Ethan
We waited longer than necessary before going inside.
No one said it, but we were all thinking the same thing: once we entered the building, whatever answers were there would stop being possibilities and start being facts.
Finally, I pushed the door open.
The science building smelled like chemicals and dust. Emergency lights glowed faintly along the ceiling. A phone rang somewhere deep inside, once, twice, and then went silent.
The hallway was a mess.
Chairs overturned. A whiteboard still covered in half-written formulas. Someone had dropped a lab coat near the stairs, one sleeve torn clean off. Glass crunched under our shoes.
Alexa swallowed hard. "Why didn't they take anything?"
"Because they didn't leave on purpose," I said.
Lila didn't argue.
We moved slowly, checking rooms as we passed them. A lab door hung open, equipment left running. A centrifuge still spun weakly, whining like it didn't know it was supposed to stop. Papers were scattered across counters, some weighed down with beakers so they wouldn't blow away.
I stopped short in front of one office.
The door was open.
Inside, a mug sat on the desk, cold coffee dried along the rim. A jacket hung over the back of the chair. On the desk lay a notebook, opened to a page filled with hurried writing.
I recognized the handwriting immediately.
Mom's.
I stepped inside without realizing I was moving. The others stayed back, silent. The page was filled with notes: observations, sketches, times circled and underlined.
Subsurface movement correlates with pressure changes.
Ground response is not random.
It reacts.
My hands shook as I turned the page.
At the bottom, one sentence had been written darker than the rest, the pen pressed hard enough to nearly tear through.
If this continues, the island will not hold.
My throat closed.
"She was here," I said.
Lila stood in the doorway now. She didn't look relieved. She looked… focused. Like she was putting pieces together instead of letting herself feel.
"Dad would've come here," she said quietly. "If something like this started happening… he wouldn't leave."
The ground shifted beneath the building.
Stronger this time.
The lights flickered.
Somewhere below us, something heavy moved.
Alex whimpered. Hana buried her face into Lila's side.
I closed the notebook and held it tight against my chest.
"Then they didn't disappear," I said. "They were investigating."
And that meant something else too.
Whatever was happening on Nako Island…
Our parents had been close enough to it that the ground had noticed.
And now, standing in the middle of their work, I wasn't sure whether we were following them…
Or stepping into the same place they had already vanished from.