Wireless Signals

The first time I suspected something was off about my dad's "IT job" was when I found him organizing a box of ethernet cables by color spectrum at 3 AM. Most IT guys don't treat cable management like FBI evidence classification.

"Dad?" I stood in the doorway, feeling like a zombie from finals week. My eyes burned, my brain felt like it had been microwaved, and I was seriously considering mainlining those vitamin gummies he kept buying me in bulk. "Everything okay?"

He jumped. The cables scattered everywhere. "Maya! What are you doing up?"

"Could ask you the same thing." I padded into his home office, sock feet silent on carpet. "What's with the cables? And since when do you have a wall of monitors?"

Six screens glowed in the dark room. Not normal work screens. These showed satellite imagery, what looked like warehouse schematics, and—was that a heatmap of downtown Chicago?

"It's... a side project," he said, but the way he wouldn't meet my eyes made my stomach twist. "Freelance consulting."

"Uh-huh." I should've dropped it. Really should've. But curiosity had always been my fatal flaw—probably why my ex-best friend Kia called me a "social spy" in middle school, always observing, analyzing, never just living. "Is this why you're never home for dinner? Why Mom's been giving you those sad looks when she thinks no one's watching?"

Something flickered across his face. Defeat? Relief? He sank into his chair. "Maya, what I'm about to tell you... it changes everything."

"Are you a spy?" The word came out before I could filter it. Stupid. Absurd. But his silence was louder than any denial.

"Not exactly." He finally met my gaze. "I work for a private intelligence firm. We track corporate espionage, data breaches, threats to critical infrastructure. The cables are part of a communication network we're monitoring."

"Like, for real? Not the fun movie spy stuff?"

"Mostly boring. Mostly staring at screens and connecting dots." A tired smile. "But sometimes... sometimes it matters. Remember last month when that power grid almost went down in Ohio?"

My mouth went dry. That had been all over the news. "You stopped that?"

"My team did." He gestured to a half-empty water bottle and a bottle of vitamins on his desk. "Come here often enough, you start feeling like a zombie. The vitamins are just to keep me functional."

"Since when?"

"Since you were twelve." His voice cracked. "I didn't want you to worry. Your mother thought it was better you didn't know."

The room tilted. All those family game nights he'd missed. All those parent-teacher conferences Mom attended alone. The distance I'd felt growing, like a bad connection I couldn't fix.

"I thought you just didn't care," I whispered.

"Maya." He reached for my hand, then stopped himself. "Everything I do, I do to keep people safe. Including you. Especially you."

I looked at the cables, suddenly seeing them differently. Not just wires. Connections. Information flows. Lines between points A and B, sender and receiver, just like the space between us that had felt so vast.

"Can I help?" The question surprised both of us. "I mean, not with the spy stuff. But... whatever else needs doing?"

He blinked. Then his shoulders dropped an inch. "I could use someone to organize these cables properly. Color spectrum is OCD, even for me."

I sat on the floor and started sorting. Red to orange to yellow. It was stupid and mundane and perfect. For the first time in years, the connection between us felt solid. Reliable. Like a cable that actually carried a signal.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, M?"

"Next time Mom's giving you those sad looks... just tell her the truth. She's tougher than she looks."

He nodded slowly. "What about you?"

"Me?" I tied a blue cable into a neat coil. "I've been snooping on you since middle school. I think I can handle a little family secret."

Behind us, the monitors kept glowing. Somewhere out there, threats were being neutralized. Data was flowing. The world kept spinning, safer because people like my dad stayed up all night making sure it did.

And me? I finally understood why I'd always felt like I was watching everything from the outside. Some of us are meant to observe. Some of us are meant to connect the dots.

Just needed the right cables.