The first sign came at 3:17 AM.
I jolted awake to every light in our bedroom blazing at full intensity, the sudden glare searing through my closed eyelids like a physical assault. Before I could even sit up, the lights plunged into darkness—total, suffocating blackness that made me question if I'd gone blind. Then they strobed. On. Off. On. Off. A nauseating rhythm that turned our bedroom into a nightclub from hell.
"What the—" I fumbled for my phone, but the smart home app refused to respond. The override commands I'd programmed myself, the backdoors only I should know about—nothing worked.
The temperature controls kicked in next. Arctic air blasted from the vents, so cold my breath misted in front of my face. I grabbed for the blanket, teeth chattering, and then the system reversed. Scalding heat poured through the room like I'd been thrown into an oven. Sweat broke out across my skin within seconds.
Then the doors started.
Every door in the house—bedroom, bathroom, closets, the front entrance three floors down—began slamming open and shut in a grotesque symphony. BANG. BANG. BANG. The sound reverberated through the walls, through my skull, through my chest until I couldn't tell if it was the doors or my own heartbeat hammering in my ears.
I ran to the bedroom door, trying to hold it closed, but the electronic lock had a mind of its own. It wrenched open against my weight, nearly throwing me backwards, then slammed shut with enough force to crack the doorframe. My fingers barely escaped being crushed.
"Stop," I whispered, then louder, "STOP!"
The security system answered with a piercing wail that made my ears ring. Every alarm in the house screamed at once—fire, intrusion, carbon monoxide—a cacophony of false emergencies that no amount of password input could silence.
I spent the next four hours moving through our home like a ghost, manually disconnecting what I could, riding out what I couldn't. My hands shook as I pried open control panels and yanked wires, destroying the very systems I'd helped Erik build. By the time dawn crept through our windows, I was sitting on the kitchen floor, surrounded by sparking electronics and my own exhausted tears.
Erik found me there at 7 AM, still in my nightgown, my hair wild and my eyes red-rimmed.
"Jane?" He set down his suitcase, his business trip apparently successful judging by his relaxed posture. "What happened here?"
I looked up at him, this man I'd loved since we were teenagers, and tried to find the words. "The system—it went crazy. Everything. The lights, the temperature, the doors. It was like the house was trying to kill me."
He glanced around at the dismantled panels, his expression shifting from concern to something closer to irritation. "Did you try rebooting the main server?"
"I tried everything." My voice cracked. "Erik, someone hacked our system. This wasn't a glitch—it was deliberate, coordinated. The timing, the escalation—"
"Jane." He crouched down, but didn't touch me. "You've been under a lot of stress. The Peterson project, the investor meetings—"
"This has nothing to do with work stress." I grabbed his arm, desperate for him to understand. "Someone accessed our home network. Someone who knows our security protocols. We need to check the logs, trace the intrusion—"
"It was probably just a technical glitch." Erik stood, already pulling out his phone. "The system's been acting up lately. I'll have Marina look at it when she gets back from the conference. She's brilliant with debugging."
Marina. Of course.
I watched him scroll through his messages, already dismissing my terror as hysteria, my technical expertise as paranoia. The man who'd once valued my insights above all others now treated me like a malfunctioning appliance that needed fixing.
"Erik, please." I pushed myself up from the floor, ignoring how my legs trembled. "Just look at the diagnostic logs with me. Five minutes. That's all I'm asking."
He sighed, the sound heavy with barely concealed impatience. "Jane, you're imagining problems. You need rest, not more work. Why don't you take a few days off? Go to that spa you like."
As if a massage could erase the memory of my own home turning into a prison. As if cucumber water could wash away the feeling of being gaslit by the man who'd promised to protect me.
I watched him walk away to take a call, his voice warm and engaged with whoever was on the other end. Probably Marina, reporting back from her conference. Probably laughing about something clever she'd said.
And I stood there in our destroyed kitchen, surrounded by the evidence of an attack Erik refused to see, and felt something inside me begin to crystallize. Not quite anger yet. Not quite resolve. But something cold and clear and utterly focused.
If he wouldn't believe me, I'd have to find proof he couldn't ignore.
I just didn't know yet how much worse things would get before I had that chance.
