A door breaks downstairs.

Not opens, breaks.

Then running, a scream cut in half, and another door slamming hard enough to shake my picture on the wall.

Mum rushes into my room. No lights. No talking. Just one word: “Hide". Then she’s gone. I hear her shout. I hear something answer. Then nothing at all.
The quiet feels wrong, heavy, a pause before something terrible.

I crawl out and go to the doorway.
Mum is lying on the floor. She isn’t moving. I really want her to get up. She doesn’t.
Something stands over her.

It’s shaped like a person, but wrong, like a scarecrow made of metal instead of straw. It leans forward, stiff and heavy, guarding the doorway like it was put there to keep children out.

Blades hang where arms should be. Two red lights glow where eyes ought to see.

Grey skin stretches around ports and plates, like the machine is trying to wear a man.

Three metal cylinders stick out of its back like extra bones.

The press gangs do not have to know your name. They only need a flag on your account and somewhere to put you: a van by the service doors, men in delivery jackets, a stairwell camera looking the other way.

Miss a payment. Click no on the new terms. Forget to say yes before the deadline. One breach gets you marked. The next gets you moved. After that comes the drone factory, pan-cleaning, and the kind of upgrade nobody wants.

Bunny slips from my hand. He hits the floor with almost no sound.

The scarecrow hears anyway.

Its head turns without its shoulders. The red lights find Bunny.

Then me.

It steps over Mum like she’s part of the floor. One heavy boot, then the other.

It has no mouth for sorry, no nose for burnt toast or rain or the smell of Mum’s soap. The company took all the human shapes away when Dad missed his payment and didn’t come home.

But I still recognise the scarecrow, the way one hand knows another even in the dark.

Some small part of me knows.

Daddy is home.