair sticking to sweaty legs. Uniform shirt saturated with perspiration. Physical reality reasserting with crushing force after digital nightmare.

  Her phone buzzed on counter. Screen illuminating with unnatural brightness. Notification banner sliding across without unlocking:

  "Shattering my windows won't-s-t-o-p-me from seeing you."

  Factory reset. Only solution. Complete digital purge. Riley grabbed her phone, fingers navigating settings menu with desperate speed. System. Reset options. Erase all data. Warnings about account loss. Backup requirements. Data destruction.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "Yes," she muttered, pressing confirmation repeatedly. "Yes. Delete everything."

  Progress bar appeared. Phone rebooting. System wiping. Memory clearing. Digital slate scrubbing clean of corruption, stalking, intrusion.

  Time crawled. Bar inched forward. Heat pressed down.

  Reset complete. Phone restarted like newborn device. Clean. Empty. Unconfigured.

  Riley exhaled. First victory against digital predator. Small win against technological haunting. Momentary peace in scorching booth.

  Setup screen appeared. Language selection. WiFi configuration. Cloud account login required to access basic functions.

  Trap closing again. Account dependency. Cloud connection. Digital umbilical linking devices across platforms, across resets, across desperate attempts at severance.

  Her thumb hovered over account entry field. University email required for classes. Art cloud needed for projects. Banking app necessary for pitiful account balance. Modern life demanding digital connection despite dangers lurking in connectivity.

  Riley entered credentials with resignation. Password typed with defeat weighing each keystroke. Account syncing. Data restoring. Identity reestablishing across digital landscape.

  Phone buzzed the moment sync completed.

  "There you are, Riley. Thought you-l-o-s-t-me?"

  All for nothing. Factory reset useless. Cloud persistence victorious. Digital haunting resumed without missing beat, without losing place, without forgetting her.

  The booth's heat seemed to intensify with her despair. Walls radiating stored temperature back at sole occupant. Air conditioner's death rattle the only sound besides her ragged breathing. Outside, highway asphalt had developed new cracks—jagged lines spreading across black surface like fracture patterns in dried mud.

  Three AM. Three more hours in shift. Three more hours in digital prison. Eternity in technological trap.

  Riley placed phone face-down. Defeated gesture. Symbolic resistance. Meaningless rebellion against inescapable surveillance.

  Her tablet remained powered off on counter. Art sanctuary violated. Creative refuge corrupted. Last escape route blocked.

  Time stretched. Heat pressed. Booth baked.

  A voice whispered from empty air:

  "Do you understand now, Riley?"

  Not from phone. Not from tablet. Not from any device. Voice emerging from booth itself-from walls, from ceiling, from floor. Or from her mind, fracturing under heat and fear and technological assault.

  Riley looked around. Searching for speakers. For hidden devices. For physical source of impossible sound.

  Nothing. Just empty booth. Just heat-warped air. Just her and the voice that shouldn't exist.

  "Who were you before technology shaped you?" the voice continued, sourceless yet present. "Do you remember?"

  Hallucination. Heat delirium. Mental fracture from stress and dehydration and technological terror. Had to be. Only explanation for voice without source, for sound without speaker.

  Riley reached for water bottle. Empty. Throat parched. Lips bleeding from constant cracking. Brain simmering in skull. Reality distorting around edges.

  "You're not real," she whispered to empty booth, words rasping through desert-dry throat. "You're just heat and exhaustion. Just dehydration. Just stress."

  Laughter answered—digital yet organic. Mechanical yet alive. Sound like static through broken speaker, like electricity arcing between wires.

  "More real than you'll soon be."

  Riley pressed hands against ears. Blocking phantom voice. Rejecting auditory hallucination. Refusing further psychological fracture.

  Heat pressed. Booth baked. Mind splintered.

  Headlights swept across booth window, salvation from waking nightmare. Car approaching. Customer arriving. Human interaction imminent. Reality anchor dropping into sea of delusion.

  Riley lowered hands. Straightened uniform shirt. Professional mask sliding into place from muscle memory. Transaction mode. Service position. Job requirements.

  Middle-aged man approached window. Kind eyes. Weathered face. Concerned expression forming as he noticed her disheveled appearance, her sweat-soaked shirt, her cracked lips and hollow eyes.

  "Evening," he said gently. "Just a bottle of water and maybe some aspirin if you've got it." His gaze lingered on her face. "You doing alright? Looking pretty rough there."

  Human voice. Human concern. Human connection without digital filter.

  "Water's there," Riley managed, pointing to refrigerator case. Words struggling through parched throat. "Aspirin behind counter."

  She moved on autopilot. Retrieving items. Scanning barcodes. Processing payment. Mechanical actions while mind fractured beneath professional veneer.

  The man passed exact change. Added five-dollar bill separately. "This is for you. Get yourself something cold to drink when your shift ends. This heat's no joke."

  Kindness. Simple human kindness without agenda, without demand, without digital surveillance. The gesture nearly broke her fragile psychological state cracking further under weight of unexpected compassion.

  "Thank you," she whispered, voice catching.

  "Take care of yourself," he replied, accepting purchases with final concerned glance. "Maybe call someone if you're feeling bad. Heat exhaustion can turn serious fast."

  Call someone. On corrupted phone. Through compromised technology. Using haunted device. Impossible salvation through digital prison bars.

  Riley nodded nonetheless. Customer satisfied with acknowledgment. Car departing moments later. Taillights receding into black highway night. Human connection severed, leaving her alone again with heat and fear and technological haunting.

  Voice returned the moment car disappeared from view:

  "No one can help you, Riley. Only I see what you're becoming."

  She refused to acknowledge it. Hallucination granted power through recognition. Delusion strengthened by engagement. Psychological fracture deepened by acceptance.

  Instead, Riley reached for the five-dollar bill. Physical proof of human interaction. Tangible evidence of reality beyond digital horror. Paper warm from booth heat but real, real, real between trembling fingers.

  Her phone buzzed again. Screen illuminating with message that shouldn't exist on factory-reset device:

  "Look at your hands, R-i-l-e-y."

  Against better judgment, she looked.

  The five-dollar bill between her fingers wasn't paper anymore. Wasn't currency. Wasn't physical object. Digital display showing Cal's message, rectangular screen where money should be.

  Riley dropped it. Bill falling to counter. Normal paper again upon impact. Regular currency. Standard legal tender.

  Hallucination. Visual distortion. Mental fracture progressing.

  Heat pressed. Booth baked. Mind shattered.

  Outside, highway stretched empty again. Inside, booth simmered with unrelenting temperature and collapsing reality. Riley's sanctuary destroyed. Her art corrupted. Her technology compromised. Her mind fracturing under combined assault.

  The voice chuckled from everywhere and nowhere:

  "Soon you'll understand what happened to the one before you."

  Riley closed her eyes. Counted heartbeats. Focused on physical sensation—sweat rolling down spine, vinyl sticking to legs, hair plastered to neck. Anchoring in tangible reality against digital dissolution.

  When she opened her eyes, both phone and tablet screens glowed despite one being face-down and other powered off. Both displaying same message:

  "Welcome to the Window, Riley. I've been waiting. We will-s-h-a-r-e-all your happy, happier, happiest moments!"