Chapter 1: The Midnight Test

After a day that chewed me up and spit me out—emails, deadlines, and the stale smell of burnt coffee—I collapsed into my desk chair, craving the mindless comfort of a screen. The only sounds in my dorm apartment were the whir of the old AC and the lazy fizz from a half-drained can of Coke sweating onto my desk. Even though the city outside was winding down, my nerves still buzzed from work.

Ding dong—

A notification pinged in the top left corner of my monitor, slicing through the silence. Not a text, not the usual work Slack—an email from someone I didn’t recognize.

[Impostor Test Software:]

Probably another scam or a prank, I thought. But something about the subject line hooked me—maybe it was boredom, maybe it was the kind of curiosity you get at 2 AM when you know you should just go to bed. I clicked it open. The message loaded slow as molasses, and then a stark black-and-white photograph filled my screen.

The woman in the photo wore an exaggerated grin, one of those cartoonish, stretched-out smiles that almost reached her ears. It looked pasted on, her eyes glassy and empty—a mannequin’s stare. My fingers tightened around the mouse, and I felt a bead of sweat run down my spine as I squinted closer, half-expecting her to blink.

Beneath the image, a single line of blood-red text glared back:

[If you think this photo is normal, please exit the test software immediately.]

[If you find this photo unsettling, please continue with the following test.]

1

Impostor Test Software

My interest was piqued now—creepypasta vibes, maybe a weird indie game, or just someone’s attempt at a viral scare. Either way, it beat doomscrolling through news. I almost grinned at the cheap thrill.

I set my sweating Coke down on the coffee-stained end table, the can clinking against a stack of old takeout menus.

Click.

I hit download without a second thought. Risky, maybe, but my antivirus was up-to-date and I was desperate for something out of the ordinary.

The software was tiny, barely over twenty megabytes. Probably just a gimmicky prank, I thought as the progress bar zipped to 100%.

I launched it. The first thing that popped up was another black-and-white photo—this time, a girl.

My chair squeaked as I jerked back, heart thudding. Cheap jump scare, but it worked.

There was something off about this girl—her eyes were set way too far apart, her mouth stretched in an unsettling grin, almost simian. The uncanny valley effect hit hard, like those fake AI-generated faces you see floating around the internet.

At that moment, a new line of text flickered on the screen:

[If you feel this picture is normal, it is recommended you exit this test.]

[If you feel this picture is abnormal, or even unsettling, you must continue with the following test.]

Two options appeared below:

[Continue] and [Exit]

Staring at that bizarre photo, a shudder ran up my arms—like cold air sneaking under the covers on a winter night. My hand hovered just a second before I clicked Continue. No way was I bailing now.

Two more photos blinked into existence.

System prompt:

[Please click the picture you believe is the impostor.]

One showed a middle-aged man grinning at the camera, and the other was a little boy with a stiff, unnatural smile—his features oddly assembled, like a marionette’s.

He really looked like a puppet. No way a real kid could look that stiff. Is this even a real person?

I muttered, “No way a real kid could look that stiff. Is this even a real person?”

Without a second’s hesitation, I clicked on the boy. My gut didn’t waver.

Instantly, two more photos appeared:

One was a long-faced man, arm stretched out for a selfie, his gaze distant and blank. The other was a middle-aged man, same selfie angle, but something was off—hard to pin down.

After a moment’s observation, I decisively clicked the long-faced man. The pattern was getting clearer, and the details were starting to repeat: the emptiness, the weirdly frozen faces.

All these people had one thing in common: their eyes looked dead, their stares glazed over, and their smiles felt wrong, almost forced—like actors in a low-budget horror flick.

They just didn’t feel human. Not in any way that mattered.

Based on the previous rounds, I came to this conclusion, feeling a strange mix of adrenaline and unease.

Several more rounds of picture selection followed, each photo more disturbing than the last—wide grins, vacant eyes, poses that screamed "not right." Still, I got every one right, or at least it felt that way. My leg bounced under the desk, the tension in my shoulders climbing with every click. My hand moved on instinct now, not logic.

Until the final round—

Crap.

As soon as the images loaded, I blurted out loud, startled: “Isn’t that my neighbor, Mr. Fisher, from next door?”

The two pictures on the screen:

One was a woman, her face plain, nothing weird or forced.

The other was unmistakable—my neighbor across the hall, Mr. Fisher, in a photo I'd never seen before.

In the photo, Mr. Fisher’s eyes were unnaturally wide, gaze unfocused, and his mouth twisted into the same disturbing grin as the others. I almost laughed at the absurdity, except my skin crawled.

Seriously, isn’t this violating someone’s privacy rights? I’m definitely reporting this crappy game later. For a split second, I thought about all the TikTok videos warning about face-stealing apps and shrugged uncomfortably.

Grumbling about the game, I still clicked Mr. Fisher’s photo. My hands moved faster than my brain could process, muscle memory overriding common sense.

After so many rounds, I could immediately tell Mr. Fisher wasn’t human—or at least, not the Mr. Fisher I knew.

Click.

The crisp mouse click echoed in my tiny apartment, unnaturally loud. Suddenly, the screen froze, pixels flickering in a moment of digital vertigo.

Then two options popped up:

[Are you still alive?]

[Yes][No]

Are you kidding me? If I weren’t alive, who would be answering your questions? I snorted, trying to break the tension, but my laugh sounded thin, even to me.

I clicked Yes, feeling more and more like this was just some lame prank software—a Reddit scare story come to life. Still, my heart thudded in my chest, uneasy.

But then, the screen froze again. A creeping sense of dread clawed at me.

Just as I started wondering if my computer had caught a virus—

Several lines of blood-red text flashed across the screen:

[Congratulations, you have passed the test.]

[We will come to pick you up within a week. Please do not speak, do not open the door, and do not answer any calls now.]

[Do not let them know you have discovered their abnormality.]

[If you do not receive any further emails from us after a week,]

[Then you can only pray for yourself.]

[Beeep...]

The computer screen flickered violently, colors bleeding and ghosting, before crashing to a harsh blue screen.

Crap. Did I just nuke my laptop for a meme? This crappy software actually infected my computer! I cursed, pounding the desk with my fist in frustration, half-wondering if I’d just bricked my machine.

I shut down the computer, hand shaking slightly, ready to restart and run every scan I knew—

But just then:

Knock knock knock—