The power went out at 11:23 p.m.
Not the building's full systems, which had backup generation for security and essential functions, but the residential circuit, the lights and the kitchen appliances and the ambient systems that kept the penthouse at its exact calibrated temperature and filled its silence with the hum of managed infrastructure. All of it went quiet at once, and the apartment became something different in the sudden dark, smaller somehow, more honest, without the organized brightness that had always made it feel like a performance of habitation rather than actual living.
Ethan did not stir. He slept with the complete commitment he brought to everything.
I had been in the guest room reading when the lights went. I sat for a moment in the dark, oriented myself by the ambien
