Page 111 of Behind the Shadows

Dope slammed the laptop closed. The other large screens cut to black.

Silence thundered, and no one said a word. The only sound was my heart hammering in my ears.

We sat that way for what seemed like forever.

Then Dope exhaled before he reopened the laptop.

“It’s offline now,” he said. “Whatever that was, it’s severed.”

Ella crossed her arms. “Not if they already got what they wanted.”

I stared at the black screen. The image of those words burned into my brain.

Something vile had reached through the digital void and touched us.

My body went cold. But my mind? My mind fractured. Not all at once—but in delicate, hairline cracks.

He was still out there. Still orchestrating. Still watching.

And for the first time in years, I felt like prey again.

I clenched my fists until my nails bit deep. My breath stuttered in my chest. Every cell inside me wanted to scream—but I didn’t. I couldn’t.

Screaming never saved anyone.

I swallowed it down.

The rage. The terror. The instinct to run.

And somewhere in that storm of silence, something in me twisted.

I wasn’t the same girl he’d marked.

I’d grown teeth in the dark.

Let him come.

I would tear the music from his goddamn throat and bury the fucking flute in his chest.

The silence after felt surgical—like it had cut something out of me.

“There was no IP return. No traceable link,” Dope said. But he didn’t sound convinced.

They weren’t threats. They were warnings. But they didn’t make me want to run.

They made me want to fight.

“He’s still watching,” I said quietly, saying out loud what we were all thinking.

Ella looked at me. “You think it was him?”

“I think it was someone close. Someone with access.”

Dope leaned forward again. His mask was slipping now. No grin and no jokes.

“That wasn’t a script. That wasn’t in the file system. Someone typed that. In real time.”

I glanced at him. “Then they knew we were inside.”