The Secret Society of Wattpad

THE UNDERGROUND

[chapter four]

This was like the Matrix; was she in the midst of battling a cyber-intelligence? She clearly wasn't smart enough to, unless maybe . . . this was some kind of test to see if she passed?

None of it made sense.

How could someone message her and not have a profile? Even he had a profile picture: the famous, green photo of numbers from the Matrix.

But no matter how many times she clicked his profile picture, she got the same result over and over again.

Why and how was this happening? Especially to her?

Instead of coming up with random scenarios and answers, she decided to respond to his message. Maybe there had to have been some sort of explanation to this?

"Hi. Thank you for your kind words, and I'm glad our projects aren't that similar." Which was a lie. She never stole anyone's work, so how could she possibly know? "By the way, I noticed that you don't have an actual profile. How are you writing me?"

The thought, Please don't be a creep, please don't be a creep, came to mind. But she sent it off anyway. At seventeen years old, she was on the brink of being both stupid and smart. But there truly was no in-between.

She straightened her spine, sitting with her back against the bed frame. It would take a while for him to get back to her, right?

But instead, he responded in an instant.

"I'm glad, too. Oh, and . . . I'll show you. It's time you should be invited."

Huh, what did that mean? Invited? To what, exactly? To where?

Her computer began to wig out again; the changing screen color, the scrambles going across. She had absolutely no idea what was happening. How could it have happened since it was going so smoothly before?

"Don't shut it off," a male's voice said through her computer. "And don't press anything either."

What . . . the freak . . . was going on?

How did her computer know that she was about to do a repeat of what happened earlier?

In a blink of an eye, everything on her laptop became still. It became a complete, black screen. Confused, with fear rushing through her veins, she looked at her laptop like it was now broken. But she gave it a second to respond. Perhaps, it was still alive? She had some hope left over.

With some luck, the screen began to change and it looked similar to the Wattpad format, except, the background colors were black. It was like she entered a different dimension that had a Wattpad app., but was diverse in various ways.

"Welcome to the Underground, Ava."