It had only been two days since the boy arrived in Heldale. The town's air still felt heavy in his lungs, thick with old secrets and silence that crept up the spine. He hadn't told his real name—Drew since he got here, not to the worried strangers that had asked while passing by, out of mere curiosity that a young boy was roaming the streets.
The place he stayed in wasn't much. Just a cramped wooden compartment behind Grainer's Eatery, a half-forgotten restaurant tucked between two rundown buildings along Crover Lane,East side of Heldale. The owner, an aging man with cigarette-stained fingers and a bad leg, let him stay there in exchange for hauling out weeks' worth of rotting garbage from behind the restaurant's kitchen.
To the man, the boy was just another homeless kid — quiet, ragged, and grateful enough to take shelter and leftover potatoes without complaint. They didn't talk much. The boy preferred it that way.
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Inside the compartment, lit by the faint blue flicker of a dying bulb, the boy sat cross-legged on a thin mattress laid directly on the floorboards. His fingers moved slowly, carefully flipping open his worn-out journal.
Tucked within it was a page — hand-sketched and shaded with charcoal, marked with crooked lines and symbols. It was a blueprint… or something close to it. A faded sketch of what looked like a lab facility — a structure in a sector of the town.
His eyes scanned every detail. His memory stirred.
He closed the journal and reached for the wrinkled map beside it — a street map of Heldale, stained and torn in its edges. His hands smoothed it flat against the floor. Lines. Crossroads. Sewer paths. Construction zones. His index finger traced one curve in particular — a looping stretch of road that led toward the abandoned west district, where the closed down lab used to be.
His breathing slowed.
He was getting closer.
This town— held the key to what he had been searching for. Heldale authorities manipulated lots of things to hide the truth . That whatever nightmare once lingered was buried in old papers, or washed away in the blood of forgotten victims.
But it wasn't gone. Not to his dad. Not to him.
Staying here... it bought him time.
Time to move.
Time to investigate.
Time to locate the abandoned lab and find out more.
The bulb overhead buzzed and flickered again, threatening to die out completely. The boy didn't flinch. He closed the map, folded it back into the journal, and tucked it beneath his backpack.
Outside, the streets of Heldale hissed with the whisper of wind and faraway sirens.