Zack hit Send and waited. Moments later, three dots appeared in the text window. Here we go. But just as suddenly as it had appeared, the screen turned black, and the words “No Service” appeared at the top of the phone. What? How could that be?

Zack stood up, walked over to the wall, and hit the light switch. Might as well get dressed. He knew he’d pay for it by early afternoon when his eyes would hurt and the feeling of fatigue would set in, but he didn’t care—he and his wife had successfully raised two kids so far. He knew what true sleep deprivation was like.

As he walked into the bathroom, the voice-over-IP phone he had on the nightstand caught his attention. “No Service” was displayed in gray digital letters, and Zack’s pulse quickened. No way. No cell service and no internet? He was not a completely paranoid man, but the chances that both would suddenly go down in the middle of the night had to be incredibly rare.

Once he finished in the bathroom, he dressed quickly in dark gray sweatpants and a black Under Armour hoodie. He felt more secure in dark clothes at night—a holdover from his former career.

Once in his office, he fired up the outrageously expensive desktop iMac that he used for programming and was unsurprised to see the pie slice of curved lines grayed out. The internet was still down. Another burst of wind rattled the office windows, a sign of the impending cold front. A chill passed through him, but not one caused by the cold.

Zack walked to the office closet, opened the door, and bent down to enter a five-digit code on the front panel of a two-drawer floor safe. He told his family that it contained their personal documents in case of a fire—which was true—but it also had several work-related items and one piece of equipment that might have raised the eyebrows of his beautiful wife—an Iridium satellite phone.

Zack grabbed the handset, powered it up, and walked toward the kitchen and the back of the house. He stopped at the kitchen island, picked up a small fob remote, and disarmed the home’s alarm system. Three beeps sounded and he slid the back door open, walked through the screened-in porch, and exited to the back deck, an expansive area that contained his smoker, grill, and a luxurious set of patio furniture.

He looked at the phone and stopped dead in his tracks. No service. A creeping sensation of dread spread throughout his gut. Something’s happening. There’s no way they can know. He’d been careful to the point of fanatical paranoia in planning tomorrow’s event, but still, his mind played tricks on him, especially at three in the morning.