Beep.
Beep.
Squeak.
The door creaked open. Greg stepped inside, slow, reverent, as if entering a cathedral. His footsteps made less sound than the beeps that had just echoed through the house. Head bowed, shoulders tense, he looked like a man walking into judgment.
Jamie froze mid-push-up, sweat dripping from his brow. His eyes snapped to Greg, wide with surprise, and something deeper, something wary. He rose quickly, muscles coiled, unaware that the friend he trusted most now carried motives tangled in shadows.
Greg's eyes flickered over Jamie's transformed frame, how his body had sharpened, how it seemed to glow faintly under the sitting room light.
"There here !" Bray announced, striding in with zero regard for how absurd he looked wrapped in a white cooking cloth like some misplaced chef-saint.
Squeak!
Greg crossed the threshold fully, still avoiding eye contact.
