Chapter 3: Collateral Damage and a New System

Leo stared at Clara's text message for the third time that morning, his thumb hovering over the keyboard. The cursor blinked expectantly in the reply field, but every response he drafted seemed to carry too much risk. How did she even get his number?

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sound at his door made Leo's blood freeze. It was 9:47 AM—too early for deliveries, too late for emergency services. The Wolf Pack never knocked; they just existed in their realm of perpetual noise above his head, which had remained blissfully silent for eighteen hours now.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

More insistent this time. Leo muted his laptop and moved carefully to the door, avoiding the creaky floorboard near his mixing board. Through the peephole, he saw a woman in her seventies wearing a prim cardigan and an expression that could cut glass.

Mrs. Gable from 2A. His downstairs neighbor.

Leo's stomach dropped. In all his acoustic calculations, he'd focused on projecting sound upward toward the Wolf Pack. He hadn't considered how much might travel downward through the building's structure.

He opened the door to find Eleanor Gable standing with her arms crossed, her gray hair pulled back in a severe bun that matched her severe expression. She was small but carried herself with the kind of authority that came from thirty years as a high school principal before retirement.

"Mr. Vance," she said, her voice crisp and controlled. "We need to talk."

"Mrs. Gable, I—"

"Inside." She stepped past him without invitation, her sharp eyes immediately cataloging his equipment-filled apartment. "Interesting setup you have here."

Leo closed the door, his mind racing through damage control scenarios. Mrs. Gable had lived in the building longer than anyone. If she complained to the landlord, if she'd figured out what happened last night...

"I know what you did," she said simply, turning to face him.

The words hit Leo like a physical blow. His carefully constructed life, his refuge, his entire operation—all of it crumbling because he'd been too focused on his target to consider collateral damage.

"Mrs. Gable, I can explain—"

"That sound last night." She walked closer to his speaker array, still covered with the black cloth. "At 2:47 AM. Ninety seconds duration, repeated once. I haven't experienced anything like it since my late husband took me to see a Maori cultural performance in Auckland forty years ago."

Leo's mouth went dry. She knew about the Haka. She knew the exact timing. And from the way she was studying his equipment, she was connecting dots faster than he could think of ways to disconnect them.

"The acoustic properties were fascinating," Mrs. Gable continued, running her fingers along the edge of his mixing board. "Subsonic frequencies that I could feel in my bones, harmonic structures designed for maximum psychological impact. Very sophisticated work."

"You don't understand," Leo said desperately. "They've been keeping me awake for months. Every night, stomping around, playing music, throwing parties. I just wanted some peace—"

"Oh, I understand perfectly." Mrs. Gable's stern expression softened slightly. "I've been living under those animals for eighteen months. Kyle Martinez and his pack of degenerates have made this building a living hell for anyone who values quiet and common decency."

Leo blinked. "You... you know about them?"

"Mr. Vance, I was a high school principal for three decades. I can identify problem children from a mile away." She gestured toward the ceiling. "Those boys up there are the same breed of entitled brat I dealt with every day—the kind who believe the world exists solely for their entertainment."

Relief flooded through Leo so quickly he nearly stumbled. She wasn't here to turn him in. She was...

"You're on my side?"

"I'm on the side of civilized behavior," Mrs. Gable corrected. "But what you did last night? That wasn't civilized. It was warfare."

She moved to his window and peered out at the street below, where a few people were still clustered in small groups, probably discussing the previous night's mysterious sound.

"Do you see Mrs. Patterson out there? The elderly woman with the walker?" Mrs. Gable pointed to a frail figure struggling to navigate the sidewalk. "She has a heart condition. Your little sonic experiment gave her palpitations that lasted until dawn. She's terrified to sleep in her own apartment."

The weight of guilt settled on Leo's shoulders like lead. In his calculations, he'd accounted for structural transmission, frequency response, and acoustic penetration. He hadn't calculated for Mrs. Patterson's weak heart, or the family with young children three buildings over, or the war veteran whose PTSD symptoms had been triggered by what sounded like an artillery barrage.

"I didn't know," Leo said quietly.

"Of course you didn't. You were so focused on your target that you forgot about everyone else in the blast radius." Mrs. Gable turned back to him, her expression mixing disappointment with something that might have been understanding. "The same mistake every brilliant young person makes—thinking their problems exist in a vacuum."

Leo sank into his desk chair, suddenly feeling older than his twenty-eight years. The acoustic weapon that had seemed so elegant, so perfectly targeted, had actually been a blunt instrument causing chaos throughout the neighborhood.

"But," Mrs. Gable continued, her voice taking on a different tone, "I didn't come here to lecture you about collateral damage."

"You didn't?"

A small smile played at the corners of her mouth—the first crack in her stern facade. "I came here to tell you that for the first time in eighteen months, I slept through the night without being woken up by elephants dancing overhead."

Leo stared at her. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that while your methods were crude and caused unnecessary suffering to innocent people, your core objective was sound." She gestured toward the ceiling. "Those boys have terrorized this building with impunity because they know the system is rigged in their favor. Noise complaints take months to process. The landlord won't act without overwhelming evidence. The police consider it a civil matter unless it reaches criminal levels."

Mrs. Gable walked back to his equipment, her fingers trailing across the covered speaker array with what looked almost like admiration.

"But you? You found a way to speak their language. To communicate in the only medium they understand: overwhelming force."

"Mrs. Gable, I can't do that again. Not after seeing what it did to the neighborhood."

"Of course not. Brute force was your first instinct, but you're smarter than that." She pulled out her phone and showed him a screenshot of the #PhantomHaka hashtag. "Look at this circus. People making videos, amateur detectives trying to solve the mystery, urban legend websites picking up the story. You've made yourself famous when you needed to stay invisible."

Leo looked at the social media chaos he'd created, the hundreds of comments and theories, the growing obsession with identifying the source of the mysterious sound. Clara's text message seemed to burn in his pocket.

"What I need," Mrs. Gable said, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "is a partner who understands that this isn't about revenge. It's about justice. It's about restoring civilized behavior to civilized people."

"A partner?"

"You have the technical skills. I have thirty years of experience managing problem children and three decades of living in this building. I know their schedules, their weaknesses, their pressure points." She leaned closer. "But more importantly, I understand that this needs to be surgical, not nuclear."

Leo found himself drawn into her logic despite his guilt about the previous night. "What are you proposing?"

Mrs. Gable pulled a small notebook from her purse and flipped it open, revealing pages of meticulous handwriting. "Kyle Martinez works Tuesday and Thursday nights at the sports bar on Fifth Street. He gets home around 2 AM and immediately starts his 'pre-sleep workout routine'—which consists of jumping jacks and what I can only assume is amateur breakdancing. Jake Thompson has online gaming sessions every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 11 PM to 4 AM, complete with shouting matches with his teammates. Tyler Walsh—"

"You've been documenting them?"

"Mr. Vance, I've been waiting eighteen months for someone with the tools to do something about this situation. Last night proved you have the capability. Now you need the strategy."

Leo looked at her notebook, filled with times, dates, behavioral patterns, and detailed observations. It was more thorough than any project brief he'd ever received. Mrs. Gable hadn't just been suffering in silence—she'd been conducting reconnaissance.

"You want me to what, exactly?"

"I want you to treat this like what it actually is: a professional project." She closed the notebook with a snap. "Not an emotional outburst, not a crime of passion. A systematic restoration of order using precisely applied pressure at strategically chosen moments."

Leo's engineer mind was already turning over the possibilities. Targeted audio bursts during specific activities. Frequency-specific disruptions that would affect only the intended targets. Acoustic countermeasures that wouldn't propagate beyond their immediate vicinity.

"It would have to be completely different from last night," he said slowly. "Focused. Controlled. No collateral damage."

"Exactly. Think of it as moving from carpet bombing to sniper fire."

Despite his guilt about Mrs. Patterson and the chaos he'd created, Leo felt a spark of intellectual excitement. This wasn't just about getting revenge on his noisy neighbors anymore. It was about solving a complex technical problem with elegant precision.

"I'd need detailed intelligence on their routines," he said. "Timing, activities, even which rooms they're using when."

Mrs. Gable smiled—a sharp, predatory expression that reminded Leo she'd spent decades dealing with unruly teenagers. "Mr. Vance, I have a clear line of sight into their apartment from my kitchen window. I know when they eat, when they sleep, when they argue, and when they bring dates home. I know Kyle's girlfriend dumps him every other month and comes crawling back when her rent is due. I know Jake orders the same Thai food every Tuesday and tips poorly. I know Tyler practices guitar badly every Sunday afternoon."

Leo opened his laptop and created a new folder. "Operation: Sonic Justice - Phase Two."

"Catchy name," Mrs. Gable observed.

"If we're going to do this, we do it right. Complete operational planning, targeted objectives, measurable outcomes." Leo's fingers flew across the keyboard as he began outlining a new approach. "No more blunt instruments. No more collateral damage. We become surgical."

Mrs. Gable pulled up a chair beside him, her notebook open to a page titled "Wolf Pack Activity Log - Week of October 15th."

"Then let's begin," she said. "I believe it's time to show those boys that actions have consequences. Precise, carefully calibrated consequences."

As they worked together, mapping out schedules and behavioral patterns, Leo felt something he hadn't experienced since the nightmare began: hope. Not the desperate, angry hope of a man driven to his breaking point, but the steady confidence of a professional approaching a solvable problem.

The war for silence was entering a new phase. One where brains would triumph over brawn, where precision would replace power, and where two unlikely allies would prove that sometimes the best revenge was served with perfect acoustic timing.

Above them, the Wolf Pack's apartment remained quiet. But Leo was no longer just grateful for the silence.

He was planning for its permanent return.