The house wasn't hers, but Mia Carver didn't care. Locks were just puzzles, and she'd been cracking them since she was twelve, when Ethan taught her to twist picks like secrets. Midnight clung to the Virginia woods, the air thick with pine and something sharper—ozone, like a storm no sky promised. The job was simple: grab the cash, get out. Her client, a voice on a burner, didn't care about the rest. Neither did she.
The lock gave with a click, too easy for a place this old. Inside, dust choked her, the hum hitting first—not cicadas, not wind, but deeper, like the house breathed tech she couldn't see. Her flashlight caught no cameras, no wires, just junk—chairs, crates, a TV older than her twenty-two years. Ethan's voice ghosted her: Don't trust easy jobs, Mia. He'd been dead three months, car crash, no body to bury. She pushed it down, her gloved hand steady.
The cash was upstairs, the client said. Her boots creaked floorboards, the hum louder, her skin prickling. A bedroom—empty, mattress gutted—held a safe, combo scratched on its door like a taunt. She spun it, the hum spiking, her pulse with it. The safe clicked, revealing not bills but a USB drive, a key with a circle-and-slash pendant, and a note: Mia, run. Ethan's scrawl.
Her breath caught. The hum wasn't the house—it was alive, under her feet, and headlights flared outside. Not cops, not clients—black SUVs, silent, hers. She grabbed the drive, the key, and bolted, the note ash in her mind. The hum chased her, doors slamming, her flashlight dying. Ethan wasn't dead. He'd left her a trap.
She hit the woods, SUVs roaring, her boots slipping in mud. The key burned her palm, the USB heavy, Ethan's voice louder: Run. A gunshot cracked, too close, and the hum wasn't behind her anymore. It was in her.