Chapter Thirty Six: Shadows Don't Sleep
411 Words
Writer’s POV
The house was silent.
Too silent.
Mila lay awake, the glow of her phone dim against the darkness. Her heart hadn’t stopped racing since that message.
You saw too much.
She’d read it at least twenty times, hoping the words would change. They didn’t.
Downstairs, the clock ticked — slow, deliberate, like footsteps pacing through her thoughts.
She turned on her side, staring at the curtains that fluttered softly in the night breeze. The streetlight cast thin silver lines across her wall, swaying like ghostly fingers.
She should tell someone. Her mother. Xavier, maybe.
But what would she say?
That her father might be hiding something? That someone knew she’d seen something she wasn’t supposed to?
No. She couldn’t. Not yet.
*****
Midnight.
A faint thud.
Her head snapped up.
The sound came from outside — near her window. Slow. Deliberate.
Mila’s breath caught as she slid out of bed, feet touching the cold floor. She reached for the curtain, hesitated, then pulled it aside.
Nothing.
Just the yard — quiet, still, empty.
She exhaled shakily and was about to turn back when something caught her eye.
A small, square envelope sat on the window ledge.
Her heart lurched.
She opened the window, reaching out with trembling fingers. The envelope was plain — no name, no stamp. Just one thing written across it in neat black ink:
> “Do not trust your father.”
Her hand went cold.
Inside, a folded photograph — old, yellowed. It showed a group of men in lab coats standing before a sign:
PROJECT MNEMOSYNE.
And there — at the edge of the photo — was her father. Smiling.
Mila’s throat went dry.
She dropped the photo back into the envelope, her pulse pounding. Her father had told her he left government research years ago.
So why was he in a picture that looked like it was taken weeks ago?
The floor creaked outside her door.
Her blood froze.
She slipped the envelope under her pillow and turned off her lamp just as the door handle moved.
A shadow fell across the c***k.
Paused.
Then slowly… disappeared.
*****
Writer’s POV
Mila stayed still until the house returned to silence. Only then did she exhale, shaking.
Sleep never came. She sat awake till dawn, clutching the envelope like a secret that could destroy everything.
Because now she knew one thing for certain —
her father wasn’t just hiding something.
He was part of it.
- Writer
