Chapter 7 - The Signal on the Concrete
The old phone’s screen was cracked, and its battery sat at a dangerous eight percent. It had no SIM card installed, rendering standard emergency phone calls completely impossible from beneath the thick concrete foundation.
Clara lay on her stomach inside the cage, reaching her thin arm through the lowest set of iron bars, straining her fingers toward the rusty toolbox.
Her fingernails scraped against the cold steel of the box until she finally managed to hook her index finger around the phone's corner, sliding it across the floor into her blanket.
Her heart pounded against her ribs like a sledgehammer as the screen flickered to life under her touch.
NO SIM CARD.
Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. She needed an active network to make an emergency call.
Then, she remembered the mansion's guest Wi-Fi system. Her father had helped install the estate's smart-home infrastructure two years ago, placing an industrial wireless extender inside the basement utility closet to power the security cameras.
She typed the old home password with trembling fingers: CLARA2022.
The small Wi-Fi icon at the top of the cracked screen flashed once... twice... and connected with a full three bars of strength.
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Instead of trying to send a text message that Marcus's IT team might intercept, Clara opened a live-streaming public application linked directly to her father's verified real estate foundation page.
👉 Who was the first person to see the emergency notification go live on the foundation channel?
