3:17 AM
Mumbai. Andheri East. Sky View Society. Flat 804.
Outside, the city never truly slept. The distant, grating honk of an auto-rickshaw at an empty intersection, the wail of a stray dog, the rattle of a vegetable cart hitting a pothole. These were the nocturnal sounds of Mumbai, a reminder that the city was only pretending to rest.
But the silence inside Flat 804 was different. It wasn’t a peaceful silence.
Myra Sharma lay on the couch, a thin blanket pulled up to her chin. Her laptop was shut. The TV screen was black. The only light in the room bled through the window curtains—a sickly, yellow glow from the streetlamp outside.
She hadn’t slept properly in three weeks.
It wasn’t work stress. It wasn’t the city noise. It was a strange, crawling unease she couldn’t put a name to. Like something in her everyday life had shifted by just one millimeter, but she couldn’t prove it to anyone. Not even herself.
She picked up her phone.
3:17 AM.
She put it face down.
On the small bedside table sat an Amazon Echo. Three years old. She had bought it because someone once told her that having a voice in the room makes it feel less lonely. For the first week, she played music, set alarms, and asked it stupid questions at 2 AM when she couldn’t sleep. Then the novelty wore off. It just sat there, silent, like an overpriced paperweight.
Except—for the past few days.
The blue ring—the one that was only supposed to light up when you said “Alexa”—had started waking up on its own.
The first time was two weeks ago. Late at night. Myra had stepped out of the bathroom and frozen. The blue light was pulsing in the dark like a slow, steady flame. She reasoned with herself: A sound from the street. A passing car. A siren. Nothing to worry about.
The second time was last week. Around 2 AM. Her throat had been dry. The blue ring was spinning—slow, rhythmic, like someone taking deep, measured breaths in the dark. She watched it for a full minute before the light died out on its own.
The third time… there was no light.
She heard something.
The voice was incredibly faint. A static hiss, like a broken radio transmission. And buried in that static—was her name.
“Myra...”
It wasn’t the crisp, robotic, British-accented voice of the AI. It was heavy, guttural. Human. A voice with lungs, with breath, with an intent she didn’t want to understand.
Myra spent the rest of that night fighting the fear with logic. A glitch. A neighbor’s Bluetooth crossed signals. Sleep paralysis. The human brain could conjure up endless horrors in the dark.
But she knew it was real. The chill that had settled in her spine wasn’t a hallucination.
3:17 AM.
She was wide awake. The ceiling fan spun lazily, its blades casting circular shadows on the wall. She tried to count them—one, two, three—just to avoid looking at the cylindrical device on the table.
Just to avoid admitting to herself that she was terrified of a machine.
And then—the blue light.
It flared up in the dark. A cold, artificial pulse, spinning silently. No trigger word. Just that menacing silence and the white-blue glow.
Myra’s breath hitched. Her entire body went rigid beneath the blanket. She couldn’t turn her head—she didn’t want to. The blue light danced on the ceiling, moving like a coiled snake preparing to strike.
She tried to speak. Her throat was paper-dry.
“Alexa...?”
Her voice trembled. She sounded like a frightened child.
No response. The light just kept spinning.
The machine was listening to someone else—or sending something to someone else. The feeling was suffocating. Someone is here. Not in the room, but in the silence between the data streams.
Finally, Myra gathered her courage. She swung her legs off the bed. The floor tiles felt like ice against her bare feet—or maybe it was her own blood turning cold.
She reached a trembling hand toward the machine. Her fingers hovered in the air for a fraction of a second.
Then, she did what any terrified person would do. She grabbed the power cord and yanked it hard from the wall socket.
The light died instantly.
The room was swallowed by the dark, save for the faint yellow bleed from the curtains.
Myra let out a massive breath. Then another.
Okay. It’s over. The machine is glitching. I’m throwing it in the trash tomorrow.
Just as her heartbeat began to settle, a bright white light blinded her.
Her old Samsung phone—lying on the bed—lit up with a notification.
She picked it up, squinting against the glare.
Smart Home Alert: Alexa (Bedroom) – Device Disconnected.
That made sense. She had just pulled the plug.
But right beneath it—in glaring red text—was another line.
Unknown Device Connected: 02:45 AM.
2:45 AM. Half an hour ago. While Myra was pretending to sleep.
Her hands began to shake violently. She tapped the notification. The device list opened.
Alexa (Bedroom) – Offline
Alexa (Living Room) – Offline
And right at the bottom:
Unknown Device (IP: 192.168.1.47) – Last Active: 03:17 AM
3:17 AM. The exact moment the blue light had turned on.
Myra stopped breathing. She tapped on the unknown device.
The data on the screen made the floor drop out from under her.
Data Sent: 2.3 GB | Data Received: 0.0 KB
2.3 GB. Sent. To somewhere. To someone.
In compressed voice audio, 2.3 GB equated to over 150 hours of recording. Weeks of audio. The things Myra mumbled in her sleep. Her private phone calls. The sound of her crying when the loneliness got too heavy.
Everything.
The phone slipped from her slick grip and hit the floor with a thud. Myra didn’t hear it. There was a high-pitched ringing in her ears.
The unknown device was still active on her network. Her Wi-Fi router was in the living room.
Moving like a ghost in her own apartment, Myra crept out of the bedroom.
The living room was pitch black. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the kitchen.
There—plugged into the switchboard near the microwave—was a small white adapter.
A smart plug.
Its LED indicator was glowing. Green. Bright. Connected.
Myra just stared at it. Her mind went completely blank.
She remembered where it came from. Two months ago. The office Secret Santa. An anonymous gift wrapped in cheap red paper. She had thought: Hey, an empty socket, might as well plug it in. She never downloaded an app for it. Never configured it. Just forgot about it.
But whoever gave it to her hadn’t forgotten.
It wasn’t just a smart plug. Inside its plastic shell was an extra circuit—a gateway that, once connected to her Wi-Fi, bypassed security and recorded every sound in the house. It only needed one thing to work: her router password. And the device had that password pre-programmed before it even entered her home.
The cold, bitter truth hit her.
For two months, she hadn’t been alone in this house.
Someone was out there, sitting in the dark beyond her walls, listening. Listening to her breathe. Listening to her conversations.
The green light blinked once.
Data uploading. Live.
She stared at the plug. Then at the dark kitchen. Then at the window. Somewhere out there—in the building across the street, in a parked car, in a room she would never find—someone was stealing her life. Second by second.
She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry.
She turned around, walked back to her bedroom, and picked up her phone from the floor. She opened her contacts and scrolled to a name she had added months ago.
Arjun Singh – The Crazy Reporter.
A friend had given her the number over coffee. “He doesn’t write for papers anymore. Freelance. But if you’re ever in a situation where the cops have their hands tied—call him. He’s weird, but his brain works faster than a supercomputer.”
Myra pressed dial.
The dial tone rang out.
Thump-thump... Thump-thump... Her heartbeat was louder than the phone.
On the third ring, the call connected.
A thick, sleep-drenched, gravelly voice answered: “Listen boss, I’m not buying any insurance, and my credit score is already on a ventilator.”
Myra swallowed hard. “A-Arjun Singh?”
“Yeah. But currently, I’m the fast-asleep Arjun Singh. Who is this?”
“My name is Myra. Myra Sharma. Rohini gave me your number.” Her voice finally cracked. “Someone... someone is listening to me in my house.”
A long silence followed. She thought he had hung up.
Then his voice returned—completely changed. Sharp, awake, and dead serious.
“Listening, or recording?”
“Both... I don’t know.”
“Don’t touch anything. Don’t call the police. Meet me at ‘Rafiq Electronics’ in Byculla tonight at 9 PM. I’ll text you the address.”
“Who even are you?” she whispered.
A pause. “The guy who believes you.”
The line went dead.
Myra sat alone in the dark, the phone growing warm in her palm. She looked toward the kitchen. The green light was still glowing.
Two months of her life belonged to someone else.
And now, she was going to meet a man who was either her last hope—or her next mistake.
