Chapter Fourteen — Inventory of Damage
River started carrying the flash drive in his sock.
Not his pocket. Not his bag.
His sock.
I noticed when he kicked his shoes off in my room and something hard knocked against the floor.
He froze.
We stared at it for a second — a tiny black rectangle, scuffed on one edge, with a strip of silver tape wrapped around it like someone had tried to repair it and failed.
"That's… hygienic," I said.
"People don't steal socks," he replied.
"People absolutely steal socks."
"Not single socks," he said. "They steal pairs. This is chaos-neutral."
I didn't argue. He looked like he needed that logic to survive.
---
We started cataloguing everything.
Not dramatically. Not like detectives in movies.
Just… writing things down so we wouldn't lose them.
Eli's sketchbook.
The notes.
The voicemail file copied onto my laptop.
Mara's flash drive.
The names we knew. The numbers we didn't.
River brought a notebook — cheap, college-ruled, bent at the corners. The cover still had a price sticker on it.
"Feels right," he said. "Important things should look unimportant."
We sat on the floor, backs against my bed, papers spread out between us.
Eli's handwriting was everywhere. Sharp in some places, frantic in others. He wrote like he was racing himself.
One note stood out. Not because it was coded — because it wasn't.
If they ever say "this is for your own good," ask who decides what good looks like.
River traced the sentence with his finger. "Your brother was exhausting."
"He was right," I said.
"Also exhausting people are usually right."
---
The buzzing came and went.
Not like pain.
More like a bad frequency.
Sometimes it showed up when I was reading. Sometimes when I wasn't thinking at all. Once, when I laughed.
That one scared me.
River noticed.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I think my brain is buffering," I said.
He didn't laugh.
He handed me a bottle of water instead. "Drink."
I did. The buzzing faded.
We didn't comment on it.
---
Number Eleven didn't announce themselves.
They didn't leave a note or a voicemail or a cryptic symbol.
They just… stopped showing up.
Liam Ortega.
Sophomore. Quiet. Sat three rows back in history. Always doodled boxes in the margins of his notes.
One day his seat was empty.
The next day, someone else sat there.
By Friday, no one remembered him well enough to ask questions.
I did.
I asked his lab partner where he was.
She shrugged. "Transferred, I think?"
I asked the teacher.
He frowned at the attendance sheet. "I don't have a Liam Ortega this semester."
I checked Eli's list.
Number Eleven — "Compliance achieved."
My stomach turned.
---
River and I met in the bathroom by the old auditorium — the one no one used because half the stalls were broken and the mirrors were cracked in ways that made your reflection look fractured.
He leaned against the sink, arms crossed. His hoodie sleeve had a rip at the cuff he hadn't bothered fixing.
"They didn't kill him," River said quietly. "They erased him."
"Is that better?" I asked.
"No," he said. "But it's quieter."
That was worse.
---
That night, we listened to Eli's voicemail again.
This time slower. Pausing between breaths. Letting the silence stretch.
There was something under the static — not a voice, not exactly.
A pattern.
River replayed it, frowning. "Do you hear that?"
I nodded. "It's not random."
We ran it through basic software — nothing fancy. Just enough to clean the audio.
The static dipped.
And underneath it, barely audible, was a phrase repeated over and over:
"They'll make it feel normal."
I closed my eyes.
"They already did," I said.
---
I found another note in Eli's sketchbook that night — folded into the binding like he didn't want it seen unless someone was looking closely.
Not everyone breaks the same way.
Some people resist.
Some people comply.
The dangerous ones are the ones who adapt.
Below it, circled twice:
RIVER
I stared at it until my eyes burned.
---
River noticed my silence.
"What?" he asked.
I showed him the page.
He didn't react at first. Just read it. Then read it again.
Finally, he said, "Cool. Love being perceived."
"That's not funny."
"I know," he said. "That's why I'm joking."
He closed the sketchbook gently. Too gently.
"Zara," he said. "If I start doing things that don't feel like me… if I start choosing the easier option every time—"
I shook my head. "Don't."
"No," he insisted. "Promise me you won't let me become useful to them."
My chest tightened. "You're not a tool."
"That's what tools always are before someone picks them up."
I didn't promise.
That scared both of us.
---
The next day, Mara didn't come to school.
Neither did Aiden.
By afternoon, my phone buzzed with a blocked number.
No message.
Just a photo.
A classroom door.
White paint.
Black numbers stenciled near the handle.
13
River looked at the screen over my shoulder.
"That's not subtle," he said.
"No," I replied. "That's an invitation."
Or a warning.
Or both.
---
I put Eli's sketchbook back in its drawer.
Not to hide it.
To protect it.
Some things didn't want light yet.
Some truths needed time — or they shattered the person holding them.
And whoever was behind Seraph?
They weren't rushing us.
They were letting us move forward just enough to believe we were choosing it.