Samantha
She woke up with a start.
Her heart was pounding—fast, frantic, like she'd been running through something in her sleep. But her eyes scanned the blank white ceiling of her room in the facility. Still. Quiet. Nothing out of place.
She sat up slowly, breath catching.
There was something… wrong. Or missing. She couldn't name it.
A feeling clawed at the back of her mind like a dream dissolving too fast. Like an unfinished sentence. Like forgetting why you walked into a room.
Something had happened.
She knew something had happened.
But when she tried to remember, it slipped from her like water through her fingers.
Her fingertips brushed her collarbone instinctively—no pendant.
Her fists clenched.
"Why do I feel like someone was here?"
---
Ron
He jolted upright, gasping for air.
His sheets were tangled around his legs. His skin was clammy with sweat. But he didn't care.
"She's alive."
The words came out of him like a promise. Like a scream. Like prayer.
He remembered it all.
The dark space. Her voice. Her eyes. The glowing light that cracked between them.
He had seen her. Heard her.
And now he was back in his bed like none of it had happened.
But it had.
Ron leapt up, stumbling over his chair as he reached for his phone. No messages.
He scrolled through his camera roll, hoping—maybe foolishly—that a dream that real left a trace.
Nothing.
He paced.
"She's alive. I saw her. She's safe. She's not hurt. She's not—"
But where?
That thought crashed into him like a truck.
Where was she?
He tried to calm down. Breathe. Think.
"Okay. Okay. I just have to sleep again. I'll dream again. It'll take me back."
He shut the lights. Closed his eyes.
Waited.
Waited.
Nothing.
No darkness. No light. No Samantha.
Just the suffocating stillness of his room.
He groaned, buried his face in his hands.
He wanted to punch something. Scream. Cry.
What was the point of seeing her if it couldn't help him find her?
He sat in the dark, knuckles white from clenching. His thoughts spiraling.
Then—
A shift in the air.
Like something folded into the room.
He looked up sharply.
And there—standing in the corner, half-shadowed by the moonlight through the curtains—was him.
The hooded figure.
Ron's breath caught.
"You," he whispered.
The figure didn't move.
"You were in my room before. You—you've been watching her. Following her. What are you?"
Silence.
Ron stepped forward, fists clenched. "If you're the reason she's gone—if you did something to her—"
The figure tilted its head.
And then—
It spoke.
Its voice was low. Not human. Not completely.
It felt like words woven with static and old wind.
"I know where she is."