Chapter 3

Megan finally gave up after about fifteen minutes, when neighbors and building staff came to see what the commotion was about and persuaded her to leave.

The world was quiet again.

That night, my power suddenly went out.

It wasn't a tripped breaker. My neighbors' lights were all on. My apartment was the only one plunged into darkness.

I used my phone's flashlight to check the electrical panel, but all the switches were in the "on" position.

I called property management.

"Ms. Carter, please hold on. We're sending an electrician over immediately."

As I waited, a deep sense of unease settled in my stomach.

The video doorbell was offline.

I was blind. I had no idea what was happening right outside my door.

I dragged a heavy armchair from the living room and wedged it under the doorknob.

Then I heard soft footsteps.

They stopped right in front of my door.

A faint, metallic scraping sound followed.

Someone was picking my lock.

Every hair on my body stood on end.

I held my breath, crept to the door, and pressed my ear against the cool wood.

Whoever was out there was an amateur. They fumbled with the lock for a long while, but they couldn't get it open.

I heard them let out a frustrated, muffled curse.

Then came a new sound, a faint squelch, like something being squeezed from a tube.

They were filling the new lock with glue.

They were trying to trap me inside.

My mind raced. What if there was a fire?

The thought sent a bolt of pure terror through me.

I backed away from the door and made my way to the kitchen on shaking legs, pulling the longest, sharpest knife from the block.

Just then, my phone rang, the sound deafening in the silence.

It was the electrician.

"Ms. Carter, I'm on your floor, but someone has put a padlock on the electrical room door by the elevator. I can't get in. I'm going to have to go get the bolt cutters."

My heart sank into my stomach.

They locked the electrical room.

At the same time, I heard a noise from the hallway. The person outside must have heard my phone ring.

There was a frantic scuffling and then the sound of footsteps sprinting toward the stairwell.

I rushed to the door and looked through the peephole.

The hallway was empty.

I ripped the door open.

The acrid smell of industrial glue filled my nostrils.

The keyhole was completely sealed.

Down the hall, a heavy-duty U-lock was clamped around the handles of the electrical room door.

This was a targeted attack. They wanted to hurt me.

I stumbled back inside, my back hitting the door as it closed. My heart was a wild thing beating against my ribs.

My phone screen lit up. It was a text from an unknown number.

[Did you like my gift? This is only the beginning.]

I stared at the text message, my fingers turning to ice.

Then, the fear receded, replaced by a tidal wave of pure rage.

I didn't reply. I just blocked the number and deleted the message.

I called the electrician back.

"Hey, listen, don't come up," I said. "The guy who did this was still on this floor, and he locked the electrical room. Just be careful. I'll figure something else out."

After hanging up, I didn't bother with property management.

They were useless.

I didn't call the cops, either.

They would show up to see a glued-up lock and a padlocked maintenance door, and with no one to arrest, they would write it up as misdemeanor property damage.

Kevin would just claim it was all a big "prank."

I wasn't looking for a slap on the wrist.

I wanted them to regret this. I wanted them to hurt.

I sat in the suffocating darkness, my mind running cold and clear.

They were cutting my electricity, picking the lock, and gluing it shut. This wasn't just harassment.

It was a coordinated attack by a spoiled man-child and his unhinged mother.

You couldn't fight crazy with common sense.

I took to my phone to search for the tools of their trade: neighbor noise revenge, falling weights, and ceiling shakers.

The keywords flashed through my mind.

All of those were too easy to trace back to me and too dangerous for the neighbors. I couldn't risk hurting innocent people.

My finger paused on a new search result.

I found a page on "directional sonic weapons."

They work like a spotlight for sound, focusing audio into a narrow beam that can be aimed with pinpoint accuracy.

Outside the target area, you heard nothing.

My eyes lit up.

The next day, I took another day off work and drove to an electronics wholesale market in the next city over.

I spent the entire day buying up amplifier modules, ultrasonic transducer arrays, and signal generators.

Individually, the components were unremarkable.

But together, they could become my own personal whisper cannon.

When I got home that night, the power was back on.

Property management had replaced my lock and scrubbed the filth off my door.

I closed the door, drew the curtains, and got to work assembling my new toy on the living room floor.

Between the circuit diagrams, the soldering, and the debugging, I felt like a mad scientist, completely lost in a world of my own.

At 3 a.m., it was finally finished.

It looked like a simple black speaker box, but its face was a dense grid of tiny transducers.

I aimed it at the ceiling, directly below where I knew 1701's master bedroom was.

I connected my phone and opened an audio app.

The track I chose was a high-decibel sinewave pulse set on a loop, a sound that isn't heard so much as it is felt in the teeth.

I didn't press play.

I was waiting.