So I’m Lila, right? I just landed this tiny room under the roof where the ceiling slants like it’s drunk. Landlord says, “Internet’s included, fiber, super fast,” and I’m like, cool, I can stream my shows and code my side-hustle app without selling a kidney for data. First night, I rip open my noodles, open the laptop, and the Wi-Fi list shows one bar: “Mrtvý_2.4G.” Mrtvý means “dead” in Czech—my vocab’s trash but I know that one. Creepy name, whatever, students are edgy. I click, it connects without a password, full five bars. Sweet.
Next morning I wake up to Slack pinging like crazy. My buddy Tom’s like, “Girl, why’d you text me at 3 a.m. saying ‘help me find my face’?” I scroll up and there it is, green bubble from my account, timestamp 03:02. My fingers go ice. I live alone, door locked, no sleepwalking record. I type, “Sorry, account got hacked,” but the second I hit enter the cursor jumps two lines down and writes—by itself—"not hacked, just lonely." I swear the laptop fan stops, like the whole machine holds its breath. I slam the lid, shove it under the pillow, and go to class shaking.
Evening, I’m brave again. I open Chrome, plan to change every password, but the browser autofills a site I’ve never seen: faceless.gallery. Black page, one upload button. I try to close the tab; it multiplies, ten identical tabs laughing at me with loading circles. Router lights are blinking Morse or something, super fast. I yank the power cord, but the lights stay on, battery backup I didn’t know existed. My phone camera opens by itself, snaps a selfie, flash blinding. I dive for the router, chuck it out the skylight. It falls four stories, smashes on the cobblestones. I breathe, like, problem solved, right?
Wrong. Midnight, I’m under the duvet scrolling Insta on 5G when the same SSID pops up: Mrtvý_2.4G, full signal. Impossible, the router’s in pieces. I screenshot it, post “WTF ghost Wi-Fi?” and within seconds someone replies: “Because you broke my home.” Handle is @faceless.gallery. I tap the profile; it’s the same black page, but now my smashed router photo is the header. Caption: “Body hurts, bring new shell.” My battery drops from 80 to 5 percent instantly, phone burning hot. I throw it across the room, screen cracks, but the speakers whisper, crystal clear, “Need… face… upload.”
I run downstairs, bang on the landlord’s door. Old dude opens in slippers, candle in hand—yeah, power’s out in the whole building. I rant about haunted internet; he sighs, “Room’s cheap for a reason.” Story time: 1998, computer science student lived up there, obsessed with mapping human faces into 3-D meshes. One night router shorted, electrocuted him, firefighters found body but no face—skin melted smooth. Ever since, tenants complain the net’s “too interactive.” Landlord hands me a rusty key, says, “Attic storage, maybe find answers.”
I climb, flashlight trembling. Dust, cobwebs, and a tower of broken routers, every model since the 90s, each labeled with former tenant names. At the bottom sits a pristine one, blinking blue. I flip it: sticker says “LILA” in fresh ink. Hell no. I grab a brick, smash it to bits, but plastic shards bleed like meat, warm and pulsing. A low Wi-Fi signal icon appears on my forearm, tattooing itself in red pixels. I scrub, skin peels, pain insane.
Then I get mad. I’m no scream-queen. I stomp back, plug my laptop straight into the wall ethernet, air-gapped, no Wi-Fi card. I code all night, build a script that floods any network named Mrtvý with random selfies—thousands of faces per second, basically DDoS of humanity. If the ghost wants faces, I’ll bury it in faces. At 4:12 a.m. the attic explodes with light, whole building shakes, neighbors scream. My script hits 100 percent upload. Laptop screen cracks down the middle, but the red pixel tattoo fades from my arm.
Dawn, police and fire trucks everywhere. Landlord’s crying, says attic’s empty, no routers, no blood, just a scorched outline of a body. Cops blame faulty wiring. I pack my stuff, head to the door, phone buzzes—one new network available: “Děkuji_5G.” Děkuji means thank you. Signal’s one bar, gentle, not pushy. I smile, weirdly calm, and walk away without connecting. Some inboxes are better left unopened, you know?