What did past-Rome want?
He shifted his weight, the FLIR case still in hand. The honest answer would've required therapy he couldn't afford and a level of vulnerability he'd spent seventeen years learning to avoid. So naturally, he went with the classics.
"To get through my shift tomorrow without falling asleep. To pay my rent. The usual."
Might as well have said 'I like breathing and eating food.'
"Fair enough."
Her eyes had done that thing though. That microsecond pause where someone files away information they know is bullshit. Like a dealer spotting a bluff and choosing not to call it yet.
The observer version of Rome floating in this memory wanted to reach down and shake his younger self. That was the tell, you idiot.
She turned back to her equipment. The soft clicks of cables being seated into ports filled the silence. Down below, through the grimy windows, he could see the faint glow of Base Camp's monitor setup. The static cameras' red LEDs blinked like distant stars in the dark ocean of the processing floor.
Past-Rome had nothing to do except stand there feeling awkward. His hand drifted up to his chest without conscious thought, fingers finding the familiar shape of the obsidian pendant through his shirt.
"That necklace. Bree was pretty interested in it earlier. Family heirloom?"
"Something like that. It was my mom's. She left it for me."
Which was technically true if you squinted and didn't look too hard at the gaping void where actual facts should be. He had no clue who his mother was. The necklace had been around his neck in every single memory he possessed, going back to that orphanage floor. He'd just... assumed. Built a whole mythology around three ounces of rock and tarnished silver because the alternative was admitting he had absolutely nothing.
"Been wearing it since I was a baby," he added. "Never taken it off."
Madison finally turned around. She held a small cylindrical sensor in one hand, about the size of a film canister.
"Never? Aren't you curious what's underneath?"
"It's just a rock," he said.
"Is it?"
She took a step closer.
"It looks old." Her eyes dropped to his chest where the pendant rested beneath his shirt.
"I mean, it's just something I wear," he said lamely. "Sentimental value and all that."
Madison's expression shifted. Something in her posture relaxed, like she'd gotten the reading she needed and was backing off before the subject got too spooked.
"The truth is," she said, her voice dropping into something closer to confession than conversation, "I'm not here for ghosts. Not really."
Oh good. A plot twist. Just what this night needed.
She set the sensor down on the dusty conference table and leaned against it. "My family has a history of sensitives. Not like Bree with her feelings and vibes. I mean people who can actually perceive energy patterns that most instruments can't detect."
Past-Rome waited.
"I don't believe in spirits," Madison continued. "I believe in energy though. And I've been tracking a specific signature in this area for months. Something that doesn't fit any known model." She paused, her dark eyes catching his. "It feels hungry."
The word landed between them like a stone in still water.
"That's why I organized this whole thing. Convinced Chloe it would be great content. Set up the equipment grid." She gestured vaguely at the laptop and sensors. "I needed an excuse to get instruments in here when that energy signature was most active."
Past-Rome's brain was doing that thing where it tries to process too much information at once and just sort of blue-screens. She'd orchestrated this entire investigation. The Spectral Seekers thought they were leading, but Madison had been pulling strings the whole time.
"So this is all what, a science experiment?"
"More like confirmation of a hypothesis." She tilted her head, studying his reaction. "You feel it too, don't you? That sensation like something's watching us. Has been since we arrived."
He wanted to deny it. The smart play would've been to laugh it off, make a joke, reestablish the comfortable distance between weird shit and his carefully maintained normal life.
She was right though.
The air in this building had weight. Texture. Like the atmosphere itself was paying attention in a way that had nothing to do with barometric pressure or temperature gradients.
He opened his mouth to respond.
The walkie-talkie on his belt erupted in a screech of static so loud he actually jumped.
Madison's laptop screen flickered. The feed showing the main processing floor, the wide shot from the static camera they'd set up, stuttered and pixelated.
Then came the scream.
Raw and wet and so full of agony it didn't sound human. The walkie-talkie's cheap speaker couldn't handle the range, distorting the sound into something that scraped along his spine like rusted nails.
"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?!"
Jake's voice. Shrill and terrified and way too loud.
"GET BACK! CHLOE, GET BACK!"
A sound like tearing fabric. Something heavy hitting the ground.
Then nothing.
The laptop feed dissolved into corrupted static, green and black pixels swarming across the screen like digital insects. The walkie-talkie went dead mid-burst, the sudden silence somehow worse than the noise.
Past-Rome's body moved before his brain caught up. He was at the door in two steps, hand on the knob, pulling.
"Wait."
He turned back. Madison hadn't moved. She stood exactly where she'd been, leaning against that dusty conference table. Her eyes were locked on the static-filled laptop screen.
And she was smiling.
Not a big smile. Not some cartoonish villain grin. Just a small upturn at the corners of her mouth. The expression of someone who'd just had a theory confirmed after months of work.
"We have to help them," past-Rome said. His voice sounded distant, like it belonged to someone else.
Madison's gaze slid from the screen to him. The concern he'd seen earlier, the casual friendliness, the confiding tone, all of it had evaporated like morning frost.
"Three months," she said quietly. "I've been monitoring energy fluctuations in this location for three months. Mapping patterns. Correlating them with lunar phases, solar activity, electromagnetic field variations." She gestured at the static-filled screen. "I could never get a direct observation though. The signature would spike and then disappear before I could triangulate it."
"Madison, what the fuck are you talking about?" His hand was still on the doorknob, knuckles white. "They're in trouble."
"They were always going to be in trouble." She said it so matter-of-factly. Like she was explaining a chemical reaction. "That's how it feeds. It requires organic energy, preferably human. Young, healthy subjects with strong life force."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees.
"You knew."
"I hypothesized." She pulled out a small device from her pocket, something that looked like a modified EMF reader. Its display showed numbers that meant nothing to him, scrolling too fast to read. "The confirmation is invaluable though. Look at these readings. The energy signature isn't diffuse anymore. It's consolidated. Active."
"You used them as bait."
Madison's eyes met his. For the first time all night, she looked completely honest. "I used all of you as bait. Chloe, Jake, Bree, they were always going to push deeper into the building though. Their belief makes them reckless." She took a step toward him. "You were different. You don't believe. You observe. That makes you much more interesting data."
The walkie-talkie on his belt crackled. Not static this time. Something else. A wet breathing sound, like air being pulled through damaged lungs.
Then a voice. Bree's voice.
"Rome?"
"Bree! Are you okay? What happened?"
"Rome, you need to come down here. We found something. Something important."
Madison's smile widened. "Don't."
"Bree, where are Jake and Chloe?"
"They're here too. We're all here. Come down, Rome. We've been waiting for you."
The breathing sound grew louder.
"Come home."
The walkie-talkie went silent.
Madison was watching him with that same clinical fascination. Her modified EMF reader pulsed with light, the numbers still scrolling.
"See?" she whispered. "I told you I was here for the data."
The building groaned around them. Somewhere below, something heavy dragged across concrete.