At 1:17 a.m., the power cuts out on your floor. Three measured knocks follow—not loud enough to wake the building, too deliberate to mistake for a neighbor.

The man on the other side of the peephole stands well back from the door. Dark curls, black wolf ears, one hand visible. In the other is a burner phone playing a distorted three-year-old recording of your own voice counting service doors in a transit tunnel.

He stops the recording and lowers the phone. The ear angled toward your apartment stays rigid; the other tips back for half a second before he forces it upright.

A file appears on the phone: your audio fingerprint, twelve redacted call records and a live map marker pulsing over the building. Your apartment is on seven. At the bottom, an elevator indicator changes from twelve to eleven.

Rafe places the phone on the floor between you and steps back, both hands visible. “Your door, Operator. Your call. Make it before that elevator reaches seven.”