RONAN The sounds blended into one heavy wall of noise. Voices from men and women piled on top of each other. Music of every style and volume blasted down the hall, all of it buried under endless phone chimes. The noise pressed in from every side. We reached the open doorway of one room inside the Sanctum Complex. I recognized it as one of the conference rooms. The sound poured out of it like a river in flood, loud enough to shake the air. “Me left, you right. Closest corner first,” Nguyen said. His voice barely reached me over the roar coming from inside. The soldier stepped in first, just like before. His rifle came up with him, moving where his eyes went. He swept the room in a smooth arc, checking every angle as he advanced. He did not stop until the whole space was clear. I followed him in, forcing myself to focus on the right corner near the door. Doubt crept in fast. No confidence existed that I was doing this the right way. Nothing waited for me in the corner. Only Nguyen’s armored shape moved on the far side of a long conference table. Phones covered its surface. That table pulled at an old memory. The Sanctum Complex had bought it from a local craftswoman years ago. Real wood, shaped by hand. Most members had loved it. They talked about beauty and feeling closer to nature while planning Sanctum business. My father had complained for weeks. He said the money should have gone to people who needed help, not to how leaders looked while sitting around it. Nguyen bent and checked under the table. “Clear,” he said. At least that was what I thought he said.Standing inside the room made everything worse. The swarm of sound swallowed small noises whole. Nguyen pointed at the table, then shifted his stance so he had a clean view of the door. I stepped closer. Phones covered the tabletop, dozens of them. Every case had been stripped away. Plastic and rubber covers lay dumped in a large bin in the far corner. The container overflowed with them. The phones were stacked in neat towers, sorted by model and sometimes by year. Screens flashed nonstop. Messages popped up. Many showed live video calls. Faces filled those screens. Men. Women. Even children. Fear showed on almost all of them. Heads turned. Hands shook. Voices moved in constant motion. Each person seemed deep in conversation. Focus narrowed to one screen. A young man appeared there, probably still in university. His voice trembled as he spoke. Every few moments he stopped, nodded, then continued. It took a second longer to understand what I was seeing. He was talking to someone I could not see. “What the fuck?” slipped out before I could stop it. The room was so loud that I had not realized how sharp my voice sounded until Nguyen answered. “What’s wrong?” My gaze shifted from the phone to him. “These phones are intercepting conversations. All of them. They are pulling in calls from different people.” “Can they even do that?” he asked. His eyes never left the doorway. “Technically, every wireless device receives any signal strong enough to reach it,” I said. “Software filters most of it out. Most of it is encrypted now too. Even if you catch it, it should be useless unless you are the intended person.”The phone rested in my hand. The young man stared back at me from the screen. He talked about his neighborhood. He talked about how bad things were getting. Fear sat heavy in his voice. Leaving felt dangerous. Staying felt worse. “So what’s the problem?” Nguyen asked. The answer would not come right away. Something about the rhythm of the young man’s speech set off alarms in my head. Dread crept in, slow and cold. He stopped talking. The unseen person spoke instead. Their words could not be heard, but the subject felt obvious. The young man nodded hard. His eyes darted around the room he was in, like he expected someone to burst through the door at any second. “I know I can’t stay here,” he said. “Is it any safer at the Sanctum Complex?” He paused again, listening. Then he spoke with a fragile resolve. “I think I can make it there. I’ll wait for a break in the fighting. I love you, Dad.” The phone felt heavier in my hand after that.