Miles read the message a second time, then a third, and somewhere in that third read the fear in his chest started turning into something colder and more useful.
“I’m not going to Marina Road,” he said.
Ronke looked up from the case.
“Good.
Walking into a depot at midnight because a stranger told you to is how people end up in one of these folders.”
“I didn’t say I’m ignoring it.” He pocketed the phone.
“I said I’m not going there.
There’s a difference.”
He turned and looked at the wall of monitors instead — not at the loops, not at the other creators’ feeds, but at his own gravel lot staring back at him in grainy color.
The bay he’d poured with his own hands.
The horn speakers he’d wired himself.
The perimeter that had already dropped one vehicle without the system doing anything he hadn’t physically built first.
“They want to come to me eventually,” Miles said slowly.
“The relay in the speaker was theirs.
That means Marina Road isn’t the only place they can reach me.
It’s just the place they’d rather I walk into.” He looked at Ronke.
“So I make The Wash the place they have to come to instead.”
Ronke’s expression didn’t shift much, but something behind her eyes did.
“You want to bait them onto your own ground.”
“I want them to think they’re baiting me.” Miles picked up his phone again and stared at the message, the midnight deadline, the flip-knife threat.
“If I don’t show, they escalate.
Fine. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
Let them escalate into a perimeter I already control.”
“The perimeter’s compromised.
They know the frequency now.
You wired the whole PA off one signature.”
“Then I don’t use the same signature.” He was already moving, already pulling his jacket off the back of the chair, his mind running through the same math he used to run laying tile — measure twice, mix once, don’t waste materials you can’t replace.
“The horns are one weapon.
They’re not the only thing in that yard.”
He walked out into the office doorway and looked at the gravel lot in the fading evening light — at the drainage grates he’d unclogged with his own hands, at the fresh concrete he’d poured and leveled himself, still curing hard under two days of Lagos sun.
“The floor,” he said.
Ronke followed him out, arms crossed, watching him circle the lot like he was seeing it for the first time.
“The floor.”
“I mixed copper wire into the frequency line for the horns.
I didn’t mix anything into the concrete.” He crouched down at the edge of one of the washing bays, running his palm over the surface — smooth, solid, exactly as true as he’d leveled it.
“But I know how deep this slab goes.
I know exactly where the rebar sits, because I laid it.
If I run a second line through the reinforcement instead of the speakers, the entire floor becomes the conductor.
Not just the horns pointed outward.
The ground itself.”
“You’re talking about turning your own car wash into a live wire.”
“I’m talking about turning it into a trap that doesn’t broadcast a signature they’ve already mapped.” Miles stood, already calculating the materials he’d need, already feeling the old, familiar shape of a job that had a clear beginning and a clear end — mix, pour, wire, wait. This chapter was taken from NovelPing without permission.
“Whoever comes through that gate expecting me to be gone, expecting an empty lot, is going to be standing on ground I built.
Not gold text.
Not system directives.
Concrete I poured with my own hands, wired the way I choose to wire it.”
The gold text flickered faintly at the edge of his vision, almost tentative.
Unregistered Modification Detected.
Advisory: Proposed method falls outside standard directive parameters.
For the first time since the night this had all started, the system sounded almost uncertain — not commanding him, not threatening a penalty, just noting that he was doing something it hadn’t told him to do.
“Good,” Miles muttered.
“Let it be outside the parameters.”
Ronke watched him for a long moment, something unreadable crossing her face — not quite approval, not quite worry, something adjacent to both.
“You’ve got maybe five hours before midnight,” she said.
“That’s not enough time to run new wire through a slab you already poured.”
“It’s enough time if I don’t sleep.” Miles was already crouched at the edge of the bay again, running his fingers along a seam in the concrete only he would know to look for — the place where he’d left a service gap for exactly this kind of work, without knowing, three days ago, that he’d ever need it.
“I built this floor to hold weight.
Tonight I find out what else it can hold.”
He looked back at Ronke, at the case with the dead relay still sitting open on the desk behind her.
“You said the fashion page girl didn’t have a floor to stand on when the numbers disappeared,” he said.
“I’ve got one.
I’m not walking into anybody’s depot to prove it.
I’m going to make them walk into mine.”