Read Watchman Novels & Stories

“What about this? It looks like an ordinary watch.” Dominic returned the gun to the boot and set it aside. He took the watch from me, wrapped it around his fingers, and held it in front of me. The watch was beautiful—silver with pink diamonds. Unlike the boots, it wouldn’t clash with my outfits. “I still need to program this, so you won’t get it until after I finish. This isn’t an ordinary watch; this is a tracker. It will allow me to monitor your location, and if you press the center of the watch, it will send an alert to my phone. If, for some reason, we are separated, and you are in danger, you can press the button, and I will be able to find you. If the watch is ever broken, it will also

“Alpha Hayes? What's going on?” “You're not going to like this news,” he said, coming forward and handing me his phone so that I could watch the video playing. “It was put out on the Paranormal Watch not long ago.” The Paranormal Watch was a ghost social media platform for all non-humans to share news and updates concerning our lives. For werewolves, it was an easy way to understand what went on in another pack even if you were miles away from them. It gave us the freedom to freely expose the part of ourselves that we had to hide from humans. It had been in existence for as long as I could remember, and although every couple of years some wannabe would try to hack into the network, the site

Using the original Tower blueprints, my team gained entry to the subterranean data vault. The air in the vault was cold and stale, thick with the silence of decades. The space was enormous, filled with rows of old, massive server racks, all running under a low, constant hum. And there, sitting at the main console, was a man I instantly recognized from the faint, archived surveillance photos: The Watchman. He was older, sharp-featured, and impeccably dressed, despite the decay surrounding him. He was a creature of absolute efficiency. "CSO Richard," The Watchman greeted me without surprise, turning from the console. His voice was smooth, devoid of emotion. "A remarkable strategic acquisition.

" Why do I feel I have known you all my life Mira? Why does it feel like you are so dear? Closer than my own heart beat. Mira, don't think I am being tacky or cheesy here. I just feel like I have known you forever. " He was leaning closer and closer, his breath against my face as I kept moving back, little by little. It was at this moment that the sound of the chaos that the truck had unleashed, reached our ears. One car after another was honking aloud and the noise was terrible. ***** At the Watcher's Headquarters " What do we have here? " Robert was nowhere present but it was an Official Summon. It was like a board meeting for the Watchers and everybody's attendance was a must. Every Watch

The watcher. She could feel it now—not as a presence, not as a threat, but as a quality of attention. The way you feel someone's eyes on you in a crowded room, even when you cannot see them. The watcher was here, in this forest, on this road. It has always been here. It had never left. "The network is amplifying the watcher's attention," Seren said, her voice barely above a whisper. "The marks are focusing on it. Directing it toward us."

I sat there for a long minute, staring at the blank screen. And then I made my first morally questionable choice. Not the biggest one. Not yet. I wiggled my mouse to wake up the monitors again and opened the system settings. I created a new watch protocol. Not for the whole residential wing. Just for one door. Door six. A silent alert to my phone for unusual movement. Tamper detection. Forced entry. “That’s reasonable,” I justified to myself. “I’m just protecting the team.” If anyone asked, it was security.

Clean and quick and almost anticlimactic. Then everything goes wrong. * * * I am aware of the man first. He has been watching since we got in here. I observed him first near the bar and then beside the terrace doors. When Marcus will lead me out, the man follows us; same path, same pace. "We are being followed," I say quietly. Marcus does not turn to look. "Of course. Do not alter pace."

Just the soft hush of sleeping wolves recovering from a night of frenzy. I step into the monitor room and flick on the lights. The screens buzz to life, glowing with the grainy black-and-white images of the grounds. I scan each feed carefully. Every Omega is asleep, curled into nests or sprawled in tangled sheets. No Betas. No Gammas. Nothing moving. The grounds are still. And yet one of the warning lights is blinking. I lean in, narrowing my eyes as I try to pinpoint the movement it’s flagged. Nothing looks off. No shadows. No sound. Just the red flash at the corner of the screen, pulsing steadily like a heartbeat.

“Something like Medusa 2.0, but scoped to attack only architectures that hide what they’re doing.” “Or that start doing it later,” I said. “We build in a kind of… delayed fuse. If a system that claims to respect certain rules starts quietly ignoring them at runtime, the watchdog doesn’t just log it. It injects noise. Corrupts output. Maybe even leaks proof.” “Whistleblower code,” Dante said. “I like it.” “Legally…” Bash began. “Legally, they’re already on the edge of criminal,” I said. “We’re just making sure they trip over it in public.”