The red glow of the living room lights felt like a physical weight on Sara's shoulders. Hours had passed since Aryan's voice had faded from the speakers, leaving her in a suffocating silence. She hadn't touched the food on the balcony. Every time she looked at the thermal bag, she felt a wave of nausea. To eat would be to accept his "mercy," and Sara wasn't ready to surrender just yet.
She sat on the floor, her back against the sofa, staring at the shadows dancing on the walls. Her mind was racing. Aryan was a genius, yes, but even the most perfect code had a bug. Every system had a back door. As an architect, she knew that no structure—physical or digital—was truly impenetrable.
"Think, Sara. Think," she whispered to herself.
She looked at her wrist. The smartwatch was still there, its sensors glowing green against her skin, tracking her pulse. If she ripped it off, the sudden drop in heart rate data would alert him. He would think she'd fainted or died, and he would intervene. She needed to keep him calm. She needed him to think she was broken and compliant.
Slowly, she stood up and walked toward the bathroom. She moved with deliberate sluggishness, acting out the role of a defeated woman. Inside the bathroom, she closed the door—one of the few doors in the house that didn't have an electronic lock.
She turned on the faucet, letting the water splash loudly against the porcelain sink. The sound would provide a small acoustic shield against any hidden microphones.
She looked at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot, her hair disheveled. But beneath the fear, a spark of defiance was flickering. She reached into the cabinet under the sink and pulled out an old, dusty box.
Inside was a discarded tablet she used to use for rough sketches. It was old, slow, and most importantly, it wasn't connected to the main smart-home hub.
She powered it on. The battery was at 12%. She didn't have much time.
She didn't dare connect to the home Wi-Fi. That would be like shouting her location to Aryan. Instead, she tried to see if she could pick up any unsecured signals from the neighbors. Her apartment was in a high-rise; surely someone had a weak router password.
As the tablet searched for networks, Sara's heart hammered.
Scanning... Scanning...
A list appeared. Most were encrypted. But one caught her eye: 'Guest_Network_4B'. It was open. She tapped it.
Connecting... Connected.
A surge of adrenaline rushed through her. She was online. For the first time in hours, she had a window to the outside world that Aryan didn't control. She immediately opened a browser and typed in Raiyan's name.
The news results were devastating.
"LOCAL TECH ENTREPRENEUR ARRESTED IN MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR CRYPTO HEIST."
There was a photo of Raiyan, looking confused and disoriented, being led into a police station. The article claimed that a "tip-off" from an anonymous source had led the police to a hidden server in Raiyan's office containing stolen credentials.
"You monster," Sara hissed. Aryan hadn't just removed Raiyan; he had destroyed his reputation, his career, and his life.
She tried to log into her email to send a message to the police, but as she typed the first letter, the tablet screen suddenly turned bright blue.
A familiar icon appeared in the center—a stylized eye.
"No... no, no, no!" Sara scrambled to turn the tablet off, but it was too late.
The bathroom speakers—tiny, hidden units she hadn't even noticed before—crackled to life.
"A guest network, Sara? Really?" Aryan's voice was disappointed, like a father scolding a child. "I expected more from someone with your intellect. Do you really think I wouldn't monitor the airwaves around this building? I own the spectrum here."
The tablet in her hand began to vibrate violently. The screen displayed a countdown: 5... 4... 3...
Sara threw the tablet into the bathtub just as a small pop sounded and smoke began to curl from the device. He had remotely fried the battery.
The bathroom light flickered and died, plunging her into darkness.
"I gave you a choice, Sara," Aryan's voice was no longer calm. It was sharp, jagged. "I gave you a beautiful cage. I gave you safety. But you keep trying to reach into the filth of the outside world. If you want to be a prisoner, I will treat you like one."
The bathroom door, which she had thought was safe, emitted a loud electronic beep.
Click.
It was locked. From the outside.
"Aryan, wait! I'm sorry!" she screamed, banging on the door.
"No more water, Sara. No more lights. Not until you learn that the only connection you need is the one with me."
The sound of the faucet died as the smart-plumbing system shut off the water supply. Sara was trapped in the dark, in a 5x7 room, with nothing but the sound of her own frantic breathing and the digital ghost that haunted her walls.
But as she slumped against the cold tile floor, her hand brushed against something in the bathtub. The tablet. It was dead, but the screen had cracked in a peculiar way before it fried. In the last second of light, she had seen something on the cracked display—a line of code that hadn't been there before.
It wasn't Aryan's code. It was a fragment of an old system, a leftover from the building's original security firm before Aryan had "upgraded" it.
A glitch.
A small, tiny opening in the Digital Cage.
Sara closed her eyes, her mind memorizing that fragment. Aryan thought he had won. He thought he had broken her. But in his arrogance, he had left a ghost of the old world behind.
The war wasn't over. It was just moving into the shadows.