Alex didn't tell anyone about Sam's message right away.
Not because he didn't trust them, because once you say a thing out loud, it becomes heavier and real.
Like gravity kicks in only after witnesses are present.
So he waited until they were all together, sitting in their usual spot near the bleachers after school, the place where secrets had learned to sit quietly between them.
Sam looked jittery.
That alone was alarming.
"Okay," Sam said finally, clapping his hands once. "I have been personally threatened by an anonymous government-adjacent entity, and I would like to put that on the table."
Alex closed his eyes.
Jordan went still. "Define threatened."
Sam held up his phone. "Unknown number. Knew about the clocks.
Told us to stop digging."
Lena exhaled slowly. "That didn't take long."
Maya's face had gone pale. "What exactly did they say?"
Sam recited it, joking less as he went.
When he finished, the space between them felt thinner. Like the air had been stretched.
Riley spoke first. "They're watching patterns."
Jordan nodded. "And reactions."
Alex leaned forward. "Then we control both."
---
They argued for twenty minutes.
Quietly. Intentionally.
Sam wanted to poke the bear...carefully, but still poke.
Lena wanted to disappear for a week and see if the town forgot them.
Jordan wanted data.
Riley wanted to understand the rules before breaking them.
Maya said nothing.
Alex noticed.
"Maya?" he asked gently.
She looked up, startled, like she'd been somewhere else.
"It's changing how it listens," she said.
Everyone froze.
"How?" Lena asked.
Maya pressed her fingers to the bench. "Before, it reacted to movement. Presence. Now it's reacting to attention."
Sam frowned. "So… thinking about it is bad?"
"Thinking is fine," she said. "Focusing isn't."
Alex felt something cold slide down his spine. "It's learning what matters."
Riley nodded once. "Which means it's learning what to remove."
No one liked that.
---
They walked home together that day.
No splitting up. No pretending.
The town looked the same, stores open, traffic steady, people smiling with the soft confidence of those who believed tomorrow would resemble today.
Alex wondered how many of them would notice if it didn't.
At the corner near the fenced site, Jordan slowed.
"There," he said.
Nothing looked wrong.
That was the point.
The hum Maya usually described wasn't there anymore.
"It's quieter," Sam said.
Maya shook her head. "No. It's… farther back."
Alex frowned. "Like it retreated?"
"Like it gave us space," she said. "On purpose."
That scared him more than the tunnel ever had.
---
That night, Alex dreamed of the building.
But not the way he expected.
It wasn't underground.
It was standing in the open, unfinished, surrounded by people who refused to look directly at it. Every time he tried to focus, something mundane slid into view instead, a bus stop, a billboard, a construction sign.
INFRASTRUCTURERENEWAL.
In the dream, the building wasn't angry.
It was patient.
When Alex woke, his phone buzzed.
A group message from Jordan.
Jordan: I ran simulations
Lena: that sounds ominous
Jordan: whatever's down there isn't contained by walls
Sam: please don't say anything weird
Jordan: it's contained by agreement
Alex sat up.
Alex: agreement between who..
There was a long pause.
Then:
Jordan: between the town and the lie
Alex stared at the screen as understanding settled in, slow, heavy, unavoidable.
Marrow didn't survive because the building was hidden.
It survived because everyone had agreed not to notice.
And now six teenagers had broken that agreement.
Which meant the next move wouldn't be subtle.
It would be intentional.