The door closed behind me with a tired click.
My apartment smelled like old coffee, gun oil, and regret. The kind of place where nothing new ever started, only ended. I dropped my coat on the chair and stood still for a moment, listening.
Silence.
Good.
Silence meant no one followed me home.
I walked to the window and pulled the blinds halfway shut. Gravehaven City glowed outside, wet and restless. Neon signs flickered like dying nerves. Somewhere down the block, a siren wailed, then faded. The city was breathing again.
I took the paper out of my pocket.
The number stared back at me.
No name.
No code.
Just digits.
Burner number, most likely. Disposable. Clean. The kind people use when they don't want to exist after the call.
I sat at my desk, turned on the lamp, and opened the drawer.
Inside was my old phone.
Not the one I carried now. This one had no SIM, no ID, no mercy. I used it when I wanted to make calls that shouldn't be traced back to me.
But tonight, I wasn't calling.
I was listening.
I powered it on, connected it to my laptop, and opened a piece of software I hadn't touched in years. Lucas once called it illegal. I called it necessary. It was a call-loop sniffer — a trick from the old days, when criminals still thought they were smarter than the city.
The plan was simple.
Dangerous.
And slow.
I would make the number call me.
I typed in a command, routed the signal through three dead relays, and triggered a silent ping. Not a call. Not a message. Just a digital knock on the door — the kind that made burner phones wake up and respond without their owners knowing.
I waited.
Five seconds.
Ten.
Then the laptop screen blinked.
Got you.
A faint signal came back, weak but alive. I locked onto it, letting the software chew through the noise. The number was bouncing through layers of masks, but every mask leaves fingerprints if you wait long enough.
My coffee went cold.
The city outside changed shifts.
Finally, the screen stabilized.
The number wasn't local.
It wasn't even active anymore.
But it had been used recently — routed through a private exchange node near the industrial district.
And then I saw something that made my breath slow.
The number wasn't random.
It was a relay.
Someone had used it to forward calls.
I followed the trail deeper, peeling it back piece by piece, until the real number surfaced beneath the ghost.
I stared at it.
My pulse picked up.
This one was old.
Registered.
Hidden, but not erased.
And tied to a name I hadn't heard in years.
I leaned back in my chair and laughed once — short, bitter.
"So that's how you want to play," I muttered.
I copied the number, wrote it down carefully, and shut everything off. No digital footprints. No loose ends.
The city watched me through the glass.
Someone out there thought they were pulling strings.
They were wrong.
I picked up my phone.
Didn't call yet.
Not tonight.
Some numbers change your life the moment you dial them.
I wasn't ready for that moment.
Not yet.
I turned off the lamp and let the darkness take the room.
Tomorrow, I'd make the call.
And tomorrow, the past would answer.