The blank expression of a doll that has been collecting dust long enough to forget what it was made for. My pulse spikes and then drops. I stand there a moment, looking at it—folded towels,spare bedsheets, a shelf of old linens stacked to the ceiling around it—and exhale slowly through my nose.
I leave the door exactly as I found it. Ajar.
On my way back through the main area, I pass under one of the security cameras, its red light steady in the dark.
I stop.
Blyad.
I’ve been walking the floors with a gun while the answer was mounted to the ceiling the whole time. Three in the morning and I’m checking linen closets. I need the footage.
I make my way to the office and open the laptop. The security system is solid, but the download is slow, files crawling in one percent at a time while I sit in the dark and wait. I watch the progress bar with the particular patience of a man who has learned that impatience costs more than time.
When it’s done, I pull up the panel and work through it methodically. Balcony. Kitchen. Front door. Hallway. I run each feed, then run it again on half-speed, watching for anything that doesn’t belong—a shadow that shifts wrong, a frame that stutters, anything.
Nothing.
I sit back.
The cameras are clean. The locks were intact. The door was a doll and a shelf of spare towels.
Which means either I’m chasing a feeling—or whatever Aslanov is planning hasn’t arrived yet.
I’m not sure which is worse.
I go back to the beginning. Not the past few nights this time—I pull just the last twenty-four hours, tightening the window. If something is coming, it’ll show up here first.
I sit forward and work through it slowly, timestamp by timestamp. Half-speed.
The balcony. The kitchen. The front door and hallway.
Then the screen stutters. A crawl of pixelated static, there and gone in a few seconds, before the image resolves again.
I go back.
Same thing. Front door and hallway cam, same window of time.
I close the file and redownload it, deleting older footage to clear the space. The laptop churns through it while I wait, jaw tight.
Same fucking result.
I set the gun down on the desk and look at it for a moment, then pick up my phone and dial.
“Paladin Security. How can I help?”
“My hallway cam is glitching. A few minutes of footage, earlier tonight—corrupted or missing. Everything else is running clean. I need to know why.”
“Let me check your account.”
I lean back and wait, listening to the soft percussion of keys on the other end of the line. The clock on the laptop reads 3:54 AM.
“I’m not seeing any external issues from our end, sir. No breach flagged in our log. Based on what you’re describing, it looks like the corruption originated inside the system itself.”
“Inside the system.”
“That’s correct.”
“Can you retrieve the footage?”
