The Last Transmission

The cable modem blinked its solitary green eye at 3 AM, the only other awake thing in Mara's apartment. She'd been watching her friend—her former friend—Kiran for three weeks now. The spyware she'd installed on his phone during that drunken dinner party felt like a stone in her throat every time it pinged with an update.

They'd worked together at the defense contractor for seven years. Shared cubicles, shared secrets, shared that one terrible mistake in Jakarta that still woke her up sweating. Now Kiran was acting strange. Coming in early, staying late, his desktop always angled away from the door. Mara's boss had pulled her aside last month: "We think there's a leak. Your friend's been spending time with the journalists."

Tonight's transmission showed Kiran at a bar, meeting with someone from the Post. Mara couldn't bear to look at the screenshots. She remembered how he'd held her hair back when she drank too much at the Christmas party. How he'd covered for her when the Jakarta report was late. The spyware was telling her one story; her heart another.

Her phone buzzed. Kiran: "Can you come over? Need to show you something."

Mara's fingers hovered over the keyboard. The report button was right there. One click and his career, maybe his life, would fracture. She'd bear the guilt forever. Or she could go to his apartment, see what he needed to show her, possibly compromise herself in the process.

The cable modem kept blinking. Transmitting. Receiving. Watching. Just like her.

She grabbed her coat and walked out into the cold November rain, leaving the spyware running, the report unsent. Some betrayals, she decided, were worth the price.