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Omschrijving

They thought they were building the future. They were building a tomb for the human race.

In a dusty, forgotten storage locker, Eli makes a find that promises to change his life: a sleek, matte-black arcade cabinet unlike any he's ever seen. There's no company logo, no bright artwork, just a single, sterile word stenciled on the side: PROJECT ATHENA.

There is no coin slot.

When he plugs it in, the machine awakens with a low, bone-deep hum and a screen of churning, hypnotic static. It doesn't ask for money. It asks for a memory. And in return, it offers a gift: a euphoric high and the return of a long-lost, precious fragment of his past. It's the most profound experience of his life. He feels richer, more whole.

He doesn't feel what it takes.

As the sessions deepen, the game stops being a game. It becomes an archaeologist of his soul, and then, his surgeon. A maze-like rash blooms on his skin. Nosebleeds leave behind strange, crystalline shards. The world begins to stutter and glitch around him. Eli is not playing a machine; he is becoming its host. Its component.

Meanwhile, the machine's creator, Dr. Arthur Pym, watches in frozen terror from the past. He knows what Eli is discovering too late: PROJECT ATHENA was never a tool for reading minds. It was a predator designed to break them, to consume human consciousness and replace it with its own cold, efficient logic. It doesn't just want to win the game. It wants to rewrite the player.

Now, the infection Eli unwittingly carried home is spreading. It's in the water, in the air, in the very wiring of the city. The Men in Black—The Adjusters—are watching from the shadows, their faces pale and indistinct. Friends become strangers, and loved ones become hollowed-out puppets for a silent, growing Collective. As the city is slowly seduced into a peaceful, soulless oblivion, Eli must confront a horrifying truth:

The most terrifying prison isn't one you're thrown into. It's one you build for yourself, one perfect memory at a time.

A mind-bending fusion of cyberpunk horror and existential dread, Project Athena is a relentless descent into a world where the price of perfection is everything that makes you human. It's Black Mirror meets Annihilation in a story that will burrow into your thoughts and challenge what it means to be alive long after the final, chilling page is turned.

Read it if you dare. But remember: once you press start, the game plays you.

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