I woke up exhausted again, but it feels different this time.
Not the soft weight of yesterday's fatigue — this is sharper, wired into my nerves, humming under my skin. Today isn't a day I can just move through. Today I have to do something.
My hands shake brushing my teeth.
I pretend not to notice.
By the time I leave my apartment, I'm already behind. My legs feel slow, like the air is resisting me. When I reach the street, I see Ryan waiting by the office entrance, pacing in tight circles.
He's early.
Or maybe I'm later than I thought.
"John," he says when he spots me, relief softening his expression. "Good. We need to talk before we go inside."
I don't want to.
But I nod.
We stand near the entrance, out of the way of people filing in.
"So," Ryan says, lowering his voice, "what's the plan? USB first?"
I shrug. "We might as well try."
He looks more awake than I've ever seen him — too awake, too alert.
I envy it. I resent it.
We plug the USB into Ryan's laptop in the break area.
A password prompt appears immediately, along with a hint:
"The place without echoes."
We both stare at it.
"What the hell does that mean?" Ryan whispers.
I shake my head. "Could be anything. A quote? A nickname? Something from work?"
"Or something from his personal life?" he says.
We try a few guesses.
All wrong.
The prompt reappears, patient, unmoving.
Ryan exhales. "Alright. Let's move on."
Part of me is relieved — failure means a delay.
A break.
A pause before whatever waits behind that password.
Next we spread the map across the table. It's yellowed, creased, edges worn from someone folding it too many times.
"It's old," Ryan mutters. "This version of the city's, what, thirty years outdated?"
We try to compare it to an online map.
Nothing lines up.
Not the streets, not the buildings, not the districts.
It's like trying to match a dream to reality.
"Jimmy did this on purpose," I say.
Ryan nods. "He didn't want strangers to understand it."
I swallow.
If this map was meant for coworkers… then Jimmy trusted us.
Or he had no one else.
That thought sinks deep.
We move to the notebook scribbles.
Numbers circled in shaky pen lines.
Random at first glance.
But after running them through the internal system, they match something:
a drawer number in the company database room — a restricted zone guarded at all hours.
The air between us shifts.
"This is it," Ryan says quietly.
I feel the dread climb my spine.
Of course Jimmy would hide something here.
Of course it would be somewhere we shouldn't be.
When we reach the security desk, the guard sits reading something on his phone, tapping the screen slowly.
Ryan steps forward. "Hey, uh, can you help me? My badge isn't working. Keeps giving me some 'access mismatch' error."
The guard groans, annoyed already. "Again? Show me."
While Ryan talks, overly friendly, overly curious, I move behind the desk.
My heart is a hammer in my throat.
I keep my breath shallow so it won't shake too loudly.
The badge hangs from a hook, just within reach.
I stretch my fingers slowly, feel the plastic edge under my fingertips—
Footsteps.
I freeze.
But it's just someone walking past the hall.
Not the guard.
I take the badge.
I slip it into my pocket.
Pretend I didn't just commit the stupidest crime of my life.
Ryan's voice rises just enough to pull attention back to him.
"So maybe you can check upstairs?" he says to the guard. "If the system's flagging out-of-sync IDs, it could be on the third floor."
The guard mutters something about lazy IT technicians, grabs his radio, and walks off.
The moment he's out of sight, Ryan's eyes meet mine.
"No turning back now."
The database room hums with cold air and blinking lights. Servers line the walls like silent watchers, breathing in mechanical rhythm.
We slip between the aisles.
Drawer 19-612.
That's the number.
Ryan finds it first.
"Hurry," he whispers.
He pulls it open.
Inside is… nothing we expected.
A single sheet of white paper.
Thin.
Marked with crooked lines and incomplete shapes, like the beginning of a map or a sketch abandoned halfway.
"What is this?" he mutters.
"I don't know," I say. "Just take it."
He folds the paper, tucks it into his jacket.
Footsteps echo down the hallway outside.
We both freeze.
The footsteps pause.
Then quicken.
Heading toward us.
We slide between server racks, pressing ourselves into the narrow space.
My shoulder brushes metal.
My breath fogs in the cold air.
Then my elbow clips something.
A server panel rattles loudly.
Shit.
The footsteps stop.
And then he appears.
Jack.
A coworker.
Someone we've eaten lunch near, answered emails from, passed in hallways without thinking.
"John?" he says, voice dropping. "Ryan? What are you two doing here?"
His eyes fall to the folded paper peeking from Ryan's jacket pocket.
"Give me that."
He lunges forward.
Before I can step back, his arm slams across my chest, pinning me against a server rack.
The metal bites into my spine.
"Jack—stop—" I choke out.
Ryan grabs him, shoving hard.
Jack stumbles into the aisle.
"Run," Ryan gasps.
So we run.
Down the hallway, past the humming lights, out the side exit before Jack regains his footing.
We don't stop until we're blocks away.
We collapse into a tiny restaurant, red plastic booths and flickering lights. The absurd normality makes my skin crawl.
I sit across from Ryan, breathing too fast, my hands shaking so hard I hide them under the table.
"I can't do this anymore," I say, the words ripping out of me. "I'm out."
Ryan stares at me, sweat still on his forehead. "John. Listen to me. We're the only ones who can discover the truth."
"No. No, we aren't—"
"And he might still be alive."
That sentence hits me like a punch.
Alive.
Save him.
My vision blurs.
My breathing collapses inward.
The restaurant around me dissolves.
And I'm small again.
Too small to understand anything.
My mother's arms wrapped around me, her breath shaking against my ear.
"You're the only one who can save me."
Her voice breaks.
Her grip tightens.
My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
I couldn't save her.
I couldn't do anything.
The memory slams into the present —
and I can't breathe.
Ryan's voice sounds far away.
"John? John—hey—look at me—breathe—man, breathe—"
But the air won't enter my lungs.
My hands go numb.
My chest feels like it's collapsing inward.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to hold focus on anything — the table's texture, the cold metal spoon, the pulse in my throat.
Slowly, painfully, the world returns.
My vision steadies.
My breath catches and releases in ragged bursts.
Ryan watches me with worry carved across his face.
I swallow once, hard.
"…Let's get this over with."
We finally unfold the paper Ryan grabbed.
At first it's nothing — just crooked lines, half-drawn shapes, marks that look like they belong to something else.
But then Ryan places it over the old map.
And the shapes line up.
The incomplete pieces become whole.
The red mark becomes a destination.
A farm.
Far from the city.
Far from everything.
Jimmy wanted someone to find this.
Someone like us.
"We go tomorrow," Ryan says quietly.
I nod.
I'm too tired to argue.
Tomorrow.
Everything happens tomorrow.