The quiet in the house was suffocating, wrapping around him like a constricting shroud.
Leo stood frozen in Mara's old office, the memory crystal heavy in his coat pocket. The glow from the desk lamp cast long, trembling shadows that seemed to crawl across the walls like living things.
Outside, the rain drummed a steady rhythm on the roof, but inside, everything had fallen into a stifling stillness.
Then, the faintest sound. A shuffle. A soft scraping just beyond the door, like nails dragging lightly against wood.
His heart slammed against his ribs, each beat pounding louder in the hollow room. He spun toward the door, muscles taut and senses sharpened to a razor's edge. The lamp's weak light spilled out into the hallway, but the shadows beyond it seemed to thicken, pulsing with a darkness that didn't belong.
He stepped out, every footfall swallowed by the carpet, and the cold whisper of air slid over his skin. The hallway stretched before him, dark, endless. Gone was the house's steady murmur, replaced with a silence so absolute it seemed out of place.
A faint breath, almost a sigh, drifted from the far end near the staircase. Leo froze, every nerve screaming. The portraits of the Lennox ancestors loomed above him, their painted eyes glittering like cold coals, watching and judging. A sudden chill slithered down his spine.
He edged forward, drawn by an invisible pull. A flicker of movement caught his eye near the archway, a shifting shadow too quick to catch, vanishing before he could react.
A whisper, barely audible, grazed his ear. Words lost to the rain and the dark, but the threat was clear: he was not alone.
He turned sharply toward the window. Outside, the garden lay drenched in ghostly silver moonlight, rain dripping in slow, cold tears from the leaves. The iron gate was closed tight, unbroken, but Leo felt the weight of eyes watching him from beyond the glass, silent, unseen.
His breath hitched. The lock clicked behind him as he shut the door. The room contracted under the weight of encroaching shadows, the atmosphere thick with concealed whispers.
Leo swallowed hard, fingers trembling as he slid the memory crystal back into his coat. The walls seemed to close around him, the past and present entwining in a suffocating grip.
Something was here.
Watching.
Waiting.
Leo paused at the door to Mara's office, his fingers lingering on the cold metal handle. With deliberate care, he turned the lock, the soft click echoing in the stillness like a warning. Inside, the faint glow of the desk lamp cast long shadows over scattered papers and half-forgotten keepsakes, reminders of a life abruptly paused.
He slipped the copied memory crystal into the inside pocket of his coat, pressing his hand over it as if to steady the fragile weight of the secret it held. Taking a deep breath, Leo stepped away from the room, the locked door sealing the past behind him as he moved toward whatever uncertain future waited outside.
Dash was already there when Leo slipped into the garage, a cramped, shadowy space that smelled of oil and cold metal. He paced restlessly beneath the flickering overhead light, the dull glow casting jittery shadows on the concrete walls.
The usual hum of security monitors was absent, replaced by an eerie silence that made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something wasn't right. The grid had been acting up, glitches in the cameras, untraceable blackouts, little things Dash hadn't been able to ignore.
Leo's footsteps echoed softly as he approached, and without a word, he pulled the memory crystal from inside his coat pocket. The tiny device pulsed faintly with a dull blue light, like a heartbeat trapped in glass.
Dash stopped pacing and reached out, taking the crystal carefully, his fingers tightening around it as if it could shatter at any moment.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," Dash said, his voice low but edged with urgency.
Leo's gaze didn't waver. His voice was rough, almost a whisper. "Something worse. I think someone else knows we're looking."
Dash swallowed hard, eyes darting to the entrance and then back to Leo. "You mean they're watching us? Here?"
Leo nodded slowly, the weight of the suspicion settling deep in his chest. "It's not just the house. Someone's been inside the security system. They know we're digging into Mara's stuff."
Dash's jaw clenched. "We're running out of time, then. If they want to stop us, they'll come hard and fast."
A long pause stretched between them, thick with unspoken fears.
Leo's hand brushed against the wall, steadying himself. "We need to get this to everyone. Dash, whatever happens... we can't let them silence us."
Dash looked down at the glowing crystal again, then met Leo's eyes. "We won't."
The garage lights flickered once, plunging the room into near-darkness before humming back to life. Both men froze, ears straining in the sudden quiet.
The faint echo of footsteps faded behind them as Leo and Dash left the garage, slipping silently through the darkened halls of the Lennox estate.
The house seemed to hold its breath, walls closing in like a cage. Dash led the way, his mind still buzzing with unease as he navigated toward his room, a messy, shady sanctuary where rows of monitors flickered like watchful eyes.
Dash's room was a world apart from the rest of the mansion. Screens glowed in pale blues and greens, casting sharp angles across scattered cables, circuit boards, and notebooks filled with notes.
The murmur of computers filled the room, a quiet and steady pulsation that felt almost alive.
Without delay, Dash inserted the memory crystal into a sleek, custom reader at his desk. The device blinked to life, its soft whirr cutting through the quiet as the data began to decrypt.
The image that emerged was hauntingly familiar: Mara's voice, fractured and tense, speaking a warning that only they had heard before.
But this time, Dash's reaction was different; his jaw clenched, eyes narrowing, the weight of what he knew settling deeper. He tapped furiously on the keyboard, pulling files from the crystal and cross-referencing them with estate logs.
Lines of code, embedded timestamps, and security footage filled the screens. Dash methodically cataloged every detail, tracing shadows and glitches back to suspicious activity, patterns hidden beneath layers of digital static.