If they were coming for me they would have already come.
My chest tightens slightly. What if they don’t know where I am. What if they can’t find me.
What if... I swallow, my throat dry.
What if I don’t get out of this.
The thought sits there. Then everything softens again.
The edges blur. My body sinks further into the bed. And this time, when I close my eyes, it isn’t because I’m fighting it.
It’s because I don’t know how to stay awake anymore.
twenty-two
Zach
The drive out to the warehouse feels different to the others.
Not quieter, not calmer, but tighter, like everything inside the car has been pulled into a single line that’s stretched too far and is about to snap if anything shifts the wrong way. No one fills the silence. No one tries. There’s nothing left to say that hasn’t already been said, nothing that’s going to make this easier, nothing that’s going to change what we find when we get there.
Elijah is in the front, still and unreadable in a way that’s worse than when he was pacing, worse than when he was breaking things just to move the energy out of his body. It sits in him now, contained, held too tightly, like it’s waiting for somewhere to go.
Jackson hasn’t stopped moving since we left. It’s small things, subtle if you’re not looking for them, his fingers tapping once against his leg, his hand dragging through his hair, his jaw tightening and releasing like he’s forcing himself not to say something every few seconds.
Christian drives.
I sit in the back and watch the road disappear behind us, forcing my head to stay where it is instead of slipping somewhere else, instead of letting it drift back to her again in a way that doesn’t help anything.
We’re close.
I can feel that much.
Not because I know where she is yet.
Because this is the first real direction we’ve had.
The warehouse comes into view ahead of us, sitting low and empty against the dark, the same place from the video, the same concrete, the same structure that’s been sitting in my head since the moment we saw it.
Christian doesn’t fully stop the car before Elijah is already moving.
There’s no hesitation as we cross the distance to the entrance, no pause to think, no moment to plan anything out further. The door gives under Elijah’s hand hard enough that it hits the wall behind it, the sound echoing through the space as we move inside.
Empty.
The word lands immediately, even before we fully register it.
Empty.
The air inside is stale, unmoving, the space too open, too still in a way that feels wrong after everything we’ve seen, after everything that should still be here.
Jackson steps further in, turning slowly, his eyes scanning everything.
“This is it,” he says, his voice tight. “This is where the first video was taken. The concrete...this is it.”
Elijah doesn’t answer him.
He’s already moving, crossing the space, checking corners, pulling open doors that lead nowhere, his movements sharp,aggressive in a way that doesn’t quite break control but sits right on the edge of it.
