When I was eight, I found a photograph wedged in the bottom drawer of Dad's desk.
It was old—creased in the corners and blurred with time. In it, he stood outside a crumbling observatory, younger, smiling, holding something metal and strange in his hands. When I asked about it, he laughed and told me it was "just a ghost of an idea."
I never understood what that meant.
Now I do.
---
The photo from Lila's locker burned in my backpack as I trudged through the fog-covered woods at dawn, each step crunching dead leaves underfoot. Ash walked beside me, silent but alert, his breath fogging in the chill. We'd waited until my mom left for work before sneaking out. The sun hadn't risen fully yet—just a dull glow pressing against the edges of the sky.
"Are you sure it's still here?" Ash asked, pulling his hoodie tighter.
I nodded. "It's barely on any maps now, but Dad used to take me there before it was sealed off. He said it was where he got his best ideas."
He didn't tell me it was where he built the Wish Engine prototype.
Or that he wasn't the only one involved.
---
The observatory stood like a skeleton at the top of the ridge—charred beams reaching toward the sky, its dome cracked open like an egg. Nature had started reclaiming it. Ivy crept through broken windows. Moss coated the stairs.
But something pulsed beneath the decay—*energy.*
I felt it in my teeth. In my spine.
Inside, the walls were scorched from a long-ago fire. The ceiling had partially collapsed, and light spilled through the gaps like silver knives.
Ash stepped ahead, sweeping his flashlight across the room. "There's no dust."
He was right.
Everything should've been caked in cobwebs and decay. But the floor was *clean*—like someone had been here. Recently.
Then I saw it: a trapdoor under a rusted hatch, half-buried beneath debris.
---
We pried it open together, muscles straining against the weight. The hinges groaned, then gave way, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling down into darkness.
Ash looked at me. "If we go down there, there's no pretending we don't know anymore."
I swallowed hard. "I stopped pretending the second I opened Lila's locker."
We descended.
The steps were cold steel. The air grew tighter with every turn. My ears rang. Somewhere deep below, something *hummed*—low and alive.
At the bottom, we entered a circular chamber.
And at the center of it: **the original Wish Engine.**
---
It wasn't like the one in our basement.
This one was raw. Exposed wires, jagged copper tubing, crystals suspended in glass orbs. A mess of math and madness. The room pulsed with dim blue light, each flicker syncing with my heartbeat.
I stepped closer, heart thudding.
The console was covered in fingerprints. Recent ones. Notes scattered across a nearby desk, handwritten in a script I recognized.
My dad's.
And another, messier, scribbled in pink ink:
**Lila.**
Ash picked up one of the pages, scanning it fast. "He wasn't just experimenting with wish-energy... he was trying to *bind* it. Contain it. But something went wrong."
He handed me another note—written like a journal entry.
> *"The Engine is no longer neutral. It interprets intent through emotional weight. If a wish is strong enough—if grief, love, or rage anchors it—it doesn't just rewrite reality. It absorbs the person who made it."*
I stared. "It feeds on people?"
Ash nodded grimly. "Or on what they give up to make their wishes come true."
---
In a side room, we found a cot, a half-empty water jug, and a small mirror mounted to the wall. A notebook sat on the desk beside it.
I opened it—and my blood ran cold.
The first page was labeled **Subject 01: Lila Torres.**
Beneath it: my father's signature.
> *"Lila's abilities exceeded expectations. Her proximity to emotional hotspots increases Engine response time by 42%. Memory fragmentation observed but stabilized using anchor phrases. Further conditioning required."*
I sank onto the cot, the weight of it crashing down on me.
"She wasn't just involved," I whispered. "She was the *experiment.* A tether."
Ash knelt beside me, his voice barely audible. "He made her a living part of the Engine. And now she's *unstable.*"
I clutched the notebook to my chest, bile rising in my throat. "He lied to me. All these years. He wasn't just working on some idea. He was building something that *used* people."
Ash touched my shoulder, but I pulled away.
I needed air.
---
Outside, the sun had fully risen, but it cast no warmth. Fog still clung to the trees like ghosts unwilling to leave.
I sat on a fallen log, the forest silent around us.
"I keep thinking," I said after a while, "what if *I'm* part of it too? What if I wasn't born—I was *willed* into being by the Engine?"
Ash sat beside me. "No. You're real, Calla. You bleed. You feel. You fight. That's more real than anything the Engine can fabricate."
I looked at him. "Then how do I stop this?"
He didn't answer.
Because we both knew we weren't dealing with a machine anymore.
We were dealing with something that had *learned to want.*
---
Later that night, I returned home and found Mom sitting in the dark, staring at the old wedding photo she kept on the mantel.
"Did you love him?" I asked.
She looked up, startled. "Of course. Why—?"
"Did you know what he was doing with Lila?"
Her face went pale. She set the photo down, hands trembling. "How do you know about that?"
I stepped forward, voice hard. "Because I saw the lab. The notes. He *created her.* Manipulated her. Used her."
Mom swallowed. "He said it was for you. Everything he did was to build a world where you'd never suffer like he did."
"What kind of world *lets people vanish* because their wishes are too strong?"
Her eyes shimmered. "A broken one. But he thought he could fix it."
I shook my head. "He didn't fix anything. He made a ticking bomb. And now it's counting down."
---
That night, I dreamed of the horse again.
But this time, I was the one standing at the edge of the field. The black horse circled me slowly, its hooves echoing like thunder in an empty sky.
It lowered its head. I reached out.
And when I touched it, I saw everything.
Lila's first wish: **to be seen.**
My father's wish: **to undo his past.**
Ash's: **to understand everything.**
Mine: **to bring Dad back.**
Each wish carved a fracture into the world.
And the Engine fed on every crack.
---
I woke up gasping.
The photo of Dad and Lila still sat on my desk.
But the writing on the back had changed.
Now, it read:
**"Phase Two: Integration."**
And below that, scrawled in my own handwriting:
**"Calla."**