Signal Black

You answer before you can talk yourself out of it.

The line connects with a soft click, too clean to be a mistake.

At first there’s nothing but breathing—yours, maybe, or someone trying very hard not to sound afraid. Then your own voice comes through again, close enough to raise the hair on your arms.

Avery, listen carefully.

Not tomorrow. Not later. Now.

Don’t stay on this call.

A beat. A little static. Somewhere under it, a tone like a system searching for signal.

If you answered, it already has your attention. That’s the part it wants.

The voice sounds exhausted, clipped down to essentials. You can hear the strain in it, the effort of someone speaking while moving fast. The same cadence, the same dry impatience you know from your own recordings, only sharpened by panic.

Get away from anything that can ring back, it says. Kitchen phone. Intercom. Laptop. Leave them if you have to.

A muffled sound cuts across the line—steps, maybe. Or a door opening somewhere far away.

You swallow.

Who is this?

The reply comes instantly, like it was waiting for the question.

You already know.

Then, lower:

If you hear a second voice, don’t engage.

Your phone vibrates hard enough to skitter against the table. The screen flashes an incoming call banner from your own number even though you’re already on the line. The kitchen speaker emits a thin burst of feedback. The laptop lid wakes a fraction wider, bright with a fresh notification that you cannot read before it disappears.

Then the wall intercom crackles and a voice you don’t recognize says your name.

The line in your hand goes dead.

For half a second the apartment is silent enough to hear the refrigerator motor hum.

Then the phone rings again.

Not from your pocket. From the hallway. From the laptop. From the old landline buried in the counter that you haven’t used in months.

One after another, overlapping, impossible to place.

The call has learned the shape of your rooms.

And somewhere beneath the noise, something begins to breathe.