Signal Black

Your phone lights up on the kitchen table while the room is still half-dark.

Unknown number.

Then it stops.

Before the screen can go black, a voice note arrives from your own number.

You don’t remember recording it. You don’t remember the timestamp, either, except that it’s impossible—tomorrow morning, 9:14 a.m.

Avery.

Your own voice is flat with strain, like someone trying not to breathe too hard into the mic.

Don’t answer the next call.

A pause. In the background, a sound like traffic through glass. A second voice—muffled, not quite human, or maybe just badly clipped.

If you’re hearing this, it already saw you.

The message ends with a click.

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then the phone rings.

The same number. Not unknown anymore. Your number.

The display pulses once, twice, insistently bright enough to stain the tabletop. No matter where you look, it feels centered there, like the room has decided what matters.

You stare at it, waiting for the practical joke to reveal itself. A spoof. Malware. A glitch. Someone with too much patience and too little respect for boundaries.

The phone keeps ringing.

You don’t have much time to think, only time to choose how visible you’re going to be.

The next ring comes through the kitchen speaker as well.

Then the laptop on the counter wakes up on its own. A notification banner appears and vanishes before you can read it. The hallway intercom crackles once, a burst of static in the wall.

The call is not just on your phone anymore.

It is looking for a way to reach you.

And now it has one.