The Last Honest Witness

The cat watched me with amber eyes that seemed to know everything — my dead-end job reviewing security footage, the way I'd started drinking alone, the hollow ache where my marriage used to be. Prometheus, I'd named him. A joke about stolen fire, about knowledge that burns.

I worked as what the company called a 'digital risk analyst.' The truth was simpler: I was a glorified spy, watching people through their own devices, cataloging their private moments for corporate insurance purposes. Tonight's target was a senior executive who might be leaking trade secrets. I'd spent three weeks monitoring his home network, parsing through intimate conversations, watching him cook dinner, argue with his wife, cry in his garage at 3 AM.

The coaxial cable hummed against the baseboard, a thin black umbilical feeding me someone else's life. I loosened another bottle cap, thinking about how Elena had left because she said I'd become addicted to other people's privacy, unable to engage with my own.

Prometheus jumped onto my desk and knocked against the monitor. The screen shifted — suddenly I wasn't watching the executive anymore. I was watching myself, seen through his smart home camera. I was there in frame, hunched over my desk, illuminated by the cold blue glow, alone with my surveillance work. But I wasn't alone. In the corner of the frame, Elena stood watching me. She'd been there for days, maybe weeks, moving through my apartment when I was at work, sleeping in my bed, eating my food.

The timestamp was current.

I spun around. The apartment was empty except for Prometheus, who blinked slowly, knowing something I hadn't understood until this moment: we're all being watched by someone, and the privacy we violate is always our own.