My heart couldn’t bear it. I sent several messages—and then I learned the words that stopped my breath: “My sister had been shot”

That night, when I finally reached home, my calls to my sister met only the same cold, mechanical voice:

“The subscriber you have dialed is not reachable. Your call will be delivered to them via SMS…”

Again and again and again.

At midnight, a single message arrived from her: “I’ve reached home!”

Those five words were the last trace of her voice the network would ever carry to me.

 Moments later, the regime severed the internet and the entire SMS system across our 90-million-strong nation in one brutal stroke. Voice calls still limped along—barely—distorted, faint, and maddeningly intermittent. It was a strange, suffocating night.

 Anxiety clawed at me from every direction. That one message had steadied my heart somewhat: a dead woman cannot send a text. Yet the question gnawed deeper—why had she turned her phone off?

The next morning, I tried her. She answered almost instantly. My first words came sharp:

“Why did you switch your phone off last night?! Are you alright?”

“I’m okay… My husband said it might be dangerous. They could be listening—our phones might be tapped. So, we decided…”

 “Tapped?” I cut in. “Come on! They can’t eavesdrop on ninety million phones! It’s just another scare tactic; another lies to keep us afraid. Forget it!”

“Really? … I’m sorry. I got scared… I thought maybe…”

“Are you really alright?”

A pause. Then, very softly:

“Last night… I was hit by pellets. I’m fine, but… it hurts so much… ahh…”

One thought drowned out everything else inside me: “Your eyes. Please tell me your eyes are safe.”

Instead, I asked: “Really? Where? How many?”

“I don’t even know… It was like a rain of lead shot. My entire back… the back of my ears… everything burns. Right now, I’m lying on the bed and my daughter is pulling the tiny pellets out of my skin one by one.”

“My God…” Even though hundreds of kilometers separate us, I swear I can feel each burning pellet lodged beneath my own skin. How is such sympathy possible? How can pain travel so far, so faithfully?

As I type these lines now the same phantom agony flickers across my back. The internet remains dead. My gaze is fixed on the small, sinister icon in the top-right corner of the screen—the universal symbol of disconnection. The image is of a globe with an ominous "No Trespassing" sign emblazoned on one corner.

 A blue planet floats there, beautiful and whole. In its corner someone has brutally stamped the mark of prohibition. A red circle. A diagonal slash

Entry forbidden. Will the gates ever reopen?

Will breathe return to this silenced land once more?

Will we ever breathe again?

Link to chapter 4

(As I'm publishing this, internet is up and running after 3 weeks of total darkness, but it is still very unstable and hard to reach. I can't upload many images and answer comments, but I appreciate them and read them all and like them. Honestly it's so frustrating to wait to upload a single image for half and hour or more. But I'm thankful that we at least didn't lose it yet. And I'm still here,)