The sketchbook hadn't left my sight since we found it.
The numbers etched into that single page haunted me—not just because they looked like coordinates, but because they felt like a choice. A challenge. A trap.
Hana had spent the better part of the morning decoding them. She worked with the kind of quiet, focused precision that made it hard to breathe around her—like she was mentally defusing a bomb while casually sipping coffee.
"I ran the numbers through a coordinate obfuscation model," she said, not looking up from her laptop. "It matches a location just outside of the city. An abandoned rail depot. Off-grid."
"Sounds like the perfect place to hide a body," I muttered.
She smirked. "Or hide the truth."
We didn't speak of Wilburt much after last night.
Not because we didn't care.
Because caring hurt.
And deep down, part of me was afraid that if we said too much, we'd expose the thin hope we were still holding onto—that maybe he wasn't a traitor. That maybe we were wrong.
The ride out to the depot was quiet. Sergeant Kane drove without question, without commentary. His eyes locked on the road like it had secrets it refused to give up.
"This place was shut down nearly a decade ago," Hana said, checking the topographic overlay on her tablet. "No cameras. No signal interference. No reason for anyone to be there."
"Unless someone wants it that way."
Kane didn't look back. "I'll sweep the perimeter. Two kilometers out. If you're not out in ninety minutes, I come in. Hard."
We nodded.
The car stopped just past the tree line. From there, we walked.
The depot looked like the kind of place stories ended. Steel skeletons of forgotten freight lines. Graffiti-covered walls. A signal tower bent sideways, rusted and forgotten. Vines had crept through the cracks in the pavement like nature was trying to erase it from memory.
I could feel it—the wrongness of it all. Not in the air. In my gut.
"I hate this," I said.
"Good," Hana replied. "That means you're still sane."
We stepped through the broken gate, our footsteps crunching against shattered glass and gravel. The silence here was loud. Not peaceful. Suspicious.
Then we found it.
A single locker.
Tucked away in the corner of the old station manager's office.
I glanced at Hana, who raised a brow. "Seriously?"
She approached first. No visible traps. No sensors. No wires.
Just… a locker.
And inside?
A flash drive.
Nothing else.
We stared at it like it might explode.
I finally picked it up. "This feels… staged."
Hana nodded. "And yet we're still doing exactly what whoever left this wants us to do."
She took it from me, slid it into her tablet, and the screen lit up.
A single file.
Encrypted. No metadata. Just a title:
Revelation – 01
She cracked the encryption like she was peeling fruit.
The file opened to a video. Blurry. Time-stamped two weeks ago.
Wilburt.
Sitting in what looked like a hostel or a cheap room somewhere abroad. Thin mattress. Concrete walls. He looked straight at the camera.
"If you're watching this, I've already made my move," he said. His tone was calm. Practiced. Like a speech he'd rehearsed in the mirror.
"You won't understand yet. But you will."
He leaned in closer.
"There's a bigger system at play. Project Aeon is more than what you think. You're chasing shadows. But I've seen the architects. They're building something that won't stop—unless someone burns it from the inside."
He paused, exhaled.
"Trust no one. Especially the ones closest to you."
The video cut to black.
Hana stared at the screen, her fingers still resting on the keyboard.
"Is that a warning?" I asked.
"Or bait," she replied. "He's manipulating us. That video is too clean. Too composed. He wanted us to find this."
"And we did."
I looked at her.
"So now what?"
She stood slowly, eyes still fixed on the dark screen.
"Now we follow the next clue."
Outside, the wind had picked up.
And I swear—I could still hear Wilburt's voice echoing in my head.
"Trust no one. Especially the ones closest to you."