King App

Dustin Kingsley stared at his phone in confusion. The icon was on his home screen. A simple outline of a golden crown on a black circle with the words “King App” underneath. He pulled up the phone’s settings. There was nothing even remotely similar in the list of installed apps. He ran through the security lists. There was nothing in the download history that he hadn’t expected to see. He pulled up the app store and ran a search. The name generated dozens of hits, but none that were an exact match, and none that shared anything like the simple logo that stared back at him as he returned to the home screen.

He frowned for a moment. If it was some kind of hack then they’d clearly already been able to root the phone. But if they’d done that, then why install a tell-tale on the homescreen? He smirked, guess they wanted his credit card details and mother’s maiden name too. He wondered what stupid game they would offer to try and entice him to enter them. Might as well find out before trashing the phone.

He clicked the logo and felt something almost like a small static shock as the app filled the screen. Shaking his finger, he frowned as a gold-edged text box popped up, the plain black text a far cry from the garish dopamine overload intro he had expected.

Congratulations, you have been chosen as one of ten global users of 'King App'! Using King App, you can tag any man or woman to receive and obey your Commands. Level up to unlock more options and control more people! To win, become the One And Only King and rule the world.

He chuckled to himself as he dismissed the message, well that was certainly quite the pitch. The next screen only had a single option, a gilded button labeled 'Tag New'. He gave an amused grunt and tapped it. A screen opened up and he frowned as he saw the list of people. There were only two, both with small portraits next to their names. The first was his mother, Jessica, the other was Vitalia, their maid.

“What the fuck?” He stared at the images. He didn’t recognize the picture of his mother, but he supposed it could have been scraped from somewhere in the phone’s memory, but he didn’t have any photos of Vitalia on there. If this was a hack, they must have hacked hers too, and why the hell were none of his other contacts on the list?

Experimentally he reached out to press his finger against one of the images.