Page 42 of White Noise

Saga seems to have mistaken that limitation for an exit.

She’s downstairs cleaning up the mess from our little chase with the kind of irritated focus people use when they’re trying very hard to make something impossible feel ordinary. As far as she knows, I disappeared with the static. The silence afterward probably helped convince her I was too weak to do anything else.

Physically, she isn’t entirely wrong.

That doesn’t mean I’m gone.

I don’t need a body to move through the things she keeps surrounding herself with. Her security system is still connected. So is the television, her phone, the speaker upstairs, the cameras she thinks corrupted when I came through.

Once I slip back into the network, they open to me easily enough. The signal may not be strong enough to hold six and a half feet of me together in her kitchen, but watching requires almost nothing.

So I watch.

Saga is crouched beside the island wiping neon energy drink from the floor and swearing under her breath about the security system, the ruined bowl near the wall, the crooked stool and, judging by the number of creative insults involving my existence, me.

Her voice has steadied, but her hands haven’t.

The difference catches my attention immediately.

The tremor irritates her enough that she stops wiping and stares at her fingers before curling them into a fist. She holds them there until the shaking settles, as if sheer stubbornness can force her nervous system back under control.

The palm that took the discharge from the knife is red, an angry mark crossing the skin where the current traveled through the handle.

Nothing serious.

“Perfect” I smirk. I’m not finished with those hands.

She rinses them under cold water, flexing her fingers beneath the stream before drying them against her shirt. Then she does exactly what frightened humans always do once they convince themselves the immediate threat has passed.

She checks the things that failed her.

The front door comes first. Saga unlocks it manually, locks it again, then tests the handle twice. After that she moves to the balcony, the windows, the security panel, working through each one

with increasing irritation. She resets the system, waits for it to reboot and gets the same error code.

“Come the fuck on.”

She tries again.

Nothing.

“Piece of shit.”

My mouth pulls into a smile.

She thinks she’s alone enough to complain to electronics again. That almost feels insulting.

She reaches the bottom of the stairs and stops.

For several seconds, she just looks up.

I can feel the hesitation from here. Not the wild fear that pulled me through earlier, but enough awareness that every dark room upstairs now belongs to me a little.

I push lightly against the connection, just enough to make the living-room television flicker.

Saga whips around so fast that her entire body goes rigid, eyes locked on the screen while she waits for something else to happen.

Nothing does.