The Watch Trap

I didn’t wait for my father to finish walking through the door. I lungED. My Japanese carbon-steel shears were a heavy, silver extension of my own rural Ohio rage, and I brought them down toward his throat with the desperation of a woman who was done being a specimen.

But my blade didn’t hit flesh. It didn’t even hit air.

The steel passed right through his shoulder, a glitch in the light, and I stumbled forward, my momentum carrying me into the metal catwalk railing. I spun around, gasping, but the figure—the ghost of the man who had died in 2004—was already fading into a mosaic of blue and red pixels.

"He’s not a variable anymore, Elara," Julian’s voice spoke, but it wasn't coming from the catwalk.

It was coming from the monitor mounted on the server rack. The grid of sixty-four windows had collapsed into a single, high-fidelity frame. Julian Thorne was sitting in his archivist basement, stirring his Starbucks cup with his right hand. He looked bored. Very Real Housewives energy, if the show was produced by an algorithm that had already seen the reunion.

"That was just a legacy file," Julian said to the camera. "A ghost in the machine to keep you in the frame. Marcus is the one you should be worried about."

My heart rate spiked to 160. My Apple Watch chimed, but the screen was a blur of digital static. I looked down at my hands. They were Clean. Meticulously pruned.

"Where is he?" I shouted at the screen.

"He’s currently performing the finale," Julian said. He took a slow sip of his latte. "He strikeS the match in forty-seven seconds. Exactly like the recording."

I didn't amble. I schlepped through the server racks, searching for the exit, for the Northwest rain, for anything that didn't smell like cloying methane. I found a door at the end of the catwalk—a heavy steel airlock with a black glass slate instead of a handle.

I pressed my palm to the slate.

*Access Denied. User: Vance, Elara. Status: Fatality Imminent.*

"Plot twist," I whispered, my teeth buzzing.

I reached for the old laptop I’d kept offline—the one Marcus didn't know about. I’d hidden it in my apron, a cold silver insurance policy. I fumbled with the power button, my coordination slipping as the dread spiked.

I needed to see the router logs. I needed to know who opened the door to the devil.

The screen flickered to life. I wasn't digitally illiterate; I was a floral designer. I understood the architecture of a network just as well as the arrangement of a lily. I pulled up the bridge connection Julian had used to hijack my reality.

The installation date hit me like a splash of reagent.

*August 14, 2024.*

The day Marcus "gifted" me the smart-security system. The day he told me he’d added Sarah to my account as an emergency contact.

"You really understood the assignment, Marcus," I hissed.

I heard a car pull into the driveway. Not Julian’s white SUV. Marcus’s Audi. The low-frequency growl of the engine vibrated through the metal catwalk.

He wasn't at the airport. He wasn't in Zurich.

He was right here.

I watched through the black glass of the airlock as Marcus stepped out of the car. He didn't look like a brother. He looked like a predator who had just finished curating a tragedy. He walked straight to the mudroom door, a petrol can in his hand.

"Action," Julian’s voice spoke from the laptop speakers.

I checked the SafeGate app on the iPad Marcus had left on the catwalk. The notification wasn't about a scavenger's desperation anymore.

"NEW VIDEO UPLOADED: The Final Edit - Residence 402."

I tapped the link. The video started. It showed my mother’s bedroom from twenty years ago. My father was in the bed, gasping for air, the capillaries in his retina rupturing as the methane from the Ohio vents hit his system.

But as I watched, a figure entered the frame.

A young man with a familiar swagger.

He wasn't helping my father breathe.

He was holding a damp cloth over my father's mouth.

"Tell me you're not seeing this," I whispered, the betrayal reaching a ten.

In the recording, the young man looked up at the camera—the hidden camera Julian had installed in 2004.

It was Marcus.

He had killed our father to keep the soil reports buried. He had been balancing the ledger since he was sixteen.

"He was an economic variable," Julian’s voice echoed in the sub-basement. "And so are you, Elara."

The airlock door hissed open.

Not because of my palm print.

But because Marcus was standing on the other side.

He wasn't wearing his expensive wool coat. He was wearing my favourite silk pajamas, his eyes completely red.

"Are you taking your meds, Elara?" he asked. His voice was a flat, perfect recording of my own.

He stepped onto the catwalk, the petrol can heavy in his hand. The smell of sweet, cloying methane exploded from the vents.

I backed away, my heel catching on the metal grating.

I fell.

Exactly like the recording.

As I tumbled into the sea of servers, I saw one last window on the grid.

It was a shot of a motel on the edge of town.

A coffee spill in the background of a weather report.

And a woman who looked exactly like me, waking up.

She wasn't holding a match.

She was holding my Japanese shears.

And she was looking directly at the camera.

I hit the floor of the archive with a wet, heavy thud.

I didn't feel the pain.

I only felt the server lag.

Julian Thorne stepped out from behind the server rack. He didn't look like a records manager. He looked like an editor who had just found the perfect finale.

He reached into his lab coat and pulled out an amber bottle.

The label said: *Elara Vance. Pronounced Dead at the Scene. 9:02 PM.*

Julian smiled. The Slow-Puncture Smile.

"Congratulations, Elara," he whispered.

"You're the lead now."

He handed me a white dish.

On it sat two blue pills.

And a photograph of my mother, taken forty-eight hours after I was born.

In the photo, she was crying.

But as I watched, she looked at the camera.

And her eyes were completely blue.

The footsteps stopped outside the sub-basement door.

The handle began to turn.