Your phone buzzes while the song changes. Bass shudders through the floor into your shoes. For a heartbeat the vibration feels like part of the party, another stimulus in a room built to drown thought. You nearly ignore it, then see the preview: an email thread, Isabella's name, the subject line you have been carrying all day like a bruise you keep pressing because you cannot believe it is real. The room is suddenly too bright and too loud. You see smiles without hearing jokes. You feel sweat at your hairline and the cheap warmth of someone else's laughter against your shoulder. The night narrows back to the operation, ruthless as a spotlight. You are not only Julian at a party anymore. You are a person standing at the edge of two lives, and one of them just knocked. [[Cybercrime/The_Phisherman/Back home|Go back home]]