Dash knew Igor wasn't just sick. He was being controlled. Monitored. Reset like some broken toy. And Dash had seen the way Igor looked at him lately, those strange, faraway pauses, the way his eyes would lock on Dash like he was trying to remember something.
The thought sent a shiver down his spine. What if his presence was triggering something worse?
What if their shared history, their friendship, was a glitch in the system, an anomaly that threatened to unravel the control exerted over Igor?
He couldn't shake the feeling that he was a key, unknowingly unlocking something dark and dangerous within his friend. He had to figure out what was happening, and fast, before Igor was lost completely.
Dash clenched his fists, knuckles white. His jaw tightened, the muscle ticking nervously. The words replayed in his head, a toxic loop eroding his composure. He couldn't tell Maisie. Not yet.
The weight of the secret pressed down on him, a suffocating blanket of responsibility. If they didn't want her to know, then blabbing would be a reckless gamble, a dangerous move that might put Igor in even more danger than he already was.
But he had to do something. Ignoring this wasn't an option. He couldn't just stand by and watch. He needed leverage. Find more proof. Concrete evidence to back up the whispers he'd overheard.
Observe, analyze, anticipate. Watch more closely. Every move, every conversation, every fleeting glance. He had to become a shadow, a silent observer piecing together the puzzle.
Dash wasn't just some idle rich kid sneaking around out of boredom; he had a reputation, quiet but formidable, for his skill behind a screen. The mansion's network had once been his playground, its encrypted walls no match for his patient persistence.
He knew how to navigate firewalls like locked doors, how to slip through surveillance without leaving a trace. If there was data to uncover, logs, footage, private messages, he could find it. He didn't need brute force; he had finesse, intuition, and a deep, chewing desperation that sharpened every keystroke. If his father was hiding something, Dash would find it, buried somewhere.
He wasn't just the younger brother lurking in the corner anymore, dismissed and overlooked, a cloud clinging to the edges of their brightly lit lives. Not after what he'd heard, the silent whispers that cut through the walls like shards of ice, the reckless admissions they thought him too inconsequential to understand.
Not if they were talking about him like a pawn, a disposable piece on their grand chessboard, like bait in a trap designed to catch something far more valuable, something they were willing to sacrifice him to obtain.
The idea that his family, his father, even, the person who was supposed to cherish and protect him, had potentially used him that way, treated him as a mere tool, ignited a slow-burning fury within him.
It wasn't a sudden, explosive rage, but a deep, simmering resentment that promised to reshape him. This betrayal forged a resolve within him, a steely determination to protect himself and those he cared about, even if it meant defying them all, even if it meant shattering the carefully constructed facade of familial harmony they clung to so fiercely.
He would no longer be a passive observer in his own life. He would be a player, and he would make damn sure they knew it.
He sat down stiffly on the piano bench, the ancient wood groaning slightly beneath his weight. His fingers, long and slender from years of practice, hovered above the ivory keys, a hesitant squadron afraid to engage.
He didn't press them down, didn't coax a single note from the silent instrument. The piano was a phantom of happier times, a repository of memories he desperately tried to conjure.
He used to play duets here with Maisie, rambunctious, cheerful pieces that filled the house with laughter. Back then, Maisie was in a better mood, mischievous and bright, and things in the house still felt like a game, a playful charade.
Now, the laughter was gone, replaced by a hush so dense it felt like a physical weight. Everything was brittle, sharp-edged, ready to splinter at the slightest tremor. The air crackled with unspoken anxieties.
His father's clipped, acute voice still echoed in his ears, a constant, nagging reminder: "Maisie can't know." The words felt like a frigid stone in his stomach. Which meant whatever they were doing, whatever secrets his father was guarding with such ferocity, it wasn't just dangerous. It was personal.
It involved Maisie, threatened somehow. And the realization, like a shard of ice, pierced through the fog of chaos, nestling itself deep within his fear. He had to protect her, even if he didn't know from what.
Outside the window, the sky had darkened to a smoky blue, clouds gathering over the treetops like bruises. A pre-storm calm hung in the air, broken only by the rustling of leaves that seemed to whisper warnings. Dash watched the clouds roll in, a mirroring tempest brewing within him. He couldn't shake the image of the man in the suit.
Crisp, corporate, utterly devoid of warmth. The way he spoke about Igor, his tone clinical and detached, like a thing, not a person. As if they'd built him in a lab, piecing him together from algorithms and data points. "Cognitive leak," the man had said, as if diagnosing a faulty machine. "Reset the programming."
The cold precision of those words chilled Dash to the bone. Was Igor even allowed to choose what he remembered? Did he have any agency over his past, or was it simply wiped clean and rewritten at the whim of these shadowy figures?
The ethical implications were staggering, a chilling invasion of the very essence of personhood. Dash felt a surge of protectiveness towards Igor, a fierce determination to understand the truth behind the man in the suit's pronouncements, and to help Igor reclaim his narrative, whatever it might be.
A new thought, a tendril of fear, wormed its way into his consciousness. It wasn't just the immediate danger to Igor, or even to himself, that now plagued him. What if Igor wasn't an isolated case?
What if their twisted experiment, their insidious rewrite, hadn't been confined to a single victim? What if they'd done the same to others? What if Igor wasn't the only one who'd been rewritten, his memories and personality surgically altered, his very essence violated?
But the true gut-wrenching horror came with a specific name, a face he cherished. What if Maisie had been, too? The idea hit him like a physical blow, leaving him breathless and reeling.
Could a person he loved, his sister, whom he thought he knew so intimately, be nothing more than a carefully crafted fabrication, a puppet dancing on strings he couldn't even see? The question lingered, a poisonous seed planted in the fertile ground of his worry, threatening to blossom into a full-blown nightmare.