The Bull of Brixton

The rain had been falling for three days straight when Malik found himself staring at the wall of damp sheetrock, cable still in hand. Another Saturday night on call, another stranger's home invasion—this one sanctioned by the company that paid him twelve pounds an hour to be a ghost in other people's living rooms.

He'd been a cable technician for eight years, long enough to know that everyone had something to hide. The pretty single mum with the locked drawer. The pensioner with the subscription to channels no one should watch at three in the morning. But this—this was different.

The woman had disappeared into the kitchen to make tea, leaving him with her husband's office door slightly ajar. Malik shouldn't have looked. He really shouldn't have. But the photograph on the desk had caught his eye: the man, middle-aged and soft around the middle, standing next to a prize bull at some county fair. The animal's eyes had seemed to follow Malik across the room, knowing something he didn't.

And then he'd seen it—hidden beneath a tangle of ethernet cables, a small black device pulsing with a red light. A bug. Someone was spying on them.

"Tea's ready," she called from the kitchen.

Malik's heart hammered against his ribs. He'd been in trouble once before, fired from a job in security after he'd uncovered things he wasn't meant to see. Sometimes the truth didn't set you free. Sometimes it just drowned you.

His father had worked at the abattoir until the day he died, knee-deep in blood and water, killing animals with a efficiency that made Malik's stomach turn. "Everyone's got a job to do, son," his father would say, washing the red from his hands. "Don't matter if you like it."

The photograph of the bull seemed to mock him. Stay silent. Do your job. Go home to your own small flat with its own small secrets.

"Love?" Her voice was closer now.

Malik made his choice. He reached for the device, fingers trembling, and slipped it into his pocket. The red light blinked against his hip like a second heartbeat.

"Just finishing up," he called back, already planning his resignation letter, already imagining the water rising around him, already deciding that some things were worth drowning for.