Midnight Fire
The city felt different when you walked through it carrying a secret that could set it on fire.
By the time I left the hotel, the air had turned sharp and electric. The avenue was a river of headlights and exhaust, the kind of buzzing midnight where everything's awake and half of it is dangerous. Cassandra's smirk was still burned into the backs of my eyes. Eli's text echoed like a countdown.
If you're going to move, move before midnight. After that, the trail is gone.
I cut through side streets, walking faster than heels were meant for, one hand clamped around my bag like someone might try to rip it off me. Inside, the LEVERAGE folder pressed against my ribs every time I breathed.
It struck me then, somewhere between Third and Second: I wasn't just running from something anymore.
I was running toward something.
That was new.
My apartment was too quiet when I pushed the door open. No TV, no music—just the faint hum of the fridge and the city's distant roar leaking through the windows. I locked the door, slid the chain, then checked it again even though I knew it was ridiculous.
I tossed my bag on the table, took the drive from my pocket, and stared at it for a second. It was small, matte black, unremarkable. It didn't look like it contained the kind of thing people ruined lives over.
I plugged it in. The laptop woke up with a soft chime, the screen flooding my dark living room in cold light.
E: REMOTE ARCHIVE flashed into view.
My phone buzzed almost immediately.
Eli:
You home?
Me:
Yeah. About to open the gates of hell.
A typing bubble appeared, disappeared. Then:
Back up first. Twice. Then we talk about hell.
I snorted despite myself. "Nerd," I muttered, clicking through.
First thing I did was drag a copy of the HA–J.A.–Contract_Memo and all of Eli's metadata into a new folder and drop it into cloud storage under a boring name: TAX_DOCS_2018. Then I mirrored it onto my old external hard drive, the one I kept more photos than sense on.
By the time both progress bars hit 100%, my heart was racing like I'd run stairs.
"Okay," I said into the air, as if the walls needed to hear me. "Now we talk about hell."
I hit call. Eli picked up on the second ring.
"I'm in," he said. "You have the full set?"
"Yes. Clause 7 highlighted, log traces, the calendar invite. Everything."
"Good. We're not sending gossip this time. We're sending architecture."
I pulled the folder onto the desktop and opened the main file. The memo lit up my screen, all stiff legal joints and hidden teeth.
"Who gets this?" I asked.
There was the faint clack of keys on his end. "There's a journalist I trust. She runs an investigative blog—no advertisers, no board, no fear of Cassandra's donors. We send it to her first, encrypted. If she bites, she'll cross-check quietly before she publishes."
"And if she doesn't?"
"Then we reassess. But we don't go to XMZ with this. They'll make it about 'the mistress strikes back.' You need someone who cares about systemic rot, not just scandals with good cheekbones."
I took a breath, rolled my shoulders like I was about to walk into HR again. "Alright. Show me."
He walked me through the encryption like a patient armchair bomb tech. We zipped the files, wrapped them in a password of his choosing, then layered it with a one-time link.
On my screen, a new outgoing email stared at me, addressed to a woman whose name I'd only heard when Marisol talked about "the last real journalist left in this city."
Subject:Re: Confidential counsel documents – Hale–Archer / Archer Partners LLP
The cursor blinked in the body, waiting.
"What do I even say?" I asked.
"Nothing heroic," Eli said. "Just: 'These files suggest undisclosed conflicts of interest and manipulated HR process tied to a corporate integration. Please verify before deletion. – A source.'"
I typed it exactly like that. Stared at it. My fingers hovered over the keys.
"You ready?" Eli asked.
"No," I said. "Send anyway."
I hit Send. The email whooshed off into cyberspace, a digital paper airplane carrying my last illusions of staying small.
My phone buzzed again before I could exhale.
XMZ:Tune in live — we've got a BRAND NEW UPDATE in the Archer scandal. You won't believe what our sources found next.
I nearly dropped the phone.
"Of course they do," I muttered.
"Amira?" Eli's voice sharpened. "What was that?"
"XMZ," I said. "They're teasing an update. She's moving, too."
He swore softly. "Then speed matters. Get me into your share; I want to make sure that metadata didn't corrupt."
I granted him access. Lines of text flashed by as he tunneled in. The laptop's fan whirred, dealing with the sudden demand, the apartment filling with that tiny roar that made it sound like the machine was breathing.
Then the lights flickered.
Just once. Off, on again. Barely a hiccup.
I froze.
"Please tell me that's not you," I said.
"That's not me," Eli said slowly. "Your power just dipped?"
"Yes."
He went quiet for a second. "Could be nothing. Could be the building. Keep going. Open page six of the memo—the one with the deepest redaction."
I scrolled down, the black bars thick as asphalt. Only a few lines of actual text lived at the top and bottom—nothing helpful, generic fluff.
"Surprise," I said. "Black rectangles. My favorite."
"Check your email," he said.
I tabbed over. A new message from him waited, subject line: Patch.
I downloaded the attachment—another version of the same page, but this one grainier, stitched together from backups.
"Look at clause 4(b), under the blackout," he said. "I recovered a line Cassandra obviously tried to nuke."
I zoomed in, squinting. A single sentence glowed through the fuzz, just clear enough to read:
All reputational contingencies tied to Hale–Archer integration remain null unless triggered by mutual consent of signatories.
I read it twice. Three times.
"Nulled," I murmured. "Unless there's mutual consent."
"Bingo," Eli said. "If Julian never signed, never consented to activate the 'reputational triggers,' Cassandra has no legal standing to frame herself as the 'stabilizing party' acting under pre-agreed authority. It means her whole 'I'm just enforcing the agreement' angle is dust."
"And if I leak it," I said slowly, "she looks like a wife weaponizing confidential legal drafts to seize control she doesn't actually have."
"Exactly. Investors hate phantom power plays. They can overlook a scandal; they don't forgive being manipulated."
I leaned back, let my head thump against the chair. Somewhere below, a car alarm went off, shrill and insistent, like the city was trying to warn me about something it didn't have words for.
"Okay," I whispered. "So now we don't just have a story—we have a fault line."
"Yes," Eli said. "And you are currently standing on it."
I started packaging everything: the memo, Eli's reconstructed page, screenshots of the XMZ headlines, the timeline of when Cassandra began accessing internal servers. I added a simple document at the front: just dates, bullet points, cause and effect—how my HR meeting lined up perfectly with her joint-venture push.
The lights flickered again. This time longer. They came back dimmer, as if the building were thinking about whether we deserved full power.
"You still there?" Eli asked.
"For now."
On my screen, the encrypted archive began uploading to a secondary secure drive—my personal insurance if the journalist passed or if everything went sideways. The progress bar crawled. 12%. 37%. 54%.
Another buzz from my phone. Group text.
Tasha:
XMZ just went live. They're saying there's "new proof" you're obsessed with Julian. Some anonymous coworker snitched about you "throwing yourself at him in the office."
Marisol:
Girl they're calling you "Archer's shadow." I'm gonna fight somebody.
Janelle:
Please just stay inside tonight. Please.
I stared at the messages, feeling the familiar burn behind my eyes. My cheeks were dry, but the humiliation was no less sharp. Somewhere, Cassandra was probably watching the same stream, sipping overpriced wine.
"She's not stopping," I told Eli. "She's layering narratives. That I hacked, that I'm obsessed, that I'm dangerous."
"Then don't aim this at her," he said. "Aim it at the board. At the money. The story becomes about them choosing a lawyer who secretly sought control through undisclosed mechanisms. You're just the collateral damage that points the camera in the right direction."
"That's poetic," I said. "You rehearse that?"
"I live in server rooms and message boards," he said. "You'd be amazed what people rehearse."
The upload ticked to 79%. Then 83%. The fan whirred louder, a desperate little engine.
I opened a blank email, addressed it to the journalist again.
Subject:Supplemental context – leverage clause
Body:
You may want to pay special attention to Clause 4(b). If consent was never given, control claims are smoke. Follow the money. The HR timing isn't coincidence. – A source.
I attached the patched page. My finger hovered over Send.
The lights cut.
Not a flicker. Not a dim.
A full, thick blackout.
My laptop screen went instantly dark. The fan died mid-whir, leaving my ears buzzing in the sudden silence. For a second, I thought my heart had stopped too.
"Eli?" I said into the dark.
Static. Then: "Amira? You dropped. What happened?"
"My power's out," I said. "Completely."
"Check your breaker."
I fumbled for my phone flashlight, the beam shaky in my hand. The apartment looked alien—furniture turned into black shapes, familiar corners gone sharp. I cracked open the breaker panel. All switches were still aligned.
"Nope," I said. "Not me."
He cursed quietly. "Could be the building. Could be a block issue. Check the window."
I walked to the glass, pulled the curtain back. The streetlights were still glowing. Cars moved. Windows in the building across from mine were lit up, warm rectangles of other people's problems.
But my building's hallway sconce outside my door flickered, then died.
"It's just me," I said.
The upload. My mind jumped to it. That progress bar—how far had it gotten? Was it saved? Corrupted? Could someone see that I'd tried?
"Listen to me," Eli said sharply. "The drive still has the data. The cloud copy is safe. Even if the last upload failed, you're not empty-handed."
A soft sound came from the direction of my front door. Not a knock. A brush. Like fabric against wood.
Every hair on my arms stood up.
"Eli," I whispered. "Someone's in the hallway."
He went completely silent on the line. Then: "Stay away from the door. Move to the back room. Now."
I took a slow step back from the entrance, then another. The beam from my phone trembled over the floor. My own reflection in the window looked pale, wide-eyed, unreal.
Another sound. A metallic jingle. A key trying the lock—or the chain. Testing.
I clamped a hand over my mouth so my breath wouldn't give me away.
"Call 911," Eli said. "Use your other phone if you have one. Put me on mute—"
The jingle stopped.
A shape moved in the frosted glass panel inset into my door. Just a shadow, vague and tall, blocking the faint light from the dying hallway sconce. Whoever it was stood there, not knocking, not leaving, just… present.
Watching. Listening.
My heart slammed against my ribs like it wanted out.
My laptop, dead and opaque, sat on the table between us like a secret we shared.
Midnight hadn't hit yet. Neither had send.
The game was still on the board.
And someone, on the other side of that door, knew it.