The Neighborly Bounty

I have spent twenty years believing that the fire was my fatal flaw, but standing in the sub-level ruins of St. Jude’s Gallery, I realize that the matches were just the first line of code. My lungs are a raw structural failure, wheezing against the heavy, blue-fire stench of benzene that Julian Thorne spent two decades harvesting.

Fear is no longer a sharp spike. It is a constant, low-frequency hum that matches the Oakhaven power grid, a vibration that suggests my foundation was never actually mine to build.

Sarah is gone. Marcus is gone. The woman with my mother’s face is gone.

I am lying in the debris, my fingers twitching against the micro-SD card Miller said was incinerated. It’s still warm, a tiny plastic heart pulsing with the data of a state-wide takeover. The Neighborly drones have retreated into the grey fog, their searchlights replaced by the rhythmic, strobing red of the town’s emergency lockdown.

I pull myself up, my knee screaming in a language of pure, white-hot agony. I don't amble. I don't schlep. I drag my leaden body toward the gallery’s exit, my father’s fire-inspector jacket heavy with the soot of a thousand lies.

The front doors of St. Jude’s are shattered, the reinforced glass crunching like diamond dust under my boots. I reach the street, expecting Miller, expecting sirens, expecting the Bureau to finally settle the claim.

Instead, I find a digital gallows.

The Neighborly app on the SD card—which is somehow still tethered to my phone’s dead battery—pings with a relentless, rhythmic cruelty. Every chime is a fresh jolt of adrenaline.

[CIVIL HEALTH ALERT]: COMMUNITY BOUNTY INITIALIZED. SUBJECT: ELARA VANCE.

I look at the street. A row of urban townhouses—the ones Julian Thorne "regenerated" from the Spokane spill—glow with a sterile, amber light. Behind the glass, I see my neighbors. The young couple from 4B who always waved at the Starbucks line. The retired professor from 3C who shared his Sunday Times.

They aren't waving now. They are looking at their phones.

The screenshot of my location is already in three group chats. My face is on every screen, every MacBook, every smart-fridge in the block.

DANGEROUS FUGITIVE: SUBJECT 417-001.

The audacity is astronomical. Julian hasn't just escaped; he’s gamified my murder. He’s turned the residents of Oakhaven into his removal team.

"This is giving serial killer vibes," I mutter, my voice a dry rasp that I barely recognize.

I see Mr. Henderson, the professor, step onto his porch. He isn't holding his morning tea. He’s holding a heavy, wooden baseball bat. His eyes are fixed on the Neighborly map, tracking the blue dot that is currently standing in front of his driveway.

"Elara?" he shouts, his voice cracking with a terrifying, civic-minded duty. "The app says you're a liability. The app says you started the purge."

"Mr. Henderson, no! Julian Thorne lied! The town is sitting on a benzene plume!"

He doesn't hear me. He doesn't want to hear me. He’s looking at his Apple Watch, his heart rate probably spiking as the app promises him 50,000 credits for my "adjustment."

I turn and run toward the safe house Miller mentioned, but every Ring doorbell I pass chirps with a rhythmic, bleeding red light.

"Target recognized," the speakers whisper in unison. "Initializing the harvest."

I realize now that Oakhaven isn't a setting. It’s Julian Thorne’s weaponized social experiment. He didn't build a tech-utopia; he built a containment unit where the residents are the guards and the auditors are the fill.

I dive into a narrow alleyway, my heart a frantic percussion against my ribs. Desperation is a cold, oily slick coating my throat. I am one bad day away from becoming a true crime podcast, and the audience is currently closing in from both ends of the block.

I reach the back door of the fire station, the only structure in Oakhaven that still feels analog. I shove the manual override key Silas gave me into the lock. It turns with a heavy, satisfying clunk that the smart-city hasn't learned to block yet.

I scramble inside and slam the door, my breath coming in jagged, ragged hitches. The sub-level is dark, smelling of motor oil and ancient exhaust. I collapse against the bumper of the old Spokane pump engine.

The pager in my pocket vibrates.

One new message.

SENDER: [UNKNOWN].

MESSAGE: Check the foundations of the second match, Elara. The Architect left a witness in the frame.

I pull the micro-SD card from the mud and plug it into Marcus’s discarded laptop on the workbench. The screen flickers to life, bypassing the Bureau’s encryption.

It’s a directory titled: PROTOTYPE_FAILURES.

I find a sub-folder: VANCE, ELARA.

Inside are hundreds of hours of surveillance footage. Not from Oakhaven. From Spokane.

I see myself at fourteen, standing in the garage. But the video isn't from the backyard. It’s from a hidden camera inside the industrial-grade benzene filters Silas was storing.

I see my mother. She isn't arguing with my father. She is talking to a man in a slate-grey suit.

Julian Thorne.

"The valuations are too high, Julian," she says, her voice a fragile glass thread. "The fill is radioactive. If the audit goes through, Thorne Development is a total loss."

Julian smiles—the same smile he used when he gave me my adjustment firm license. "Containment is just a fancy word for structure, honey. We don't need an audit. We need a payout."

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a single, unspent matchbook.

Spokane diner red.

"Give the cloud to the daughter who knows how to burn it," Julian whispers.

He doesn't strike the match. My mother does.

She doesn't do it with fear. She does it with a terrifying, clinical serenity.

I feel a wave of horror that makes my blood turn to ice. The "Golden Silence" Silas forced on me wasn't to protect me. It was to hide the fact that my مادر wasn't the victim. She was the architect of the first claim.

The typing bubbles appear on the laptop screen. This is the moment I finally understand the "call is coming from inside the house" energy.

[USER_MOTHER]: Plot twist, Elara. The first match was the prototype. You are the integrated asset.

The Ring doorbell camera in the corner of the fire station sub-level chirps.

The small, circular light turns a violent, strobing red.

And a voice comes through the speaker—not Julian’s, not the Architect’s, but my own voice, younger and sharper.

"Are you ready for the private viewing, sister?"

I turn, my heart a fist pounding against my ribs, as the station’s main bay door begins to slide open with a mechanical roar.

But it’s not the black SUV idling outside.

It’s a white Municipal Security van.

And as the men in tactical gear step out, I see the figure standing behind them.

She’s wearing a perfectly tailored Lululemon athletic set and carrying a Starbucks cup.

She looks up at the camera and takes a sip of her latte.

And in the reflection of her sunglasses, I see the face of the fourth girl.

The one holding the thermal lance.

She opened the envelope. Inside was a photograph. Her blood turned to ice. It showed—