Fog wrapped hills in a billowing shroud, lit by the waning moon. An owl flew over the hamlet, swooping to skim over the waters of Sanguine Pond before rising up to soar into the foothills of the Jay Range. The nightbird landed in a tall, dead pine and watched with curiosity as the human ascended the foothills.

  Allison ran through the woods, up the slope, away from the town. Branches reached to grab her, stretching out like hands in the darkness, scratching her face, grabbing her hair, tugging on her clothes.

  Only her father's work jacket kept her safe. Behind her, feet pounded closer and closer. She could hear her pursuer gaining on her.

  She struggled uphill, pine needles and rocks slipping as her feet skittered up the slope, all the while her pursuer drew closer. Below, a rifle cracked, over and over, the air around her filling with the zipping buzz of deadly bees. Copper-plated slugs pocked into the deadfall around her, blowing sudden holes in the trunks of old-growth timber.

  She was safe, but felt strange. Diminished, her left hand uncharacteristically numb. Allison risked a glance down to see it had been replaced—a prosthetic like the one on her right, but older, more clunky, less articulated. Like the model she wore in high school. The only thing connecting the two was that both prostheses were blinking, a throbbing red light to the same cadence as her pounding heart. It was her only light in the darkness.

  She looked behind her, down the slope, and saw two eyes approaching, just a couple feet off the ground. Bright LED eyes glowing, pulsing with the same beat as the lights on her hands. A figure, low and inhuman, stepped into the moonlit clearing as branches parted, revealing it to be Scruff, the TetherLy mascot, with a vicious grin on his canine mouth, teeth impossibly sharp, walking through the forest like some nightmare. "You shouldn't have made a fool of me," the animated mascot said, in a voice that sent shivers down her spine. It wasn't Scruff. It was Hadley.

  As the dog walked closer, his eyes continued to pulse, like her heart, or a knock, knock, knock at the door.

  Allison awoke.

  She sat up, blinking blearily. She caught a whiff of faint tobacco as her father's jacket slid from her shoulders. She stood up. The knocking at the door continued.

  Where am I? Allison looked around the room. Clean. Rustic. Masculine. The photos over the fireplace brought her back.

  Her father's house. New York.

  She stood and stretched, the LED on her hand catching her eye. That hadn't gone away while she slept. She needed to figure out why her hand was giving her a warning signal. She noticed her left arm hanging limply beside her.

  She must have been sleeping on her elbow, cutting off circulation or pinching the nerve. Right now, her whole left hand was all pins and needles and dead weight. Thankfully, the prosthesis was functional, despite its strange warning signal.

  She could tell by the position of the sun in the dim light of the room that it was late afternoon. She crossed to the door and looked outside through one of the three glass panes set in the upper part of the door to see Uncle Betty.

  No, no. It's Brad now, she thought to herself. I'm an adult. He is Brad.

  Shaking her head to clear the cobwebs, Allison grabbed the knob with her right hand and opened the front door to greet her uncle.

  Brad stood on the wooden deck, a few steps back from the threshold. He wore a pair of tan Carhartt carpenter work pants, brown leather hiking boots, and had his hands tucked into the center pocket of a thick navy blue hoodie. His face was shaded by the brim of a maroon trucker cap. Ten years his brother's junior, her uncle looked nothing like her father. Maybe it was the shadows from his hat, but his eyes looked raw, like he'd been crying.

  "Hey kiddo, you get some rest?" Brad asked, glancing from her tangled hair to her own wrinkled outfit.

  "Yeah, Uncle Brad," Allison replied, stifling another yawn with her prosthesis. "Used the restroom and slept like a log. Guess I lost track of time."

  "No factor. You do look cold though."

  "No, I'm good," Allison said, then slid her tingling arm behind her back to hide the sudden goosebumps. Damn. Should've put on a jacket.

  Brad shook his head. "Nope. Not buying it. Here, give me a few minutes and I'll have this place steaming like a sauna."

  "I appreciate it, Uncle Brad, but I'm fine, really," Allison protested. "I had my own place in LA for almost a year."

  "Oh yeah? They show you how to restart a propane water heater or turn on an oil burning furnace down there?"

  "Ah. No."

  "Let me. You can get it next time. Deal?"

  "OK." Allison stepped aside as her uncle stepped into the house with a smile.

  "Attagirl." Brad turned right after entering and passed through the living room into one end of the open floorplan kitchen area. He turned right again and opened a solid wood six-panel door hard up against a frosted glass enclosed pantry. "I would've done this earlier," he said, flicking on the basement lights, "but you zonked out. Been up a while?"

  "Yeah," Allison replied. "I came here straight from LA. Hadn't slept since yesterday morning." She followed, staying four or five steps behind her uncle. She was glad the stairwell had railings on either side, especially with her still-tender left arm.

  The stairs deposited them in the concrete-floored simplicity of the building's unfinished basement. It had an open floorplan, with six individual lights in the ceiling giving the large room an adequate if dreary degree of light. The walls stood proud with wire metal shelving, each unit five feet high and loaded with cardboard boxes. This will take forever to sort through, Allison groaned.

  If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Brad crossed to a five-foot tall cylinder-shaped appliance, with a steel pipe feeding into its lower region and topped with a pair of flexible colored tubes. The red and blue plastic piping traveled up from the water heater and dispersed like veins along the basement's unfinished ceiling.

  Brad knelt beside the water heater and adjusted a couple of knobs. He explained the purpose of each step to his niece as he moved through the process with workmanlike efficiency. His lecture ground to a halt as he held down the priming bulb on the newly relit furnace for what began to feel like an eternity. Allison stifled a yawn.

  "What'd you say earlier? No sleep since LA?" Brad let out a low whistle. "Ouch. Watch it, Al. You're not so young anymore."

  "Okay, Uncle Salt-and-Pepper." Allison raised her chin toward her uncle's close-cropped hair.

  "What, the ladies like it," Brad said defensively. Before Al could respond, he tentatively released his finger. The circle of blue flame remained. "Success!" He smiled, then rose with a grunt.

  Brad dusted the knees of his Carhartt, then after a beat, said, "Hey, sorry about Tony earlier."

  Allison's nose wrinkled. She stepped back reflexively, bumping her already tingling elbow against the edge of the washing machine. "What, that goof? With the bathrobe?"

  "Oof," Brad winced sympathetically as he walked toward a bulky heater on the other end of the basement. "He's really not that bad when you get to know him. Just a bit odd. I vet my neighbors before they get to live here."

  "Well, hopefully I won't have to get to know him," Allison said through gritted teeth. Her left arm, which had just been starting to feel normal, was a roar of pins and needles once more from the funny bone strike. "In fact, I think I'll spend the next couple weeks down here, going through boxes, just so I won't see that guy again."

  "Yeah. About that." Brad paused.

  "What?" she asked, freezing in the act of rubbing her tender elbow.

  "Tony's having a dinner party tomorrow evening. He invited everyone in town. Including you."

  "No way." Allison raised her hands in protest, so distracted that she failed to notice the indicator on her right wrist. "Seriously. I'm not in the mood for people. Especially more weirdos."

  Brad paused in front of the furnace's control panel. "Al, I get that. But he's a neighbor. And out here, that carries some weight." He tapped a fuel gauge, sucked a breath through his teeth, and opened a valve. "Fuel oil's a bit low. You'll need to order more if you plan to stay long."

  "Hold up," Allison interrupted, "you want to spend time with Bathrobe Boy?"

  "Whether I do or not, he invited me. Small town rules. You ghost someone's dinner party, they'll remember it for decades. Plus, he's usually better dressed than this morning."

  "You're really bringing shame culture into this?" Allison asked.

  "Shame is the flip side of honor. I spent twelve years in the teams. Hard to shake some things." He bent into a squat, flipped a switch, and depressed a button on the furnace marked RESET. "I've known Tony for a few years. He's harmless. And deep down, I think he's a pretty good guy."

  "Yeah, deep, deep down, maybe," Allison muttered.

  "Well there's the lip I remembered." Brad smiled. He released the button and was rewarded with a warm-sounding WHUMP of flame, followed by the chirrrr of a blower motor revving up to speed. "There, all set. You're lucky this is all automated. When I was a kid, we had to use matches."

  "They had matches back in the Flintstones era?"

  Brad clutched a hand to his chest. "You're killing me, smalls. Sound like your dad. Sarah HATED when he'd get snarky."

  "I know," Allison replied. He didn't have to tell her. It was something her mom had found endearing—once. But as her parents' marriage grew more fractured, her father's sarcastic charm turned into another weapon in the war of words. She reached out with her left hand and rubbed the cool, sleek material of her prosthesis.

  "Hey, why's your robo-hand blinking?" Brad asked.

  "Oh," Allison pronated her wrist and frowned at the pulsing LED. "I don't know. It just started doing it today on the drive in. I was going to run a diagnostic when I got inside, then I got distracted."

  "Maybe your boss at TetherLy is trying to ping you to get back to work."

  "No. I quit TetherLy."

  "No shit? Al, I thought that was your dream job."

  "Me too. Guess we were all wrong." She turned and headed up the stairs, felt, then heard her uncle's feet behind her. Don't ask why. Not now.

  He did not. They walked in silence to the entry door. "Thanks for your help, Uncle Brad," Allison said as she opened the door.

  Brad stepped past his niece, onto the deck, then turned. He gave her a look, then nodded. The bill of his ball cap bobbed like the head of a duck decoy caught in a motorboat's wake. "No problem, kiddo. It's been a hard six weeks."

  "Yeah." She stared past her uncle, letting her eyes relax as she watched the wind blow pine boughs sway.

  "All right. Here's what we do now." Brad rubbed his hands together. "I've got the Traeger going. Burgers, brats, and beer in the fridge. Nothing like meat cooked over a wood fire after a long day's travel. We'll eat. Talking is optional."

  Allison looked away. She almost said no. Then, something settled and changed. Maybe it was the spreading warmth of the furnace. Maybe it was the sudden hunger in her stomach. Whatever the case, a long dark evening alone in her late father's house filled her chest with an anxious chill. Dusk comes early in the Adirondacks, doubly so in October. She stood, framed in the doorway of her late father's house, the darkness inside almost palpable with solidity. The wind, not content to stir the fallen leaves and dry needles, made its move. She shivered in the face of the leafy dust devil and nodded. "OK. That sounds really nice. Let me pop this off, shower up, and I'll be there."

  "All these bells and whistles and the damn thing isn't waterproof?" Brad was incredulous.

  "It is—IPX8 rated, can handle submersion up to 200 meters—just more efficient to top off the battery and run tests while I'm occupied."

  "Makes sense." Brad nodded. "See you in thirty?"

  "I can taste the brats already," Allison smiled, then shut the door as her uncle left. His boots clonked down the deck and crunched across the gravel. Only then did her smile drop, replaced by a heavy sense of the work ahead.

  Allison knelt and unzipped her carry-on backpack. She extracted her thin Mac laptop from its protective kangaroo pouch, along with the power adapter and USB-C cable. After turning on the living room light, she scanned the walls for outlets, finally choosing one beneath a glass-topped end table. As her computer came to life, Allison reached for her elbow. She squeezed and twisted until the prosthesis came away, just like that. She hooked the entire appendage to the laptop by means of the USB-C cable and started the diagnostic scan. It would be completed, and the battery topped off, by the time she'd finished freshening up.

  Thanks to her pre-nap pit stop, Allison already knew where the closest shower was located. How to operate the typically alien controls of an unfamiliar shower was a different story. When she finally got the balance of temperatures just right, she relaxed. Only when her hair was soaked did she realize her shampoo choices were limited to her father's three-in-one store brand everything. With a sigh, she began to wash up, letting the water wash away her remaining weariness, her stomach rumbling audibly. Yeah, Uncle Betty's cooking would be great.

  She hadn't told her uncle about Hadley. She did not plan to. Some things were not worth bringing up. Like the other reason she showered without her revolutionary prosthetic device. It had no microphone, no speaker, and no cameras. But still, Allison had never been able to shake the feeling that it was still, somehow, watching her.