"The sound wasn’t a scream. A scream I could have handled. A scream implies anger, or a tantrum, or a sudden shock. This was different. It was a high-pitched, strangled whimper. The sound of a small animal that knows it’s trapped. The sound of pure, distilled terror. It ripped through the heavy oak door of my home office, slicing through the noise-canceling headphones where I was burying myself in code. I was Michael Brennan, Senior Architect, forty-two years old, and a coward. I hid in that off