Sleep did not come. It was not a case of restlessness, of tossing and turning in the dark. It was a complete and total rejection. Sleep was a state of vulnerability, a surrender, and every cell in Lucas's body was on high alert, screaming at him that to surrender was to die. He lay beside Carla in the pre-dawn gloom, his body a rigid statue of feigned rest, his mind a warzone.
He watched the darkness in his room slowly dilute, shifting from the absolute black of midnight to the bruised purple of early twilight, and finally to the stark, unforgiving gray of morning. Each subtle change in the light felt like the ticking of a clock, counting down the minutes to his ten o'clock appointment with a woman who felt less like a person and more like a force of nature.
Ada. Her name was a splinter in his mind. It was a cold, smooth stone in his gut. He replayed her voice from the phone call, dissecting every syllable, every inflection. The professional courtesy was a thin, brittle veneer over a tone of absolute ownership. _"This isn't a request, Lucas. It's a requirement."_ He was not her partner; he was her property. He was a tool she was summoning, and the factory, the desolate, forgotten skeleton of his family's industrial past, was the workshop where she intended to use him.
He slipped out of bed before Carla stirred, moving with the silent, cautious steps of a burglar in his own home. The house was quiet, but his mind was deafeningly loud. The anxiety was a physical entity this morning. It was a sour, metallic taste on his tongue. It was a cold, coiling serpent in his stomach. It was a tightness in his chest so profound that each breath felt like a conscious, labored effort.
He went through the motions of a normal morning, a desperate pantomime of a life that was no longer his. He turned on the coffee maker, the gurgling sound of the machine grating on his frayed nerves. He stood under the hot spray of the shower, but the water couldn't wash away the feeling of a cold, invisible film on his skin. He was trying to prepare his body for the day, but his mind was already at the factory gates, staring into the abyss.
His worry for Bonnie, which had been a persistent, nagging ache, had metastasized overnight into an acute, agonizing fear. Her absence at the party was the turning point. It had transformed her silence from a personal mystery into a public fact. Before, he could invent a thousand plausible reasons for her not answering his calls. _She's busy. She's angry with me. She lost her phone._ But not showing up to Zoya's birthday party, an event she had not only known about but had been excited for, was a blaring, five-alarm fire. It was wrong.
He sat at the kitchen table, the untouched mug of coffee steaming in front of him, and stared at his phone. It lay on the cool quartz countertop like a black, malevolent stone. A conduit to a world he desperately needed to access, and a constant reminder of his failure. His isolation felt absolute. Ada had called him, summoned him, and the one person in the entire world who might have an answer, a piece of advice, a shield against the coming darkness, had vanished. It felt deliberate. It felt like a strategic removal of a key defensive piece from the board before the final, brutal checkmate.
He needed her. He needed to ask her about Ada. He needed to ask her about the tea, that miraculous, golden silence in a cup. He needed to ask her about the whispers, about the locket, about the terrifying, ancient language that had poured from her lips. He needed her to tell him he wasn't crazy.
With a trembling hand, he picked up the phone. His thumb, slick with nervous sweat, swiped across the screen, navigating to his recent calls. Her name was at the top of the list, a monument to his repeated failures. **Bonnie**. He pressed the call button, a fresh wave of desperate, irrational hope surging through him. _Please pick up. Please, please, just be there._
He lifted the phone to his ear, his entire body tense.
One ring. _Maybe she's just waking up._
Two rings. _Maybe she's in the shower._
Three rings. _Maybe she's searching for her phone, her heart leaping with recognition when she sees my name._
The ringing stopped. For a split second, his heart seized with hope, thinking she had answered. But then came the click. The familiar, soul-crushing click of the connection being rerouted.
_"Hey, you've reached Bonnie. Leave a message, and I'll get back to you."_
Her voice, so full of cheerful, easygoing life, was a ghost. It was a recording from a different time, a different reality. A reality before he had walked into her shop and dragged her into his personal darkness. The cheerful promise to 'get back to you' was a cruel, mocking lie.
He hung up without leaving a message, the silence that followed more damning than any words. He dropped the phone onto the table as if it were burning hot. It was over. She was gone. The door to that world, the world of answers and explanations, had been slammed shut and locked. He was utterly, completely alone.
"Morning."
Carla's voice, soft and sleepy from the doorway, made him jump. He turned, forcing his face into a mask of placid neutrality, a Herculean effort of will. She stood there in one of his old t-shirts, her hair a beautiful mess, her eyes full of concern as she took in his rigid posture.
"You're up early," she said, walking over to the coffee maker. "Couldn't sleep?"
"Just thinking," he said, the understatement so vast it was almost comical. "About the meeting today."
"Ada," she said, the name a dark note in the bright morning air. She poured herself a coffee and sat down opposite him, her expression serious. "Lucas, you don't have to go. You can tell your father you're sick. You can just… not show up. What's the worst that can happen? He gets angry? He's always angry."
He looked at her, at her fierce, protective love, and his heart ached with a terrible, secret grief. She didn't understand. She couldn't. This wasn't about his father anymore. This wasn't a corporate power play he could simply opt out of. This felt elemental. Fated. Ada's summons was not an invitation that could be declined; it was a gravitational pull he was powerless to resist.
"I have to go," he said, his voice flat, devoid of the emotion churning inside him. "It's my job now, remember? Grim Enterprises representative." He tried for a wry smile, but it felt like a grimace. "Can't flake on my first day."
She knew he was lying. Or, at least, she knew he was hiding the real reason for his fear. But she also knew him well enough to see the grim, unshakeable resolve in his eyes. She didn't push. She just reached across the table and placed her hand over his. Her skin was warm, alive.
"Then you'll go, and you'll be brilliant," she said, her voice a low, fierce promise. "You'll be smart, and professional, and you won't let that woman intimidate you. And you'll come home tonight, and I'll be right here. Okay?"
He nodded, unable to speak, his throat tight with unspoken fear and gratitude. Her hand on his was his only anchor to this world, the only thing that felt real.
He spent the next hour preparing for battle. He showered again, scrubbing at his skin as if he could wash away the dread. He stood in front of his closet, choosing his armor. Not the comfortable jeans and hoodies of his student life, but the crisp, severe lines of his corporate uniform. A dark navy suit that was almost black, a starched white shirt, a muted silver tie. Each item was a layer of a carefully constructed facade, a costume designed to project an aura of untouchable competence.
He knotted the tie, his fingers feeling clumsy, alien. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. The man looking back at him was a stranger. His face was pale, his jaw tight, his hazel eyes wide with a frantic, hunted look that the expensive suit couldn't hide. He looked like a condemned man on his way to the gallows, dressed in his Sunday best.
The preparations were a lie. He wasn't getting ready for a meeting. He was getting ready to be devoured. And the worst part, the part that made his stomach clench with a cold, sickening dread, was that he was going willingly. He had to know. He had to understand what she wanted from him. He had to walk into the heart of the furnace to discover why he was chosen to be the sacrifice. His isolation was a cage, and Ada held the only key.