If you want to be Silas’s wife, you take care of his mess, or you get back on the plane to Ohio.
The sudden, blinding flash of lightning turned the canyon into a stark, temporary photograph of chaos. A deafening clap of thunder followed, shaking the very ground.
Then came the rumble. A deep, guttural sound that intensified rapidly, like a monstrous beast waking up.
From my position at the kitchen window, watching the relentless rain, I saw it happen. A wall of mud, rocks, and uprooted trees slid down the steep hillside, crashing onto the estate’s main driveway. It sealed the entrance with an impassable barrier.
A second later, another, smaller landslide crashed down on the back access road, the one Victoria sometimes used.
“We’re completely cut off,” Eli said, his voice flat. He had been standing beside me, looking out at the raging storm.
The power flickered erratically inside the house, plunging us into darkness for agonizing seconds, then returning with a weak, sputtering glow. The entire canyon’s power grid was failing.
Outside, by the main gates, Victoria’s second vehicle, a dark sedan with four armed guards and Gemma Brooks, had been forced to take shelter. They’d been trying to move past the first landslide when the second, larger one hit.
The roar of the mudslide, followed by another earth-shattering crack of thunder, made the sedan’s occupants jump. They were now sandwiched between two impassable walls of debris.
Gemma Brooks, visibly terrified, pressed herself against the car window. “We’re trapped!” she shrieked, her earlier composed demeanor completely gone. “We’re completely cut off!”
Victoria Finch, who had abandoned her own stalled SUV on the back trail and hiked through the mud to reach this second vehicle, slammed her fist on the dashboard. “This is impossible! No one can get in or out!”
But then, an even stranger sound began to emanate from the estate itself. A high-pitched whine, like a jet engine winding up. Lights, not from the grid, but from some internal source, began to pulse within the house.
The estate, it turned out, was equipped with a sophisticated automated emergency system. Designed for high-profile studio events and critical broadcasts, it had a massive backup generator.
And more importantly, it had a high-bandwidth satellite uplink.
This system, meant to ensure a live transmission could always go out even during a major power failure, had just detected a complete grid collapse across the canyon.
The internal hum grew louder. Screens inside the estate’s command center, hidden behind another panel in the screening room, flickered to life. The satellite dish on the roof, usually dormant, slowly rotated, locking onto a geosynchronous orbit.
An emergency transmission protocol had been initiated. It was designed to broadcast a live feed from every studio camera connected to the estate’s network, in case of a natural disaster or security breach.
The system, thinking it was protecting studio assets during a major regional crisis, was preparing to go live.
Victoria, along with Gemma and her guards, looked at the house, a sudden realization dawning on their faces. They were not only trapped *on* the property, but the property itself was about to become an unwilling, live broadcast station.
The storm had not just cut off the world. It had forced it to watch.
More Stories
+ There are no comments
Add yours