THE ARCHITECTS OF EMBERS

Arthur stood up so fast his heavy leather chair rolled back and slammed into the server rack behind him, making the metal frames rattle in their mounts.

He grabbed a flashlight from his desk drawer and moved toward the basement stairs, his steps heavy, frantic, his breath coming in jagged gasps.

"Eleanor!" he hissed, his voice echoing up the dark stairwell.

There was no answer. The house above was silent, drowned in the deep, artificial quiet of three-inch thick acoustic insulation.

He sprinted up the stairs, his flashlight beam cutting through the darkness of the ground-floor studio. He passed the birthday set—the white tablecloth still stained yellow-orange, the unlit candles sitting on the cold buttercream cake, the pastel balloons swaying softly in the air current created by his movement.

He reached the front door. The heavy deadbolts were engaged. The security panel on the wall showed a solid green light—no motion sensors had been triggered, no exterior doors had been opened, no alarms had sounded.

He turned and ran up the stairs to the second floor, his leather shoes slamming against the carpeted steps. He reached Lily-Rose’s door, grabbed the brass handle, and yanked it open.

The room was pitch black.

He clicked on his flashlight, throwing a bright beam of white light across the white walls, sweeping it over the bed.

Lily-Rose was lying under her thin blanket, her eyes wide, staring directly into the light beam. She didn't blink. She didn't flinch. She lay there like a doll that had been placed on the mattress and forgotten.

Arthur strode across the room, his shadow towering over the child as he reached the faux window frame. He reached behind the wooden panel, his fingers feeling along the drywall, looking for a hidden lens, a secondary camera, a wireless transmitter—anything that could explain the photograph.

There was nothing. The drywall was smooth, cold, untouched.

He spun around, crouching over his daughter, bringing his face so close to hers that he could smell the stale, sweet scent of the primer still clinging to her forehead.

"Who was in this room tonight?" Arthur demanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous, terrifying whisper.

Lily-Rose looked at him, her blue eyes reflecting the bright beam of his flashlight.

"Nobody, Papa," she said softly.

"Don't lie to me!" he snapped, his fingers grabbing her small shoulder, squeezing through the cotton fabric of her pajamas until his knuckles turned white. "Someone took a picture of you. Someone stood right here while your mother gave you your medicine. Who was it?"

Lily-Rose didn't cry. She didn't make a sound. Her eyes moved slowly away from his face, looking past his ear toward the dark corner of the ceiling behind him—the corner where the security camera sat behind its smoked-glass dome.

"The camera was watching," she whispered.

Arthur froze.

He turned his head slowly, looking up at the small black dome in the corner of her ceiling. He had installed those cameras himself three years ago—a closed-circuit system wired directly to the basement servers, completely air-gapped from the internet to prevent any external hacking or data leaks.