LOGINAlanWhen 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,
AlanThe sound didn’t echo the way it should have, and that was the first thing that settled wrong inside me before anything else had the chance to fully register in my mind.A stairwell like this should have carried sound easily, stretching it out and bouncing it back in uneven pieces that made it hard to tell exactly where it came from, but those three knocks didn’t do that at all, they stayed contained and flat and disturbingly precise, like they hadn’t traveled through the air in the normal way at all but had instead just… appeared exactly where we heard them.Behind us, inside the wall we had already checked.I didn’t turn around right away, not because I was trying to be careful or brave or even logical in any real sense, but because something in me stalled in a quiet, stubborn way that felt deeper than thought, like a part of my body had decided it didn’t want confirmation of what we had just heard.Natasha’s hand tightened around my arm again, and this time there was nothing s
NatashaThere is a kind of fear that doesn't announce itself.Not the loud kind, not the kind that shows up with a racing heart and shaking hands so at least you know what you're dealing with. This one is quieter than that. It moves in slowly and settles somewhere behind your sternum and just sits there, patient, waiting for you to stop moving long enough to feel the full weight of it. I know that fear. I have lived inside it before, in other places, with other people, and I had hoped, stupidly, that I was done with it and then Alan had stopped breathing and I had learned I was not done with it at all.We were moving now, which helped. Movement is good. Movement means there is somewhere to be, something to do with your hands and your legs and the part of your brain that would otherwise sit down on the floor and simply fall apart. Matt was ahead of us, checking corners, muttering something under his breath that I couldn't fully catch, some combination of directions and profanity that
AlanThere is a moment between dying and not dying where everything is perfectly quiet.Not the quiet of sleep, not the quiet of a room with the door shut and the world locked out. Something else entirely. Something so deep and complete that calling it quiet felt wrong, felt like the wrong word for a thing that had no word, because it was not the absence of sound…it was the absence of everything, and it was not terrifying the way I had always imagined it would be.It was a relief.I do not know how long I was there. I am not sure there was one there. Just space that was not space, and something that used to be me drifting in the middle of it without weight, without the constant pressure behind my eyes I had carried so long I had stopped noticing it until it was finally gone. No fear. No voice that wasn't mine whispering things in registers I couldn't tune out. No edges of something vast trying to push through the walls I kept building.Just stillness and then something pulled.Not vio
NatashaI do not know how long I stayed there on that cold, broken floor with Alan’s hand in mine, because time stopped making sense the moment his body went still, and everything around me faded into something distant and unreal, like the world had stepped back and left me alone with the weight of what had just happened, and the silence that followed felt heavier than all the noise that came before it, pressing down on me until breathing itself became something I had to force.I kept staring at his face, like if I looked away even for a second he would disappear completely, like memorizing every part of him was the only thing I had left to hold onto, and it hurt because he looked peaceful, more peaceful than I had ever seen him, and I hated that, I hated that it took him choosing death to finally be free from whatever had been tearing him apart, I hated that I could not do anything to stop him from making that choice even though I understood why he did it.“You were not supposed to l
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







