Neighborly Is Watching

I don't just run; I evaporate. My lungs are screaming, a hot, jagged pain that matches the white-hot pulse of my knee, but adrenaline is a hell of a drug. It turns the world into a blur of grey rain and neon signs. I scramble away from the alley, my father’s soot-stained jacket heavy against my chest, the matchbook inside feeling like it's burning a hole through the fabric.

Coordinates for my own grave. Ten years ago.

The math doesn't work. The logic is a structural failure. Ten years ago, I was twenty-two, working my first junior adjustment firm in Spokane, trying to forget the smell of smoke. I wasn't dead. I was barely beginning.

I duck into a narrow gap between a high-end yoga studio and a closed boutique. My heart is a fist pounding against my ribs, making it impossible to think. I pull out Marcus’s burner phone. My hands are shaking so badly I almost drop it into a puddle of oily slush.

The screen is glowing with a new Neighborly App notification.

CIVIL HEALTH BOUNTY INCREASED: 10,000 CREDITS. LAST SEEN: FIRST NATIONAL ALLEY. WARNING: SUBJECT IS ARMED AND DELUSIONAL.

Armed? I’m holding a matchbook and a sense of impending collapse. But in Oakhaven, the narrative is the reality. If the app says I’m armed, every person with a Ring camera and a sense of civic duty is going to treat me like a school shooter.

I need to hide. Somewhere the smart-sensors can't find me. Somewhere analog.

The Grind is two blocks away. It’s a risk—Marcus bolted on me once—but he’s the only one who didn't look at me with the clinical detachment of Mrs. Gable. He looked at me with pity. Pity I can work with.

I limp toward the back entrance of the coffee shop, staying in the shadows of the delivery trucks. Every Tesla dashcam I pass feels like a loaded gun. Every person walking their dog with AirPods in feels like a sleeper agent waiting for the app to chime.

I reach the service door of The Grind. It’s heavy steel, painted a cheerful, corporate green. I pound on it, the sound dull and flat in the rain.

"Marcus! It's Elara! Open the door!"

Nothing. Just the hum of the city’s power grid.

"Marcus, please! They’re coming for me! I know you saw the chat!"

The door clicks. Not a full unlock, just the latch releasing. It edges open three inches. I don't wait for an invitation; I shoulder my way inside, stumbling into the smell of roasted beans and industrial floor cleaner.

Marcus is there, but he’s not behind the counter. He’s huddled in the small office nook, surrounded by flickering monitors. He looks like he hasn't slept in a week. His hair is a greasy mess, and his hands are flying across a mechanical keyboard—the loud, clicky kind that hackers love because it feels real.

"You shouldn't be here," he whispers, not looking up. "The Neighborly mesh-network has already triangulated your burner’s MAC address. I’m masking it, but it’s like trying to hide a fire with a paper towel."

"Marcus, look at this." I throw the fire inspector’s jacket onto his desk. I pull out the matchbook. "My father’s jacket was in a dumpster. This was inside. GPS coordinates for a grave with my name on it from 2016."

Marcus stops typing. He picks up the matchbook with the tip of his fingers, his eyes darting over the numbers. He leans back, his chair groaning.

"Elara... do you know what Oakhaven actually is?"

"It's a commuter town. A tech-hub. A 'Smart-City' pilot program."

"No," Marcus says, turning one of his monitors toward me. "It's a liquidation site. Thorne Urban Development didn't just build these lofts. They built a closed-loop social credit ecosystem. The Neighborly app isn't for gossip. It’s an algorithmic judge. It decides who is a 'structural asset' and who is a 'liability.'"

He taps a key. A spreadsheet appears. Thousands of names. I see my own.

STATUS: LIQUIDATION SCHEDULED.
REASON: AUDIT INTERFERENCE / HISTORICAL ANOMALY.

"Historical anomaly?" I wheeze.

"The system checked your Spokane records, Elara. It found the discrepancy. The death certificate Julian filed this morning? It didn't just appear. The system has been prep-populating it for years. It was waiting for a trigger."

I stare at the screen. The spreadsheet is giving serial killer vibes, but with better formatting.

"And my father?"

"Silas Vance isn't retired," Marcus says, his voice dropping. "He's the Chief of Crisis Management for Thorne. He’s the one who handles the 'physical adjustments' when the digital erasure isn't enough. He didn't lose your money, Elara. He moved it to fund the next phase."

I feel a wave of nausea. The call was coming from inside the house. My own Roman Empire was the belief that my father loved me enough to keep me safe.

"But the grave," I say, pointing at the matchbook. "Why ten years ago?"

Marcus bites his lip. He opens a new window, bypassing three layers of encryption. He enters the coordinates from the matchbook.

The map zooms in. It’s not a cemetery. It’s a patch of woods behind the old Spokane chemical plant—the one Thorne 'cleaned up' before Oakhaven was even a blueprint.

"This grave isn't yours, Elara," Marcus whispers. "It’s the person you replaced."

I feel the room tilt. "What are you talking about? I’m Elara Vance."

"Are you? Or are you just the girl Silas needed you to be to cash the check?"

Before I can scream at him, the Ring doorbell notification on Marcus’s desk pings.

The video feed shows the alley. The two men in suits are standing right outside the door I just entered. They aren't looking for me anymore. They’re looking at the camera.

One of them holds up a tablet. He taps the screen.

The power in The Grind doesn't just flicker; it dies. The monitors go black. The industrial espresso machine let out a long, wheezing hiss of steam.

"They're here," Marcus says, his voice flat with terror. "They've disconnected the shop from the grid. We’re in a dead zone now."

"We have to get out of here," I snap, grabbing the jacket.

"There's no out, Elara. The Neighborly app just issued a 'Civil Emergency.' The shop's smart-locks are hard-coded to seal during a lockdown. We’re trapped."

I look at the door. I can hear the rhythmic thud of a thermal lance beginning to bite into the steel. The smell of burnt metal—that ozone scent I’m becoming too familiar with—starts to seep through the cracks.

I turn back to Marcus. He’s staring at the black screens, his face illuminated only by the faint red glow of the 'Lockdown' indicator on the wall.

"Marcus, tell me the truth. Why did you help me? Why did you give me the burner?"

Marcus looks at me. Really looks at me. His eyes are wet.

"Because I have 'I have a secret family in another state' energy, Elara. Because Julian Thorne has my sister too. She’s on that spreadsheet. Number 418."

I look at the fire inspector’s jacket. I think about the matches. I think about the girl I’m supposed to be and the grave I’m supposed to be in.

"The coordinates," I say, grabbing his arm. "If we get to that grave, what's inside?"

"Evidence," he says. "The kind of evidence that crashes a cloud."

The lance sparks through the door. A white-hot line of fire appears in the darkness, glowing like a neon sign for my own execution.

"Choose," I say, mirroring the cadence of my father's old PSAs. "The silence. Or the fire."

Marcus reaches into his desk and pulls out a heavy, analog sledgehammer. He doesn't look sus anymore. He looks like he’s about to f*ck around and find out.

"I choose the fire," he says.

He swings the hammer, not at the door, but at the floorboards in the office nook. The wood splinters, revealing a narrow crawlspace that leads toward the grease trap.

"Go!" he shouts.

I scramble into the hole, my knee screaming, my father’s jacket snagging on a rusted nail. I yank myself through, the fabric tearing, and I tumble into the dark, damp earth beneath the shop.

I can hear the men in suits bursting into the office above. I can hear Marcus’s grunt of pain as they find him.

I crawl through the filth, the smell of old grease and wet dirt filling my nose. I reach the external vent and kick it open, spilling out into the rain-slicked street behind the shopping center.

I don't look back. I run toward the only thing left. The grave.

I reach the coordinates thirty minutes later, hidden in the dense pine woods at the edge of the Thorne estate. The rain has turned the ground into a soup of needles and mud.

I find the spot. It’s marked by a single, rusted structural girder driven into the earth like a headstone.

I start digging with my bare hands, the cold mud caking under my fingernails, the skin of my palms raw and bleeding. I dig until my fingers hit something hard. Something metallic.

It's a fireproof lockbox. The kind fire chiefs use to store arson evidence.

I pry it open.

Inside is a single, plastic-wrapped folder. I pull it out, my breath hitching in the dark.

I open the folder and a photo falls out.

It’s a photo of the fire in Spokane. But it’s not the house. It’s the backyard.

I see my mother. She’s standing next to a man I recognize instantly.

It’s Julian Thorne.

And they aren't arguing. They’re holding a child.

A child with a birthmark on her neck exactly like the one I’ve spent twenty years covering with expensive silk scarves.

I turn the photo over.

There’s a name written in my mother’s handwriting, dated one week before the fire.

The name isn't Elara.

I look at the name and my blood turns to ice, because if I’m the girl in this photo, then who the hell is the woman Julian Thorne just buried this morning?