The morning sun of Redwood Falls did not merely rise; it staged an assault. A single, piercing beam of gold slanted through the gap in the living room curtains, striking Thomas Briggs directly across the bridge of his nose. He groaned, the sound vibrating deep in his chest, and pulled the borrowed wool blanket over his head in a futile attempt to reclaim the darkness. But the house was already pulsing with the quiet, domestic energy of the Halliston family.
From the kitchen, the rhythmic sizzle-pop of bacon acted as a secondary alarm, followed closely by the melodic but firm voice of Alexa. "Thomas? Time to join the living. The coffee is going to be cold in ten minutes, and I don't make second pots for sleepers."
Thomas threw the blanket aside, squinting against the brilliance of the morning. His back popped—a series of sharp, dry sounds that reminded him he was a man in his forties who had just spent the night on a floral-patterned sofa. He sat up, rubbing his face with his palms, and looked toward the hallway.
"Morning, Alexa," he called out, his voice gravelly.
"Guest washroom is yours," she replied, appearing in the doorway with a spatula in hand. "George and I talked it over last night. You're moving into the guest room today. No more sleeping by the front door like a sentry. You're a guest, Thomas, not a bodyguard."
Thomas stood, stretching his tall frame. "I appreciate the offer, Alexa. Really. But old habits die hard. I like being the first thing someone hits if they try that door."
"In this house, the first thing they'll hit is me," she joked, though her eyes were soft. "Go on. Wash up. George left something for you on the counter."
In the guest bathroom, Thomas found a brand-new toothbrush and a stack of fresh towels. He stripped off his wrinkled blue shirt and stepped into a steaming shower, the heat of the water melting away the tension of the hospital, the lab, and the suspension. When he emerged, he found a crisp, button-down shirt waiting for him. It was a deep, navy blue—George's favorite color. Thomas chuckled as he pulled it on. For the first time in nearly a decade, he didn't feel the weight of the tan Sheriff's uniform or the cold pressure of the badge against his chest. He felt light. He felt like a neighbor.
The dining table was a spread that would have put any local diner to shame: piles of crispy bacon, toasted sourdough sandwiches, carafes of orange and apple juice, and a small fruit tart sitting as a centerpiece.
"Alright, listen up," Alexa said as the family gathered, her "manager" voice taking over. "I'm taking Edward for his follow-up. His fever is down, but the doctor wants to check his lungs. Thomas, you're taking Logan to the hospital for his dressing change, and then you're taking him straight to school. I've already spoken to his teacher, Mrs. Marlin. She knows he'll be late."
She turned her gaze to Thomas. "And since you're suspended, you're our official houseguest for the week. You'll help George with the gardening, you'll eat my cooking, and you'll try to remember what it's like to have a life outside of that station."
Thomas nodded, a genuine smile breaking through his stubble. "If you're willing to put up with me, I'm more than happy to stay."
The drive to the hospital was quiet. Logan sat in the passenger seat of Thomas's personal car, staring out at the passing Redwood trees. The bandages on his head and arm made him look fragile, but there was a new, hardened look in his eyes—a look that Thomas recognized from the faces of veterans.
The check-up was routine but thorough. The doctor poked and prodded, checked the sutures on Logan's scalp, and finally gave a satisfied nod. "You're healing fast, kid. High metabolism. Keep up the protein, stay hydrated, and try to keep your head out of any more ladders."
As they walked back to the parking lot, Thomas noticed Logan's steps falter.
"Hey, buddy," Thomas said, placing a steadying hand on the boy's shoulder. "You still feeling the fear? It's okay if you are. That kid... what happened... it wasn't normal."
Logan looked up, his face pale in the harsh midday light. "It's not that I'm scared he's coming back today, Uncle Thomas. It's just... I can't unsee his face. Every time I close my eyes, I see that empty socket. I see the blood. I keep wondering if he was real or if I'm finally just breaking."
Thomas stopped him by the car door. "Listen to me, Logan. I'm going to protect your family. I'm going to spend this week making sure no one in this town—man, boy, or whatever that thing was—gets near you. You focus on being a student. You focus on your friends. Let me handle the monsters."
Logan gave a small, tentative nod. "Uncle Thomas? Dad mentioned the Science Expo is in two days. Are you still coming?"
"Wouldn't miss it for the world," Thomas said, ruffling the boy's hair. "I want to see what that brain of yours has cooked up."
The hallways of Redwood Academy felt strangely alien to Logan as he walked toward his Biology class. The lockers were the same, the posters for the fall dance were the same, but the world felt thinner, as if at any moment the walls might simply peel away to reveal the static beneath.
He stood at the door of Mrs. Marlin's room, his hand hovering over the handle. He took a deep breath and pushed it open.
"May I come in, ma'am?"
Mrs. Marlin, a woman who wore her grey hair in a bun so tight it seemed to pull her eyebrows up, stopped her lecture on the human circulatory system. Her eyes softened instantly. "Logan! Yes, come in. We were all so worried. How are you feeling, dear? Should you really be here?"
"I'm much better, ma'am. I didn't want to miss the lecture," Logan said, his voice practiced and polite.
"Spoken like a true scholar," she beamed. "Take your seat. We're just discussing the way the heart regulates pressure."
Logan navigated to the back of the room, where Adison, Jamie, and Lyra were already huddled together. As he sat down, the air in the small corner of the room seemed to vibrate with their unasked questions.
"Lunch," Logan whispered before they could speak. "Science lab. Don't ask me anything until then. My head is killing me."
They honored his request, though the tension was palpable. When the bell finally signaled the lunch break, they didn't head for the cafeteria. They moved like a single organism toward the old, half-forgotten science lab on the second floor.
Once inside, Jamie braced the door with a chair. Lyra turned on the fume hood to provide a layer of white noise, and Adison sat on the edge of a lab bench, his eyes wide.
"Logan," Lyra said, her voice low and urgent. "The Sheriff took the recorder. We thought we were dead in the water. Tell us you have something."
Logan didn't say a word. He reached into the hidden compartment of his backpack and pulled out a sleek, silver digital recorder—the one his father had given him for his birthday.
"He took the evidence," Logan said, a small, triumphant spark returning to his eyes. "But before he left the house that first night, I did a pass-through. I plugged the field unit into my desktop speakers and re-recorded the entire file onto this. It's a second-generation copy, but it's clean."
Jamie let out a breathy laugh. "You absolute nerd. You actually did it."
"He's a genius," Adison added, reaching for the device.
Lyra took the lead. She pulled a pair of high-fidelity headphones from her bag and a splitter. She and Adison each took a side, pressing the cups to their ears. Logan and Jamie watched their expressions, waiting for the verdict.
The sound began. To the naked ear, it was just the buzzzzz-sssss of the Aurora Engine's death throes. But as Lyra adjusted the playback speed, turning the dial until the audio was slowed by forty percent, the "noise" began to separate.
"There," Lyra whispered. "Do you hear that? Behind the thermal hiss."
"It's rhythmic," Adison said, his eyes closed in concentration. "It's not part of the engine failure. It's coming from the recording hardware's internal pickup."
Jamie looked frustrated. "All I hear is a lawnmower in a wind tunnel, guys. What are you talking about?"
"It's tapping, Jamie," Logan said, stepping closer. "I heard it when I was making the copy. It sounds like someone is sitting in the room with the recorder, tapping a pen against a wooden desk. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap."
Lyra pulled the headphones off and looked at Logan. "It's not a pen, Logan. And it's not random."
"What do you mean?"
"The person who says 'Be careful' at the end," Lyra explained, her voice trembling slightly. "That voice is filtered through the same frequency as the tapping. They aren't two different things. They're the same message."
Adison opened his notebook, his pen hovering over the page. "I've been running the intervals in my head. Eleven point three seconds is the gap between the voice bursts. But the tapping? The tapping is constant. It's a non-verbal overlay."
Jamie scoffed. "Who talks in taps? This isn't a spy movie."
Logan's mind flashed back to a book he had read in the library over the summer—a book on historical communication. He felt a jolt of electricity run down his spine. He stood up and suddenly hugged Jamie, a jubilant, frantic motion that startled the larger boy.
"Jamie, you're a genius!" Logan shouted.
"I am? I mean, yeah, I am. Why?"
"Non-verbal language!" Logan cried. "The person isn't trying to talk to our ears. They're talking to our logic. Lyra, what if the tapping isn't noise? What if it's a code?"
Lyra's eyes widened. "Morse."
Adison looked at his notebook, then back at the recorder. "Morse code. It's the only thing that would survive that much atmospheric distortion. Dots and dashes. High and low pulses."
"Does anyone here know it?" Jamie asked, looking around the room.
Silence.
"I know the SOS call," Adison offered weakly. "That's it."
"We need a professional," Logan said, pacing the small space between the lab tables. "Someone who wouldn't go to the police. Someone who knows how to handle 'dark' signals."
He stopped, his eyes landing on a photo Suvi had pinned to the refrigerator at home—a photo of her and her mentor at the local gym.
"Bruce Kane," Logan whispered.
"The basketball guy?" Jamie asked. "The one they call 'Ace'?"
"He wasn't always a basketball player, Jamie," Logan said, his voice growing more confident. "Suvi told me once. Before he came back to Redwood Falls, he was a signal intelligence specialist in the Army. Three years in a specialized unit. She said he can hear a pin drop in a thunderstorm."
Lyra nodded. "A signal specialist would know Morse like we know the alphabet. And he's a friend of the family. He won't turn us in to Freddy Alliston."
"Then it's settled," Logan said, packing the silver recorder back into his bag. "We finish the day, we act normal, and then we go to the 5th Street Gym. We find Ace."
The rest of the school day felt like an eternity. Logan sat through History and Math, his mind miles away. He kept thinking about the boy with the missing eye. If the boy was "part of the overlap," as Bruce would later suggest, then he wasn't just a monster. He was a piece of another reality that had been torn away and grafted onto theirs.
Was the boy trying to warn him? Or was the recorder a beacon that the boy needed to find his way back?