Chapter 1 - One StrikeThe room looked too perfect for anything real to happen inside it.
White walls. Clean light. A wall of glass overlooking the city.
Then came the sound.
CRACK.
The stone struck the cast around Elias Vane’s left leg.
Plaster exploded across the polished floor.
Every person in the room froze.
Ten-year-old Noah Vane stood beside the hospital bed, both hands wrapped around the heavy dark stone he had carried in from the garden. He was thin, pale, and completely still.
Elias screamed.
“What did you do?!”
Noah looked at him.
“It wasn’t healing.”
Dr. Mara Quinn turned sharply.
“Noah, put that down.”
He didn’t.
A fracture line had appeared across the cast.
Elias’s fingers tightened around the bedrail.
“Get him away from me!”
Noah raised the stone again.
“Stop!”
CRACK.
The second blow split away a large section of plaster.
It landed with a hollow thud.
The room went silent.
Mara stared.
Beneath the broken cast, Elias’s foot was clean.
No bruising.
No swelling.
No surgical dressing.
Nothing.
Noah pointed.
“Move your toes.”
Elias said nothing.
“Move them.”
The old man’s face went gray.
Then one toe twitched.
Mara gasped.
Dr. Daniel Cross stepped forward.
“That’s impossible.”
Elias tried to pull the blanket over his foot.
Noah caught the edge.
“Why are you pretending?”
Elias stared at him.
Not like a sick man.
Like a man looking at someone who had just opened a locked door.
Daniel crouched and examined the broken cast.
Something had been hidden inside.
He carefully reached into the broken lining.
His fingers caught plastic.
He pulled.
A sealed packet emerged.
Mara stared at the folded papers inside.
“Elias…”
He shook his head.
“Don’t open that.”
Daniel looked at him.
“Why?”
“Because you have no idea what you’re holding.”
Noah stepped closer.
“I do.”
Everyone turned.
The boy pointed at the packet.
“He put it there the night before the accident.”
Elias stopped breathing.
Mara frowned.
“What accident?”
Noah’s eyes lowered.
“The one they said killed my mother.”
Silence.
Daniel slowly looked toward Elias.
“Your daughter’s death?”
Noah nodded.
“They told me she crashed her car.”
His voice was steady.
“But I saw Grandpa Elias put the phone in the cast before they took him to the hospital.”
Elias’s expression changed.
Mara tore open the packet.
Inside was a single photograph.
A black SUV.
A warehouse.
And a timestamp.
2:13 A.M.
Daniel looked at the date.
His face drained of color.
“That’s three days before the crash.”
Mara turned the photograph over.
There was handwriting on the back.
Six words.
SHE DIDN’T DIE IN THE CRASH.
Elias suddenly reached for the packet.
Daniel stepped away.
“No.”
Elias’s eyes filled with something far more frightening than anger.
“Burn it.”
Mara stared at him.
“Why?”
Elias whispered:
“Because the person who took that photograph is still alive.”
The hospital door slammed open.
A security guard stumbled inside.
His face was white.
“Doctor… the cameras are down.”
Daniel froze.
“For how long?”
The guard swallowed.
“Seven minutes.”
Mara looked toward Noah.
Then the lights went out.
A red emergency glow filled the room.
Somewhere in the hallway, a slow metallic click echoed.
One.
Two.
Three.
Noah whispered:
May you like
“They found us.”
BLACKOUT.
