Cam doesn’t answer right away. His eyes are locked on the screen as the color slowly drains from his face. “That’s not a breach,” he says, his voice low and unnervingly quiet. “It’s worse.”
Sterling straightens, slowly, standing taller. Alert in a way that pulls the air tight. “Explain.”
Cam swallows hard, eyes still fixed on the screen. “It’s a handshake.”
My stomach drops. “From where?”
He shakes his head, slow and grim. “Not from outside.” His voice drops lower. “Frominsidethe architecture. Like something just woke up.”
The room feels smaller. The hum of the house suddenly feels too loud. Too alive. “That’s impossible,” I say, even as my fingers curl tightly against the edge of the table. “We isolated every layer.”
“Iknow,” Cam replies quietly, rubbing a hand over his face. “I helped fucking design it.”
Lila pushes to her feet. “Okay, I officially hate this. Can we go back to bullying Cam’s eggs? I was having a great time there.”
Sterling moves closer, stopping just behind my chair. He doesn’t touch me, but the heat of him is unmistakable—steady, solid, grounding. “What does it want?” He asks, his voice low.
Cam’s cursor moves on its own. No input. No keystrokes. Text populates the screen. Slow and deliberate. Letter by letter. Like it knows we’re watching.
Good morning.
Lila lets out a short, sharp laugh. “Oh, fuck that.” More lines appear on the screen.
You’ve built something clever.
But clever isn’t the same as unseen.
Cam’s voicedrops to a whisper, barely audible. “It bypassed the perimeter without triggering anything. It’s riding the framework…” He swallows hard. “Like we wrote it into the code.”
My mouth goes dry. “Or…before us.”
Cam’s face pales even further. He leans closer to the screen, fingers hovering uselessly over the keys. “No,” he mutters. “That’s not possible. We air-gapped the core layers. There’s no external access point unless…” He trails off, eyes widening as realization hits. “Unless someone built a backdoor inside the air gap. From the very beginning.” The cursor blinks once, almost mockingly.
Sterling’s voice is low behind me, close enough that I feel the words against my hair. “Meaning it didn’t break in. It was already invited.” He pauses, then adds quietly, “Don’t answer it. Don’t engage.”
Lila crosses her arms, jaw tight. “I don’t like how familiar this feels.”Neither do I.More lines start typing themselves.
You’re close.
Careful not to remember the wrong things too fast.
The screen goes black. Silence floods the room, thick and suffocating. Cam exhales like he’s been holding his breath for years. “It didn’t take anything,” he says, his voice rough. “Didn’t leave anything either.”
Sterling’s grip tightens on the back of my chair, knuckles whitening. “That wasn’t a warning.”
I stare at the dead screen, skin prickling with something older than fear. “No,” I say quietly. “That was a reminder.”
Lila looks between us. “Reminder of what?” I don’t answer. Because I don’t know yet. All I know is that the quiet we were sitting in wasn’t peace. It was permission. And something just took it back.
No one speaks for a long moment. The house seems to hold its breath with us, as if it knows better than to interrupt. Cam finally breaks the silence, voice rough and edged. “I’m running diagnostics. Full sweep—memory, cache, ghost processes. If it touched anything, I’ll find it.”
“You won’t,” Sterling says calmly.
Cam shoots him a sharp look. “That’s reassuring.”
“It’s honest,” Sterling replies, his voice calm and low. “Whatever that was didn’t stumble in. It didn’t need to touch anything,” he pauses, taking a deep breath, “because it already knows the layout.”
My fingers curl tighter against the edge of the table. “Like someone walking through their own house in the dark.” Sterling’s eyes flick to me, sharp and assessing. Like I said, something heavier than I meant to.
