Before the Return
He did not go home immediately.
The shoreline was empty, the sky drained of color, the lighthouse distant enough to pretend it was not watching. Sylence stood beside his car, phone in hand, scrolling through names he no longer used aloud.
He called them anyway.
One by one.
No small talk. No updates. No explanations.
"I'm leaving," he said each time.
"For how long?"
"A few months."
"For what?"
"A mission."
Some laughed. Some warned him. One told him not to disappear again.
"I'll contact you when it's done," Sylence said. "If it's done."
He ended every call before goodbyes could form.
They didn't need comfort.
They needed distance.
Before dawn, he returned to the apartment only once.
The laptop was already waiting.
Stripped. Encrypted. Layered beneath systems only someone looking for him would think to breach. He placed it on the desk, powered but locked, the screen displaying a single directory:Manage the network sammy
and you mange my company
READ THAT DOCUMENT ONLY IF I FAIL
No message accompanied it.
He trusted curiosity more than instructions.
He left everything else behind.
Clothes. Money. Identification.
Only the diary came with him.
Thin. Unlabeled. Its pages already weighted by things not yet written.
He did not open it.
Some records, he knew, should begin after the point of no return.
Sylence locked the door behind him and walked away without hesitation.
The lighthouse remained a shape on the horizon.
It did not shine.
It did not follow.
It waited.