The base comms office was empty except for me and a server rack humming in the far corner.

I opened the electric bill portal on my second screen.

The bar graph from the day before showed a huge spike in usage beginning right at midnight.

The anomaly made perfect sense now.

The eighty-dollar jump in the utility bill wasn’t a broken meter or an air conditioner left running.

The visitor was staying into the early morning.

He was turning on lights and running the water heater while the kids slept down the hall.

I checked my phone messages again.