The corridor felt narrower today.
Not physically—nothing had changed—but industries like this don't rely on walls. They rely on what you feel between them. And right now, the air between the walls felt alive… humming… as if aware that someone was walking through it.
Krish slowed down.
His steps were steady, but his breathing wasn't. A faint metallic scent drifted in—like wires had been overheated. Or maybe it wasn't the wires. Maybe it was something else. Something that shouldn't exist here.
When he reached the end of the hallway, he stopped.
The room he expected to see was not the room in front of him.
He blinked once. Twice.
The walls were the same shape…
The furniture had the same arrangement…
But the colour, the texture, even the lighting—subtly wrong.
Like someone had recreated this entire space from memory, but got 2% of the details wrong.
And that 2% was enough to make the brain scream.
Krish stepped in.
The air was colder. Not AC cold.
Empty cold.
Like the room didn't have memories inside it.
His eyes landed on the desk—except the small file that used to lie on the left corner was missing. Not the one Sarah gave him… another one. A file he remembered skimming long ago. One he shouldn't have remembered suddenly… but did.
He crouched down, touching the desk surface.
A thin line of dust sat along the edge.
"That's not possible…" he whispered.
He had cleaned this exact desk two days ago. Himself.
Someone had staged this room.
Recently.
And rushed.
His heartbeat rose—not because of fear but because something clicked in his mind. A connection forming like a wire touching another wire.
He turned around.
The door wasn't fully closed anymore.
It was open by maybe a half inch.
But he hadn't left it like that.
"Who's there?"
His voice was steady, but the shadows in the hallway didn't move.
Instead, he heard something else.
A faint, rhythmic tapping.
Once.
Pause.
Twice.
Pause.
Thrice.
Like a code.
Like a signal.
Like someone telling him—
You're not alone.
He walked toward the sound, each step slow, calculated, as if the floor might give way. When he reached the doorway, he placed his hand on the frame.
The tapping stopped.
Silence swallowed everything.
Then—
A whisper.
Soft.
Close.
Unmistakable.
"Krish… you're late."
His entire body froze.
Because the voice didn't belong to someone alive.
It belonged to someone who should not, under any circumstance, be speaking again.
Not today.
Not here.
Not ever.
He turned.
But the corridor behind him was empty.
At least… visually.
Because something in the air moved.
Something that felt like presence without shape.
And for the first time since Chapter 1—
Krish felt truly, paralyzingly, skin-deep fear