The cabin’s silence had weight—a slow, suffocating gravity that pressed in on Michael the moment he stepped inside. The heater hissed on low, but it did nothing to fight the chill in the air. Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the windowpanes like a warning from the woods: this was still his world. He hadn't left it yet.
Michael paused midway across the room, the barrel of the pistol resting on the edge of a battered wooden desk, a single beam of moonlight splitting the cold metal in two. He felt its weight in his hand not unfamiliar, but no longer intuitive. A ghost carries his tools like an extension of his will; a father holds them like an ornament of war.
But that distinction had blurred long ago.
On the desk, the deleted HYDRUS file, gone from his laptop but still fixed in his m
