Thursday Night

Purge all recordings. The command echoed through the speaker as the drive in my waistband pulsed with a heat that felt like a brand. Chloe’s face on the monitor was a mask of marble, her eyes fixed on the lens as if she could see me through the digital veil, watching the last evidence of her crimes being scrubbed by a line of code.

I didn't wait for the confirmation chime. I moved to the master bed, my fingers sinking into the plush white duvet. Mark was still slumped in the chair, his head lolling against the wingback, the rhythmic rasp of his drunken sleep the only sound in the room. He was a dead weight, a man who had finally surrendered his conscience to a bottle of Macallan.

I pulled the rug back, revealing the metal grate of the floor vent. The copper wires I’d bridged hours ago were still exposed, a jagged, raw nerve in the house's infrastructure. My hands were shaking so violently I had to press them against the hardwood to steady them. This wasn't a rehearsal. This was the final act.

If I stayed in this bed, I was a ghost. If I went into that van, I was a corpse.

I reached for the metal underwire I’d hidden beneath the mattress. It was thin, sharp, and carried the potential to turn this smart home into a furnace. I looked at the trunk line—the main artery feeding the house's security grid. To bypass the "Disposal" plan, I had to sever the connection between the hub and the locks.

"Mark?" Chloe’s voice erupted from the hallway, her heels clicking a staccato rhythm against the glass walls. "Mark, why is the master suite offline? Open this door."

The handle rattled, a sharp, metallic sound that made my heart leap into my throat. The electronic lock held, a temporary mercy I’d bought with the bridge. But I could hear the beep of a master keycard being swiped.

One second. Maybe two.

I jammed the metal wire across the two primary power leads in the vent.

A shower of brilliant, white-hot sparks erupted from the floor, the scent of burning rubber and ozone instantly filling the room. The house gave a long, electronic moan—a dying sound from a machine whose heart had just been pierced.

The external floodlights flickered and died, plunging the yard into a thick, suburban darkness. In the kitchen, I heard the crash of porcelain as the smart-refrigerator lost its magnetic seal.

"Burn it down," I whispered, my voice a jagged edge.

The master bedroom door hissed open. Chloe stood there, the blue light of her tablet reflecting in her eyes like twin fires. She looked at Mark, then at the smoking vent, then finally at me. She didn't scream. She didn't reach for her medical bag. She just pulled a long, serrated blade from the tactical vest of the man behind her.

The man in the tactical vest stepped into the room, his hand reaching for the light switch that no longer worked.

"Change of plans," Chloe said. Her voice was a sub-zero wind.

Mark stirred in the chair, his eyes fluttering open as the smell of smoke reached his lungs. He looked at me, then at the knife in Chloe's hand, his face a contorted map of realization.

He didn't move toward me. He moved toward her.

"Elena, wait—"

Chloe didn't look at him. She looked through him. "You’re a liability now, Mark. Just like Sarah was."

She stepped toward the bed, the steel blade gleaming in the moonlight.

"I'm not going back to Portland," she whispered. "And neither are you."