Page 104 of In the Dark of the Past

No.

“Yes,” I said.

He pushed, and darkness poured out until our beams converged. The shape of it made my stomach lurch.

This wasn’t a forgotten storage space.

It was lived in.

A cot. A table. A water jug. Books. A waste bin. A neat stack of clothing folded with the precision of someone who had learned, in this place, that keeping things ordered was the only control available to them.

But the wall…

The wall made me freeze.

There were photos. Dozens of them. Clippings. Notes. Reports. All connected with red thread or string in spreading clusters, with each cluster anchored by the same red symbol. The Watchers’ eye, rendered over and over in different hands and different inks, with the same cold meaning.

Atlas stepped closer, his voice low. “Jesus. This is active. Someone still works in here.”

They weren’t hiding this room. They were using it.

Finn moved to the largest cluster and stopped dead when he saw the heading.

BENNETT — INTERNAL / SENSITIVE

My breath punched out of me.

Pinned beneath that heading were three photographs. My mother, thin, tired, and younger than I ever remembered her, in what looked like institutional clothing. Then me, at maybe sixteen years old, standing outside our old house. And my father behind the courthouse, shaking hands with a man I didn’t recognize.

Finn’s jaw flexed. “This is surveillance. Long-running surveillance.”

I stepped closer, up to the page beneath my mother’s photo. Finn reached to stop me, but I lifted it first. The header glowed under the beam of his flashlight:

CONFIDENTIAL — BENEVOLENCE DIRECTIVE

Case: M. BENNETT (Deceased)

I forced myself to read. “Subject exhibited resistance to community compliance protocols. Recommended: Strategic Silencing. Secondary Target, dependent, pending evaluation.”

My legs buckled. Finn was there instantly, his strong arms around me, grounding me as the floor tried to tilt away.

My mother hadn’t died because she was sick. She hadn’t taken her life as everyone said. She’d died because she’d known too much and tried to protect those she loved.

And I…I think I had been next. That secondary target.

Atlas whispered, “Oh, holy hell.”

Finn held me tighter. His voice was a quiet, lethal tremor. “This isn’t corruption. This is organized murder.”

We each took pictures of everything. As we were, a soft click echoed from deeper inside the dark. A door being opened, though not ours. Then footsteps. Slow, deliberate, and approaching.

Finn’s arm locked around me, and Atlas raised his gun.

“Show yourself!” Finn called, voice ricocheting through the hollow room.

The footsteps stopped, then a voice came. Smooth, calm, and all too familiar. “Sheriff Callahan,” it said. “You really should’ve stayed out of this.”

A shape detached itself from the darkness at the end of the corridor. Their steps were slow , hands visible. I couldn’t see any weapons.