I'd been working night security on the lot long enough to know that the job only worked if nothing happened.

That was the point of it.

Repetition.

You walked the same routes, check the same doors, log the same confirmations, until the motions stopped requiring thought.

The nights where you started thinking were the

nights who missed something. The site itself was massive. Warehouses, office blocks, loading bays,

service corridors stitched together with access roads and fencing. During the day, it was loud and chaotic. At night,

it emptied out so completely it felt abandoned. Most shifts were automated, sensors reporting

back to a central system, cameras cycling, logs filling themselves in. I was pretty much paid to watch Netflix all year, because nothing ever went wrong.

Christmas Eve was the exception.

Early closures meant that all the building's operations had to be shut down.

Temporary overrides had to be applied and removed manually.

Systems that normally talked to each other got staggered or isolated.

For one night a year, the site stopped being able to rely on automation alone.

So, on this one day of the year, the job changed.

Instead of monitoring, I had to be present, physically verify locks, reset zones by hand,

confirm lighting, power routing, access points, All of it untight specific timings.

It wasn't dangerous, just precise.

Work where being five minutes late mattered more than being absent.

There was a failsafe for nights like that, a full-site reset unit locked away in the central security hub.

I'd been shown it during training years ago, back when I still had a supervisor walking me through procedures,

designed for what the manual called, full-sight instability.

...