[Intro: Female Lead, whispered]
Pager at midnight.
Three notes split the bedroom black.
Twelve-oh-three burns on the clock.
The dark has called MAH-rah back.

[Verse 1: Female Lead, Mara]
Bare feet cross the kitchen tile.
The laptop wakes and takes a while.
"Smoke in rack sixteen," it claims.
The camera shows no heat, no flames.
MAH-rah calls the downstairs guard.
Dust has choked the sensor hard.
She clears the fault and kills the light.
The plastic teeth reset to bite.

[Pre-Chorus: Female Lead]
First false fire, then test-nine,
dead for years but paging fine.
Half-shut eyes inspect the thread.
Nothing lives, but nothing's dead.

[Chorus: Female Lead with Male Countervoice]
Pager at midnight, teeth in the dark,
three short pulses strike the spark.
One hand on coffee, one on the door,
bare feet planted on the kitchen floor.
Most bells lie and waste your breath.
One rings true and names the threat.

[Verse 2: Female Lead, Mara]
At one-forty-six, test-nine clears,
retired and ownerless for years.
The lid comes down. A truck grinds past.
Silence settles, thin as glass.
At two-seventeen, the pager cries.
The payment graph begins to dive.
Cards enter. No reply comes back.
The checkout queue turns hard and black.

[Pre-Chorus: Alternating Vocals, Female First]
"TAH-reek, wake. The totals dropped."
"Which region failed?"
"Not one. The lot."

[Chorus: Duet]
Pager at midnight, teeth in the dark,
three short pulses strike the spark.
One hand on coffee, one on the door,
bare feet planted on the kitchen floor.
Most bells lie and waste your breath.
One rings true and names the threat.

[Verse 3: Alternating Vocals]
LAY-nah joins with tangled hair.
TAH-reek pulls the ledger bare.
Ten thousand purchases wait in line,
each one trapped at checkout time.
No dust, dead test, or easy cause.
The queue keeps climbing without pause.
Cold noodles skin beside the screen.
The status page stays falsely green.

[Instrumental Break: accelerating pager motif, alternating six-eight toms and rigid four-four guitars]

[Bridge: Female Lead]
MAH-rah braces against the chair,
blue-white heat across her stare.
One cheap device on kitchen stone
props a company alone.

[Breakdown: Alternating Vocals]
Two-seventeen.
Payments down.
Open the channel.
Wake the town.

[Final Chorus: Duet]
Pager at midnight, teeth in the dark,
three joined voices feed the spark.
Coffee goes cold by the kitchen door;
the failed queue shakes the concrete floor.
Most bells lied and stole our breath.
This bell rang and named the threat.

[Outro: Female Lead, spoken]
The clock turns two-eighteen.
The status page remains green.
MAH-rah types: "Major incident.
Take control."
