Page 41 of Requiem
She clicks. And everything freezes.
“Adela?” Rafe asks, already leaning closer over her shoulder.
“Wait,” she says under her breath, her fingers moving quickly now. “No, no—just give me a second—”
The image distorts, warping slightly before vanishing altogether. The screen goes black, and a single line of text appears.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED.
The temperature in the room seems to drop all at once. Adela goes completely still. Another line follows beneath it.
INITIATING SECONDARY ENCRYPTION.
“What does that mean?” I ask, my voice tightening despite my effort to stay calm.
Adela remains quiet, gaze locked on the screen as the system begins to shift in real time. The folder restructures itself, file names scrambling, timestamps disappearing, everything collapsing inward like it’s being rewritten faster than we can process.
Nico leans closer. “What’s happening?”
Her hands hover above the keyboard, no longer moving. “It’s reactive,” she says quietly. “It’s not just protected. Itresponds.”
The screen refreshes. And when it comes back, the folder is still there, but everything inside it is different. They’re blurred, locked, and sealed. The silence that follows is suffocating. My body is trembling, hoping to god that she didn’t just trigger something we can’t undo.
“Can you get it back?” Micah asks.
Adela doesn’t look away from the screen. “I don’t know.”
I stare at the space where his face had been just moments ago, my thoughts struggling to catch up with the reality of what just happened.
We were close. Closer than we’ve been since this started.
And now it’s gone.
A soft vibration pulls my attention downward, my phone lighting up in my hand. My blood runs cold when I see it’s a message from an unknown sender. Still, I swipe the screen.
There’s no text. Just a single video file. And beneath it, is a timer.
01:59:12
My fingers tighten around the phone, my pulse thudding loudly in my ears as the realization settles in. “He knows,” I say quietly.
And whatever we just touched…it touched back.
Rafe glances over my shoulder at my screen. “There’s another video attachment. Click it.”
“You’re not going to want to,” Adriana calls from the couch, her voice flat. She’s not even bothering to look at us.
Micah turns my phone slightly so he and Heather can see the screen.
I don’t think. I don’t prepare. I just…tap. For a second, the screen is black. Then it flickers, and a dark concrete room shifts into view.
“Looks like a basement,” Heather says.
“Oh, you’rereallynot going to want to see it,” Adriana warns.
My chest tightens, a frigid cold curling through me as the camera steadies. And then there’s Jude, restrained in a chair, his wrists bound and his head hanging forward. His hair is damp, clinging to his forehead, and his chest rises and falls in wild, shallow breaths.
“This looks like the video version of what was in that folder,” Adela murmurs. “Must be a connected video file that he sent the moment I tripped this wall.”
