The sound stopped but its echo stayed behind, buzzing in my skull—low and mean, like a swarm of thoughts that wouldn't settle.
Jason was still crouched, breathing hard. I watched his shoulders rise and fall in silence, each breath sharp like he was trying to hold himself together one inhale at a time. His fists were clenched, knuckles pale. There was something raw about him in that moment—wounded, but alert.
He didn't speak. Neither did I. The air between us was thick, waiting.
Minutes passed—maybe seconds. Time felt strange in that room. It folded in on itself, slow and looping, like it had forgotten how to move forward.
As if on cue, the speaker crackled to life again, the sharp noise slicing through the tension in the room. A new voice emerged—male, smooth, but with an edge of something darkly amused, almost as if he was enjoying our confusion.
"You're catching on," the voice said, a strange hint of mockery threading through the words. "But you're late to the game."
Jason stiffened, his posture straightening, his jaw setting in determination. "Who are you?"
There was a moment of unnerving silence, the kind that stretched between us, thick and suffocating, like something pressing on my chest. Then, the voice returned, this time softer, colder, as if it was savoring every syllable.
"That depends. Who do you think we are? Your past? Your punishment?"
Jason didn't answer, his fists clenching at his sides, a muscle twitching in his jaw. The question hung in the air, unanswered, filling the space with more questions than we could grasp. The weight of it pressed against us, the feeling that we were walking into a trap we didn't fully understand.
The voice continued, its tone almost condescending now, as though it were speaking to children playing in a game far too complicated for them to understand.
"You'll find out soon enough," it said, the words dropping like stones in water, slow and deliberate. "But for now, let's see what she remembers."
The line went dead again, leaving only the hollow sound of my own breath in my ears.
I turned to look at Jason, my heart thudding in my chest. The silence that followed was oppressive, thick with the weight of everything we hadn't said, everything we didn't understand.
Jason's eyes met mine, and I could feel the unspoken question in them, the same question that burned in me. What did they mean? What was all of this leading to?
I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came. The memory, the faint echo of something old and forgotten, began to resurface—something from the past.
A shadow of something I thought I had long buried. And the more I tried to grasp it, the more it slipped away, leaving only an overwhelming sense of dread in its place.
A memory from years ago.
I was thirteen. Maybe fourteen.
Mama would sit on the edge of her bed in the late hours, long after she thought I was asleep. The lamplight would spill over her shoulders, her silhouette hunched forward, pen in hand. Page after page. Her writing never stopped.
I never asked what was inside. She never offered. And even though she didn't tell me not to look, I never dared.
I used to think it was about the cancer. Her pain. Her past. Her slow goodbye. I thought she just needed a place to put it all.
But I remember how she wrapped it—like something sacred. Wrapped it in fabric, like a wound she didn't want the world to see. Slipped it behind the loose panel in her wardrobe. Not hidden out of shame. Hidden with purpose.
Now I see it.
That journal… it wasn't just hers.
It was mine. A warning. A key.
My hands trembled in my lap, sweat blooming down my back despite the cold. I tasted metal—fear, memory, or both.
And I couldn't say a word—not with Jason staring, not with the walls listening. So I said nothing.
Jason was still watching me. Like he could tell something had cracked open inside me—but not what.
All those years I passed it by, like a child too polite for her own good.
What if I'd opened it then?
Would we still be here?
But deep inside, I was burning with one truth.
I know where it is.
A low mechanical sound echoed from above.
We both looked up.
Something was being lowered through the vent—slow, deliberate. A rope. And tied at the end of it… a package. Wrapped in brown paper. Still warm.
Dinner.
But my mind was elsewhere. The journal—the one I had never opened—kept pulling at me.
The question wouldn't leave me:
What if everything we needed was inside it?