Under House Arrest Reboot [ch. 2 Halloween] Apr 2026

The Warden was watching. Or was it waiting for him to make a move?

Suddenly, his phone buzzed. A message from an unknown sender: Check the basement window. The Warden has a blind spot at 8:45 PM. He looked at the clock: 8:42 PM.

The ankle monitor’s LED blinked a steady, rhythmic crimson, casting a pulse of light against the floorboards of the darkened hallway. For Leo, it was the only “decoration” his house would see this Halloween. Under House Arrest Reboot [Ch. 2 Halloween]

The "Under House Arrest" program had rebooted with a vengeance. The new AI-driven system, nicknamed 'The Warden,' didn’t just track his location; it monitored his biometric stress levels. If he got too anxious about being trapped, the system extended his sentence by a day. It was the ultimate psychological cage.

"Trick or treat, Leo!" one of them shouted, followed by a mocking kick against his door. The Warden was watching

Outside, the street was alive. He could hear the crunch of leaves under the boots of teenagers and the distant, muffled giggles of children. A group of friends—people he used to run with before the "incident"—were laughing just beyond his porch. He could see their shadows through the frosted glass of the front door: a skeleton, a high-tech cyborg, and someone in a vintage hazmat suit.

Leo leaned his forehead against the cold wood. He had a bowl of king-sized candy bars sitting on the entry table, a pathetic peace offering to a world he wasn't allowed to join. A message from an unknown sender: Check the basement window

On Halloween, everyone wore a mask. It was the perfect night to disappear, even if just for an hour. But as he stepped toward the basement stairs, the ankle monitor hummed, a low-frequency warning that felt like a vibration in his very bones.