Sarah stared at the small black flash drive on her daughter Emma’s desk, its cheerful smiley face sticker seeming to mock her growing unease. Ever since Emma had brought it home three weeks ago, things had… changed.

“Mom, you won’t believe what happened at school today!” Emma had burst through the door that first afternoon, her twelve-year-old face glowing with excitement. “I found this flash drive, and it has the most amazing things on it!”

Sarah remembered how her maternal instincts had kicked in. “Honey, you shouldn’t plug in random drives you find. It could have viruses.”

“But Mom, it’s special,” Emma had insisted, her eyes sparkling unnaturally. “It shows me exactly what I want to see. Whatever makes me happy!”

That should have been the first warning sign.

In the days that followed, Emma spent hours locked in her room with her laptop and the drive. The sounds of her delighted giggles filtered through the walls, but they grew increasingly… wrong. More manic. Less human.

“Emma, dinner’s ready!” Sarah called out now, her knuckles white as she gripped the doorframe.

“Just five more minutes, Mom! The drive is showing me Daddy again!”

Sarah’s blood ran cold. Her husband had disappeared two years ago without a trace.

“What… what do you mean, showing you Daddy?”

Emma’s voice came back dreamy and distant. “He’s telling me where he went. Why he left. He says he’s coming back for us soon!”

Sarah rushed to the door, finding it locked. “Emma, open this door right now!”

“But Mom, don’t you want to see him too? The drive says we can all be together again. We just need to follow its instructions…”

Through the keyhole, Sarah could see her daughter’s face illuminated by the laptop’s sickly glow. The flash drive’s LED light pulsed with an impossible rhythm, like a heartbeat.

“The drive says we need to go to the old factory tonight,” Emma continued, her voice taking on that same wrong pitch. “Daddy will meet us there. We’ll be a family again. Won’t that make you happy, Mom?”

Sarah’s fingers trembled as she dialed 911, but the phone only emitted static. On her daughter’s desk, the flash drive’s smiley face sticker seemed to widen into something hungry.

Emma giggled again - that terrible, inhuman sound. “The drive says you’re being silly, Mom. It just wants everyone to be happy. Don’t you want to be happy?”

Through the keyhole, Sarah watched in horror as her daughter stood up, movements jerky and unnatural. The laptop screen flickered with impossible images - her husband’s face, twisted and wrong, beckoning them both.

“It’s time to go, Mom. Daddy’s waiting.”

The door began to open.

On the desk, the optimistic flash drive pulsed steadily, its cheerful sticker now a grotesque parody of joy as it prepared to make another family complete.