She was walking home from her gig at Quantum Drop, a cloud storage startup. Her apartment key fob was broken, so she relied on —a rolling code generator that cloned her building's RFID signal. She tapped the Geeklock to the panel. Click. The door opened.

"Geeklock Utilitas is not responsible for injuries resulting from unauthorized utility #171 or higher. For classified applications, contact your local Field Office."

"Recommendation: Activate Distress Beacon (Util #88). Activate Sonic Disruptor (Util #143). Exit via fire escape in 12 seconds."

Below it, a single line of text: "Three humans. Heartbeats elevated. One in the kitchen, two in the living room. Breathing pattern: impatient."

Mara didn’t think. She tapped the screen. A high-pitched whine erupted from the Geeklock’s tiny speaker—not loud enough to hurt, but perfectly tuned to disorient. From the living room, she heard muffled swearing and the crash of a lamp.

She’d bought it from a defunct crowdfunding campaign: the . A chunky, hexagonal wristband with a tiny e-ink screen, a retractable USB-C dongle, and a gyroscope that could detect a paperclip drop from three feet away. The marketing copy had promised "170+ utilities for the modern geek."

A password manager that unlocked her laptop when she tapped it twice. Utility #59: A thermal sensor that helped her find the perfect spot for her coffee mug. Utility #104: A silent "meeting scrambler" that played random keyboard clacks through her headphones during boring Zoom calls.