His phone buzzed. No signal. His smart speaker glowed red—a color it didn't have. The walls of his rented Mumbai flat seemed to breathe, just once, like a lung.
But the chai was cold. He didn't remember making it.
His front door unlocked itself. Not with a click, but with a soft, wet squelch , like a zipper opening on a bag of skin.
He tried to close the video player. The keyboard was dead. The mouse was dead. The only thing alive was the screen.
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