We eat. It isn’t bad. It isn’t great either, but no one cares.
The TV plays the local news softly in the background.
I grab the remote, turning the volume up.
“—Kristie Talbert still missing after a month long search—”
We all look up. The footage shows the makeup trailer. Crime scene tape.
Travis spoons another bite into his mouth and mumbles, “Damn shame. Wonder if we’ll ever find out what really happened.”
Brooke lets out a small laugh.
I lean back and let the voices fade under the crackling fire.
For a moment, everything feels… peaceful.
A faint, rhythmic beeping cuts through it.
Travis’s head snaps toward his laptop on the coffee table. The sound repeats, sharper this time, urgent in a way that makes the energy in the room shift before any of us even understand why.
“That’s not normal,” he says, already moving.
His fingers fly across the keyboard, pulling up the Collective database. Lines of code flicker across the screen before a notification window forces itself to the front.
“Shit,” Travis mutters. “It’s a live feed.”
My chest tightens.
“What kind of live feed?” Brooke asks, her voice already shifting, already knowing the answer isn’t going to be good.
Travis doesn’t respond right away. He clicks into it, eyes scanning fast, jaw locking.
“Private stream. Restricted access. This is… this is coming from inside their network.”
The beeping stops.
The silence that replaces it feels worse.
Beau raises a brow, “Put it on the TV.”
Travis nods once and moves quickly, connecting his laptop to the screen. The TV flickers, then the feed fills the entire wall, stretching wide and impossible to ignore.
No one sits down.
No one speaks.
The room seems to hold its breath.
The video stabilizes.
My mother’s face fills the screen.
Samantha’s eye is nearly swollen shut. Blood crusts along her hairline, dried in dark streaks that trace down her temple. Her lips tremble so badly that her teeth click when she tries to speak. Her hands are bound behind her, her shoulders pulled tight, and her whole body shakes hard enough to rattle the camera.
“Seth,” she cries. “Oh God, Seth.”
Something inside my chest tears open.
