The farm doesn't offer anything new in daylight.
It looks smaller, somehow—shrunk by exposure. The kind of place that feels more threatening when you don't look at it too closely. Ryan checks the house again. Drawers. Cabinets. Corners that already gave up their secrets. Nate wanders the yard, kicking at dirt, peering into places that never held anything important.
Nothing.
No body.
No explanation.
No sign of Jimmy beyond the blood we already saw.
The silence feels used up.
"This is it," Ryan says finally. Not disappointed. Resigned. "If there was anything else, it's gone."
I nod, but my eyes keep drifting past the house, past the barn, toward the tall cylinder rising at the edge of the land.
The silo.
It stands apart from everything else, thin and vertical, like it doesn't belong to the rest of the farm. Its metal skin is dull with age, streaked with rust that runs downward in long, dried lines.
A place without echo.
The thought doesn't arrive fully formed. It slips in sideways, quiet and unwelcome.
"I think it's the silo," I say.
Ryan turns. "What?"
"The password," I say. My throat tightens. "Jimmy didn't mean a room. He meant… something like that."
Nate squints up at it. "You ever been inside one of those?"
"No," Ryan says.
"Good," Nate replies. "They're awful."
We walk closer.
The door at the base is locked. Not broken. Not forced. Just closed, like someone expected to come back and didn't.
Ryan pulls once. Harder the second time.
Nothing.
"No key in the house," he mutters.
Nate circles the silo once, craning his neck upward. "There's a hatch at the top."
Ryan follows his gaze. "That's thirty feet up."
"Yeah," Nate says. "And there's a ladder. Rusty. Half-rotten. But it's there."
I already know where this is going.
"No," Ryan says. "Absolutely not."
Nate laughs once. Sharp. Humorless. "Relax. I've climbed worse."
Ryan looks at me, like he expects me to say something. To weigh in. To decide.
I don't.
I'm already backing away from the idea, my mind rehearsing every possible failure. A fall. A scream. A body at the bottom of the silo.
Nate notices.
"Don't worry," he says lightly. "Can't be worse than going home every day."
He doesn't wait for permission.
The ladder groans under his weight. Every rung he climbs sounds like a warning. Ryan paces at the base, muttering under his breath, eyes locked upward.
I can't watch. I stare at the dirt instead, tracing meaningless patterns with my shoe.
Minutes pass.
Then Nate's voice drops down from above. Muffled. Contained.
"There's something in here."
Ryan freezes. "What kind of something?"
"A message," Nate says. "Scratched into the wall."
My pulse spikes.
"What does it say?" I ask.
There's a pause. Long enough to make my stomach twist.
"The Trinity."
The words hit wrong. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just heavy.
Nate climbs down slower than he went up. When his boots hit the ground, he wipes his hands on his jeans like he touched something he didn't want to carry.
"That's all?" Ryan asks.
"That's all," Nate says.
No explanation.
No context.
Just a phrase, left behind like a dare.
We don't talk on the drive back into town. Ryan plugs the USB into his laptop the moment we sit down inside the car. The password field waits. Patient.
Ryan types it in.
THE TRINITY.
Enter.
The screen flickers.
Then opens.
No fanfare. No sound. Just folders appearing where there were none before.
Locations. Coordinates. Labels.
My eyes skim until one word stops me cold.
HOME.
The numbers beside it don't match Jimmy's address. Not even close.
Ryan exhales slowly. "That's not his apartment."
"No," I say. "It's something else."
Something earlier.
Something he ran from before he ran here.
We close the laptop.
Nate clears his throat. "If you're heading there… I'm coming with you."
Ryan looks surprised. "You don't have to."
"I know," Nate says. "But I am."
He hesitates. "Just—give me a minute. I'll grab my stuff."
We wait by the car.
The house door slams open.
Nate steps out fast, backpack slung over one shoulder. His father follows, face red, movements sharp and uneven.
"After all these years I took care of you," the man shouts, "you leave me alone like this?"
Nate turns. "You didn't take care of me."
The punch comes fast.
Too fast.
The sound cracks through the air and something inside me snaps open.
A sound.
A movement.
Leather sliding free.
Metal brushing fabric.
My father's hand.
I don't resist.
I waited for someone—anyone—to stop him.
I don't think.
I move.
I step between them.
The fist hits my face.
Pain blooms white and immediate, but I'm still standing. Still there.
Ryan reacts instantly, shoving Nate's father back hard enough to stagger him.
"Get away from us," Ryan shouts.
The man spits on the ground, curses under his breath, then retreats, disappearing back into the house like nothing happened.
Nate stares at me. His breathing is shallow. His hands are shaking.
I don't say anything.
I don't need to.
We get into the car.
As Ryan pulls onto the road, the landscape blurs past the window. Fields. Buildings. Distance opening up ahead of us.
My face throbs. My chest still feels tight.
But something is different.
I didn't stop him.
I didn't fix anything.
But I moved.
And it helped someone.
I watch the landscape slide past the window.
The thought doesn't arrive as a sentence. It forms slowly, like something assembling itself without my permission.
I waited.
I always did.
If I hadn't—
If I had moved sooner—
If I had stepped in before things reached that point—
Maybe it wouldn't have ended the way it did
I don't know if the thought is true.
I only know how badly I want it to be.