The Tech Villa on Lake Zurich
Episode 1: Happy Halloween
Between reality and fiction. Between protection and obsession. Always where light meets glass.
Author: Anne-Katrin Michelmann
"I put a spell on you and now you’re mine."
Hocus Pocus
Beneath the veil of autumn.
The Lake Zurich lay still, a mirror of black glass. Fog, creeping like cold breath over the water, began to spread. Two men stood on the upper path beneath an old linden tree. In front of them – the villa. It was that typical kind of building that didn’t even try to appear modest. A concrete cube with too much glass, looking as if it wanted to say: We can afford everything.
The taller man grinned and crossed his arms. “That’s what they call understatement, right?” The smaller one didn’t answer. His gaze lingered on the windows where the light of the lake refracted. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t feel as though they were looking at the house. It felt more like the house was looking at them. A gaze without eyes, cold and unrelenting, that pierced through the glass surfaces like a thought one cannot shake off.
Inside, a muted light glowed. No one was visible. Only designer furniture lined up neatly, as if waiting for a magazine shoot. “Look at that,” the taller one muttered. “Everything straight, everything perfect. Not even a curtain.” A gust of wind swept through the linden tree, carrying with it the scent of wood smoke and money. “A house that thinks it’s better than you,” he said quietly.
“Perfect,” the other replied. “Then let’s get back to reality. In two weeks he’s gone. New York. Symposium. He posted it on LinkedIn.”
In the rhythm of routine.
They came back. Not every day. That would have been too conspicuous. But often enough for their bodies to get used to the route.
They knew every corner of the lakeside path, every hedge that offered cover, every house with lights that went out too early or too late.
Once they passed by as joggers, with headphones but no music.
Once as walkers with a dog that wasn’t theirs.
Once in a delivery van with a magnetic logo they would peel off again in the evening.
Always the same private road, always the same villa.
Their world was routine in the shadows. A silent rehearsal of someone else’s habits, to know their victim’s life as precisely as if it were their own.
How long does she take to come back from yoga?
When does she meet her friends for shopping?
When is the house left empty?
They knew exactly when the man would fly to New York for a conference in two weeks.
The complete timeline of the symposium was available to everyone on the internet:
“Three-day symposium, plus a few meetings in Midtown,” he had written on LinkedIn.
Three hundred likes.
For the two men, it wasn’t networking. It was a countdown.
“Self-care Sunday.”
They knew more about her than she would have liked. She gave everything away without realizing it. A perfect everyday life, in perfectly filtered light. The coffee cup on the terrace, always at the same time of day.
A glass of wine by the lake at sunset. “Self-care Sunday,” she wrote underneath. Sometimes a quote about trust, sometimes a selfie in the mirror that reflected the interior of the house in the background: the open staircase, the entrance area, the chic handbag on the console table, tastefully placed — and worth more than a small car.
She left digital traces as precise as footprints in fresh snow. She didn’t have to say anything. The photos told everything: how expensive her life was and how naturally safe she felt.
For the men, she wasn’t just a woman. She was a plan. A puzzle that completed itself with every post.
Something to be watched, calculated, and eventually exploited.
Alone.
She loved autumn. She loved the lake at dusk, with the leaves tinted red and yellow. It had its own kind of beauty, one that all the destinations she had already traveled to couldn’t compete with.
But she hated the silence when her husband was away.
He was traveling again, this time for three days in New York. Five, actually, if you counted the flights.
He wrote from hotel rooms, sent selfies with tired eyes, and promised to bring her something back.
She had read the message and smiled faintly. With her luck, he’d confuse Tiffany with an Apple Store. That would be so typical of her husband.
Back then, in the middle of summer, he had led her to the window. The sun glittered on the water, and two technicians were standing in the garden with cable reels and tools.
“What’s that?” she had asked.
“Your present,” he had said — with that proud voice she loved about him.
“A… cable?”
He had laughed, like someone who had just solved the riddle of his life.
“Not a cable, darling. Intelligent technology! The best there is!”
She had nodded, politely.
Yay. Technology. Something every woman wishes for on her birthday.
He was thrilled, talking about efficiency, safety, and the future.
In 3 out of 10 burglaries, someone is at home.
Deactivated alarm systems are one of the reasons.
Halloween.
The night was loud and alive. Children in costumes ran screaming through the streets, bags full of candy, lanterns made of plastic.
Laughter, shouting, doors opening and closing. It was the perfect noise to go unnoticed.
The lake was just a dark strip, and the wind carried the children’s laughter with it.
Between them, two figures blended in.
“Tonight,” the taller one said quietly. “Tonight, no one will notice.”
“Trick or treat,” the smaller one replied with a crooked grin.
They had prepared — for weeks.
They knew every window, every camera, every corner that remained unlit.
They were sure they knew the blind spots.
They had grown used to the rhythm of the house, like to the heartbeat of a victim.
But he couldn’t help himself. Already with the first step through the open side gate, that feeling crept over him again — a faint, pressing something.
In front of them stood the villa. Its glass façade was black and gleaming, like the iris of an eye.
It stared at him, unyielding. His reflection was caught within it — tiny and distorted, half-swallowed by the darkness behind the glass.
“I swear to you, that thing’s alive,” he whispered.
The taller one laughed. “Yeah, sure. And next it’ll go ‘Boo!’”
Algorithm of desire.
They had seen many houses.
Too many.
But this one was different. And so was she.
They knew she wasn’t a party person. She was too disciplined for that, too self-absorbed.
She posted smoothie bowls, walks by the lake, sunsets with quotes about mindfulness.
No clubs, no social circle. Just her, her husband, the house — and a publicly shared wealth.
The smaller one knew every single one of those pictures.
He had saved them, first out of curiosity, then from a feeling he could no longer name.
She was delicate, almost fairy-like. Easy to overpower.
He caught himself waiting.
Waiting for her to post something new.
Waiting for the light in the villa to flare up again in that exact golden corner he had come to love and hate at the same time.
He told himself it was just preparation.
The taller one noticed the change.
“You’re in too deep, kid.”
“You have to understand her to see the mistakes.”
He looked over toward the villa.
It was no coincidence they chose Halloween. Dinner time.
It was the hour when she hadn’t yet activated the alarm system.
The house would be quiet, and the woman inside believed herself to be safe.
Fictions in the pattern of reality.
She sat curled up on the sofa.
On TV, one of those old Halloween stories from the nineties was playing.
She had chosen it on purpose because she liked how the plot breathed slowly, how the tension spread like warm steam.
Tonight was supposed to be calm and uneventful: a movie, a few candles, a glass of wine, and the comforting thought that her husband was in New York, having very successful meetings.
She had deliberately muted the gate bell.
Children would come, she knew that, and she didn’t like being pulled out of a film by ringing.
A scream in the movie echoed briefly through the room, then silence.
She laughed softly.
“What nonsense,” she muttered and picked up her phone to distract herself.
She scrolled.
Perfectly arranged images passed by.
Then she stopped on her own profile.
“I put a spell on you, and now you’re mine.” she had posted today.
Her husband had commented underneath: “And you’re mine.”
A dull sound made her look up.
Only the wind, she told herself.
In the reflection of the glass front, she saw her own face —
and behind it, for a fleeting moment, she thought she saw movement.
“Get a grip,” she whispered and reached for her wine glass.
The feeling of being watched wasn’t new.
Panic.
The phone vibrated.
She flinched, startled by the sound in the silence.
“Good evening, this is Eva from the Remote Protection Service,” said a voice — calm, professional, friendly.
For a heartbeat, she didn’t understand what that was supposed to mean.
“Excuse me?”
“Two individuals are in your garden. You are being watched.”
A shiver ran across her shoulders.
In her mind, the past few weeks began to rearrange themselves.
Suddenly everything made sense — and that made it worse.
The air felt suddenly heavy, too warm.
Then she heard a click.
Not from the movie.
From the hallway.
“Are… are the doors locked?”
“Yes,” said Eva. “We’ve just sealed all access points. No one can enter the house.”
She stood up slowly.
Her knees felt strange, as if they belonged to someone else.
“Please walk slowly to the panic room. You know where it is?”
She nodded, even though the other woman couldn’t see her.
Every step sounded too loud, too real.
Someone screamed on the TV.
She pressed the remote control.
The sound stopped — and her fear crept into every cell, silent and piercing at once.
Discovered.
His gaze clung to the glass front.
Behind the panes, he saw her — upright, pale, the phone in her hand.
The light from the TV flickered across her face, making her look ghostly for a moment.
She turned her head, just slightly, and he had the feeling she was looking straight through him.
A shiver ran down his spine.
For a split second, he saw his own reflection again — pale, distorted, a stranger in the glass.
Then the blinds began to lower, slowly, evenly, silently, like an eyelid closing over an eye.
His reflection disappeared — swallowed by the wall of metal.
He had known it.
The villa was watching him.
Not like a house.
Like something that had understood what he wanted.
“Kid, go! Now!” whispered the taller one.
A bright light cut through the fog.
Sirens, first distant, then close.
The taller one grabbed his arm.
“Police! Move, damn it!”
They ran.
All that remained was the image —
her in the light, the house in darkness,
and him in between, lost somewhere.
At the edge of the forest, he stopped, gasping for breath.
He turned around one last time. Blue and red reflections broke across the glass fronts, danced over the façade, and drew flickering lines across concrete and steel.
A barely noticeable smile crossed his face.
“You’ve put a spell on me… and now I belong to you.”
The morning after.
The sun hung low over the lake, tired and pale, as if it didn’t want to see the past evening again.
The water glittered sluggishly, as though it knew that something beneath its surface had changed — something invisible that remained.
She sat in the garden with her last glass of wine.
When the sun finally rose, she would try to sleep.
The phone vibrated.
New York.
“Hey, my love,” he said — warm, familiar, exhausted.
In the background, the metallic clatter of rolling suitcases.
“I heard everything. Are you okay?”
She smiled faintly.
“Yes. It’s… all good.”
Her voice sounded strange in her own ears, like a sentence spoken by someone else.
“So my gift was worth it after all?”
Part of her knew: yes, the system had worked.
But another part — quieter, deeper — knew that she hadn’t been alone since.
That someone out there had brushed against her life,
like a shadow that lingers even after the light has changed.
And that her everyday life now continued in another mind as well.
In his.
Afterword
With this story begins our ongoing series about the Tech Villa on Lake Zurich,
a modern Romantic Crime & Tech Thriller series. Each episode is released at a special time of the year.
Each story is about seeing and being seen,
about the fine line between reality and fiction, between protection and surveillance. We don’t just want to explain technology — we want to make it tangible —
with all its light and shadow. Because artificial intelligence is not made up only of data and algorithms,
but it reflects
who we are
and how we live.