Crossed Wires

Setting up a new safehouse should be simple for a team of seasoned operatives. But when a mysterious piece of tech awakens something it shouldn’t,
they find the greatest threat might be the ghosts in their own machine, and the only defense is warm scones and unwavering trust.

Hereford

A low electrical groan travelled through the walls. Logan had the basement door propped with his boot, shoulders crammed into the comms rack as he traced crossed cable runs. “Whoever mothballed this did it backwards,” he muttered, coaxing a stubborn BNC into place. He wore his sunglasses even underground—ridiculous on anyone else. On him, it was policy. Hide the eyes, hide the tells.

Boots echoed down the stairs. Malik appeared in the doorway, dark hoodie sleeves pushed up, an old burn scar pale on his wrist. He carried a Pelican case in one hand. He surveyed the room—ceiling corners, junction boxes, the way Logan’s weight shifted on concrete. His gaze dropped to the rack. One brow lifted. “Backwards and colour-blind, looks like.” He set the case on the workbench and flipped the latches. “Brought you a signal analyser. Might help sort out which of these rats’ nests is actually live.”

Malik crouched beside the breaker panel, watching the line voltage settle. One hand braced on his knee, the other testing a fuse with a multimeter. The chalk stripe on his knuckle was the only sign he’d nicked himself earlier. He hadn’t bothered with a plaster. “Main bus is clean. Your backwards saboteur also labelled everything properly. Try Aux Two.”

Logan studied Malik’s reflection in the rack’s faceplate. He didn’t turn—kept one hand on the coax. “Colour-blind I could work with. This? This is sabotage disguised as laziness.” He straightened, vertebrae popping, and nudged the Pelican case. Not standard issue—personal kit. He whistled low. “Either you’re house-proud or you’re planning to bug the place yourself.”

Logan flicked a toggle. Somewhere in the walls, a relay clunked. The back porch light coughed to life.
 
Upstairs, just off the kitchen, a soft pulse of light shimmered across Dar’s desk—brief, almost imperceptible—as the black device and tablet exchanged a whisper of recognition before going dark. Dar, reviewing her notebooks, froze. Her eyes snapped to the device. That wasn’t scheduled.

The kitchen hummed with its own rhythm. Pam had rolled up her sleeves, hair in a makeshift bun already half-escaped. Chocolate splattered her apron, along with what looked like kale purée. She hummed off-key to some forgotten 80s track, hips swaying as she filled miniature tart shells. A faint thump echoed from the basement. She paused mid-whisk, head cocked. “Bloody hell, they better not be electrocuting themselves down there.” She wiped her hands on a tea towel and padded toward the basement door. Leaning over the railing, she called down, “Everything still attached, boys? Or do I need to ring the fire brigade?”

Logan’s shoulders twitched. He flicked the basement hallway light switch twice; the bulb stuttered. “Still got all my fingers, Pam.” He glanced at Malik, lowering his voice. “She’s already planning how to season us if we trip the breaker.” He raised his tone. “We’re nowhere near the oven either.”

Pam’s laugh drifted down the stairs. She bent over the banister, red curls tumbling forward. “You say that now,” she sang, footsteps retreating.

The office door, still scarred from Logan’s repairs, was closed. Inside, Dar had already arranged seven black notebooks in a perfect line beside the new device Veyr had given her. Earlier, when Twigs had sniffed the tablet and batted it with her paws; the pulse flared. Dar had shooed the cat off the desk. “You set off a top secret, and you’re cleaning it up.”

She pressed her thumb to the laptop’s biometric pad. The screen woke with a veiled eye, the word SIBYL breathing once before fading. No Wi-Fi, no ports—just the low hum of the processor. She placed the tablet beside it. A soft pulse of light shimmered between them as the device confirmed the new intel packet.

The intel packet took forty minutes to decrypt. Finally, a face materialised.

Mikhail Kozlov, former GRU. Arms trafficking. Human cargo. His network spanned nine countries. Next was Dr. Natasha Volkov, a biochemist. Casualty estimates in the thousands—until Dar cross-referenced a shipping route from Kozlov’s file that ended near a refugee camp Volkov had visited. The abstract number gained faces. Her jaw tightened. Third was Marcus Ashford, photographed at a Brussels function. A broker, turning conflict into profit. She found a payment from one of Ashford’s accounts to a holding company linked to Volkov. It wasn’t just three monsters; it was a machine.

Beneath the files lay the directive. Words that felt like chipped ice: Immediate interdiction. Permanent neutralisation. Peripheral casualties: acceptable and unlogged.

Dar’s fingers hovered over the keys. She read the words again, then a third time, the clinical language a stark contrast to the sudden, sharp pain behind her eyes. This is the work, she thought, the phrase a dull echo in her mind. Her hand reached to close the laptop, a reflexive gesture to shut out the screen, but she stopped it mid-air. She couldn’t unsee the directive. Her throat felt tight, and she had to consciously unlock her jaw before she could pull her hair back and begin to type.

A soft noise from the kitchen broke through—Pam’s singing, Logan’s quiet reply. Living people doing living things. The contrast hit her like cold water: warm voices in a warm kitchen, while she sat here cataloguing death.

Hours later, the basement smelled of ozone and solder. Logan was replacing a faulty capacitor. A green light flickered, then faded. “AUX Three is a tease. It keeps flirting with red.”

Malik’s fingers paused on the stripped wire before he twisted the final copper strand into a junction box and knocked on the rack with the back of his hand. A single green LED blinked alive—shaky but holding. He glanced at Logan, brow raised. “AUX Three.”

From upstairs, Pam’s voice rose in an off-key crescendo. Logan smirked. “She’s making lemon bars. If we trip the breaker, she’ll weaponise the tray.” He glanced toward the stairwell, then back. His voice dropped. “Dar’s been quiet. Too quiet. That office of hers—feels like a war room.”

Logan toggled. The rack hummed a note lower. A faint snow of static whispered through the room, like a radio tuning between stations.
Malik’s spine registered it before his head did. His hand tightened on the wire stripper as he touched his temple—an old reflex—and his breathing shortened. Not the sound exactly—the shape of it. A narrow band of hiss buried under broader interference, a particular cadence you didn’t learn from manuals.

His other hand found the workbench edge, gripping hard while the present thinned and the past bled through.

Mali – 2018

Heat that burned your lungs with every gasp. Diesel and dust choking the air, the desperate screech of failing radios under a sky bleached white.

Captain Calder stalks through the chaos as if he owns the lease. Bone-dry. Mirrored sunglasses throwing back the smoke and nothing else. He slams the scope into Malik’s palm with three words: “Hawk. Eyes. Now.”

Mali, first summer out of the Regiment. They’d called it a “training exchange” in the briefing room. It turned into a bloodbath before anyone could rewrite the orders.

Malik—fresh Corporal stripes still biting into his skin—maps three sniper nests and twelve kill zones before the sweat bee drilling into the back of his neck finishes its first pass. The cheap drone overhead shreds comms to static and visibility to zero. Every time someone keys a handset, that aluminium static rips through their earpieces.

The call sign brands him before the bullet can. Malik catches the flash—metal glinting, air shimmering wrong—and hurls his team to cover milliseconds before the round tears through where his skull had been, so close the displaced air presses flat against his scalp.

Calder glances over, expressionless. “You think too fast to die stupid. Keep it.”

Later, when the heat relents and the dead are counted, Calder writes Hawk on a battered Pelican case with a paint pen. Unnecessary. Permanent anyway.

Malik’s voice was flat when he surfaced. “Ward. That hiss again. Aux Two’s filtering’s junk. Kill it or we’ll cross-talk into the house net.”

Logan killed the channel with a soft click. “Copy.” He didn’t ask how Malik knew. He rarely asked why with Malik. Man hears electricity like music. Let him conduct. He broke the loop and re-routed the feed. The hiss dulled but didn’t die.

Upstairs, Dar’s device reset like something prodded with a pin. Her screen lit with code and a single glyph: a veiled, stylised eye. For a moment, the word SIBYL appeared on the login banner, faint as breath on glass. Dar stared, her mind going blank. “Shit.” She quickly shut the laptop as her pulse hammered.

An electronic squawk drifted up from the basement. Pam’s protective instincts flared. Wiping her hands, she went to Dar’s office first, knocking once before pushing the door open. “Bloody hell. Sounds like they’re torturing a fax machine down there.”

Dar’s response came out before she could think. “It’s nothing. It’s only a…network handshake. The boys are doing a thing.”

Pam narrowed her eyes. Her friend had pulled the laptop toward her with lightning speed, arms curled protectively. “Right. Network handshake.” She drew out the words as if tasting spoiled cream. “Darla Montgomery, I’ve known you since we were fifteen. I know your ‘I definitely returned that library book’ face. This is your ‘someone’s about to die’ face. What’s wrong?”

Dar met her gaze, searching for a logical deflection, but found none. She offered a weary smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

Pam retreated to the kitchen. “Right then. Network handshakes require carbohydrates. Science.”

In the basement, Malik’s fingers froze on the signal tracer. He didn’t need to see Dar’s screen to know what just woke up. “We spooked something. Give it a minute.”

They did. The tone faded into a low, serviceable thrum. Power bars blinked steadily green. The rack breathed.

Logan rolled his shoulders back and climbed the stairs. Malik followed, wiping his hands on a shop towel. At the top, Logan paused, glancing back. Their eyes met—a brief exchange. Pam knows something’s wrong. Dar’s hiding something. We play along. Malik gave the smallest nod.

The kitchen smelled of lemon and butter. Pam offered Logan a warm scone, her gaze fixed on a shallow cut on his finger. “If you bleed on the floor I’m making you sign the tile.”

Logan took the scone, eyes already tracking to the open office door and Dar’s posture—shoulders too tight. “I’m fine.” He bit into it, chewing slowly. “Not bad.” For a moment, the kitchen settled, the simple act of eating easing the tension.

Then Logan’s gaze drifted toward Dar’s office, and his jaw tightened. “How’s your… network handshake?”

Pam was already moving. Her feet slapped the tile as she rounded the counter; her fingers grabbed the rolling pin. She planted herself between Dar and the men, arms crossed. “You’re all wound tighter than my mixer on brioche setting.” Her eyes flicked from Dar’s tensed posture to Logan’s rigid stance, then to Malik’s hand hovering near his sidearm. Her jaw tightened.

Her voice dropped to a register that made her bakery staff scatter. “Right. Ground rules since apparently this murder-cottage is back in business.” She pointed at Logan. “No detonations without twenty-four hours’ notice.” A finger at Malik. “If you’re going to string wires through the ceiling, colour-code them.” A thumb over her shoulder at Dar. “And our resident brain gets first go at the kettle.”

Dar stood and drifted past everyone toward the kitchen sink. She set the mug down and found a smile. “Since the house is apparently a submarine again, do I get to paint the office door?” Light tone. Casual. The question hung heavier than the scent of lemons.

Logan took his sunglasses off, setting them carefully on the island. “It’s your office. Door locks from both sides. We’ll upgrade the glazing and the line. Office stays. You stay. House is still yours. We’re just… boarding up the windows. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they’ll find out what a 5.56 tastes like.”

Dar’s breath caught—just for a second—and she didn’t look at Logan, but her shoulders dropped half an inch. She felt the unspoken words settle in the space between them. I couldn’t save you then. I can armour you now.

Pam clapped once. “Splendid. Ownership settled. Now—someone tell me why the lights dimmed like a haunted brothel five minutes ago.”

“Temporary load, we’re stable.” Malik drifted to the doorway of Dar’s office and looked at the desk: the tidy stacks, the notebooks labelled in her neat hand. On the wall between the desk and the window hung a large, framed picture of a girl on a bicycle. His jaw set and eased. You don’t say the names of ghosts. You make room for their chairs. He touched the door frame with two fingers—a private superstition.

Pam studied them. “You lot could melt steel with how hard you’re not saying things.” She slid a plate of scones toward them. “Eat. If we’re going to run a clandestine knitting circle out of this kitchen, I’m implementing a pastry tax.”

Logan chose another pastry. “Tax accepted.”

Dar reached for a scone, giving Pam a small smile. “Thank you.”

Pam’s fingers found Dar’s wrist, checking her pulse beneath the guise of affection. “Obviously.” She rubbed slow circles with her thumb.
“Now someone tell me what colour we’re painting that door. I’m thinking ‘Flour Dust White.’ Or ‘Sticky Bun Amber.'”

“Paint it a colour that doesn’t show dirt. I’m partial to ‘Tactical Taupe’ myself.” Logan leaned back against the counter. “Hawk gets veto. He has to look at it when we drill.”

“Matte. No glare. And not grey.” Malik gave Dar a small smile. “Something that reads warm.”

Dar felt it land. “Terracotta.”

As darkness swallowed the landscape, long after Pam had gone, the safehouse settled into its new rhythm.

In the basement, Logan labelled one last cable with surgical focus. He peeled the tape straight, pressed it true, and stepped back. Everything that could be aligned, was. He touched the breaker panel once—palm flat against the cool metal, feeling the hum of current—and murmured, “Good enough.” Then he killed the work lights.

Just off the kitchen, behind a door that would soon be terracotta, Dar opened her laptop in the blue-dark. The veiled eye regarded her with impersonal patience as an encrypted tunnel bloomed across her screen.

SIBYL: LINK ESTABLISHED.

She exhaled. Typed. The house didn’t flinch.

Malik stood alone in the kitchen, listening. The house had settled, but a faint static remained at the edge of the soundscape. Not the old wiring, not his tinnitus—the ghost of what they’d woken in the basement. Familiar. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, saw Mali’s white sky. Calder’s voice echoed in his memory, a reminder to trust the instincts that had kept him alive. He opened his eyes.

The ghost belonged to the house now.

To them.