It began with a voice.
Faint. Ghostlike.
Trapped between the flickering static of an old recording, and the frayed edges of memory.
Sloane sat alone in the study, the glow of the screen pale against his skin. The recovered data cache Dylan had passed along days ago had taken time to decrypt—weeks of buried passwords, firewalls layered with paranoia.
But in the mess of corrupted files and encrypted logs, there it was.
A voice memo.
Untitled.wav.
He clicked play.
And she spoke.
"I don't feel safe anymore. Not even here. The walls listen, and the pills blur everything. He says it's to help me sleep, but I forget things now. Whole days vanish."
His mother.
The soft, lilting cadence of her voice pulled something loose in his chest. His throat went tight.
"Cynthia comes every afternoon. She smiles too much. I think she goes through my drawers. I asked her about the new pills, and she just laughed. Said I shouldn't question my husband's care."
A long pause.
