Leo sat hunched by the broad window of his room, the freezing glass pressing a faint, aching imprint against his palm. Outside, the vast night sprawled before him, a shimmering tapestry of muted lights that seemed far and indifferent.
It was a world continuing its relentless rotation, oblivious to the chasm of absence that had opened in his life.
It had been nearly a month, thirty long, dragging days, since Mara, his mother, had left, yet the void she left behind still gnawed at him, a hollow, unyielding ache deep in his gut.
He had tried, with a desperate, fragile hope, to convince himself she was okay. She could be on some long, drawn-out trip she hadn't told him about. She just needed space, a break from... everything. She could be safe somewhere, and he didn't know it yet.
Deep down, in the quiet space behind his forced optimism, something about the pervasive quiet, the lack of any word, didn't sit right. It felt wrong, unnatural.
He'd spent sleepless nights replaying every conversation he'd had with Mara in the days leading up to her disappearance, every look he'd exchanged with Harry, his father, rigid and guarded since Mara was gone, and Dash, his younger sibling, withdrawn.
He searched their faces, their words, and their silences, desperate for cracks in their constructed stories, for some hidden clue: nothing, more questions, more unsettling voids.
He was lost in this weary loop of doubt and grief when the phone's loud, insistent buzz shattered the fragile calm of the room like breaking glass. He fumbled for it, his breath catching in his throat.
"Dash."
He answered, recognizing the number even if the voice that spoke was rough, urgent, and unfamiliar, strained with a tension Leo had never heard before.
He and Dash hadn't spoken much since Mara vanished, only polite nods across the shared spaces of the house, awkward and cautious, like two strangers forced by circumstance to share a roof, trapped in a tension neither knew how to ease.
"We need to talk," Dash stated, cutting straight to the point, the words tumbling out in a rush. "About Mom."
Leo's pulse surged, sharp and irregular, as if his body were bracing for impact. A chill crept up his spine, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake.
The word, Mom, felt heavier now, burdened by the weight of her prolonged absence, echoing in the sudden, terrible significance of Dash's tone.
"What about her?" His voice was a whisper, quieter and far more fragile than he intended, laced with a fear he couldn't name yet.
There was a significant pause on the other end, filled only by the sound of Dash's ragged, uneven breathing. A confession came, delivered in a hurried torrent. "Dad… Harry's been using the Lennox Corporation's neural tech. The memory modification stuff. Not just on himself, but on us. On me. Igor, too."
Leo frowned, blinking against the sudden, dizzying rush of disbelief that threatened to overwhelm him. Memories erased? Regulated?
That sounded like something ripped from a dystopian science fiction novel, not something happening within the walls of their normal life.
Dash's voice didn't waver; it carried a weight, a natural conviction that chilled Leo deeper than the night air already slipping through the slight crack he'd left in the windowpane.
"I… I didn't know," Leo stammered, struggling to process the words. "I thought, I thought Mom was just… gone. That she'd left." He swallowed hard, the lump in his throat thick with a dawning, horrifying realization.
"I never suspected… Harry could do something like this. Would do this."
Dash's voice dropped lower still, with the secret burden he carried. "I found out by eavesdropping, sneaking around where I shouldn't have been. I heard Dad talking about it. There's a trigger phrase he uses that can wipe clean parts of Igor's mind and erase whole sections. Dad maintains it all, managing the tech straight from the company's system."
His voice cracked. "Pieces of me feel like they're missing, Leo. Like my memories aren't… aren't mine anymore. Like they've been tampered with."
Leo's gaze, which had been fixed on his hand pressed against the cold glass, drifted back to the outside.
Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed, faint and relentless, a mournful sound that now felt like a warning he hadn't been able to hear, hadn't been allowed to hear, until this moment.
His mother's absence wasn't a sad, perplexing mystery anymore. It was a horrifying puzzle of calculated betrayal and reality he hadn't been ready to face, orchestrated by the man who was supposed to be their father.
"Why are you telling me now?" Leo's voice was tight and guarded, suspicion overriding the shock. Why him? Why, after all this time and quiet?
"Because I don't trust anyone else," Dash said, the pain lacing each word unmistakable now. "Not Harry. Not the people at Lennox who are involved. And because you… You deserve to know the truth about what Dad is hiding. About what he did."
The room felt colder, the shadows in the corners lengthening and deepening like the secrets that had just been laid bare between them. The familiar space felt alien, tainted.
Leo gripped the phone, knuckles white, as Dash's hesitant words hung substantially with unspoken fears and the weight of the revelation.
He didn't know what lay ahead now. The future, moments ago uncertain, now felt terrifyingly malleable.
One chilling thing was terrifyingly certain: the past, the memories they trusted as the foundation of their lives, was not safe. The moments they thought were theirs could all be erased, rewritten, or stolen by Harry.
He whispered, the sound almost not audible even to himself, his voice imbued with a newfound, desperate resolve, "We'll figure this out, Dash. We have to. Together."
Outside, the cold, indifferent stars blinked down from the sky, silent, ancient witnesses to a family unraveling in the creeping darkness, their reality rewritten by a father's terrible secret.
Dash POV:
Dash sat on the edge of his bed, phone still warm in his hand from the call to Leo. The conversation echoed in his mind, awkward and strained like two strangers trying to connect through a fog neither could penetrate.
Leo's silence about their mom gnawed at him. Had Leo given up? Worse, did he know something Dash didn't?
The cul-de-sac outside shimmered, the lights bleeding through the thin curtains, but the glow felt hollow, like a heartless mockery of the truth Dash was chasing. The stars overhead might as well have been cold, dead eyes watching him spiral.
His thoughts crashed: How much is Harry hiding? What isn't he telling us? That voice he'd overheard, his father's voice, about erasing memories and controlling minds, it wasn't just paranoia.
It was real. The chip inside his head, the thing that had always made him feel less human, felt like a prison cell. A leash.
Is Mom gone? Did Dad erase her, too?
The questions burned in his chest, squeezing his breath tighter with every beat. The Lennox Corporation, his family's empire, was not just a symbol of power and prestige. It was a web of shadows and lies, and he was caught in the center.
He clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms. He wanted to scream, to rage against the silence that answered him every time he sought the truth. He was alone. Alone with his suspicions, along with the fear that everything he knew was a produced lie.
Worst of all, he had no idea who else was pulling the strings.
Dash closed his eyes, a bitter taste in his mouth. The cold seeped into his bones, but the fire in his gut refused to die.
I have to find her. I have to find Mom.
It meant tearing down everything.
Dash pushed himself up from the bed, every muscle tight with restless urgency. The room felt too small, the walls closing in like the lies he was desperate to unravel.
He paced toward the window, staring out at the sprawling cityscape, the glow of corporate towers flickering like outlying warnings.
His fingers hovered over his phone. Calling Leo again wouldn't help, not yet. Leo was guarded. Like a stranger who carried secrets, Dash wasn't ready to hear.
No. He needed something concrete. Evidence.
He thought back to the muffled conversations he'd overheard, fragments of encrypted calls, hushed voices, and coded language about "memory resets" and "project approvals." Harry had been sloppy, leaving threads for Dash to follow if he looked closely enough.
Dash grabbed his laptop from the desk, heart pounding as he powered it on. The secure connection to the Lennox Corporation archives was a risk, but he had access; it was his family's empire. At least, it was supposed to be.
He typed in commands, hands trembling but determined, diving into confidential folders, encrypted files buried underneath layers of corporate secrecy.
A term flickered on the screen: "White Angels." Unknown, yet familiar from the whispers he'd caught.
Dash froze. Who were they? Allies? Enemies? The pieces didn't fit. He sensed a presence in the glooms of the data like ghosts manipulating his family's fate.
He breathed harder as a ping startled him, a secured email, unopened, sitting in his inbox.
The sender was anonymous.
The subject line read: "Answers lie beneath the silence."
His fingers hesitated. Every warning screamed in his mind: Don't open it. It may be a trap.
His inner blaze wouldn't let him look away.
He clicked.