Speaker 1: The scream comes on the wire and I hit the
patch button before anyone else understands what it is. The
woman on the line screams for her child. Her voice
is raw and sudden. The feet snaps into a household
kitchen with like from a refrigerator door and a dog
frozen a woman's feet. Fear sits in my throat. I
say the pro to call number into the console and
tell Mauran to hold the line while I write the
cameras the camera feed is corrupted. We need immediate pack up.
Static blims across the woman's face for a beat, then
closed to show her sitting up in bed and screaming
until her body goes silent. A second later, I say, Marin,
record everything, and she replies, recording into the mic with
fingers that sound like they are shaking. Within fast sentences
of the call, I know the problem. The alert that
woke the town has become a live event emergency transmission.
Our unpatch really has admitted an immediate and active threat,
and our only unusual directive is mechanical. Keep will awake
and watch the clock. I am a Liz Read. I
am the night ignition on duty at the Rural Ease
up orst. It handles the county's broadcast, interrupts and emergency feeds.
I inventory my hends coal ink stained with a radio
headset clamped over my hair. The headset smells like steel,
coffee and ozone. My ID badge is frayed. The plastic
is a hallline crack beside my name. I tap the
transmits which three times, breathe once, and arrate what I
see into the lock. Marin reads the coal signs aloud,
havers and home line active female estimated age fifty two, screaming,
then silence at nine minutes thirty two seconds. Her voice
is flat, nears. Nico is on speaker in the background,
asking for clarification. Rouke is twenty minutes out from the farmhouse.
I tell them to move fast, Sir. Doubt and suspicion
shift under my skin as I watch the frozen dog
in the video. The animal does not bark. It stares
at something above the bed and does not blink. My
hands moved to the archived terminal and I pulled the
last twelve hours of recorded feeds. The feature is the
same red bloom over sleeping subjects at intervals. I mark time.
Could then feel a different motion inside my chests. All
I must prove the pattern before more people die. We
drive to the have Orson farmhouse with work in a
borowed cruiser and a single set of hand held radios
tuned to the emergency band. The cast smells like old vinyl,
and the weathered leather seat squeaks when I shift. Rokis
jaw Titans, He says, Liz, if this is a prank
and I cut him off, daunty joke, Rok. People died
on the line. At the farmhouse. The door is unlocked,
the kitchen life flickers. A dog sits at the foot
of the bedroom door with nails clicking on the floorboards.
The bed is disturbed. The sheet is twisted towards the center,
as if someone jerked awake. On the night stone sits
a small analog timer with a red seven printed on
its face. The hand is stopped at exactly seven minutes.
I pick the timer up. It is warm. There is
a smear of sweat on the crob edge. Or calls
out missus have orson. A touch of fabricancer is them
before A neighbor steps from shadow and says she's gone.
The neighbor names her Maren. Had already loved it, and
the dog does not move back At the outpost, I
run the shift recordings with nas Anaka and dispatch off Summarin.
We sit in the dark arcave room with screens outlining
hundreds of ViOS of captured audio and video. Anakah and
were in point to the same pattern. Seven minutes of
visual calm, then a sharp screen that precedes a sudden
stop in the subject's pulse on record of vitals. That
detail alone vitals flat lining exactly after the screen turns
speculation into a crisis. I set up a methodical test.
We organize a controlled watch at the hospital to keep
a terminally ill patient awake under observation. I write the
protocol on a sticky note and taper to the monitor.
Anakar reads the lines aloud as I tape them. Stimulate
every sixty seconds, record doll responses. Do not allow eyes
to close longer than ten seconds. Log any abnormal visual artifacts.
Report immediately. The volunteer system veils and nurse warns we
can t force this, and then she does exactly there
for two hours, we keep toward bright and noisy coffees
brewed television's plaistatic channels. A patient closes his eyes for
a handful of seconds and then wig screen mean clutching
at his chest, his monitors flat line within five sickonds
of the screen. Annix slams her palms on the bedside
rail and says, it didn't he work, It didn't he work.
Her voice breaks until brittle practical anger. We approve a
town patrol with volunteers at the community center. Tom is,
a carpenter, signs up in jokes about staying awake on
that coffee. He nods to Rook and says, I've done
all nighters before. Ella, we got this. I hand him
a look sheet and a watch and say countdown in
two minute increments. Call if you need help. The patrol
is a live experiment in human endurance. He don Hall
smells of sweat and pored coffee. People rotates sitting at
a table under a single fluorescent lamp. A single small
television in the corner shows an official band of the
flock is red and white. For three hours, nothing happens.
Then Thomas Head drops his hands and clenched the mark
and he snores wants. Marina is three feet away. When
it happens. She grabs his shoulder and shakes him. He
wakes with a scream that cuts right through the group.
Thomas drops to the floor, convulses for a breath, and
goeslimp run to him. Brook checks his pulse and says
he's dead. The room breaks into shouting and frantic hands.
I radio the hospital. The radio sound is wrotten, wet
in my ear. After that, the town watch dissolves. Accusations fly.
Someone blames the proceder, someone blames the volunteers. Someone says
we should evacuate. I refuse to let the poorcoal collapse
into panic. I gather the remaining staff and order cameras
and analog logs checked for signal bleed. We will find
a pattern. What die following one another. On the control
of room monitors, Marine rewinds a feed from a farmhouse camera.
The image flickers in black and white for a single frame.
A red pulse bleeds across the frame, and a shadow
of Olat locks on the bed. The shadow is not
a person, It is a flat shape that spans the
length of the mattress. The pulse precedes every fatal event
by seven minutes. I freeze the frame with both hands,
trembling and say there it is market marine tits. The
time could like a prosecutor. We test theory with the
outpost analog six e V bank. I hook a worn
Coke's cable to an old var and watch old footage
bull under the head. The tape shows a child sleeping
in a curt and a second later, red smear spills
over the frame. The child wakes screaming, then the feed
collapses with a popostatic ever recording with a fatality. Bear
is the same anomaly, A seven minute bleed asilent, pause,
as scream, then cessation. The evidence forces an ethical line
at the hospital. Annik argues for patient sedation to eliminate suffering.
I refuse sedation would make them vulnerable. I say, we
are trying to keep them awake. Sedation is the exact
thing that lets this happen. Annika slaps down a chart.
If keeping them away kills them too, what then she asks?
Her question shifts me again from suspicion to dread. I
borrow a strayed dog from the alley behind my apartment
that we call Corrr. She is a lean mot with
a white patch on her chest and a limping gait.
I put her in the kennel corner of the control
room and give her one of my socks to lie on.
People laugh at the sock until Cora stiffens and points
her muzzle toward the south window. She will not move.
I feel my stomach drop at how she stares. Kra
freezes for four minutes and thirty eight seconds. Then she
winds once impresses her paws to the glass. I open
the window, and a neighborer's cat darts passed. Kra does
not follow. I ask Rook you see that. He nods
but does not speak. His jaw clinches, dog sends things.
He says we should listen to that a file that
the way is a practical step, and hands someone else
a kennel key. That night, while the outposts broadcasts a
directive telling listeners to stay awake into report visual anomalies,
the feed is hit by a synchronized glitch. The monitor's flutter,
a red seven blooms in the corner of every screen.
The control room lights dim, and the emergency siren and
the studio clicks between pitches. Someone behind me inhales sharply,
and the sound cracks in the open mic. A yon
technician on overtime. Dean sits slumped against a console. One
minute he is checking levels. The next his eyelid shut
for barelio blink. He wakes with a scream that does
not belong to him. His monitor's flat line, the desk
lamp rolls against the table when his body slumps. I
grab the headset and shove record onto the arkave with
my thumb. My breath tastes metallic. I do not have
time to process a personal grief. I throw everyone into action.
Murrain keeps the patch open, Brook and I run a
full sweep of a control room, and the server racks.
The shadow crosses the monitors while Dean is alive, and
then Dean is not on the screen. The shadow looks
like a smear of dark tape laid across the feed.
In the room, the air smells of burned ozon. During
the breach, the broadcast wobbles into a loop for seven minutes.
The red pulse blooms at the same interval, and the outpusts.
Transmission becomes a repeating instruction stay awake, watch the clock
log anomalies. I take over them. I can read the
procedural lines I have practiced earlier My voice is flat.
I say the rules in slow, measured beats. I tell
the county to monitor their animals for stirring. I tell
them to call us when the first red bloom appears.
There is a sharp confrontation with the mayor of a
wehather to order an evacuation. He calls on speaker and says, Alaiz,
can you guarantee safety if we stay? I answer with facts,
the pattern, the seven minute interval, the recorded dead. He
asks for certainty, and I cannot give it. We have
no countermeasure other than wakefulness and observation. The mare says,
then we evacuate, and the line goes silent. Work Slam says,
palming to the console and says, we can team move everyone.
Roads are clogged. Evacuation will kill more than this. The
argument is short and bitter. In the control room, I
push the archive reels for a full review. I need
a clue that will change how we fight this. At
three in the morning, Mauren finds a repeat from two
days earlier. The same red polse peers on a funeral
home's monitor and then on a neighbor's baby monitor. The
repeat has an extra frame wants a ham pressed to
the inside of a window, fingers spread flat. Then the
shadow moves on the shot rewrites the pattern. This is
not a random bleed, It is targeted. The mere Chapter
twas comes when I recognize a voice in the background
of a looped feed while isolated on a grainy audio track.
A child's voice hums a tune under the static, a
tune I used to hear as a kid walking past
a church near the train yard. The realization changes the
scale of the threat. It is not only a phenomenon
of signal. It is anchored to places and sounds that
people in the town will recognize. I call anakin and
she answers with a single word, do you mean? And
then stops her silence is a live wire. We try
to weaponize recognition. I organize a plan to use dogs
as sentinels. Coral will ride with me along the neighborhoods
we can still reach. Rook will drive, Marim will keep
the feet open. We mark houses on a paper map
and assign two volunteers to each sector. The plan is brittle,
but it gives people movement and puripose on patrol. Cora
holds at a driveway in points toward the bedroom window,
of swall Cottage. A family sleeps inside. I tap the
window and see the red pulse almost overlay the glass,
pleading numbers through like a shadow clock. I pound on
the door and shout wake up. A man bolts from
the bed with his throat roer. He says, what what's happening?
Cors circles his legs and winds. Recands them extra coffee
and a watch, and tells them to stay awake in
the living room with lets on. They'll look at us
like they are choosing to trust ranges over their own
sense of safety. The climax occurs back at the outputs
at dawn. We are on air. The county loot through
our signal. When the breach hits a second time, the
red pulse begins to build across every monitor, synchronized with
the counter feed. A staffer in the back who had
knotted off jerks awake and dies with the same scream
as before. The server's haycup. The studio lights go down
to minimum emergency illumination. The broadcast is hammering us with
the pattern we have been tracking. I go live on
the primary channel and read the procedural summary into the microphone.
My voice is low, flat, precise. I say, remain awake,
Monitor your animals, call this number with any red bloom.
Do not let anyone sleep alone. I do not say
the things I want to say. I am not supposed
to be human on air, But the worn crack in
my id badge feels against my chest, like a reminder
of all the lives that now depend on the words
I speak. The control room camera banks shows the dark's
mirror across the staffer's bed. The monitors are saturated with
horizontal tears. Every screen shows a silhouette sliding like a
strip of tape. Muran types into the console with two
fingers and asks me a liar's dew weak up power
to the transmitters. I consider it. Pulling the feet would
stop us from warning people. Not pulling it might spread
the patter and further. I choose to remain on air.
When the second staffardize my hands moved by instinct, I
hit the emergency bus and patch the feet to a
stand by recorder. I've rip the ex locable out of
the desk and loop it around my wrist like a
line out. I feel row heap behind my eyes. I
taste a bit of copper on my tongue. I keep speaking,
I keep the count. The immediate breach ends when the
power grid hiccops in a passing generator kicks in for
a split second. The red pulse collapses, and the monitors
marin exhales a son that is half Lathor and half
cry Rooks, lumps in a chair and rubs his face
until a smear of blood appears in the knuckles. We
have held the line, but a cost. In the aftermath.
I record a brittle procedural summary. I name the rules
and state the necessity as plainly as I can. Rule one,
do not sleep alone. Rule to lock any red bloom
and call immediately. Rule three, put animals on watch. My
voice reads like a manual. There is no up left
in tone, A less times, names and locations. I put
Dean and Thomas's names into the lock as formal entries,
and I do not let myself say anything more than necessary.
We lit the broadcast to maintain coverage. While the archive
continues to spool. The monitor in front of me shows
a faint red pulse that does not go away. It
lives in a corner of the screen, like a heartbeat
under a rib. Cor puts her head on my boot
and does not stir. I press the transmitbofed once more
to close the loop, and then I remove my head
set aside. Some one starts to clap. It is a
neighbor down the block who heard the broadcast and kept
his lights on. I do not join the applause. I
fold my hands over my chest and write the next
steps into the notebook in front of me. I number
them precise and mechanical. Maintain archives, run sentin of patrols,
prepare epulov notices, train volunteers. I underline the line that
reads do not sleep. Then I hear a soft knock
on the back door. I stand and walk to the
door with the notebook held like a shield. Marin trails
me and holds a flashlight. Brook stays with the console
and watches the monitors. I open the door in A
volunteer named Greta stands on the landing. She looks at
me with hollow eyes and says they to stand by
for instructions. What do we do now? I point to
the radio and hand how my spare head set. I say, monitor,
stay in touch, check the dog, keep the clocks running,
count in your pocket, tell us if the red shows up.
Her hands close on the headset and she nods like
some one who just received the only usable tol and
a workshop filled with broken machinery. The chapter ends with
me returning to the desk and pressing record and the
final log entry. I speak the last lines into the archive,
names times, the devices we expect to check the places
where the red pulse was strongest. The microphone catches the
soft sound of course paus on linoleum. The monitor has
a faint, looping red smear in the lower right corner
that counts down seven minutes in a rhythm I can
feel in my teeth. I close the notebook and leave
the light on. I do not sleep. The directive is
mechanical and brutal, but it is real. I leave the
headset atop a console and step into the narrow corridor
with the generator hums, and then sit on the stair
and wait for the next time stamp to arrive. The
last sentence is in action. I opened the door to
the control room again and press the transmits, which to
return a loop to the people listening, and the red
pulse on the monitor flickers and begins another seven minute count.
The deputy's voice horror into the channel mid breath. I
slaughtered him into the patch and heard Royer and a
man ripping a wordless sound through someone else's speaker. Fears
sat solid in my chest and pushed my hands to
the console. I thumb through the REALI a list while
the screaments pooled into ragged, near in human gasps. A
dog barked once, then circled. The deputy tried to give
co ordinates, and marta call's voice pot on the line,
asking where to point a flashlight. The problem was clear
in those first seconds. If sleep'll add the thing to
take a body, then staying awake was no longer in
abstract order, but a physical task that had to be enforced.
I had learned to let procedure move my hand before
panic move my mouth. I checked the recorder light, flit
the mobile vans back a power breaker, and read the
nearest safety directive from the laminated page on my clipboard.
Fear moved through me, tightening throat, colder palms. But duty
made me speak in short, precise phrases. Hat haarld eames live.
I said, do not let anyone in his house watchers
on windows. Only my voice came out flat. This is
how I kept the feed clean and the people listening
able to act. The aler shifted scream had been a
warning in practice, and the memory of that moment, how
I hit a patch button and another voice filled the
speakers kept my fingers from shaking. The first five minutes
expanded like a map of bad choices. Deputy Groggs came
in over vef breathless the layers. He is in the
living room, dogs pacing, wont to stop barking, Harold's asleep,
and then Gregg's sentence broke. I patched Mardy's audio into
the console so we could both hear the room, the dog,
the sudden, wet sound of a human for it, hold
the patch. Lieutenant Harrow from across the track. Sturdy but thin.
Harrow's come was a muscle. She flux when everyone else
wanted to run. She had been awake on that console
since the alert came down. She smelled of cold coffee
and disinfectant. Is log everything rotate waters two ears on,
two iurs off at the most. Her order made me WinCE.
We needed longer rotations, not shorter, but the point was clarity.
We set the rule aloud, so people could follow it
without asking. The tapeer corder shoved the room into my ear.
Haraldames screamed, then was silent. Then there was a small
accidental sound metal kiss chain, a dog nails on wood,
and finally the hollow thought of a body collapsing. I
wrote the time In the log tuzer Ominus seven, I
wrote the collos cadence and the dog's behavior. I wrote
that the scream came through loud and clean on Mata coal,
a spatic kitchen radio. My hands wrote in a thin,
whimical way, because fear shoppened me into checkless motion, identify, oscillate,
instruct suspicionarily, then fear, then an odd brutal clarity about
what to do next. Smart did anything on the TV flicker?
I asked. Mard answered with a sinkle low sound and
said it bled through the picture, red numbers seven minutes
on the corner, like some one pasted a timer over
the brookhast. The detail landed in my head like a splinter.
Countdown on the screen was not a symptom. It was
a method. If the entity could mark time on electronics,
it could mark time on us. I called Lieutenant Harrow
over and pointed at the monitor showing waters feed. Haro
leaned in shaw set. We treat that timer as an
initiating signal. She said, anything that hits a viewer must
be handled as little until proven otherwise. Her voice tightened.
I felt a second emotion blossom under the fear resolve.
Resolved to make rules that other people could follow. While
exhaust she made their sentences slower. We moved into the
roadside command mode within ten minutes. A folding table, a
coffee thermos, a whitboard with a mark of that wouldn't
tea dry. These were concrete things people could see in touch.
Deputy Griggs argued about mampur alaias we Duntee have enough
bodies to watch every house, especially with people who refused
to come into the center. Marta wants to stay home
with her dog. Marta staying on channel two, I said,
Deputy Griggs, you take Hale's road. Harrow assigned two people
to community rotation. The arguments ped up. We cannot risk
sleep Arrow. We still kneed drivers for medical calls. Rosa
Chin can handle med coals if we keep her awake. Griggs,
Rose is my medic and she needs rest sooner than
I do, Haro snapped back. No griggs. Roser rests after
the schiff ends right now, she monitors vitals in rotation.
The exchange ended with three quick commands and two grudging confirmations.
The rapid folly of three six lines cut between them
was the exact pattern I relied on when I had
to get people to move at the tech table. Meh
Hale's cold in Next, his voice jettered, small town at
Western and close to tears. Alais the TV my set.
It's got red numbers, and the dog won't he lie down.
There's a countdown in the corner. It's on my phone
now too. I asked him to describe the numbers. He
seven minutes, it counts down, then it stops, and the
person on the screen is scream. My dog will not sleep.
He's pacing like he's waiting for something. I asked him
to hold the phone camera steady. The line showed a
living room, cheap lamp, crocheted throw, an anxious labrador that
would not cull. An anomaly bled through the feed, A
small red digital timer, blocky and imprecise pulsing on a
corner of the screen. The presence of a scheduled in
to vomide the threat machinick. This was no random haunting.
It had rules. We set a short experiment. If that
countdown is reel and it sinks with sleep, then timing
watches matters, harrow olays, lock the sink times and send
rotations to the school. Gen make people sign the roster.
I read names aloud as if I were reading a
passenger manifest, I said Marco rose Chen, Deputy Griggs. Mister
Hale's rotate now two minutes in the door, three minutes
in the window, one minute by the radio. The instruction
fell filamented and cruel. People needed structure. When the world
refused to behave normally, fatigue crept into voices like a
physical weight. Rosa started to rub her temple with the
heel of her hand. I am not, she began, then sought.
Because of volunteers, Couf made everyone snap their heads toward
the gym's out a wall. The community vigil at the
Jim vell apot faster than night planned. Volunteers arrived holding
thermoses and flashlights. We posted them at doors and at
the long windows that faced the main street. Marta walked
and with her radio clip to her belt, and the
labrador resting its chin on her shoe. People argued about
who got to sleep in the chairs. I can take
the next watch, said a man named Cole. He was
not a coal relation but stuck as a volunteer. No,
you saw last night, Griggs calls it. He read on it, Liz.
They need a rotation shot. We can tape to the wall.
Harrow wrote one with the market that left the thick
an even line. The bickering was ordinary and useful. It
kept people from shutting down and falling into the wrong rhythm.
I roughly three in the morning, the feed from Marty's
house bled new interference. Mister Hales called back, frantic, it's
on the phone too. The timer jumped to five minutes.
Now I can team make a go away. I watched
ordeal Level's climb and fall like a medronym. We recorded
the jump. Griggs radio that Kenninrook had found fresh claw
marks on Harold Eames portrayl griggs voice shook with anger.
Wroke tried to bite something. Ilias nothing there. Brook's nose
is covered in something like paint or sap, but it
isn't tea natural We had a photograph and sand imagery.
A grainy still arrived parallel scratches setched deep into pine,
not the shallow gorges of a raccoon. The marks had
been duged with deliberate pressure. That was a new detail
that changed how we handled thresholds. We stayed. A came
in his nine patrol as a controlled action. Deputy Griggs
walked the dog across a porch under my watch. On
the monitor, rook Lund said, an empty patch of air
biding at nothing, m whining harrow is rook injured. Friggs
checked the dog's muzzle and found it clear of blood,
but smeared with a faint substance that smelt like iron
an old linseed. No visible wound, Griggs reported, But rook
won tea oberrical when he focuses, looked at the dog,
powered at the rail, and scraped at Then he bought
once and ran off into the yacht, chasing a blank space.
The cameras could not resolve. We locked the event. The
canine's failure to engage an object in the presence of
ritual like scratches shifted the danger. This was not a
predator in the ordinary sense. It provoked animals and left
traces at thresholds. We tightened the rules for anyone with
the door facing outside, keep the porch light on, seal
the threshold with duct tape, and place a watcher at
a window every minute. The rules were small and mechanical.
They kept people from improvising and sleeping in the narc places.
The pattern of our response was changing from the active
to methodical. I felt suspicion hardened into a brittle form
of confidence, confidence that strict procedure could lower the number
of deaths. But then the console he keeped power surged,
the main feed cut, then returned the drop frames in
a warp frequency. A thin red seven minute countdown flashed
across the outputs monitor without being sourced to any local device.
Harrow cursed and slapped the side of the console. What
the hell it is? Where is that coming from? I
traced inputs and found the signal paths made across three channels.
The countdown existed in the compulsit output as if someone
had stitched a graphic layer into our broadcast. My stomach
went cold in the practical way of someone who knows circuits.
This was not supernatural aesthetics. It was a live injection
into our signal chain then created a brutal logistical problem.
If the entity could place a count down in our systems,
then every relay, including the emergency networks, could become an
active vector. Harrow barked out. Orators of cut external feeds,
now switch to isolated loup bring down the relays to analog.
Only allays do it now, I killed the redundant upling.
Can watch the red time of flicker into static and
then settle into a clean and marked black on the composite.
The action brought us a measure of time, but also
a new realization. The danger had learned our architecture exhaustion.
Then people's voices deputies argued about whether to evacuate. We
can tea move everyone at once, Bruggs wrotes a slick
and people will panic. We move the elderly first, Harrow replied,
and we keep at least one mobile unit at the
center for immediate response. The argument went back and forth
in a short folly of lines, while rose a Chan
moved between people with a pulse monitor and a clipboard.
Rose As session shook as she pressed the censor on
to a volunteer's wrist. Pulse is fine, she said, but
her mouth moved tight. She had been in the medical
roll since the alert. She was exhausted, and she admitted
it with a single cut sentence. Then kept working ted
sprint toward the early morning. Climax accelerated when the duty
roster failed. A volunteer seated in the corner with the
thermos dozed off against the gym's wall. Someone's elbow nodged
his shoulder. He jerked awake and said sorry, I didnty,
and an awkward silence fell. Harrow's glare pinned him. We cannot
risk that, she said, calmly, you leave now, shift ends
for you. He protested softly, my wife, Harow cut him off.
You en now. If you disobey, you leave us all exposed.
The confrontation was short and public. It showed how far
Harrow would go to keep the watch intact. We tried
to keep everyone busy by giving them tasks sweep the street,
come blinking porch lights, check ovens, wreath the roster aloud,
so the tie of voices had to focus on names.
These tasks created a rhythm that acted like a stimulant.
I kept calling names. I kept the recorder running. Then
at four point seven. The consoles drift indicato wavered, and
our internal clock lie behind the composite again. Lieutenant Harrow
leaned back in her chair and let out along then breath, Liz,
I am going to sit for a minute with my
ass closed, she said. If I fade, you wake me.
I felt my stomach drop. No, Lieutenant, you rest at
the desk. I will watch the console. Crooksy relieve her
for one lap around the building. Harrow stared at me
a long second, and then with a small nod, sled
her cheer forward and closed her eyes. The seven minute
fall began as a small, almost courteous thing. Harrow's eyelids trembled,
the room's voices dulled distant traffic. Griggs moved away from
the console to relieve her as agreed. I watched the
monitor and saw a faint red numeral fate into exist
in at the corner of Harrow's peripheral display cyral lo
seven laundered. I felt a sudden shift suspicion stung into dread.
I wanted to shut and slap the panel, and I
wanted to move the entire truck five miles away. Instead,
I punched the intercom and said, Lieutenant, open your eyes now.
There was a pause. Her head dipped, our breath left her.
Then she made a choking sound and screamed. She screamed
in a way I will not forget. Two gut held
notes torn out of a throw that lapsed into a
sharp exhail in silence. Her body convulsed, then slackened, and
the recorder picked up a tiny where it sound as
her body hit the seat. I lunged across the console
and grabbed her shoulder. Her eyes were open, but unseeing.
I checked her pulse with fingers that felt like blocks
of ice. There was a beat. I remember the beat
because I count beats by tasks now. And then the
line went cold. I radio Griggs in free clet sentences.
Harrowed down a counsole. Paul's absent locked the van, sealed
the room. Griggs repeated my words fast and moved. Arrow's
death turned the outposts from a command posted into a
casualty zone. People lost the thin buffer of leadership that
had kept them moving. Martin began to cry at abrupt,
sharp sobs that she tried to hide behind clenched hands.
Lieutenant Harrow, she said, then stopped because the words sounded
small and ridiculous. With a dead woman in front of us,
Griggs jawl worked, He barked orders to keep people from
milling and collapsing. We no longer debate irrotations. We enforced them.
The immediate external event after Harrow's collapse was the feed
corruption surging again, screens breaking into pixelative rain, and a
chorus of small alarms going office house after has reported
their own red timers. The casualty list grew in minutes.
Martis Liberdore let out along single howl that was not
like a dog's usual howl. It was a signal of
grief and confusion. I felt my hands move without thought
because training filled the space as fear could not. I
checked the log and updated the casualty list. Harold Ames,
Lieutenant Harrow, two names that meant certain things now. Doyle
left unlocked. A volunteer tried to sleep a small failure
of procedure. The concrete causes were clear, not symbolic. We
lost the composite uplink for the day, but salvaged a
single loop, my mobile van's recorder and a patched downalog feed.
Their transmitted only the essential instructions. I stood in the
van with the mic in my hand, and condensed every
rule into a short set of commands that could be
repeated in a monotone and understood even by someone with
half their wits. Do not sleep alone, assayed into the microphone.
If you must shut your eyes, have two watches, seal thresholds.
Do not let screen show red numerals. If you see
a timer, v accuate to the community center immediately. Saying
the rules out loud made them real in the worst
possible way. Saying them also made me a different thing,
a clerk of survival, instead of simply a man listening
to radio. I recorded the final directive into a file
that I labeled stand By and appended it to the
end of the emergency loop. I spoke for a long
minute and kept my voice flat and procedural. Because war
motion would trip its readers and volunteer watchers, I included
a specific survival step. When a countdown appears, sound a
three bell alarm at the door and force everyone within
ear shut to stand and count o lad to seven
won the timer reachi zero, perform an immediate head count,
and move everyone to the community center. The rule was
designed to use human voices against whatever injected those timers.
Whether that would work, I could not prove, but it
was something that other people could do under stress, and
that mattered. Twists surface While I logged at the events
later that morning, the pattern in the casualty times matched
the nightly maintenance window of our own analog loops. I
pulled out my note book and ran times across the
page like a technician running a diagnostic. The early scream
the inject had count down the heir or collapse. Each
fell into rhythm that mash won ourssistant swap masterclocks. If
the entity could learn the windows when our equipment cycle,
then it could tend its influence to coincide with our
blind spots. In other words, we had been hosting the
vector without knowing it. The discovery shifted blame and responsibility
in a way that made my stomach heavier. Our own
infrastructure had become the medium. I called Gerks and laid
this out in short sentences. The injections align with our
maintenance swaps, I said. It uses our clock to see
the timers. We must change swap times and ron tess immediately,
Griggs kiss softly. So it's been in our systems longer
than we thought. He asked, I said, either it's been
testing us, or it's been waiting for an opening. We
made ourselves the idea that the network, something we had
built to help people, was now away. The thing reached
in our homes changed the problem from purely defensive to
partly forensic. We had to fix a mistake we'd may
without realizing it. Ros Chen and mat Call helped me
test the analog loop. Rose's fingers move with the practiced
economy of a medic who could apply a bandage with
one hand and record of vital with the other. Marty
crutch by the van and held a Foham cam a
steady Wireleye switched clock signals. We ran the loop with
a dummy feed and watched for injected ovalays. The test
produced a small, ugly result. At one of the swap intervals,
a faint end pixel right numerable blinked in the test
green for a heartbeat, and then vanished. Martyrs were allowed.
It was their alias. It was like a stutter. Rosa
rubbed her eyebrow ridge and set then is watching the
swap too. The test made the threat feel smaller because
we could measure it, and larger because measurement proved it
could adapt. We made hard choices, change maintenance windows, unpredictably,
shot the master clock across multiplanalog units, and forced manual
confirmation at each hand of the new procedures required more
bodies and more time. People argued about the labor, then
accepted it because the alternative was death. Priggs and I
drove a short perimitive patrol with Rooke and confirmed the
claw marks on three more houses. The marks repeated with
a rhythm, parallel scratches near the threshold and feign concentric's
groups at dormans. We bagged photographs, labeled them and added
them to the logger with times amps each labeled themage
felt like a small victory, a collective fact to put
against an otherwise eluding threat. A final external event closed
to the chapter. As torn wooke the town. A cap
pulled into the community center's empty law. The headlights made
the plywood sign blint. I opened the van door without
thinking and stepped out. The driver got out to it
was mister Hale's. He held his labradorous leash tightly and
looked like a man who had not slept in thirty
six iOS. He pushed a small portable radio into my
hands and said I heard it on my way in
someone's broadcasting on a local band and telling people to
open their windows. I turned it off and took the battery,
figured you to want it. I looked at the radio,
cheap plastic, a cracknity antenna, and felt the surge of
relief that comes with a specific, actionable object. I accepted
the radio and the dog, and I felt the shape
of our next set of tasks more clearly than I
had denials. Isolate the device, mappet frequencies, and distribute the
revised watch roster. I went back inside and set the
radio on the table. I felt nose inematic cathosis, no
neat moral triumph. There was work, procedural updates, casualty logging,
and a new set of signs taped to every door
in town. The final directory, recorded into the analog loop,
summarized what we had learned and what we now demanded
of every listener. I said the rules allowed once more,
and then sealed the recording. Before I left the van,
I rewound the tape, press play and listened to my
own voice read the list in a dead mechanical caredence.
The rules were concrete, peap watchers mark thresholds, changed maintenance windows,
and isolate any red numerals the moment they appear. I
closed the van door and put my hand in the
handle for a long count. My palms were rough from
the radio knobs, and my wristwatch had a crack spidering
across its crystal. The watch returned away. Our systems had
read it for decades, practical and indifferent. I felt a
shift in the room that was not merely the low
wash of a van engine. It was the knowledge that
we had ended the immediate flare up, and that the
town had fewer sleeping eros and more rules because of it.
I snapped the van's lock and felt the click register
like an answer. Some one called my name, Mardaquite, and
I turned. She handed me a list of nomestape to
a thermos and said, alayers, keep us awake. I folded
the list into my pocket and checked the recorder light
one last time. I left the mobile van with the
analog of lip sealed and the casualty log updated. Outside
the labrador padded beside martyr and nose at the first
cardboard sign we had posted keep watch report timers. I
walked toward the community Senta doors and heard the faint
three bell knock. I had instructive volunteers to use his
an alarm. It came from the far side of the
lot and stopped as suddenly as it began. The sum
made me move faster. We had won a set of ires,
but not the war. The last thing I did in
the outpost was locked the door, set the exterior light
to blink on manual instead of timed, and thumb the
bankeys into my pocket. That was the concrete closure for
the chapter. In action tied to a decision I could see,
touch and repeat. I walked away with MARTA's dog at
my heel and a noise in the air that might
have been a crow and might have been nothing at all.