LOGINAlanThe handle behind us kept turning slowly with a soft metal scrape that dug deeper into my skull with every passing second, and the sound alone was enough to make panic spread violently through my chest because whatever waited behind that door was no longer sitting quietly anymore like it had been before.It is out now.Natasha’s fingers tightened painfully around my arm while she stared at the slowly opening door with wide terrified eyes that reflected the flickering red emergency lights above us, and I could feel the fear shaking through her grip no matter how hard she tried hiding it.“Alan, stay away from it,” she whispered quickly while pulling lightly against my arm as if she thought physically dragging me backward would somehow stop whatever was happening inside my head.I tried focusing on her properly because part of me still understood that her voice was real while the whispering inside my skull was not, but every word coming from the darkness behind that door kept press
NatashaThe sound stopped every single one of us from moving almost immediately because the footsteps echoing through the hallway did not sound distant anymore. They sounded close enough now that I could almost feel the vibration of each slow step pressing through the floor beneath us, and the worst part about it was how calm the sound felt. Not rushed, not uneven…not confused.Whoever was walking toward us sounded patient, that frightened me more than panic ever could.For one long second, nobody spoke at all. The red emergency lights above us flickered weakly across the dark hallway, throwing strange moving shadows across the walls while broken glass crunched softly beneath our shoes. The entire building suddenly felt too quiet between each echoing footstep, like the silence itself was listening carefully to us.Matt slowly reached for the knife strapped against his side while staring ahead without blinking once.“I seriously hate this place,” he muttered under his breath, though hi
AlanDarkness swallowed the hallway the second the lights exploded above us, and for one terrible moment the sound alone felt powerful enough to split my skull open from the inside because it was no longer just glass shattering around us anymore. The noise inside my head rose with it immediately, twisting together with the violent crack of the lights until I could no longer separate which sounds belonged to the building and which ones belonged to whatever had forced its way into me.Natasha grabbed onto me harder the instant everything went dark, her fingers digging painfully into my arms while broken pieces of glass scattered across the floor beneath us. I heard Matt curse nearby, but even his voice sounded far away already, muffled beneath the crushing pressure pressing against my thoughts hard enough that breathing itself suddenly became difficult.Then the whisper returned inside my head, we see you now.Pain tore violently through my skull the second the words formed completely,
NatashaAlan’s eyes changed right in front of me in a way that made fear spread through my chest so quickly that for a second I could barely breathe properly anymore.It wasn’t the color of them that changed and it wasn’t anything physical that I could have explained to somebody later if they asked me what happened in that hallway, but something behind his stare shifted in a way that felt deeply wrong, like part of him had suddenly stepped somewhere farther away while the rest of him stayed standing in front of me.My hands remained locked against his face because I was terrified that the second I let go of him, even for a moment, whatever was happening inside him would pull him somewhere I could no longer reach.“Alan,” I said firmly while forcing him to keep looking at me. “Stay with me.”His breathing became uneven almost immediately after that, growing shallower and rougher in a way that made panic slowly crawl up the back of my throat because I could actually hear how hard he was
AlanWhen I say it’s right here, I feel the words sit heavier than they should, like they don’t just leave my mouth and disappear into the space between us but instead stay close, hanging around me in a way that makes it hard to breathe normally.Natasha’s grip on my arm tightens, not a small adjustment this time but something firm and deliberate, like she is making a decision with her hands before she says anything out loud, and Matt goes completely still for a second before he shifts his weight and looks at me like he is trying to see something I can’t show him.“Define here,” he says, and his voice is steady, but there is something underneath it now that wasn’t there before, something stretched thin.I swallow because I don’t have a clean answer, not one that will make sense in a normal way, but I try anyway because not answering would be worse.“It’s not behind us anymore and it’s not in the walls the way it was before, it feels like it moved,” I say slowly, choosing each word lik
NatashaThere is a very specific kind of silence that feels like it is watching you, and I recognize it immediately because it does not come from the absence of sound but from the presence of something that has decided not to make any.That is the silence that settles around us the moment Alan stops answering me, it is not empty.It is waiting.“Alan?” I say again, a little sharper this time, because the first time I said his name it disappeared into that silence without touching anything and I do not like that, I do not like the idea that my voice cannot reach him when he is standing right in front of me.He is still, not frozen like someone startled, not tense like someone bracing for something, just still in a way that feels wrong because it looks like he is listening to something that neither Matt nor I can hear.Matt takes a step closer, careful but not hesitant, his eyes moving over Alan’s face like he is trying to catch any small change before it becomes something bigger.“Hey,
NatashaThe moment Victor pulled me away from Alan, it felt wrong in a way I could not even explain properly to myself, because even though I understood why Alan had done it and even though I knew he was only trying to protect me the only way he knew how, it still felt like I was being torn away fr
AlanSomething wasn’t right, and it wasn’t the kind of feeling I could brush aside or ignore no matter how hard I tried to focus on the screens in front of me, because the unease had settled deep in my chest in a way that made it impossible to think clearly, like every instinct I had was trying to
NatashaI didn’t think I had any tears left in me, but somehow, they kept coming.Even as Alan held me close, his arms wrapped tightly around me like he was afraid I would disappear, I couldn’t stop shaking. My body felt weak, like everything that had happened had drained the life out of me.“I’m so
AlanThe moment Natasha closed the door behind her, the smile that had been on my face slowly faded. I leaned back in my chair, staring at the door for a long moment. Something about that whole conversation didn’t sit right with me. Natasha wasn’t a good liar. She tried, yes, but there was always s







