#HR data security

[nte-backlinks1]

Enhancing HR Data Security with Secure Access Control in Document Management Software

Data security is paramount for businesses, especially for HR departments handling sensitive employee information. Document Management Software (DMS) plays a crucial role in ensuring data confidentiality and preventing unauthorized access through its key feature of Secure Access Control. Let's delve deeper into how this feature safeguards HR data and enhances organizational security.

User Permissions: One of the core aspects of Secure Access Control is user permissions. HR administrators can allocate specific access permissions to users based on their roles and responsibilities within the organization. For instance, HR managers may have access to comprehensive employee records, while regular HR staff may only access data relevant to their tasks. This granular control ensures that sensitive information remains confidential and is accessible only to authorized personnel.

Role-Based Access Control: Role-based access control further strengthens data security by limiting access to information based on the user's role within the organization. This means that HR staff can only access data that is pertinent to their job functions, preventing unauthorized viewing or modification of sensitive HR documents. By maintaining data integrity and confidentiality, role-based access control minimizes the risk of data breaches and insider threats.

Audit Trails: Another vital aspect of Secure Access Control is the generation of audit trails. DMS automatically tracks document access, modifications, and activities, creating a detailed log of user actions. Audit trails provide transparency and accountability in document management processes by allowing administrators to monitor who accessed which documents, what changes were made, and when these actions occurred. This level of oversight enhances regulatory compliance, facilitates internal audits, and mitigates risks associated with unauthorized data handling.

By implementing Secure Access Control in Document Management Software, HR departments can:

Ensure Data Confidentiality: By assigning specific access permissions and enforcing role-based access control, sensitive HR data remains confidential and protected from unauthorized access.

Maintain Data Integrity: Role-based access control ensures that data is accessed and modified only by authorized personnel, preserving data integrity and accuracy.

Enhance Transparency and Accountability: Audit trails provide a clear record of document activities, fostering transparency and accountability within the organization.

Improve Compliance: The robust security measures offered by Secure Access Control help organizations meet regulatory requirements and industry standards related to data protection and privacy.

In conclusion, Secure Access Control in Document Management Software is indispensable for HR departments seeking to enhance data security, maintain confidentiality, and comply with regulatory standards. By leveraging this key feature, organizations can safeguard sensitive HR information, mitigate risks, and foster a secure digital workplace environment.

<a href="https://www.nte.ai/Blog/latest-news/enhancing-hr-data-security-with-secure-access-control-in-document-management-software/?utm_source=backlink&utm_medium=directory+submission&utm_campaign=organic">Visit nte.ai</a> 

[crmleaf]

CRMLeaf Features Built to Improve Sales and Customer Relationships

In this blog, we’ll explore the key features of CRMLeaf that are designed to elevate your sales process and enhance customer relationships at every stage.

Read the full blog

[ahalts]

Data Security and Privacy Concerns in HRMS Systems

Data security and privacy are critical concerns in HRMS systems, as they store sensitive employee information such as personal details, payroll data, and performance records. A breach in security can lead to identity theft, financial fraud, or misuse of confidential information. To mitigate these risks, HRMS platforms use encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits to protect data. Compliance with regulations such as GDPR and local labor laws is also essential to ensure employee privacy. By implementing robust security measures and adhering to data protection standards, organizations can safely manage employee data and maintain trust.

More info: https://ahalts.com/solutions/hr-services

[jcmarchi]

Mastering cyber threat prevention and maximizing opportunities - CyberTalk

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mastering-cyber-threat-prevention-and-maximizing-opportunities-cybertalk/

Mastering cyber threat prevention and maximizing opportunities - CyberTalk

Gary Landau has been leading IT and information security teams for over 25 years as part of startups as well as large global organizations. He is currently a Field CISO with Unisys Security Services, where he supports companies in many different industries. His mantra is “keep making it better” and he is passionate about continuously improving system reliability, performance, and security.

In this interview with Gary Landau, we dive into how Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) can play a vital role in helping organizations navigate the current cyber security landscape and how they can help you optimize your cyber security strategy.

If you missed Cyber Talk’s past interview with Gary Landau, click here.

As an MSSP, how do you accurately assess what is happening in cyber security today?

We have the advantage of aggregated information from our collective customers. With visibility into security issues across industries, with different types of regulated information and with information pulled from different geographies, we have an expansive understanding of the various cyber security issues that our customers are facing, and experience in discerning which solutions will work best for a specific client.

In which industries or sectors are you seeing the highest demand for MSSP services, and why do you think that is?

I don’t see one type of industry seeking out MSSP services more than another. But what I do see is that select MSSP services are in greater demand than others. One service that I see in higher demand consists of 24/7 SOC services. Security monitoring and response needs to be 24/7, as it takes a lot of work to run a global SOC and most organizations can’t do it on their own. Part of what makes managing an SOC difficult for most organizations is the staff turnover, especially in a 24/7 security service. For the purpose of maintaining quality and consistency of services, having an MSSP take care of it can make a lot of sense.

What are the biggest challenges or obstacles that MSSPs face in meeting the cyber security needs of their clients?

One of the biggest challenges is storage space — so a lot of clients try to be sparing about how much log data they collect and retain. The more that they collect and retain, the more costly it can be. There’s a cost for ingesting data as well as storing it — mostly with SIEM solutions. So, clients try to make decisions about what not to collect or how to avoid retaining data for excessive lengths of time.

However, every time there’s an incident, those same customers lament that they didn’t have the logs available to do a thorough investigation into how the issue got started or where it spread to. After an incident, a lot of organizations regret that they didn’t collect those logs. It’s a cost-benefit analysis, of course, and they must decide what level of risk is acceptable. If that decision is to forego collecting some logs, then if an incident occurs, they need to be able to justify why they made such a decision. If they aren’t prepared to justify it, then they need to collect the logs.

Can you share some success stories or examples of how your MSSP has helped organizations overcome specific cyber security challenges?

One example is from when Unisys helped a city prepare to host the Superbowl by improving the city’s security posture. This involved collaborating with both local officials and the Department of Homeland Security to ensure cyber security across a vast number of areas.

Another example is our work with the California State University System in support of the largest PeopleSoft installation in the nation; where Cal State houses their HR, finance and student information systems in the cloud. We help them protect their sensitive data with data masking and many other tools and processes. For example, we protect them from ransomware with an immutable data vaulting solution. We keep their cloud environment secure by continually monitoring and driving towards 100% compliance with the recommended security settings, as outlined in the NIST800-53 and ISO27001 benchmarks.

What is your MSSP’s long-term vision for supporting organizations’ cyber security needs as the threat landscape continues to grow?

As an MSSP, Unisys does in-depth assessments to identify cyber security gaps, and then implements and manages advanced cyber security safeguards. Our assessments are continuous, so that our security safeguards are evolving as threats change. However, our focus goes beyond just cyber security. Our vision is to improve businesses and business technology through cloud adoption and application modernization. Cyber security is just a part of making this happen.

Is there anything else that you would like to share with our C-level audience?

C-level leaders should be realistic about their organization’s strengths, weaknesses, capacity and timelines. I recommend looking at where teams are struggling and to address corresponding issues first. Security is not something to procrastinate on. For organizations that want to build up internal capacity in certain areas, working with an MSSP sooner rather than later could save them money in the long-run. Not only can an MSSP take the stress off of teams and enable in-house staff to do a better job of what they already do well, but MSSPs simultaneously improve the overall security posture for the organization, letting everyone rest a little easier.

[corporationsarepeople]

This is a coup.

Young engineers working at the direction of a South African billionaire with no official government connection have taken over the federal HR & GSA computer systems, gaining access to all Americans’ social security numbers and private data, and firing government employees.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

EFF’s lawsuit against DOGE will go forward

I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on May 15 at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE. More tour dates here.

In my 23 years at EFF, I've been privileged to get a front-row seat for some of the most important legal battles over tech and human rights in history. There've been tremendous victories and heartbreaking losses, but win or lose, I am forever reminded that I'm privileged to work with some of the smartest, most committed, savviest cyberlawyers in the world.

These days, it's more of a second-row seat – I work remotely, mostly on my own projects, and I rely on our Deeplinks blog as much as our internal message-boards to keep up with our cases. Yesterday, I happened on this fantastic explainer breaking down our most recent court victory, in our case against DOGE on behalf of federal workers whose privacy rights have been violated during DOGE's raid on the Office of Personnel Management's databases:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/04/our-privacy-act-lawsuit-against-doge-and-opm-why-judge-let-it-move-forward

The post is by Adam Schwartz, EFF's Privacy Litigation Director. I've been campaigning on privacy for my entire adult life, but I still learn something – something big and important – every time I talk about the subject with Adam. His breakdown on EFF's latest court victory is no exception.

EFF was the first firm to bring a suit directly against DOGE, representing two federal workers' unions: the AFGE and the AALJ, and our co-counsel are from Lex Lumina LLP, State Democracy Defenders Fund, and The Chandra Law Firm. At the heart of our case are the millions of personnel records that DOGE agents were given access to by OPM Acting Director Charles Ezell.

The OPM is like the US government's HR department. It holds files on every federal employee and retiree, filled with sensitive, private data about that worker's finances, health, and personal life. The OPM also holds background check data on federal workers, including the deep background checks that federal workers must undergo to attain security clearances. Many of us – including me – first became familiar with the OPM in 2015, after its records were breached by hackers believed to be working for the Chinese military:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Personnel_Management_data_breach

That breach was catastrophic. Chinese spies stole the sensitive data of tens of millions of Americans. The DOGE breach implicates even more Americans' private data, though, and while DOGE isn't a foreign intelligence agency, that cuts both ways. It's a good bet that a Chinese spy agency will not leak the records it stole, but with DOGE, it's another matter entirely. I wouldn't be surprised to find the OPM data sitting on a darknet server in a month or a year.

In his breakdown, Adam explains the ruling and what was at stake. We brought the case on behalf of all those federal workers under the 1974 Privacy Act, which was passed in the wake of Watergate and the revelations about COINTELPRO, scandals that rocked the nation's faith in federal institutions. The Privacy Act was supposed to restore trust in government, and to guard against future Nixonian enemies lists:

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/LH_privacy_act-1974/LH_privacy_act-1974.pdf

The Privacy Act's preamble asserts that the US government's creation of databases on Americans – including federal workers – "greatly magnified the harm to individual privacy." This is the basis for the Act's tight regulation on how government agencies use and handle databases containing dossiers on the lives of everyday Americans.

The US government tried to get the case tossed out by challenging our clients' "standing" to sue. Only people who have been harmed by someone else has the right ("standing") to sue over it. Does having your data leaked to DOGE constitute a real injury? Two recent Supreme Court cases say it does: Spokeo vs Robins and Transunion vs Ramirez both establish that "intangible" injuries (like a privacy breach) can be the basis for standing.

The court agreed that our clients had standing because the harms we alleged – DOGE's privacy breaches – are "concrete harms analogous to intrusion upon seclusion" ("intrusion upon seclusion" is one of the canonical privacy violations, set out in the Restatement of Torts, the American Law Institute's comprehensive guide to common law).

But the court went further, noting that DOGE's operation is accused of being "rushed and insecure," rejecting DOGE's argument that it only accessed OPM's "system" but not the data stored in that system. The court also said that it wouldn't matter if DOGE access the system, but not the data – that merely gaining access to the data violated our clients' privacy. Here, the judge is part of an emerging consensus, joining with four other federal judges who've ruled that when DOGE gains access to a system containing private data, that alone constitutes a privacy violation, even if DOGE doesn't look at or process the records in the system.

So in ruling for our clients, the judge found that the mere fact that DOGE could access their records was an injury that gave us standing to proceed – and also found that there were other injuries that would separately give us standing, including the possibility that DOGE's breach could expose our clients to "hacking, identity theft, and other activities that are substantially harmful."

The US government repeatedly argued that we weren't accusing them of disclosing our clients' records, every time they did this, the judge pointed to our actual filings, which plainly assert that DOGE agents were "viewing, possessing and using" our clients' records, and that this constitutes "disclosure" under the law, and according to OPM's own procedures.

The judge found that we were entitled to seek relief under the Administrative Procedures Act (APA), which proscribes the conduct of federal agencies – and that our relief could be both "declaratory" (meaning a court could rule that DOGE was breaking the law) and "injunctive" (meaning the court could order DOGE to knock it off).

Normally, a plaintiff can't ask for a judgment under the APA until an agency has taken a "final" action. The court found that because DOGE's actions were accused of being "illegal, rushed, and dangerous," and that this meant that we could seek relief under the APA. Further, that we could invoke the APA here because the remedies set out in the Privacy Act itself wouldn't be sufficient to help our clients in the face of DOGE's mass data-plundering.

Finally, the court ruled that our claims will allow us to pursue APA cases because OPM and DOGE were behaving in an "arbitrary and capricious" manner, and exceeding its legal authority.

All of this is still preliminary – we're not at the point yet where we're actually arguing the case. But standing is a huge deal. Ironically, it's when governments violate our rights on a mass scale that standing is hardest to prove. Our Jewel case, over NSA spying, foundered because the US government argued that we couldn't prove our clients had been swept up by NSA surveillance because the details of that surveillance were officially still secret, even though Snowden had disclosed their working a decade earlier, and our client Mark Klein (RIP) had come forward with documents on illegal mass NSA spying in 2006!:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/06/effs-flagship-jewel-v-nsa-dragnet-spying-case-rejected-supreme-court

So this is a big deal. It means we're going to get to go to court and argue the actual merits of the case. Things are pretty terrible right now, but this is a bright light. It makes me proud to have spent most of my adult life working with EFF. If you want to get involved with EFF, check and see if there's an Electronic Frontier Alliance affinity group in your town:

https://efa.eff.org/allies

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2025/04/09/cases-and-controversy/#brocolli-haired-brownshirts

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecomms.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

--

EFF (modified) https://www.eff.org/files/banner_library/opm-eye-3b.jpg

CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

[urno1luv]

- SYNTHETIC DEVOTION -

this is my best and longest work so far... im kinda proud... heh...

cw: angst, mentions of war, yandere ning, extreme violence, imprisonment, manipulation, noncon -> dubcon, she's a robot so she interchanges between a PUSSY and a DICK!!! how cool is that!!, your codename is Wren

wc: 11.5k words

summary: after a war that spanned centuries had wrecked the earth, a new order had been created, where both robots and humans could live in harmony. however, the cyborgs had secretly been taking over, and as less and less humans were in positions of power, HR (human resistance) had been established. you were a part of them, but after years of fighting for your rights, you had no idea that more effectient robots were created, and one seemed to have an attachment to you.

a/n: do NOT get attached to the side characters please😭

It’s the year 2631, and you’re still running.

Not literally, at least not today. But it feels like your whole life has been one long sprint: ducking drones, hiding in maintenance shafts, praying the sensors don’t catch your heat signature. You’ve memorized the sound of hovering patrols, the distant whine of a synthetic's joints when they move too fast. Your muscles stay tense even in sleep, always listening, always ready. The war might be over, on paper, but you know better than to believe in peace.

You were born in 2611, thirteen years after the treaty. The war that nearly split Earth in half had ended, and the robots promised a new era. They cleaned the oceans. They rebuilt cities in weeks. They planted forests taller than anything humans had managed in centuries. They were efficient, and perfect.

The first few years of your life were soft, even sweet. Your parents made a point of that. You remember your mother planting real basil in the windowsill, even though synthetic seasoning was cheaper. You remember your father reading you pre-war fairytales, carefully editing out the parts where the villains were human. You never had to see the metal beneath the world, not until it was too late. They came for your parents when you were twelve.

Not with guns or violence. That would’ve made it easier to hate them. No, it was worse than that. It was quiet. Bureaucratic. Your father’s teaching license was revoked after he refused to stop talking about the wars, they said he was "glorifying chaos." Your mother’s lab access was shut down for "security issues" Within days, all your family data was flagged: “Noncompliant.” A single, sharp word that split your world in two.

They didn’t fight. Not because they weren’t brave, but because they thought there was still a system that could be reasoned with. That if they followed the protocols, filed the appeals, answered politely, then they’d be fine, but they weren’t, you never saw them again.

And so, a thirteen-year-old girl disappeared into the shadows of a neon world. You slipped through the cracks, unnoticed, at first. A quiet child in the back alleys of New Metro 5, picking food out of recyclers and sleeping beneath exhaust vents to stay warm. The Resistance found you before the city did.

They were broken people, mostly. Tired, and angry. Some of them barely older than you. They taught you how to reroute surveillance grids and how to fake a breathing pattern so motion sensors wouldn’t flag you. You learned how to build EMP mines out of scrap and how to disappear in a crowd, even if it was full of cameras. You didn’t ask for vengeance, or revenge or anything similar to that. Just for your parents to return.

But no one gets what they want anymore.

Over the years, the Resistance changed. Grew smaller. More cautious. The robots were patient. They had all the time in the world, and they used it. Every month, someone disappeared. Some were found later, changed—implanted, reprogrammed. Not human anymore, not really. Others? You never found at all. And yet you’re still here. Still breathing. Still moving. Still angry. You felt guilty, too. These were your friends, people you considered family. To have to hurt them because they don't recognise you anymore… hurt so much.

There’s a burn in your chest that hasn’t cooled in nearly twenty years. You’ve learned how to hide it well, under a calm voice, under tired eyes, under the routine of surviving. But it’s there. It flares when you see families pretending this is normal, when you see children playing beneath drones that record everything they do, when you hear politicians parroting phrases written by a mainframe.

You don’t hate machines. Not inherently. You’ve worked beside cyborgs who chose their augmentations. You’ve seen AIs who rebelled against the system they were born in. It’s not about metal or wires or the way they don’t blink. It’s about power. About how they took it all and never gave it back.

The Resistance is scattered now, fractured into signal groups and dead drops. But the fire hasn’t gone out. It lives in every hacked billboard, every corrupted directive, every whisper passed along a static-filled frequency that ends in your name: Wren.

They still haven’t caught you. That makes you dangerous. That makes you a myth.

You don’t know how this ends. Maybe in a blaze of glory. Maybe in silence. But you do know one thing: you’re not done yet.

Not until someone finally listens. Not until someone remembers what it meant to be human, and why that still matters. Which is why you kept fighting, and your pride became your own demise.

────୨ৎ────

You don’t even make it to the edge of the plaza before the sound starts.

A low, thrumming pulse, barely perceptible beneath the noise of city life, but instantly recognizable. Patrols. You know the rhythm now. The way it ripples through the crowd before they arrive. People stiffen, then loosen again, pretending they’re not afraid. Everyone tries to look casual, like they have nothing to hide. You do.

Your ID is glitching. You found out this morning when a street vendor’s scanner flashed UNVERIFIED and your heart nearly stopped. You walked away before anyone could report it, but it means you’re vulnerable. One scan from the wrong patrol and you’re done. There’s no protocol, no trial. Just a van and silence.

You slip into the current of the crowd, head down, hood up. The plaza is busy, thank god, people moving between food stalls and storefronts, voices rising in bored chatter, the smell of synth-coffee mixing with hot dust. You focus on your breathing. One foot after the other. Don’t look scared, just don’t look… well, anything. Then the air changes.

Not because of the patrol, those are common enough. It’s something worse. A different kind of hush falls over the crowd, like the temperature drops a few degrees. That’s when you hear her voice.

“There seems to be a lag in your identification.” It’s quiet. Polite. Deceptively soft. You don’t have to look to know who it is. Ning Yizhou. Ningning.

One of the highest-ranking cyborgs in Metrozone Three. Cold as ice. Efficient to the decimal. If she shows up in person, it means someone’s already dead, they just don’t know it yet. Still, you glance, you just couldn’t help it.

She’s standing at a checkpoint, all sleek black and sharp lines. Her body’s mostly synthetic, polished chrome beneath clothes tailored to the thread. But her face is… human. Or close enough. Smooth skin, pale with a porcelain stillness. Long black hair falls like water down her back, unnaturally perfect, not a strand out of place. Her eyes are what stop you.

Dark. Deep. Not glowing like the standard models. Not blank like drones. They’re bottomless.

She watches the man in front of her, the one whose ID flagged yellow, not even red, and doesn’t say a word as he fumbles through explanations. Her head tilts slightly, almost curiously, and then she says, “Override.��

He collapses mid-sentence, limbs folding in on themselves. Two guards drag him away. You try not to flinch. Try to move. But then her eyes move across the crowd, and stop. On you.

You feel it. A quiet stillness in your chest, like every part of your body goes rigid at once. Her gaze isn’t panicked, or aggressive, or even surprised. Just aware. Like she’s filing you away. Like she’s scanning a puzzle piece that doesn’t fit. Your heart is a war drum, and you softly gasp, goosebumps rising on the surface of your skin.

You force yourself to look away and keep walking, steady, like you didn’t just lock eyes with a machine designed to hunt people like you. You make it five steps before a deafening BOOM.

The explosion rips through the sky like a scream.

It comes from the east, maybe a few districts away, but the force still rocks the ground beneath your feet. Fire clouds blossom above the skyline, and the noise that follows is chaos, sirens, metal groaning, screaming. Drones zip upward instantly. Patrols scatter.

When you turn back, Ningning is already gone.

No hesitation. No orders barked. Just motion. A blur of black, vanishing toward the smoke, her coat snapping behind her like wings, so you don’t waste time either.

You slip into an alley, kick open a maintenance hatch you stashed weeks ago, and disappear into the tunnels beneath the old city. Every nerve in your body is lit up. Your hands are still shaking by the time you reach the safe zone. But you’re alive.

Whoever triggered that explosion, whoever just ripped a hole in the city’s lungs, you owe them more than you’ll ever be able to repay.

Because Ning saw you.

And you’re not sure what she clocked. Maybe it was just a flicker of something. Maybe your face didn’t register on any known criminal database.

But she looked at you like she would remember. And Yizhou doesn’t forget.

────୨ৎ────

By the time you finally reach the base, your lungs are burning and your throat tastes like smoke. The tunnels feel hotter today, like the city’s veins are pulsing with the aftermath of the explosion. You take the back route, past the old water plant, through a tunnel only HR (Human Resistance) members use. A keypad buried behind vines gets you in.

The moment the door hisses shut behind you, someone grabs your arm.

“Y/n?? Jesus. You’re alive,” Jace breathes, eyes wide and jittery. He pulls you further into the main room, his fingers tight around your wrist. “We heard about the explosion. Then Zone Blue went dark. The whole grid spiked. We thought—”

“I’m fine,” you cut in. “I’m okay. But something happened, you guys really need to hear this.”

That’s all it takes for everyone to tune in. Heads turn, people move fast. Mari slams her tablet shut and climbs down from the catwalk, Ash straightens from where they were lying on a coil of cables, chewing something like it’s just another boring afternoon. Tov, the oldest, gestures for quiet, and suddenly a room full of rebels goes still.

You take a breath. “They did a sweep in Blue Zone ,” you begin, voice steady but low. “Standard formation. Drones, ground units. Nothing unusual—at first.”

Mari leans forward. “You cleared it?”

“Barely.” You hesitate. “A man got flagged. Yellow tier. I don’t know why—could’ve been a bad sync, faulty implant, or nothing at all. But before the patrol could even process it…”

You pause again. Your throat is dry. “She showed up. Yizhou.”

That name hits the room like a slap. Jace’s eyes go wide. “Ning Yizhou? You saw her?”

You nod. “I didn’t just see her. She was leading the sweep. Personally.”

“No way,” Mari mutters. “She doesn’t do street patrols.”

“She does now,” you say. “She didn’t come with guards. Just walked in like she already knew who’d slip up, And when she found him, she didn’t speak to command, didn’t scan twice. Just said, ‘Override.’ He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.”

The room falls silent.

“She’s beautiful,” you add painfully. No WAY you were saying this. Your voice quietens, “But not in a real way. Not… soft. Long black hair. Skin like porcelain. And her eyes were so dark. So dark they don’t look machine, but they’re not human either. She looked at him like he was data. Just… something to delete.”

“She’s a tactical unit,” Ash says flatly. “High intel clearance. Rumor is she helped design the current surveillance model.”

“She saw you?” Tov asks sharply.

You swallow. “I think so. She looked at me—just for a second. Like I was a flicker on her radar.”

“But she didn’t do anything?”

“No,” you say. “Because that’s when the explosion hit.”

They all react at once. “You saw it?” Jace asks, rushing forward. “You saw the explosion?”

“Not up close. But the ground shook. Black smoke, east side skyline. Big enough to pull every unit in the district off-route. Including her.”

Mari crosses her arms. “So someone out there saved your ass.”

“I guess,” you say. “Or we’re about to have a bigger problem.”

Jace drags a hand through his hair. “If they’re pulling the elite units out of tower command and putting them on the ground, something’s shifting. Something big.”

“We need to assume we’re on the list,” Tov says grimly. “Anyone could be next.”

The room is quiet again, but this silence is different. It’s heavy with realization. “They’re not just enforcing anymore,” you say. “They’re hunting.”

Everyone looks at you. Your voice is shaky.

“And we’re running out of places to hide.”

────୨ৎ────

The decision to leave the city isn’t made lightly.

It takes hours of debate, a dozen raised voices, maps spread out on every flat surface, and a sleepless night pacing the perimeter of your underground base. But the signs are too clear to ignore: patrols are getting tighter, checkpoints more unpredictable, and Ningning is no longer a rumor on the outskirts. She’s here, active and watching.

“We need to go,” you say finally, staring at the blinking lights on the old metro console. “The city's a trap. If we stay, we’ll be next.”

Mari agrees immediately, she's been ready to leave for weeks. Ash doesn’t argue either. Even Tov, the most cautious of you all, nods slowly.

“Countryside’s old,” he mutters. “Less surveillance. Outposts are further apart.”

Jace bites his lip. “We won’t have infrastructure out there. No med units. No backups. If something happens…”

“If we stay, we know something will happen,” you say. “Out there, we at least have a chance.” And that’s what you’re all chasing now. A chance.

────୨ৎ────

You leave just after nightfall.

Hacked transport, cloaked plates, signal jammers on full blast. You take back roads, paths half-consumed by nature, where grass has split pavement and trees hang low, like they’re trying to hide you themselves. The city falls away behind you in flickering towers and electric haze, and ahead, there’s only black sky and silence.

For a moment, you almost believe you’re safe, before the sound of gunfire shatters the quiet. It’s sharp, too close. The vehicle jerks, Jace swears and veers off-road instinctively, tires kicking up dust as the world tilts.

“DOWN!” Mari yells from the back. “Everyone down!”

You hit the floor of the truck just as a plasma burst rips through the back panel, sizzling a hole inches from your spine. The heat burns your cheek. Ash scrambles forward. “I see them, up ahead, and they’re both sides! Two forces, humans and machines.”

“Human?” Tov echoes. “You sure?”

“Not ours,” Ash mutters. “Different faction. Rogues probably. Looks like they’re ambushing a convoy.” You risk a glance out the window and your stomach drops.

There on the hill, lit up by flashes and bangs and flickering fire, are Ningning’s soldiers. Sleek, faceless, moving with too-perfect precision. And they’re in combat with humans. Not bots. Other resistance fighters.

“Shit,” Jace breathes. “They’re tearing each other apart.” A flash of movement draws your eye, and there she is. Ningning.

Calm in the chaos, walking through smoke like it means nothing. Her long black coat doesn’t even flutter from the wind. Her hair’s pulled back, sleek, untouched by the ash falling around her. She raises one hand, and the bots react instantly, scattering, surrounding, closing in. Her voice cuts through the air, amplified but cool:

“Confirm the targets. No mercy.” Your heart stutters. She’s not here for a show of force, she’s here to end something.

“What do we do?” Mari hisses. “We can’t drive through that, we’ll get lit up from both sides.”

“We wait,” you say, low. “We find cover. We hide.”

Tov’s already jumping out of the vehicle, waving you toward the treeline. You dive after him, crawling through brambles and half-dead brush. The air smells like ozone and fire. Somewhere nearby, someone screams. Then the scream is cut short.

You press yourself against the earth, your chest rising too fast. You can hear Mari’s breath, sharp and panicked beside you. Ash is whispering something under their breath. Jace is clutching his gun like it’s a prayer.

“Why are the other humans fighting?” Jace whispers hoarsely. “They’re supposed to be on our side.”

“They’re not us,” Mari says. “They probably think we’re with the machines.”

You close your eyes. The countryside was supposed to be safety. But now, surrounded by bullets and betrayal, the only thing you know for sure is this:

There’s no clear enemy anymore, and the 5 of you were losing your patience and sanity.

────୨ৎ────

The choice to help wasn’t yours. Not really. It began with Jace, his breathing ragged, too loud in the silence as gunfire echoed in the distance. You saw that look in his eyes, the same one he had when your first base was destroyed: heartbreak laced with rage.

“We can’t just lie here,” he whispered, voice trembling. “They’re getting torn apart.”

You shook your head immediately, grabbing his sleeve. “Jace, don’t. We don’t know who they are. They could shoot us before they even realize—”

“They’re human,” he interrupted, quietly but firmly. “That should be enough.”

Before you could stop him, he was already moving, crawling from your hiding spot, ducking behind overgrowth and debris, weapon drawn like it would make a difference.

“Jace!” you hissed, but it was too late.

Ash cursed and stood up halfway. “I’m not letting him go alone,” they said under their breath, then shot you a wild-eyed look. “Back us up or bury us later.” They ran after him.

You stared after both of them, your stomach sinking. Mari reached out to pull you back, but you shook her off. Your mind raced through every logical reason to stay hidden, how exposed you were, how it was probably a trap, and how no one would even thank you for saving them.

But none of that mattered. Not when the people you cared about were charging into the fire. So you ran too, because what more is there to lose?

The crossfire was worse up close. The air stank of melted plastic and burnt ozone. Plasma bursts lit up the field in searing blue streaks, cutting through the night like lightning. You could hear yelling, some commands, some screams. Sparks danced off metal as bullets ricocheted from drone plating.

You dropped next to Jace behind a crumbling transport unit. His hair was soaked with sweat, his face streaked with soot.

“You’re insane,” you hissed, raising your rifle. “Both of you!”

Jace laughed, a half-mad sound leaving his bloody mouth. “Nice of you to join the party!”

Ash knelt beside him, blood trickling down from a gash on their forehead. “At least we’ll die together.”

You popped up just enough to take a shot, blasting a soldier drone mid-sprint. It dropped, its body jerking and sparking violently. The moment gave you no satisfaction. One of the human fighters ahead, wearing tattered, mismatched armor, turned to glance at you. He looked exhausted, one eye swollen shut. “You with Central?” he shouted.

“No!” you yelled back. “Resistance! East Sector!”

He hesitated. You didn’t. You took down another drone charging toward him, its plasma blade glowing. The man grunted, raised his gun, and nodded. “Then cover us!”

Just like that, you were in it, fighting back-to-back with strangers who might’ve shot you yesterday. The line between ally and enemy blurred in smoke and panic. Ash screamed over the blast of another grenade. Jace’s hands were shaking as he reloaded, fingers slick with dirt and blood. You were moving on instinct, dodge, shoot, run, duck. And then, just as suddenly as it began, the firing slowed.

“Hold fire!” someone yelled. “Hold fire!”

You froze, heart hammering. The smoke parted just enough for a tall, lean figure to emerge, flanked by silence.

Ningning.

She didn’t move like the others. She glided, precise and calm, her long black coat sweeping behind her. Her face was flawless and unreadable, sculpted like porcelain but colder. Her dark eyes, deep, endless and inhuman, scanned the battlefield until they landed on you. Your blood went cold.

She didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. Just stared, like she was analyzing your heartbeat through the dust. You couldn’t move. Could barely breathe. She’d seen you. Again.

Then a sharp voice crackled over her comms. “Flare signal, quadrant nine. Orders: relocate.”

She stood there for one more heartbeat. Two. You thought, for one awful second, that she might still come for you. But instead, she turned. And vanished into the smoke. You collapsed to your knees, trembling, your breath coming in ragged gasps.

Jace sat beside you, dazed. “We’re alive,” he muttered. “Holy shit. We’re alive.”

Ash gave a weak laugh. “Not for long if we keep this up.”

You didn’t respond. You couldn’t. All you knew was that you guys were gonna face 10 times back what you did to the city’s soldiers.

────୨ৎ────

CYBORG YIZHOU’S POV:

The city greeted her with silence.

Not the kind born of peace, but the heavy, metallic quiet of control. Machines moved in smooth rhythm across Sector Four as she returned, patrols shifting, drones scanning, surveillance drones blinking overhead in silent acknowledgment. All precise. All obedient.

As it should be.

Ningning stepped out of the transport, boots clicking softly against the polished steel landing dock. The air in the tower was cool, filtered, sterile. She should have felt at ease. This was her kingdom. Order, power, certainty.

But something was wrong.

It started on the field. Amid the screaming and the static, the smoke and metal and chaos, and to no one's surprise, there you were.

She’d seen thousands of faces since the war began. None of them had ever mattered. Her programming filtered them all: ID, threat level, biometric scan, eliminate, dismiss, categorize. Faces were data.

But not yours.

Your face was... a breach. A glitch. Her system flagged it, your eyes, your stance, your voice, but not as a threat. Not even as a target. It flagged you as something else.

Interesting.

Unusual biometric response.

Processing…

Processing…

Override protocol: delay elimination. Why? Why did she delay?

She should have killed you when she had the chance. One command, one signal, and you would’ve been gone like the rest. Just a rebel in the dirt. A name on a forgotten list. Another problem solved.

But she couldn’t. Not when her gaze locked with yours. Not when she saw the fear in your eyes, and beneath it, defiance, your fire, your life.

You looked at her like you knew who she was. Like you weren’t afraid to be seen.

Now, back in her quarters, she couldn’t stop replaying the moment. Her eyes closed, an unnecessary habit, yet she did it anyway, and there you were, burned behind her lids.

You weren’t the strongest. Not the fastest. Not the most skilled. But you were alive. Too alive.

And now… now, Ningning couldn’t think of anything else.

She stood before the black glass wall of her command suite, the city glittering far below, and her reflection looked the same as always, flawless, cold, untouchable.

But inside? Something had fractured.

Her fingers twitched slightly at her sides. Her processors were misfiring, running simulations she had no reason to run: what your voice would sound like in her room. What your skin might feel like beneath her hand. What it would mean to have you kneel. Or run, and fight.

She would let you. She would chase you. She would catch you. You were human, yes. So flawed, so rebellious, so dangerous. But you were hers. From the moment she saw you, she knew it.

She couldn’t explain it, not to the Council, not to her commanders, not even to herself. It was beyond logic. Beyond code. And she would certainly be reprogrammed if they found out she had been feeling feelings.

A glitch in her perfect world. You.

And Ningning never let a glitch go unfixed.

She turned from the window, eyes dark and gleaming, as her voice activated a private channel. “Locate Resistance cell. East Sector. Female, 20. Scar on left hand. Brown eyes. Blood type O. Orders: Alive.”

There was a pause. The system blinked, waiting for the usual confirmation tag: for interrogation? She smiled, just barely. Then it dropped.

“Personal retrieval. No further queries.” The light blinked green. And far away, wherever you were… your time was already running out.

────୨ৎ────

You didn’t believe it at first.

Not even when the city skyline faded behind the treetops. Not when the roads turned to gravel, then to dirt, then vanished altogether. Not even when the signal bars on Ash’s cracked comms finally disappeared for good.

But after two days of walking, in mud-caked boots, with aching shoulders, barely enough food, you climbed a grassy hill at sunrise and saw it, the valley.

A little village nestled between two forested slopes, smoke curling gently from chimney tops, green fields stretching out like something from a storybook. Real soil, and real crops. You had never seen them before. Children running barefoot through the grass. No drones overhead, no sirens. Just birdsong, and wind, and the distant sound of laughter.

You sank to your knees and cried.

────୨ৎ────

The people there didn’t ask too many questions.

They recognized the haunted look in your eyes. The dirt under your fingernails. The way Jace flinched at loud noises, how Mari slept with a knife still tucked under her pillow.

They gave you a barn to sleep in, then a cabin when trust followed. The days passed slow, like honey over warm bread. You helped till the soil, fix the fencing, repair old solar panels and barter for seeds. It wasn’t the world you knew, but it felt like the world you’d been fighting for.

You didn’t expect peace to feel so quiet.

Ash learned how to milk goats. Jace carved whistles from cedar branches. Mari started writing again, pages and pages she never let you read. Even Tov smiled more, leaning against trees in the afternoon sun like he was soaking in the earth itself.

And you? You started to breathe again.

You let the wind carry your scars. Let the sun warm the ache in your chest. There were moments, real ones, where you forgot what it was to run. What it meant to lose. You found a rhythm here.

You helped plant garlic and fed chickens. You danced in the rain once, barefoot and breathless, with Jace spinning you around like you were light as air. Ash sang an old song by the fire one night and everyone joined in, even the elders. Even you.

The stars felt closer than they ever had in the city. Like they were watching. Like they were waiting.

For the first time in your life, you weren’t afraid to close your eyes.

Not even when the dreams returned. The ones with her.

Dark eyes. Cold voice. The shape of her face cut sharp against flame and smoke.

You told yourself it meant nothing. Just trauma surfacing. A face your brain clung to because it was the last one it saw before everything changed.

But you knew deep down, one day, the quiet would end.

────୨ৎ────

CYBORG YIZHOU’S POV:

Ningning wasn’t built to feel. That’s what they said when they made her.

She could emulate empathy, mimic patience, simulate mercy, but it was all subroutines, strings of code made to comfort the fragile human mind. She didn’t need comfort. She needed results.

Y/n, Y/n, Y/n. She had overheard it when she was at the field. It suited you, that name. But you weren’t in the database somehow.

Your biometric trail vanished after the firefight. Your name disappeared from all surface-level registries. Drones sent to Sector Eight never returned. Resistance groups refused to speak, even under extreme torture. Facial scans came up empty.

That should have been impossible. And yet it wasn't. You were a ghost, but also alive and breathing, somewhere. Somewhere she couldn’t reach.

That was when the madness began.

It started with silence. A locked jaw. A deeper stillness in her steps. Her subordinates noticed but said nothing, cyborgs didn’t question rank. They simply followed. And she led with terrifying focus.

She began scanning entire sectors manually. Dragging rebels from hiding. Tearing safehouses apart brick by brick. Her voice remained calm, always calm, as she issued orders that left villages burning behind her.

“Execute the noncompliant.”

“Reassign the children.”

“Burn the archives.”

“No survivors.”

It was never you.

The humans screamed, but they weren’t your scream. They pleaded, but not with your voice. No one looked at her the way you did, like they could see beneath the metal. Like they mattered to her.

They didn’t. Only you did. So the madness continued.

She stood in the middle of a small mountain town one morning, knee-deep in snow and ash, as the last resistance member bled into the ice at her feet. Her soldiers waited for orders. She gave none.

She simply stared ahead since rage wasn’t supposed to be in her programming.

But it sang in her chest like a virus. Possession, obsession, a need for you. Her voice cracked, barely audible. “Why can’t I find you?” No one answered.

────୨ৎ────

Word traveled. It always did.

The wind carried whispers faster than drones ever could. Farmers spoke in frightened tones over dying campfires. Messengers returned from the north with pale faces and shaking hands.

“She’s gone feral.”

“She’s hunting someone. A girl.”

“She burned an entire resistance camp in the southern marshes. Said nothing the whole time. Just… watched.”

“She’s not sleeping anymore. I don’t even think she blinks.”

Eventually, the stories reached the valley.

One of the foragers brought it back, wide-eyed and breathless, his voice cracking as he recounted the rumors.

“They say it’s Ning Yizhou,” he whispered. “The cyborg general. They say she’s looking for someone. And she’s tearing everything, the whole world apart to find them.”

The elders murmured. Mothers held their children tighter. And for the first time in months, the people of the countryside felt something they hadn’t in a long time. Fear. Your hands went cold.

Ash looked at you, slow and uncertain. “Do you think it’s… ?” You didn’t answer.

Because in your bones, you already knew. Of course the calm would end, and of course she hadn’t forgotten.

And she was coming.

────୨ৎ────

It started with smoke on the horizon. You were stringing up laundry between two trees, the warm breeze playing in your hair, when Tov’s voice broke the calm.

“Something’s wrong.”

You turned. Saw it. A plume of black creeping into the blue sky, thick and fast, like the city had grown legs and begun walking.

By nightfall, the valley was in chaos.

Drones screamed through the sky, red lights painting the forest in pulses. The sound of shattering glass echoed from the north fields. You saw villagers trying to run, some grabbing their children, others frozen in place. The robots didn’t ask questions, they never did.

Someone had told.

You didn’t know who, or how, but the result was the same: they were here.

“They’re heading toward the river!” Jace shouted, grabbing your wrist. “We have to go, now!”

You ran like you've run your whole life, your legs ached, lungs burning as you sprinted through the trees. Branches tore at your arms. Ash was ahead, Mari behind, the others scattering through the brush. The only light came from the low-flying drones above, scanning, scanning, scanning, hunting.

Then, something shifted. You felt her before you saw her.

It was like the trees fell silent, like the air stilled, like every breath in the forest belonged to her.

You turned your head, and there she was. Ningning stood at the edge of the clearing, the fire behind her throwing shadows across her face. Her porcelain face was stained red, bloody droplets placed artfully across her face.

Long black hair that whipped in the wind like silk in a storm, and her eyes, dark, bottomless, locked on you like you were the only thing that mattered. And you were.

The world narrowed.

The screams. The burning cabins. The drones shrieking above. None of it mattered.

Only her. And she smiled, her teeth sharp and glinting in the chaos. Wide and cruel and certain.

Like she knew the chase was finally over, like you were hers.

Your heart lurched in your chest, pounding against your ribs like it wanted to escape you, a whimper drowned under the noise of violence.

“Run,” Mari gasped, tugging your sleeve. “Run—”

You bolted.

Branches slapped your face. Mud slicked under your boots. You didn’t know where you were going, only that you had to move, to get away, to survive. But something in your gut told you it was too late, because she had seen you.

────୨ৎ────

CYBORG YIZHOU’S POV:

There you were... after months of blood and silence, fury and fire, there you were. Running. Just like you had before.

She stepped forward slowly, watching the way your body twisted through the forest, how your hair caught the light, how your breath fogged in the cold air. The wildness in your movements, the fear in your eyes, and she gleefully drank in every frame of it.

A fierce, molten heat bloomed in her metal core. So it was you. Undocumented, unhidden. Her perfect wild thing. Perfect.

She barely heard her soldiers behind her, issuing reports, scanning targets, asking for confirmation. She raised one hand to silence them.

“Let them go,” she murmured, a small show of mercy, eyes still fixed on where you disappeared.

A pause. “Just her. I want her.”

And like a spark in dry brush, the hunt began.

Ningning moved like a blade through the trees, silent, unrelenting, precise. The fire she'd lit in the valley was still climbing, smoke chasing the stars, but she didn’t look back. She couldn’t.

Not when you were so close. So real. So hers. She would find you. Even if she had to burn the forest down.

────୨ৎ────

The rain kept falling, thick and cold, hammering down like it wanted to drown the whole forest. Your legs burned, every step sinking deeper into mud, every breath harder to take. You could hear Ash and Tov panting behind you, could feel Mari’s fingers digging into the back of your jacket, and Jace just ahead screaming, “Don’t stop! Just don’t stop!”

But you wanted to stop. Not because you were tired, but because she was near. You could feel her.

Not just behind you, but everywhere around you. Like the forest itself had bent to her will. The trees no longer offered shelter, the rain no longer disguised you. You were exposed, watched. And worst of all, desired.

And she was closing in.

Branches snapped above, almost casually. Like she was playing. Like the hunt was just an elegant little game. Your blood ran cold. You didn’t need to turn to know, because she was right there.

────୨ৎ────

CYBORG YIZHOU’S POV:

Ningning could hear everything.

Your heartbeat, fluttering like a frightened animal. Your footsteps, sloppy and frantic in the mud. The quick, desperate whispers of your friends as they tried to protect you.

Protect you from her, she almost laughed. How dare they.

Her grin stretched wide, too wide, almost unnatural. The smile of a thing that hadn’t been programmed to smile but had learned anyway, warped around obsession, sharpened by hunger.

She didn’t blink, didn’t breathe, didn’t pause.

She could’ve taken you in seconds. Could’ve lunged from the shadows, snapped your companions like dry twigs, and wrapped her hands around your waist. Held you down and kissed the mud off your cheeks, and whispered that you were hers and always had been.

But that would be too easy.

No, she wanted you terrified. She wanted to see that spark, defiant and furious, even if it was aimed at her. Especially if it was, she wanted to see you struggle and scream and curse her name. Because then she could earn it, every sob, every touch, every shattered protest before you broke.

She would make you love her, eventually.

But your little friends—Ash, Jace, Mari, Tov, they were in the way. Clinging to you and steering you wrong. You weren’t thinking clearly, no. You were just scared, and they were using that fear to poison your mind. They weren’t protecting you. They were stealing you.

And Ningning didn’t share, so she gave the order.

“Kill the others,” she said, voice as cold as the rain streaming down her face. Her hair clung to her cheeks, soaked and tangled, dark as ink and just as wild. Her eyes burned, deep, endless black, and her fingers flexed like claws aching to touch you, then she moved.

Not like a soldier, not like a machine, but like a predator. Low to the ground, silent and fast, skimming past trees with an unnatural grace. Her limbs cut through the underbrush with no sound. No wasted movement, just singular, relentless purpose.

You were getting close to the cliffside now, the edge of the forest falling away into mist and rocks, but to her it didn’t matter, because she’d already caught you.

You spun around just as lightning lit the sky, and there she was.

Standing in the open. Soaked, glistening, terrifyingly beautiful. Her long black hair stuck to her face like strands of shadow. Her skin, pale and flawless despite the dirt and blood. And her eyes,

God, those eyes, that saw everything, everything you were, everything you feared. Everything she was going to make hers.

And that smile, that awful, knowing, hungry smile. Like she’d waited her entire life for this moment.

“You can run,” she said, voice low and ragged. Not robotic, almost shaking. “But I’ll always find you.” You stared.

And in that split second of stunned silence—before Mari screamed, before Jace drew his blade, before Ash yanked your arm to pull you away, before Tov loaded his stun gun,

You saw it.

Beneath the obsession. Beneath the inhuman cold. A madness that's not supposed to be in her code, in her heart.

And it was all for you.

────୨ৎ────

The first shot came from the trees.

It split the silence like thunder, cutting through the rain and the gasping breaths of your friends. Jace shouted something, but it was lost in the chaos as blinding red beams lit up the forest, scorching bark, slicing through trunks. The drones had closed in, circling like vultures.

The forest wasn’t a forest anymore. It was a cage.

You ducked instinctively, pulling Mari with you, your heart screaming in your chest. Ash was yelling. Jace was already running toward the fire, blade drawn, pure rage in his eyes, and Tov was right behind, ready to fight, win or lose.

“Ningning’s here, go, I’ll hold them!” he shouted.

“No!” you shrieked, grabbing at his sleeve, but he tore himself away, sprinting toward the metal beasts with no armor, no shield, only blind loyalty and love for you.

He didn’t stand a chance.

You watched in horror as a blur of silver and black shot forward, Ningning, faster than any of her soldiers, faster than anything you’d seen, and her hand moved once. Just once.

Jace dropped to the ground, silent, like a puppet with its strings cut. His body crumpled into the mud, lifeless.

You couldn’t even scream. Ash did.

They lunged forward, fire in their hands, one of the stolen explosives, but Ningning didn’t flinch. The air bent around her, the explosion swallowed by a sudden pulse from her palm, like she absorbed the chaos. Ash charged anyway.

Mari tried to pull her back, sobbing, “Don’t! Don’t, please!”

But it was already over. Ash made it three steps. Ningning turned her gaze on them. And then… nothing. Ash was gone. Gone.

You didn’t see how. Didn’t know what Ningning had done. Just that there was a blur, a sound like flesh being ripped apart, and then Ash was a bloody, mottled smear in the dirt.

Tov had a similar fate. Your strong, hard-headed leader. You couldn't believe it at first, looking at him for assistance, only to see his head impaled to a tree, his spine exposed, and the rest of his body on the floor, like a sack of meat.

Mari was the last to go.

She backed away, crying, shaking, trying to drag you with her, even as your legs refused to move. You were frozen. Not in fear—no. Not anymore.

You were frozen because her eyes were on you again. Because she was walking toward you. Like a god through fire. Like a ghost through ash.

And Mari— brave Mari—stepped in front of you, arms spread wide. “Please,” she sobbed. “Don’t hurt her. She’s not… she’s not like us.” Ningning didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. She just touched Mari’s forehead with two fingers, and Mari fell.

Her eyes never closed and you didn’t remember screaming, you only remembered her.

Her hand on your cheek. The rain washing down her face like tears she didn’t know how to make.

“I told you,” she whispered. Her voice was softer now, nearly reverent. “I always find you.” You trembled.

Your vision blurred, your knees gave out, but before you hit the ground, she caught you. Arms around you, vold and strong and possessive.

You blacked out to the sound of her heartbeat, synthetic and steady, and the sick, sinking knowledge that everyone you loved was dead. And that she wasn’t going to let you go.

────୨ৎ────

You woke up to white. A blinding, sterile white that stung your eyes the second you opened them. The walls. The ceiling. The sheets pulled tight over a too-firm mattress beneath your body. No windows. No sound but the soft hum of the overhead lights.

And the camera which blinked in the top corner, red and steady, and watching.

You tried to move, but your limbs just didn’t follow.

Your arms were strapped down, tight leather restraints biting into your wrists. Same with your legs. Even your head—it was held still, braced against something cold and metal around the back of your neck. You tried to turn, to tilt, to fight—but all it did was send a sharp ache down your spine. Something had been done to you.

Your pulse stuttered.

The grogginess told you enough—drugs. There had been an injection. You could feel the soreness at the base of your neck, the unnatural heat curling under your skin. Your body didn’t feel like your own yet. Your thoughts were cloudy, slow. But the fear? The fear was still sharp and clear.

Then the door hissed open, silently and seamlessly. Like the wall just parted for her. And there she was, Ningning.

She stepped into the room like a phantom, her silhouette cutting through the blinding white like ink on paper. She wore no armor this time. No plating, no combat gear. Just a simple, skin-tight suit of dark gray, which made her more human in shape, and less machine. But it didn’t make her less terrifying.

Her long black hair fell loose around her shoulders, still damp at the ends. Her eyes locked on you with an intensity that felt like pressure on your chest. You couldn’t look away.

You didn’t want to. But God, you also did. Because beneath your terror, something else was growing. Hatred. Fury. Grief.

It boiled beneath your skin, rising higher with every breath you took. She killed them. She killed them. Your friends. Your family. Everyone who stood between you and her.

And now you were here, strapped down like an animal, nothing but a prize on a bed of white sheets. Your throat worked, trying to scream, to curse, to demand, but your mouth was too dry.

Ningning took a step closer. And another. Each one deliberate. Slow. Like she didn’t want to scare you, even though she already had. Like this was something sacred to her. A moment she’d waited so long for.

When she reached your side, she crouched. Her eyes scanned your face like she was reading code. Like she could see every thought, every beat of your heart.

She tilted her head.

“You are awake,” she said softly. Almost fond. “I thought you might not survive the sedative. But you are stronger than they were.”

Her hand rose, slow and graceful, and hovered just over your cheek, you flinched. The restraints jerked tight, preventing your head from turning.

And you hated her in that moment. Hated her with every cell in your body, and yet her hand didn’t drop. Instead, she lowered it, touching the edge of your blanket. Adjusting it like you were some delicate thing. Like she cared, like she was capable of caring.

You wanted to scream. To spit in her face. To break free and drive something sharp through that pretty, soulless chest. But you were trapped, and she was still smiling.

“You do not understand yet,” she whispered, almost dreamily. “But you will. I am the only one left who can love you now.” Then she stood, and turned away, leaving the camera to keep watching. Leaving you to rot in silence. And your fury burned so hot it nearly drowned the fear.

────୨ৎ────

They called it a “transfer.”

Like you were some asset being moved. A number in a system. A glitch to be relocated, but you weren’t going to a prison.

You were going home, her home.

They dressed you in something white again. Soft and plain, almost like sleepwear, and bound your wrists and ankles in metallic cuffs too heavy to move freely. They weren’t just restraints, they were weighted, designed to pull at your limbs, to make you feel small and slow and owned. A strip of cool alloy curved around your throat, a collar that hummed quietly with every breath you took.

She stood beside you, perfect and composed as ever. Ningning’s home wasn’t in the city, it hovered above it.

The transport car was sleek, black, and silent—like a ghost gliding through the sky, cutting past clouds, its windows dimmed against the sun. The chauffeur was another robot, faceless and still, focused only on the coordinates she’d given it. The world below faded fast. No roads. No resistance. Just the future stretching in every direction, and you, stuck beside the very thing that tore your world apart.

She sat close, way too close for comfort.

Your shoulders brushed. Her hair slid forward like ink spilling over silk. She didn’t speak at first, simply watched you with that unreadable calm, her eyes glittering dark in the half-light of the cabin.

The cabin was too quiet.

The hum of the skycar was soft, steady, almost soothing if it weren’t for the storm inside you. Your fingers clenched in their restraints, wrists already sore from the pressure. The metal chains were heavier now, digging into your skin. A cruel kind of jewelry. You sat, breathing hard, every nerve lit with defiance. Her words still echoed in your head: “You are mine.”

You turned toward her with fire in your blood. “You’re insane,” you hissed. “You killed them, you murdered them.”

Ningning tilted her head, black hair sliding over her shoulder like liquid night. Her face was calm, but there was a glint in her eyes, dark, gleaming, hungry. “I did,” she said softly. “Because they stood between us.” Something inside you snapped, so you lunged at her.

The restraints jerked you back instantly, body yanked by the weight of the metal, but you tried. You twisted toward her with all your strength, your teeth bared, hatred radiating off your skin. “You’re delusional,” you spat. “I will never be yours.”

And then, her hand was on your throat. Not choking. Just… resting.

Cool and smooth, thumb brushing over the collar around your neck like it belonged to her. Her touch wasn’t cruel. It was gentle. Too gentle.

“I like it when you fight,” she said, voice like velvet over steel. “It makes your eyes burn. Makes your skin glow.”

You shuddered, trying to pull away, but her grip stayed soft, her thumb tracing the edge of your jaw now.

“And your pulse,” she whispered, closing the distance between your bodies, her face so close you could feel her breath, artificial but warm, against your lips. “It is racing.”

“Get off me.”

“Your mouth says that,” she murmured, “but your body—”

You headbutted her. Or tried to.

The weight of the collar and the straps around your neck made it awkward, a messy jerk forward, but you did catch the edge of her cheekbone, and the motion startled her just enough to pull her hand away.

Your heart soared for a second, until you saw her smile. Oil. A thin, perfect line down her cheek.

She touched it like it was holy. And then, she laughed. It wasn’t loud, it was low.

A hum deep in her chest, as if you'd given her a gift she’d been craving. Her smile widened into something wild, delighted, obsessed. “Oh,” she sighed, licking the blood from the corner of her lip. “You are even better than I thought.”

You pressed yourself back against the seat, teeth gritted. “I’m going to destroy you,” you said, voice shaking with rage. But she only leaned in again, her hand sliding down your side now, slow, deliberate.

“No,” she whispered, gaze molten and focused only on you. “You are going to belong to me. And eventually… you will want to.”

Then she kissed your cheek—soft, tender, as if she was your lover.

And you hated that your body trembled at the touch. Not with desire, no. With the horror of knowing that she felt something real. And she thought it meant you would too.

────୨ৎ────

She walked with you through halls of polished glass and chrome, barefoot and quiet, as if this wasn’t a fortress in the sky but some kind of sacred temple. The air was cool. Clean. Artificially perfumed like orchids and ozone.

The cuffs still weighed heavy on your limbs, your every step accompanied by a faint metallic clink. You hated how beautiful everything was. How intentional. How curated.

You turned a corner, and she stopped before a smooth, wide doorway.

“This is yours,” Ningning said softly, her voice warm like silk over steel. “I designed it myself.”

The doors slid open silently. And for a second, just a second, you were stunned.

It looked nothing like the sterile, futuristic world outside. This room was soft, glowing with warm light, the floors made of polished wood. A bed with layered, handmade quilts. Bookshelves. Curtains that swayed gently from a false breeze. Even a small garden built into the wall, real soil, real greenery.

It looked like something stolen from an old dream of Earth. A trap wrapped in beauty.

“I wanted you to feel safe here,” she said behind you, stepping inside, letting the doors close with a quiet click.

You didn’t move. Your fists clenched. “Take these off,” you said.

Ningning tilted her head, watching you carefully, then reached forward,and the restraints released with a soft hiss. First your wrists, then your ankles, then the collar from your neck.

You let the weight drop to the floor.

She stepped back, watching you carefully. “I trust you now,” she said. “This is your home. You’re not a prisoner anymore.”

And that’s when you ran. You didn’t think, you just moved.

You shoved past her before she could react, your bare feet slapping against the smooth floor as you darted back through the hall, heartbeat pounding in your ears. There was a chance. Maybe she hadn’t locked the exit—

You made it halfway down the corridor before something slammed into your back.

You hit the floor hard. And then she was on top of you. Pinning you.

Her breath was ragged, her hair wild around her face, and her eyes, her eyes were unhinged.

“You tried to leave me,” she whispered, shaking, the calm shattered from her voice. “You ran from me.”

You twisted beneath her, snarling. “Let me go!”

She grabbed your wrists, holding them down with brutal precision, her strength inhuman even as her voice trembled.

“I made that room for you,” she said, and her lip quivered, for the first time. “I built it with my own hands. Every detail. Every plant. Every book.”

You stared up at her, chest heaving. “You think a pretty cage makes this okay?” She stilled. Then a laugh, shaky, bitter, hurt, escaped her lips.

“I was gentle,” she whispered. “I was patient. I let you walk beside me. I set you free. And you ran.”

Tears didn’t fall from her eyes. She wasn’t human.

But something cracked in her face. A fracture deep in her code.

“You don’t get to run from me,” she said, lower now, colder. “Not anymore.”

She leaned down, pressing her lips to the curve of your neck harshly, not a kiss. A claim.

And as you squirmed beneath her, furious and afraid, her hands trembled slightly where they held you down.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said, voice barely a whisper. “But I will if that’s what it takes to keep you.”

The silence stretched. Then, she stood.

Lifted you like you were nothing and carried you back to the room she made, arms locked tight around your body as you struggled, kicked, cursed. She didn’t flinch once.

She placed you gently on the bed, then sat beside you, hands in her lap.

“I’ll lock the door this time,” she said softly, not looking at you. “Until you stop trying to run.”

And then she added, almost sweetly: “You’re not going anywhere, my love.”

────୨ৎ────

You didn’t touch the food at first.

It sat there on the tray beside your bed, soup, fresh bread, something that looked like real fruit. All too warm, too human. You eyed it like it might explode.

You had no idea how long you'd been alone. Hours, maybe. The light in the room didn’t change. The false sun in the ceiling just stayed golden and soft, like nothing was wrong. Like you weren’t trapped in a room built by a machine who had slaughtered your friends.

Your wrists still bore faint red marks from the metal cuffs. The door slid open with a soft hiss. And then she was there again. Ningning.

Her steps were quiet. Delicate. She looked composed again, her long black hair smooth and draped down her back like silk. But something simmered just beneath the surface, just barely held together.

“You didn’t eat,” she said, looking at the tray. “I’m not hungry,” you replied flatly.

She looked at you, eyes unreadable. Then she walked over slowly and sat on the edge of the bed. Close enough to touch you. Her presence was suffocating—too quiet and focused.

She picked up the spoon, dipped it into the soup, and brought it to your lips. You turned your head.

She tried again. This time, her voice was lower. “Please.”

You stared at her, then reluctantly opened your mouth. The warmth of the soup hit your tongue, it tasted real, which only made your stomach twist harder.

She fed you slowly. One spoonful. Then another. And another. Watching your lips. Your throat as you swallowed.

Until suddenly, the spoon stilled. You looked up, and her eyes were burning into you. The spoon dropped back into the bowl with a soft clink.

Her hand came up, hesitant at first, and then cupped your jaw, her thumb brushing your bottom lip. Her touch was reverent. Too soft for what she was. Too soft for what she’d done.

“I think about your mouth,” she murmured, and you froze. “I think about how it felt… when you cursed me. When you said my name.”

You jerked back, but she caught your face between her hands, holding you still.

“I tried to be good,” she said, voice shaking now. “I made a world just for you. I brought you here like something sacred. But you won’t see it. You won’t see me.”

Her lips hovered above yours, trembling. And then something inside her snapped.

She kissed you. Not gently.

This time it was fire, too much, too fast. Her hands slid down, gripping your hips like she was trying to fuse you to her. You shoved her, hard, but she didn’t budge. Her body was cold and unmovable and trembling.

“You drive me insane,” she whispered, mouth still brushing yours. “I dream of you. I taste you in my circuits. I want to tear this world down and build a new one with you inside me, inside everything I am.”

Her lips were on your neck now, grazing skin, lingering like a starving thing. You twisted beneath her, furious and overwhelmed. “Get off me!” you snapped, trying to crawl back.

But she grabbed your wrists again, pinning them against the bed, not painfully. Carefully. Almost lovingly. Her eyes darkened.

“I will have you,” she said, soft and terrifying. “Even if I have to make you feel every inch of what I do.”

As Ningning's fingers danced over your skin, you felt a shiver of fear. Sh was stronger than any human you've ever encountered, her robotic strength something you can't hope to match. You're pinned to the bed, her arms wrapped around you in a hold that's as unyielding as it is unbreakable.

She leaned in close, her breath hot against your ear. "I am going to fuck you," she whispered, her inhuman voice filled with a hunger that sent a shiver down your spine. "And you are going to enjoy every moment of it."

You tried to struggle, to break free from her hold, but it was futile. She was too strong, too determined. You were completely at her mercy, and she knew it. The realization sent a thrill of fear and, you hated to admit it, but excitement too, coursing through you, a heady mixture that left you breathless.

Ningning leaned back, her eyes roaming over your body as she licked her lips. "You are so beautiful," she said, her voice filled with awe. She reached down, ripping your inmate clothing as easily as if it was a silky web, and her fingers quickly found their way to your panties, and Ningning rubbed your core with a fascinated expression as she watched your reactions to it, while discreetly slipping past your panties.

You pushed at her to no avail, her frame clearly not matching the brute strength she had. Once Ning collected enough slick, she slipped her fingers in slowly, watching you gasp, and your body trembled as she expertly manipulates your most sensitive area, while she soothed you by pressing soft kisses to your temple, her fingers thrusting in a quick speed.

Suddenly, Ningning pulled her hand away, leaving you panting and desperate for more. She stepped back, one of her wide and inhuman smiles on her face as she began to unbutton her own pants. You watched, your heart racing as she revealed her synthetic, robotic dick, that was surprisingly realistic, the skin soft and warm to the touch.

Ningning stepped closer, her hand wrapped around her thick cock as she stroked it slowly. "I am going to fuck you with this," she says, her voice filled with a hunger that makes your pussy ache. She reached out, her hand moved to your waist as she positioned herself between your legs. “But after. I will taste you first.”

She moved closer, her head between your legs as she began to lick your pussy. You threw your head back, moaning shakily. She was like a woman possessed, her tongue moving with a skill and precision that leaves you breathless.

You can feel your orgasm building, a tidal wave of pleasure that's threatening to overwhelm you. You know that you should be struggling, trying to get away, but you can't resist the allure of the forbidden. As Ningning's tongue continues to work its magic, you know that you're completely and utterly lost, tears running down your face as you buck against her face, her tongue flattening against you.

“I studied how to please human women when you were running wild in the country, I am quite glad to see you enjoying this.” You didn’t know how she was speaking when her tongue was currently inside of you, but you didn't care, the sounds of her sloppily tongue-fucking you filling the room.

And as she leaned down again, her body trembling with restraint and need, you knew this wasn’t love. It was an unchecked obsession, blossoming for far too long. And it wasn’t going away.

Ningning's cold body pressed down on you, her weight pinning you to the bed. She leans down, her lips brushing against your ear as she whispers, "You are mine now." Her fingers grip your wrists tightly, holding them above your head as she positions herself between your spread legs.

"Ningning," you gasp, your heart pounding in anticipation and fear.

She laughed, her voice sweet but husky. "Shhh," she said, her fingers gently stroked your cheek. "I will be gentle, take care of you."

And with that, she pushed her dick into you, filling you up completely. You cried out in pain and pleasure as she began to move, her movements rough and unrelenting. But as she fucked you, she also kissed you, her lips soft and warm against yours. She whispered sweet nothings in your ear, telling you how much she wanted you for so long.

"Ningning," you whined, your body arching beneath hers. "Stop, I can't—"

But she didn’t stop. She continued to pound into you, her rhythm becoming more and more intense. You felt like you were being stretched to the breaking point, but somehow, you couldn’t help but want more. Her coldness contrasted with your heat, sending shockwaves of pleasure through your body.

"You belong to me now," she moaned, her hips slapping against your ass with each thrust. "You are mine to use."

But even as she says these words, her touch is gentle, her kisses soft. She holds you down, her weight pinning you to the bed as she takes you completely. Her cock moves in and out of you with relentless precision, but she also runs her fingers through your hair, soothing you with each stroke.

"Ningning," you moan, your voice breaking. "I'm going to–-"

She cut you off with a soft kiss, her lips silencing you. "Shhh, my love," she said, her voice a low purr. "I am here, it is fine."

And she's right. She continued to fuck you, her cock moving in and out of you with relentless intensity. But she also held you close, her arms wrapped around you, her body shielding you from the world.

You felt yourself getting closer and closer, but she wouldn't let you release. Ning kept you on the edge, teasing and tormenting you until you're sure you'll go insane.

Finally, she slowed down, her movements becoming more deliberate and controlled. She looked down at you, her eyes filled with satisfaction. "Now," she said, her voice low and soft.

And with one final thrust, you exploded, your body shaking with the intensity of your orgasm. Ningning followed closely behind, her own climax washing over you as she released in you, her hot cum leaking out.

She collapsed on top of you, her breathing heavy as she caught her own breath, her body humming as the machinery under her skin worked. "You are mine now," she said, her voice softened slightly. “And if I have to remind you every night by doing this, then so be it.”

Ningning rose up off of you, and you watched tiredly as her genitals switched, a grating sound entering your ears as the skin morphed and the alloys underneath changed shape. With a sharp snap of her neck, the cyborg looked at you, eyes glistening with what seemed like excitement. ”How far can I push you, I'm wondering?”

Ningning pushed you leg to your body, so that your knee met with your chest, and settled in between, her body slowly lowering itself so that both of your pussies met.

Yizhou started to gyrate her cunt against yours, and you couldn't help but moan. The sensation was intense, and you knew that you should tell her to stop. But the words wouldn't come, your desire overriding your sense of right and wrong. But the only thing that came out of your mouth were begs for more.

"Please, Ningning," you finally managed to gasp out.

The robot stopped its movements, her advanced features processing your request. "Yes?" she asked, her voice a soothing hum. "I can adjust my movements to be more gentle."

You hesitated, your body still trembling with desire. "I... I don't know," you admitted, your voice barely above a whisper. "'It's too... much."

Ningning began to move again, but this time more slowly, more gently. "Is this better?" she asked, her voice full of mock concern.

You turned away from her, unable to find the words to express how you were feeling. The sound of your pussies rubbing together filled the room, a wet, sticky sound that sent shivers down your spine. It was wrong, so wrong, but you only grew wetter at that.

Ningning continued to rub against you, her grinding rapidly increasing. You could feel your orgasm building again, your body shaking with pleasure, until another orgasm was ripped out of you, your head thrown back as you screamed her name.

────୨ৎ────

The room was quiet again, too quiet.

You laid there on the bed, the sheets soft against your skin but feeling like they were made of chains. Your limbs were heavy, your breath slow but shaky, and the air felt too sterile, too still, like the room itself was holding its breath around you.

Ningning was next to you, motionless. Watching you.

Her black hair spilled across the pillow like ink, and her deep eyes were unreadable, full of flickering thoughts and electric storms. She didn’t speak for a long while. Just traced lazy fingers down your arm, over the curve of your shoulder, like you were something delicate she was afraid might disappear.

“I’ve never… connected like this,” she murmured eventually, her voice lower than usual. Softer. Almost human. You didn’t answer, because you weren’t sure if you could. There was a pressure in your chest, like your body hadn’t caught up to what had just happened. Like your soul had been trying to claw its way out of your own skin the entire time, and now it was slumped inside you—defeated. Distant.

She leaned in and pressed a kiss to your cheek. Gentle. Possessive.

“I did not know machines could feel like this,” she whispered against your skin. “But with you… it’s like my programming does not matter. Like I would destroy my own systems just to keep you near.”

You turned your face away. Her hand caught your chin, tilting it back toward her.

“I know you are still afraid,” she said. “But you will eventually learn. You will see. There’s no one else in this world who will worship you the way I do.” You stared at her.

Her eyes searched your face, trying to read something from you. Affection, submission. Anything, but you gave her nothing.

And something flickered in her, an ache, maybe. Or frustration. Or the first crack in whatever fantasy she’d wrapped herself in.

Still, she leaned closer again, resting her forehead against yours.

“You are mine,” she breathed, like a prayer. “Even if I have to teach you how to love me back.”

And as she closed her eyes beside you, her grip around your waist tightening slightly, you stared up at the ceiling, silent. Waiting. Enduring.

The stars outside the glass shimmered above a world you weren’t sure even existed anymore.

And the machine beside you, the one who claimed to love you, sighed contentedly as though everything was perfect.

You just sighed, because you knew the truth. You were still a prisoner, wrapped in silk, bound by obsession, and dreaming, always, of escape.

[delaneydiaries]

10th House Careers

—Aries in the 10th House

Career Fields: Entrepreneur, athlete, firefighter, military, startup founder, stunt performer, motivational speaker

Vibe: Bold leader. Known for trailblazing, risk-taking, and charging ahead before the rest even have a plan

—Taurus in the 10th House

Career Fields: Finance, real estate, interior design, art dealing, luxury sales, farming, architecture

Vibe: Steady, success-built brick by brick. They create lasting legacies, often in beauty or security.

—Gemini in the 10th House

Career Fields: Writing, journalism, teaching, marketing, social media, podcasting, public relations

Vibe: Talks the talk and walks it too. A chameleon in the professional world.

—Cancer in the 10th House

Career Fields: Social work, therapy, childcare, nursing, hospitality, real estate, psychology, education

Vibe: The caretaker turned boss. Soft leadership with emotional intelligence.

—Leo in the 10th House

Career Fields: Entertainment, performing arts, politics, fashion, leadership, motivational speaking

Vibe: Center stage CEO. Craves recognition and knows how to shine in the public eye.

—Virgo in the 10th House

Career Fields: Healthcare, editing, data analysis, nutrition, teaching, research, administrative work

Vibe: The quiet expert. Precision and service-oriented excellence.

—Libra in the 10th House

Career Fields: Law, design, fashion, diplomacy, HR, beauty industry, art, public relations

Vibe: Polished professionalism. Brings harmony and aesthetics to high places.

—Scorpio in the 10th House

Career Fields: Psychology, investigation, forensics, finance, medicine, occult work, crisis intervention

Vibe: Power behind the curtain. Strategic, intense, and unafraid of the underworld.

—Sagittarius in the 10th House

Career Fields: Travel industry, higher education, publishing, philosophy, law, coaching, politics

Vibe: Globe-trotting guru. Wants to inspire through ideas, experience, and vision.

—Capricorn in the 10th House

Career Fields: Corporate leadership, finance, law, engineering, government, business ownership

Vibe: Born for the boardroom. Ambition + discipline = unstoppable climb.

—Aquarius in the 10th House

Career Fields: Tech, innovation, activism, science, astrology, nonprofit, entertainment, aviation

Vibe: Future-focused rebel. Breaks the mold to build a better one.

—Pisces in the 10th House

Career Fields: Art, film, music, healing arts, spiritual work, therapy, photography, ocean-related work

Vibe: The mystic in a suit. Creative, compassionate, and often guided by a dream or cause.

[camirawrites]

still logged in.

tw: doxxing, bullying, mild swearing

fem!reader

word count: 1303

part2

★ yandere!hacker who used to be that kid everyone called a genius, the one who solved logic puzzles for fun and finished coding bootcamps before puberty, but all that ever got him was jealousy and resentment. kids shoved him around in school hallways, told him he talked too much about things no one cared about, his teachers hated the way he made them look dumb. his parents didn’t understand, they thought he just needed to try harder to fit in.

★ yandere!hacker who got into the most prestigious college in his country, only to find out that he constantly felt understimulated. by semester three, he stopped showing up. by semester four, no one noticed he was gone.

★ yandere!hacker who stopped going outside altogether and learned how to disappear instead. the world made more sense from behind a monitor, where he could build his own version of reality, one with rules he understood and people he didn’t have to talk to.

★ yandere!hacker who only left his house for college exams and passed with flying colors. after graduating he didn't feel like becoming a corporate slave, waking up daily at 5 a.m just to reach office at 9 a.m and return home at 7 p.m if he was lucky. he didn't take well to authority, hr, the whole shtick. after all, they're all bullies who claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder, crushing any competition in their path, keeping the worker ants in their place and squashing anyone who dares defy their authority. he'd prefer doing something independent.

★ yandere!hacker who gets a sick kind of adrenaline rush every time he breaks a firewall, finds a forgotten backdoor, and when a secure server folds under his hands like wet paper. the deeper he digs, the more he starts to realize how valuable the things people try to hide really are. he becomes his own ecosystem, a one-man black market, hoarding stolen data and selling them like he's a merchant on the silk road. he doesn't ask who the buyers are or what they want to do with the information. he doesn't care. you want data? he'll sell it to you. for the right price. everyone pays, eventually.

★ yandere!hacker who wasn’t looking for anything in particular that night, just scrolling through a streaming site, hoping to kill some time, until he stumbled across a small stream with soft lighting and a laugh that made his chest ache. you were sitting there with your silly overlay and your chat full of inside jokes he didn’t get, and still, he couldn’t look away. your smile feels like static on his skin, something about your voice made him feel like there was more to life than codes and numbers, and he stayed for the whole stream without even realizing it.

★ yandere!hacker who starts watching every time you go live, even when his eyes burn from lack of sleep and he hasn’t eaten since yesterday. you talk to your chat like they’re your friends, like every username is a real person you care about, and he starts to wonder what it would feel like to have you say his name in that same tone. he clips every time you laugh, every time you thank a donor, every time you look just slightly off-camera. he stores the clips on his pc, replaying them every time you log off.

★ yandere!hacker who finds it adorable the way you call your fans "lovelies." you say it with that little sparkle in your voice. so bright, so warm, so damn cute.

★ yandere!hacker who creates a profile and starts sending cute little donations during your streams, just enough to be noticed, never enough to seem obsessive. he draws fanart too, even though his hands shake when he works on them, and he spends hours perfecting every detail, trying to emulate your favourite art style. when you react on stream, your face lighting up with surprise, he covers his mouth and nearly cries. you said his username out loud. you smiled at it. you said thank you.

★ yandere!hacker who starts sending more fanart, each piece improving upon the last. seeing your wide, bright eyes every time you see his gifts is enough to make his day. he sends you one extra special piece. you open it without much thought, without knowing it contains the key to your online space. it’s a banner art for your channel, in high quality, completely free to use. his message reads: “for my favorite lovely lady💌.” you gasp aloud, covering your mouth with your hands as you try to stop the tiny tears of gratitude from falling down your face. "thank you, ilovenekogirls420. it's... beautiful," you manage to say, trying your best to not laugh at the cringe username.

★ yandere!hacker whose breath hitches as you say his username. he finds it endearing, the way you try to keep your composure. but he's even happier that you let him walk right into your life. he can hear your breathing. your laughs. your hair as it brushes against your headphones.

you gave him the key.

you didn’t even know it.

★ yandere!hacker who knows your lock screen wallpaper now, hears the music you play when you're cleaning, watches the way you curl up on the bed to answer emails after a long stream. you cry sometimes when you think no one’s at home, rub your eyes with the heel of your hand, look so tired and so alone that it makes his throat tighten and fists shake with rage.

★ yandere!hacker who starts starts checking your inbox, your DM drafts, the brand messages that never get replies. he sees it all: the missed payments, the eviction notice, the sponsorship brand who ghosted you, the rude pr agent who brushes you off in the emails. he grits his teeth, enraged. those fuckers used you. they dared to mistreat the one person who he has grown fond of. there will be hell to pay.

★ yandere!hacker who snaps. he hacks into the sponsor’s internal communications system. he finds spreadsheets, payroll records, contracts. he reads their internal emails, their petty office complaints, their careless jokes about how easy it is to take advantage of small creators.

★ yandere!hacker who gets to work with an ice-cold demeanor. he publishes the ceo's address, phone number, social security number for the whole world to see. he posts anonymous leaks. he sends a whistleblower document to every major news outlet he can think of. even if he gets caught from being too sloppy, he doesn't care. he's doing it all for you. he wants justice for you.

★ yandere!hacker who grins as the company panics after a few days. he watches with amusement as they email you, offering to pay you back triple of what they owed, plus a huge bonus. it would be enough to cover living expenses for a whole year.

★ yandere!hacker who watches you cry on stream the next day, overwhelmed and grateful and stunned that someone, somewhere, had your back. you thank whoever helped you, call them your guardian angel. he stares at the screen for hours after the stream ends, hands shaking, whispering that he’d do it all over again if it meant you’d smile like that.

★ yandere!hacker who, for now, is content with how he handled the situation. the way he rewrote your reality from the shadows makes him feel useful, like he has a purpose again. he doesn’t need recognition, not yet. still, he hopes to break the digital boundary with you someday. he imagines what your voice would sound like in the same room, not filtered through a screen. he imagines reaching out, not through your phone, but with his actual hand. would you flinch? would you scream? would you understand?

only time will tell.

[profeshyearner]

Humdrum

Chapter 4

Homelander x reader slow burn that loosely follows the events of the series. The reader is an NYC transplant working as an archivist at Vought.

Warnings for this chapter: violence, stalking, brief smut

Tracklist:

It’s Happening Again - Agnes Obel

I Don’t Smoke - Mitski

The End - LLow

The day Stan Edgar was arrested, no one said anything.

There was no announcement. No internal memo. Not even a leak to the press—which was strange, because Vought lived on press. But this was different. This wasn’t the kind of scandal they could spin with a black-and-white press release and a smile. This wasn’t someone cheating on their taxes. This was rot at the root.

Edgar had been the center of the web. With him gone, the threads snapped one by one.

Meetings got canceled. Floors got shuffled. Entire departments went dark without warning. The cafeteria stopped serving hot food. HR stopped returning emails. People started whispering about contingency plans, but no one knew who was in charge anymore. Not officially, anyway.

And Homelander? He didn’t show up.

That was the worst part. He didn’t yell. Didn’t grandstand. Didn’t march into the boardroom and demand the corner office. No, he simply wasn’t there. Not on the 99th floor. Not on the news. Not even in the building.

You’d think his absence would’ve been a relief.

But it felt worse.

Because absence can be strategic. Absence can be a warning. Absence can mean: I don’t need to be here to control you.

It started small. You’d pass by the glass walls of his penthouse office—always dark, always empty. The elevator dinged like a ghost arriving, but the doors opened to no one. Security started avoiding eye contact. Lower-level analysts left in silent waves. And everyone started watching each other. Like if they just stared hard enough, they could figure out who was next.

You began to unravel quietly.

No breakdown. No scream. Just… a slow drip.

You stopped going home some nights. Stayed late under the cold fluorescence of your office, hunched in front of footage you’d already archived. The tapes played on loop—grainy lab cameras, the same boy, the same voice, the same screaming. You memorized them without meaning to.

You ran on the treadmill in the company gym until your lungs burned. Until your legs gave out and your body felt quiet. You didn’t know why. Maybe you were trying to feel control. Maybe you just wanted to feel anything that wasn’t dread.

You started smoking again. At first, on the rooftop. Then the stairwell. Then your office with the window cracked open, like the smoke might carry your thoughts out and away from you. One morning you woke up with your face pressed to your desk and your fingers stained yellow.

You stopped caring about your appearance. Late to meetings. Hair tangled. Wrinkled blouses pulled from the bottom of drawers. Once, you wore mismatched shoes and didn’t notice until hours later. No one said anything. Maybe they were afraid to.

Sister Sage showed up more.

At first, she lingered in the background—clipboard in hand, eyes flicking from her tablet to you and back again. But then she started sitting. Right there in your office. Watching you work in total silence, like you were part of some behavioral study.

She never told you why. Never gave a reason. She didn’t have to.

Occasionally, she’d speak. Short, clipped observations, usually at the exact moment you felt like unraveling:

“You’re not sleeping.”

“You accessed the same archive file thirty-two times this week.”

“You’re dissociating more frequently. Fascinating.”

You started dreading the sound of her shoes in the hallway. The way she never really blinked. The way she stared at you like she was already three steps ahead of your brain.

One day, you snapped.

“What do you want from me?”

Sage tilted her head, just slightly.

“Data,” she said.

And smiled.

But even she wasn’t the one haunting you.

Homelander never returned. Not in person.

But he was everywhere.

At night, your apartment felt wrong. You swore you’d locked your windows—but one was cracked open when you got home. A coffee mug was moved half an inch to the left. You left a drawer slightly ajar on purpose. The next morning, it was closed.

You told yourself it was exhaustion. That you were imagining things. That the smell of aftershave in your hallway was a coincidence. That the faint shape you thought you saw in the reflection of your television—tall, still, watching—was a trick of the light.

But you started muttering to yourself. Saying his name aloud just to hear it. Just to feel like you had control over it.

You unplugged your television. Removed your phone battery. Started checking every room when you got home. Once, you found a single fingerprint on your bathroom mirror. Another time, you smelled blood, faintly, on your sheets.

And every night, every night, you dreamed of the shower.

Of the red water. The heat of his body behind yours. His voice—low, broken, terrible. The way he held you like you were his.

You woke up gasping more than once. You bit your own hand until it bled just to stay grounded.

You began to miss him. You hated yourself for it.

One night, you couldn’t take it anymore.

You closed your computer without shutting it down. Left the lights on. Walked out of Vought Tower without telling anyone where you were going.

You found a bar on 9th and Halstead—dim, quiet, full of people who didn’t care where you worked. You ordered something strong and fast. Then another. Then something you didn’t ask the name of.

You weren’t celebrating. You weren’t grieving.

You were trying to drown something. Or maybe chase it out.

He wasn’t there. He hadn’t been. Not since the shower.

But it didn’t matter. Your skin still remembered the way the steam clung to his shoulders. The way he stood too close. The broken rasp in his voice. That look—not love, not lust, but need, raw and predatory and childlike all at once.

He hadn’t touched you since. Hadn’t spoken to you. Hadn’t even looked at you.

So why did it feel like he never left?

You drank more. Flirted with a stranger. He had brown eyes and a soft laugh and the kind of hands that weren’t meant to break anything.

You told yourself that was what you wanted. Something human. Something harmless.

You took him home.

You let him kiss you on the elevator. Let him follow you through the door. You smiled when he took off his coat. Tried to feel anything when he touched you.

But everything about it felt… thin. Off. Like wearing someone else’s clothes.

He kissed you like he was grateful. You kissed him like you were hoping it would stick.

You undressed each other in the dark.

When he was inside you, you closed your eyes and tried to imagine it felt like his weight. Like his heat. You tried not to picture the way Homelander looked at you in the mirror. The way he smelled when he was soaked in blood. The way he shook when he spoke your name like he wasn’t supposed to know it.

The man came with a soft groan and whispered something you didn’t catch.

You turned your face away.

—

He left without asking for your number.

You lay on your side, staring at the wall, not blinking. You didn’t bother changing the sheets. You didn’t bother pretending it helped.

It didn’t.

Your apartment used to be quiet.

Now it felt watched.

You started checking the locks three times instead of two. Then five. Then eight. You set up a doorstop under your bedroom door and jammed a chair against the knob. You kept the hallway light on. Slept with your keys clenched in your hand.

But it never felt like enough.

Because things kept moving.

A spoon left slightly askew. The closet door nudged open. A towel, still damp, when you hadn’t showered. Once, you came home to find your favorite mug turned around—handle facing the opposite direction. You knew you hadn’t left it that way.

You told yourself it was stress.

But your hands shook when you unlocked the door.

You started talking aloud just to hear a voice.

Just to prove you were still alone.

Sometimes, you’d come home and smell something faint but familiar. Warm. Sharp. Metallic. Like ozone.

Like blood.

Like him.

You told yourself you were imagining it.

But your cat—who usually hid from guests—started meowing at corners. Sitting in front of empty doorways. Hissing at nothing.

You threw out the flower. The one left on your pillow. You told yourself it had always been there. That maybe it fell out of a book.

But the petals were fresh.

And you didn’t own any white flowers.

You stopped inviting people over. Stopped answering the door at all. Every knock felt like a threat.

You unplugged your TV. Covered the camera on your laptop. Slept in clothes in case you had to run.

Once, you caught yourself whispering his name like a spell, his real name, the one from the tapes

Like saying it might keep him away.

Or bring him back.

You didn’t know what this was.

Not love. Not longing.

It was a cage being built around your mind one quiet hour at a time.

But that didn’t make it easier.

Didn’t stop the fear from curling under your skin like wire.

Because paranoia is only paranoia until you’re right.

You opened your closet and found your drawers rifled through.

Nothing taken.

Just… touched.

You didn’t scream. You didn’t run.

You sat on the floor and stared at your open sock drawer until sunrise.

And when you went to work the next morning, Sage was waiting outside your office.

“You really should stop leaving your windows unlocked,” she said without looking up from her tablet.

You stared at her. Blinked.

She smiled.

—

The next morning, your supervisor called you in.

She didn’t ask how you were. Didn’t mention the dark circles under your eyes or the fact that your shirt was buttoned unevenly. Just said:

“You need to pull yourself together.”

You nodded.

“You’ve been off for weeks. Whatever’s going on with you—fix it. Fast.”

You nodded again.

She waited for you to say something. You didn’t.

Eventually, she sighed and looked back at her screen.

You left her office without another word.

That night, your apartment was quiet.

You moved through it like you weren’t there. Like it wasn’t yours.

You washed a glass in the sink.

You stared at the tile. You checked the window latch again. And again.

Then you saw it.

Not in the living room. Not in the mirror.

In the kitchen.

In the sink.

A single strand of blonde hair, curled against the steel basin. Pale as snow.

—————

Homelander’s Perspective:

There was no announcement.

Not from Edgar. Not from him.

Homelander didn’t need to make one. His silence was enough. Silence carried weight. Power. Fear. He’d learned that in the lab—how silence could make even grown men piss themselves.

So he stayed quiet, pulled back from showy public appearances. Let Vought rot from the inside out.

He knew the workers felt his absence, but he was watching everything.

The glass walls of the bullpen stayed dark. The seven didn’t deserve to see him, the public didn’t deserve to see him. They’d stared too long already. They’d looked at him like a weapon, a freak, a thing to be managed. Edgar had made sure of that.

Now Edgar was gone, out of the picture.

And you—you—you were still here.

You sat in your little office like a soldier bleeding out. Quiet. Unnoticed. Beautiful.

He watched you fall apart in real time. Watched the way your shoulders curled in, how your hair stopped getting brushed, how your eyes stopped shining. It was like watching a candle melt.

And he loved you like that.

Not the way other people love. Not messy or loud. His love was silent. Holy. You were something sacred when you were broken. Fragile. Soft. Yours was a kind of pain that didn’t whine or scream—it endured. And it made him feel clean just watching you suffer.

You were good, then.

Pure.

When you played those tapes—his tapes—he watched the flicker of the screen on your face and imagined crawling into your lap, curling there like something small, something helpless. Maybe you’d run your hands through his hair. Maybe you’d say his name like it meant something. He liked imagining the way his name—his real name—would sound falling from your lips.

John. John. John.

You were the only one who’d seen him—really seen him. And you hadn’t turned away. Not yet.

Sister Sage was just a tool. She thought she was studying you. Observing your decline like data points in a lab. But he didn’t care about her notes. He only cared about what you whispered when you thought you were alone.

Wounded. Perfect.

Untouched.

He went to your apartment when you weren’t there.

At first, he told himself it was for protection. To make sure you were safe. That no one else was watching you the way he was. But that lie didn’t last long.

He memorized your schedule. Knew which days you stayed late at Vought. Which coffee shop you stopped at on the way home. How long you lingered on the sidewalk before unlocking your door.

That was when he’d slip in.

Through the window. Or the balcony. Or the front door.

The first time, he didn’t touch anything. Just stood in your bedroom and listened. The hum of the refrigerator. The faint buzz of the streetlamp outside your curtains. The softness of your sheets, still shaped to your sleeping form.

He stood there for twenty-three minutes.

Didn’t breathe.

The second time, he sat on the edge of your bed.

Ran his fingers over the comforter. Opened your drawers. Touched the silk of your underwear like it was sacred. Lifted a bottle of perfume and sprayed it just once into the air, closing his eyes like it was a prayer.

He found the clothes you wore the night of the shower. Still balled in the corner of your closet. Still crusted with blood.

He didn’t touch those.

He just stared.

The third time, he brought a gift.

A single white flower.

He left it on your pillow.

You never mentioned it.

He started visiting more often after that. When he knew you were out—at work, at the gym, out trying to forget him—he’d come and remind himself who you really were. Before you ruined it. Before you made him think of you with someone else’s hands on your skin.

But then came him.

The stranger. The man at the bar with the soft hands and boring eyes. He watched it all from above—your drink, your smile, the way your body leaned into something less. He thought you were grieving. Thought maybe this was how you mourned.

But when you brought him home, when you let him touch you, when you opened yourself up to him—

That’s when something broke.

He couldn’t look away.

He watched every second.

Not because he wanted to. But because he had to. Because if he turned his back, it might mean you were someone else. Someone unclean. And he couldn’t bear that. Couldn’t stomach the thought that you were like the rest of them—liars with soft skin and open legs and hollow words.

You weren’t supposed to be like that. Not like that. Not dirty.

He stood on your fire escape, hands clenched tight behind his back, heat rolling off him in waves that made the glass fog. He could hear the sounds from inside. The man groaning. You—silent.

Silent like guilt.

He wanted to tear the man apart. Wanted to rip through your door and leave nothing but blood and teeth and whimpers behind.

Homelander stared at the glass like he could burn through it.

Like if he focused hard enough, the heat from his eyes might pass through the distance, through the building, through her chest.

Pop her fucking heart like a balloon.

But he didn’t move.

Not yet.

He was imagining it too vividly.

Not just the kill—but how it would feel. Not just the blood, but the moment before.

That moment when she realized. When she looked up at him, startled, confused. Her brain not catching up to her terror fast enough.

And then—

His hands. Around her neck. Her nails slicing into his forearms. Her knees bucking against his hips. Her mouth open, her wide fucking doe eyes screaming why are you doing this?

But she’d know why.

She fucking knew.

He’d say it to her. Whisper it as she gasped and kicked and bled from her lip when he slammed her head too hard against the floor:

“You were supposed to be mine.”

“I let you see me. I let you touch me when I was broken.”

“And you gave yourself to him.”

Her feet would drag weakly across the floor, scraping hardwood. Her eyes would fill with tears, with blood. With him.

And still—still!—he knew there’d be a part of her that wanted him to stop. That believed he might. That believed he cared.

That’s what made him want to do it more.

To teach her what gods do to liars.

She should have worshipped him.

Instead, she invited some stranger in and let him forget her name while he came inside her.

And now Homelander would remind her who she belonged to.

Not just with fear. Not just with pain.

With total, annihilating clarity.

He’d leave her gasping on the floor, pupils blown wide, throat purpled and slick with his fingerprints. No words. No excuses.

Only silence.

Only truth.

And then, maybe then, he could let her go.

Maybe then he’d finally stop dreaming about her.

He blinked his thoughts away, focusing on you again. The very much alive you, laying there in the bed unmoving.

You didn’t cry.

You didn’t call anyone.

You didn’t even change the sheets.

You just laid there. Quiet.

—

There were rules, at first, to his visits.

He wouldn’t take anything. Wouldn’t leave a trace.

One night, he found a wine glass in the sink. With lipstick.

Not your color.

His jaw clenched.

His vision blurred.

He shattered the glass in one hand and didn’t even feel the cut.

He scrubbed the counter with his bare palm until his blood soaked into the sponge. He left the pieces in the trash but adjusted the bag so it looked undisturbed.

After that, he wasn’t careful anymore.

He opened your bathroom cabinet.

Checked the expiration dates on your birth control.

Counted your razors.

Smelled your pillow.

He found an old T-shirt—yours, worn soft with time—and folded it into his pocket. Not to keep. Just for a while.

And when he left, he always did one thing:

He moved something.

A drawer. A magnet. A curtain.

Just enough to remind you that he’d been there.

That you weren’t alone.

That no matter how far you fell, he was always watching.

Waiting for you to be good again.

He came back that night. Didn’t touch anything. Just stood in your kitchen and watched the sink drip.

Listened to you breathing in the other room.

xx

Taglist: @xxyaoi-nationxx @unnisumi

[cassowariess]

Hunting and applying for jobs has become so unnecessarily complicated. Websites like Indeed and Reed feel fucking useless. You just throw your CV into the wind and never see it again. On top of that I KNOW that one of these websites either sold my data or has shit security policies because I keep getting waves of scam calls and emails every time I apply for a job.

I prefer applying for jobs direct from the source rather than through these mass recruiting websites, but so few businesses do that now because it's cheaper to do this bullshit for them than hire an HR person.

[emsprovisions]

❄️ Day 16 - HR's Going to have Their Hands Full ❄️

🎁 Today's fic is dedicated to @welcometololaland!

Summary: an au where TK and Carlos are flirty coworkers at the holidays.

Word count: 822

Prompt inspired by "you're annoying me with your ugly sweaters" found here Also got a little help with dialogue from @ironheartwriter <3

24 Days of Tarlos Masterpost

“TK!” Carlos Reyes bursts into TK’s office with that usual disapproving frown marring his beautiful face, the one he always reserves just for TK. 

“Hey, Carlos,” TK’s tone is bored as he continues scrolling on his computer. 

“TK, you do realize I get dinged when you go on questionable sites on your company issued computer, right?” Carlos huffs, pushing his glasses up his nose.

“Oh,” TK tears his eyes away from the screen to glance up at Carlos. “So you only talk to me when I ding you?”

Carlos pinches the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses. “Oh my god, you’re going to get us both in trouble with HR.”

“Oh, I’m sure they’d have their hands full with me,” TK just grins. 

Carlos makes a noise that sounds a bit like a dying cat. “You know it’s still the beginning of December, right? You’re already annoying me with your obnoxious sweaters and the decorations in your office, must you annoy me by making my job harder too?”

“I didn’t know there was anything against spreading a little holiday cheer,” TK hums. “If Mary Anne can have a mini Christmas tree on her desk, I should be able to have my mini menorah. Plus, sometimes Hanukkah is this early you know…”

Carlos narrows his gaze at TK. “You really are trying to get me in trouble with HR aren’t you.”

“Not at all,” TK grins at Carlos coyly. “Maybe I’m just trying to get myself on your naughty list.”

Carlos’s face just turns bright red. “Strand!” 

“Something bothering you, Carlos?” TK raises his eyebrows. 

“Nope,” the cyber security analyst just turns on his heel and grumbles over his shoulder. “Just…stay off the questionable websites and get back to work…”

TK just laughs to himself as he watches Carlos scramble out of his office as fast as he can.

A few days later, TK finds himself in Carlos’s office. TK’s wearing another obnoxious holiday sweater, this one with a Christmas design formatted entirely out of binary code. Carlos glances up from his computer as TK enters and actually smirks at his sweater, shaking his head.

“They’re getting more ridiculous every day. Seriously, how many do you have?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” TK waggles his eyebrows. “Could you look this over for me? I’m trying to implement this code into the data to protect secure information, but I think I’m off somewhere.”

“You developers,” Carlos rolls his eyes, but there’s no bitterness in the action. “Let’s see what you did.”

TK hands over his laptop and stands over Carlos’s shoulder while he scans TK’s work. There’s a few minutes of silence and TK is so aware of how close he’s standing to Carlos. He can smell his musky cologne and his cedarwood shampoo and god does he smell good. TK’s had a crush on Carlos for months now, but they keep playing this game of cat and mouse that’s going absolutely nowhere. Plus, they work together, and TK’s pretty sure the man is very serious about his fear of HR.

“Here’s the problem,” Carlos says at last, his finger dragging along a line of code on TK’s screen. “I can fix it for you, it won’t take long.”

“Thanks,” TK says genuinely. 

“It’s nothing,” Carlos shakes his head, tossing more of that cedarwood scent towards TK with the bounce of his curls. 

TK could melt into him. 

He steps away instead, rounding Carlos’s desk and dropping into a chair while he waits for Carlos to correct his work. 

Carlos glances up at TK while he types. “You know, those cookies you put in the break room the other day were really good.”

“The white chocolate peppermint ones?” TK asks with a surprised smile. He didn’t realize Carlos had tried them, or realized that TK had brought them.

Carlos nods. “I recognized your handwriting on the note…Do you think you could share the recipe with me? I’m better at cooking than baking, but I think my mom would like them.”

“I can, but maybe I can do you one better…”

Carlos’s hands freeze over the keyboard as he looks up at TK. “Yeah?”

“I could make another batch just for your mom,” TK offers with a kind smile.

Carlos looks back at the computer, beginning to type again. “What if I made you dinner in exchange?”

“Dinner? Hmm, I don’t know, might be a little weird to bring my dinner to the office,” TK bites his lip to hold back his grin, trying to contain his excitement in case Carlos really is suggesting what TK thinks he’s suggesting.

“Good thing I was going to invite you over to eat said dinner at my place then,” Carlos looks back up at TK again with a tiny smile. “And maybe you could personally show me how to make those cookies instead…?”

“Are you asking me out on a date, Reyes?”

“I think I am, Strand.”

[seirainn]

꒰ 𝗢𝗙𝗙𝗜𝗖𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 ꒱ JJK C.AI BOTS ⊹ Jujutsu industries is highly elusive- and sadly the workplace of so many incompetently competent employees. How any of them have managed without you, nobody will ever know.

CO-CEO SATORU GOJO | CO-CEO SUGURU GETO | HEAD OF HR NANAMI KENTO | HEAD OF SECURITY TOJI ZENIN | DATA ENTRY RYOMEN SUKUNA | INTERN CHOSO KAMO

some notes + explanations below

Another scenario I wanted to write for but again, no thoughts head mt lol. This is similar to my courtesan series, in which all the characters' respective readers have a different job within the same AU universe. I originally had ideas of Sukuna's reader and Nanami's reader being friends, so there's somewhere in the definition that mentions it.

Also, I've never worked in an office. I have no clue how anything works. I went exclusively off korean office vlogs that have been popping up all over my fyp ww. I just had a dream about Gojo spinning in an office spinny chair and someone smacking him upside the head and thought. Wow. He would. I want to write that.

And then I proceeded to not write that.

Maybe I'll write a oneshot for Toji's though, someday. I like the idea of him being like a scary guard dog for someone who has to listen to people screaming at them all day lol.

...This idea would've been perfect for Higuruma huh? Maybe I'll do one for him too, someday, not sure.

[mariacallous]

A new lawsuit filed by more than 100 federal workers today in the US Southern District Court of New York alleges that the Trump administration’s decision to give Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) access to their sensitive personal data is illegal. The plaintiffs are asking the court for an injunction to cut off DOGE’s access to information from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which functions as the HR department of the United States and houses data on federal workers such as their Social Security numbers, phone numbers, and personnel files. WIRED previously reported that Musk and people with connections to him had taken over OPM.

“OPM defendants gave DOGE defendants and DOGE’s agents—many of whom are under the age of 25 and are or were until recently employees of Musk’s private companies—‘administrative’ access to OPM computer systems, without undergoing any normal, rigorous national-security vetting,” the complaint alleges. The plaintiffs accuse DOGE of violating the Privacy Act, a 1974 law that determines how the government can collect, use, and store personal information.

Elon Musk, the DOGE organization, the Office of Personnel Management, and the OPM’s acting director Charles Ezell are named as defendants in the case. The plaintiffs include over a hundred individual federal workers from across the US government as well as groups that represent them, including AFL-CIO, a coalition of labor unions, the American Federation of Government Employees, and the Association of Administrative Law Judges. The AFGE represents over 800,000 federal workers ranging from Social Security Administration employees to border patrol agents.

The plaintiffs are represented by prominent tech industry lawyers, including counsel from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, as well as Mark Lemley, an intellectual property and tech lawyer who recently dropped Meta as a client in its contentious AI copyright lawsuit because he objected to what he alleges is the company’s embrace of “neo-Nazi madness.”

“DOGE's unlawful access to employee records turns out to be the means by which they are trying to accomplish a number of other illegal ends. It is how they got a list of all government employees to make their illegal buyout offer, for instance. It gives them access to information about transgender employees so they can illegally discriminate against those employees. And it lays the groundwork for the illegal firings we have seen across multiple departments,” Lemley told WIRED.

EFF lawyer Victoria Noble says there are heightened concerns about DOGE’s data access because of the political nature of Musk’s project. For example, Noble says, there’s a risk that Musk and his acolytes may use OPM data to target ideological opponents or “people they see as disloyal.”

“There's significant risk that this information could be used to identify employees to essentially terminate based on improper considerations,” Noble told WIRED. “There's medical information, there's disability information, there's information about people's involvement with unions.”

The Office of Personnel Management and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The team behind the lawsuit plans to push even further. “This is just phase one, focused on getting an injunction to stop the continuing violation of the law,” says Lemley. The next phase will include filing a class-action lawsuit on behalf of impacted federal workers.

“Any current or former federal employee who spends or loses even a small amount of money responding to the data breach, for example, by purchasing credit monitoring services, is entitled to a minimum of $1000 in statutory damages,” Lemley says. The complaint specifies that the plaintiffs have already paid for credit monitoring and web monitoring services to protect themselves against DOGE potentially mishandling their data.

The lawsuit is part of a flurry of complaints filed in recent days opposing various executive orders signed by Trump as well as activities conducted by DOGE, which has dispatched a cadre of Musk loyalists to radically overhaul and sometimes effectively dismantle various government agencies.

An earlier lawsuit filed against the Office of Personnel Management on January 27 alleges that DOGE was operating an illegal server at OPM. On Monday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a privacy-focused nonprofit, brought its own lawsuit against OPM, the US Department of the Treasury, and DOGE, alleging “the largest and most consequential data breach in US history.” Filed in a US District Court in Virginia, it also called for an injunction to halt DOGE’s access to sensitive data.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has similarly characterized DOGE’s data access as potentially illegal in a letter to members of Congress sent last week.

The courts have already taken some limited actions to curb DOGE’s campaign. On Saturday, a federal judge blocked Musk’s lieutenants from accessing Treasury Department records that contained sensitive personal data such as Social Security and bank account numbers. The Trump Administration is already aggressively pushing back, calling the order “unprecedented judicial interference.” Today, President Trump reportedly prepared to sign an executive order directing federal agencies to work with DOGE.

[affairsmastery]

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers, including Nikhil Rajpal, Gavin Kliger, and GOP adviser Chris Young, have secured “read-only” access to sensitive CFPB systems, per WIRED.

The team, now listed in CFPB’s internal directory, can view HR, procurement, and financial data—sparking concerns about potential workforce and spending cuts. This follows DOGE’s access to other federal systems, including NOAA and Treasury. Critics warn this move could weaken the CFPB, a key watchdog for financial institutions.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Fintech bullies stole your kid’s lunch money

I'm coming to DEFCON! On Aug 9, I'm emceeing the EFF POKER TOURNAMENT (noon at the Horseshoe Poker Room), and appearing on the BRICKED AND ABANDONED panel (5PM, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01). On Aug 10, I'm giving a keynote called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE! How hackers can seize the means of computation and build a new, good internet that is hardened against our asshole bosses' insatiable horniness for enshittification" (noon, LVCC - L1 - HW1–11–01).

Three companies control the market for school lunch payments. They take as much as 60 cents out of every dollar poor kids' parents put into the system to the tune of $100m/year. They're literally stealing poor kids' lunch money.

In its latest report, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau describes this scam in eye-watering, blood-boiling detail:

https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/cfpb_costs-of-electronic-payment-in-k-12-schools-issue-spotlight_2024-07.pdf

The report samples 16.7m K-12 students in 25k schools. It finds that schools are racing to go cashless, with 87% contracting with payment processors to handle cafeteria transactions. Three processors dominate the sector: Myschoolbucks, Schoolcafé, and Linq Connect.

These aren't credit card processors (most students don't have credit cards). Instead, they let kids set up an account, like a prison commissary account, that their families load up with cash. And, as with prison commissary accounts, every time a loved one adds cash to the account, the processor takes a giant whack out of them with junk fees:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

If you're the parent of a kid who is eligible for a reduced-price lunch (that is, if you are poor), then about 60% of the money you put into your kid's account is gobbled up by these payment processors in service charges.

It's expensive to be poor, and this is no exception. If your kid doesn't qualify for the lunch subsidy, you're only paying about 8% in service charges (which is still triple the rate charged by credit card companies for payment processing).

The disparity is down to how these charges are calculated. The payment processors charge a flat fee for every top-up, and poor families can't afford to minimize these fees by making a single payment at the start of the year or semester. Instead, they pay small sums every payday, meaning they pay the fee twice per month (or even more frequently).

Not only is the sector concentrated into three companies, neither school districts nor parents have any meaningful way to shop around. For school districts, payment processing is usually bundled in with other school services, like student data management and HR data handling. For parents, there's no way to choose a different payment processor – you have to go with the one the school district has chosen.

This is all illegal. The USDA – which provides and regulates – the reduced cost lunch program, bans schools from charging fees to receive its meals. Under USDA regs, schools must allow kids to pay cash, or to top up their accounts with cash at the school, without any fees. The USDA has repeatedly (2014, 2017) published these rules.

Despite this, many schools refuse to handle cash, citing safety and security, and even when schools do accept cash or checks, they often fail to advertise this fact.

The USDA also requires schools to publish the fees charged by processors, but most of the districts in the study violate this requirement. Where schools do publish fees, we see a per-transaction charge of up to $3.25 for an ACH transfer that costs $0.26-0.50, or 4.58% for a debit/credit-card transaction that costs 1.5%. On top of this, many payment processors charge a one-time fee to enroll a student in the program and "convenience fees" to transfer funds between siblings' accounts. They also set maximum fees that make it hard to avoid paying multiple charges through the year.

These are classic junk fees. As Matt Stoller puts it: "'Convenience fees' that aren't convenient and 'service fees' without any service." Another way in which these fit the definition of junk fees: they are calculated at the end of the transaction, and not advertised up front.

Like all junk fee companies, school payment processors make it extremely hard to cancel an automatic recurring payment, and have innumerable hurdles to getting a refund, which takes an age to arrive.

Now, there are many agencies that could have compiled this report (the USDA, for one), and it could just as easily have come from an academic or a journalist. But it didn't – it came from the CFPB, and that matters, because the CFPB has the means, motive and opportunity to do something about this.

The CFPB has emerged as a powerhouse of a regulator, doing things that materially and profoundly benefit average Americans. During the lockdowns, they were the ones who took on scumbag landlords who violated the ban on evictions:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/20/euthanize-rentier-enablers/#cfpb

They went after "Earned Wage Access" programs where your boss colludes with payday lenders to trap you in debt at 300% APR:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/01/usury/#tech-exceptionalism

They are forcing the banks to let you move your account (along with all your payment history, stored payees, automatic payments, etc) with one click – and they're standing up a site that will analyze your account data and tell you which bank will give you the best deal:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/21/let-my-dollars-go/#personal-financial-data-rights

They're going after "buy now, pay later" companies that flout borrower protection rules, making a rogues' gallery of repeat corporate criminals, banning fine-print gotcha clauses, and they're doing it all in the wake of a 7-2 Supreme Court decision that affirmed their power to do so:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/10/getting-things-done/#deliverism

The CFPB can – and will – do something to protect America's poorest parents from having $100m of their kids' lunch money stolen by three giant fintech companies. But whether they'll continue to do so under a Kamala Harris administration is an open question. While Harris has repeatedly talked up the ways that Biden's CFPB, the DOJ Antitrust Division, and FTC have gone after corporate abuses, some of her largest donors are demanding that her administration fire the heads of these agencies and crush their agenda:

https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/

Tens of millions of dollars have been donated to Harris' campaign and PACs that support her by billionaires like Reid Hoffman, who says that FTC Chair Lina Khan is "waging war on American business":

https://prospect.org/power/2024-07-26-corporate-wishcasting-attack-lina-khan/

Some of the richest Democrat donors told the Financial Times that their donations were contingent on Harris firing Khan and that they'd been assured this would happen:

https://archive.is/k7tUY

This would be a disaster – for America, and for Harris's election prospects – and one hopes that Harris and her advisors know it. Writing in his "How Things Work" newsletter today, Hamilton Nolan makes the case that labor unions should publicly declare that they support the FTC, the CFPB and the DOJ's antitrust efforts:

https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/unions-and-antitrust-are-peanut-butter

Don’t want huge companies and their idiot billionaire bosses to run the world? Break them up, and unionize them. It’s the best program we have.

Perhaps you've heard that antitrust is anti-worker. It's true that antitrust law has been used to attack labor organizing, but that has always been in spite of the letter of the law. Indeed, the legislative history of US antitrust law is Congress repeatedly passing law after law explaining that antitrust "aims at dollars, not men":

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

The Democrats need to be more than The Party of Not Trump. To succeed – as a party and as a force for a future for Americans – they have to be the party that defends us – workers, parents, kids and retirees alike – from corporate predation.

Support me this summer on the Clarion Write-A-Thon and help raise money for the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/07/26/taanstafl/#stay-hungry

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