The room was still, save for the quiet hum of electricity coursing through frayed wiring buried behind plaster walls. Somewhere beyond the cracked windows, a dry wind skittered leaves against the side of the garage—soft, inconsistent taps, like fingers drumming from another world. The structure creaked in places it hadn't the day before. Age or intrusion, Dominic couldn't say.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, spine pressed against the crumbling wall, the air around him damp with dust and memory. The faint scent of rust clung to the room—old tools, forgotten oil, the ghost of machinery long since dead. The only light came from a single slit in the boarded window, and even that was muted, diffused through grime and years of neglect.
About twenty minutes have passed since he escaped from what he will call a scary situation. Before him lay the "clues"—a term he now questioned. They were spread with surgical care: the half-burned journal page, edges curled like dried skin; the charred family photograph with one face erased by fire or intention; the black feather, its sheen untouched by dust; and the faded floorplan with the red-marked room that did not, by official records, exist.
Each item had once pulsed with promise.
Now, they stank of manipulation.
He doesn't know why—But he feels an unease in every fiber of his being.
An itch he can't scratch.
Something is wrong.
He can feel it.
He reached for the journal page. The ink was smeared in places where heat had licked the paper, like a tongue trying to consume the truth. The handwriting was undeniably his father's—measured, efficient—but a hollowness clung to it.
The syntax felt too rigid, like a speech penned for another's mouth. The date, too, gnawed at him. It placed the writing after a known lockdown of the estate, when access had supposedly been restricted even to inner family members.
So why had it been there?
Why had it survived?
Why was it left when others have been cleaned up and erased?
He turned the page over, more out of reflex than hope. Nothing. No smudge of ink. No watermark. Just clean, aged paper. Too clean.
A fake?
He moved on.
The feather—still perfect. Too perfect. He raised it again to the light, rotating it. There were no bends, no signs of friction. A sparrow's feather, black as pitch. But sparrows didn't shed feathers like this, not black. Not indoors. Not in climate-controlled manors sealed against nature. His family had installed filtration systems. Every vent was secured. Every entry monitored. He would know—he helped install the diagnostics when he was fifteen.
Then how did it get there?
Unless it wasn't left by chance.
Unless it was placed here by someone.
The wind clawed again at the outside walls.
Dominic's skin prickled.
He picked up the floorplan. The aged paper crackled in protest, brittle at the folds. It was real—authentic in age and texture—but the red markings were fresh. Not new-ink fresh, but younger than the base document. The lines were crisp, untouched by yellowing. He had assumed his father marked them.
But now…
Now he saw it differently.
The handwriting wasn't a match. Not perfectly.
Not enough to convict—but enough to doubt.
The implications sent a slow, creeping tremor through him. The sealed drawer. The undamaged crest on the folder. The too-perfect survival of fragile things in a massacre where nothing else had remained untouched. The photograph—half-burned, yes, but it was deliberate. Too controlled. And the one face destroyed? His grandfather's.
His mind sharpened as the spiral came into focus.
This wasn't a trail to the truth.
It was a trail meant for him—calculated, staged. A series of staged artifacts, carefully selected to keep him chasing, questioning, stuck in a loop of faux discovery. Someone wanted him active. Investigating. But not too far.
Kept busy.
Kept visible.
He let the floorplan fall to the ground. It landed with a papery gasp.
A quiet rose from the room—thicker, heavier. The hum of electricity seemed to vanish into the walls, replaced by the sound of his breath.
He leaned forward, elbows on knees, and whispered to the dark.
"If they'll go this far to orchestrate the narrative… then following it is playing into their hands."
He stared at the photograph again—eyes locked on the charred smear where his grandfather's face should've been. His heart slowed, but each beat hit harder, like it was trying to hammer the truth through his ribs.
"They won't let me find it. Not by their rules."
He stood.
His legs felt cold, stiff, as if the floor had been draining him. He crossed the room to the boarded window, pried a sliver wider, and stared into the city night.
Outside, the world glowed.
False stars—neon signs and flickering billboards—cast illusions of warmth across streets that had never felt colder. A couple stumbled down the sidewalk below, laughing too loud. Somewhere, an engine coughed and died. Life moved on, even as his had frozen in time.
He pressed a hand to the windowpane.
How many others had been silenced? How many trails deleted? Police records falsified. Media gagged. "Safehouses" like the one they'd dumped him in—clean and contained—surrounded by watchers with polite smiles and clipped tones.
He remembered the funeral. The too-clean graves. The grey-gloved woman's comment.
"They left the world with dignity."
Lie.
He remembered his mother's scorched hand, curled in reflex.
His sister's necklace—gone.
His father's shattered monocle.
That wasn't dignity.
That was war.
A war hidden behind protocol, behind suits and protocol and staged silence.
He clenched his fists.
It should be accompanied with vengeance
Even his schoolmates—so kind, so broken in their concern—how many of them had passed by and check on him? How many had been listening, recording, reporting about him?
He turned from the window.
Enough.
He crossed the room and knelt again. Not before the clues—but beside them. As if to acknowledge them, and then, leave them behind.
He lifted the photograph one final time. Beneath the smear of ash, he could almost see the curve of a jawline he once knew.
Grandfather.
His myth. His guide. His ghost.
Gone... but maybe not lost.
Whispers had always clung to the man. Whispers of enemies, of betrayal, of a disappearance that was too clean to be natural. Dominic had clung to them as bedtime stories once. But now…
Now they felt like lifelines.
"If there's truth," he said to the room, voice steady, "it won't be in files someone lets me open."
He reached for the gear he'd tucked into the closet's dark corner. A weathered backpack. Gloves. A utility knife. A printed map of the outer districts—back when paper still held more value than corrupted cloud drives.
"I've been their mouse. Running in circles. Chasing crumbs. It ends tonight."
He threw on the backpack and turned to the door. The air inside the garage felt tighter suddenly, as if the walls had leaned in to hear him. Or warn him.
Let them listen.
He paused at the threshold.
If his grandfather was still alive—hiding, or imprisoned, or worse—then he was the only thread not touched by this theater. The only person who might still carry the truth unscripted.
Or he was bait.
A final snare.
But if Dominic didn't chase it, he'd never know.
And he couldn't survive in a cage of doubt.
He cleaned his, prints and existence of ever being here, deliberately leaving some gems broken off from jewelries still keeping up the persona of a thief.
Outside, a camera clicked once. Soft. Almost inaudible.
But Dominic had trained his ears for things that shouldn't be heard.
He smirked, stepped into the night, and vanished with the wind.
He still has his mask on
Let them follow.
He was done walking their path.
[End of Chapter Six]