4338.206 · July 25, 2018 AD
The Door He Forgot to Close
Luke needs three minutes. Three minutes while the courier uses the bathroom, three minutes to do something impossible and cover his tracks before anyone notices. Joel needs answers. About the name on his birth certificate, about the man who lives in this house, about why a simple delivery feels like walking into someone else's secret. Neither of them is going to get what they need.
Luke has done the calculations. He knows exactly how long a bathroom break takes, how many seconds he has to act, how tight the margins are between success and disaster. He's been planning for weeks—longer, if you count the dreams. Everything depends on speed, precision, and the courier not asking questions.
Joel has questions. He's had them since yesterday, since the birth certificate, since his mother's tears in a dark kitchen. The name on the delivery manifest pulled him back here, and now he's inside the house, standing where he shouldn't be standing, looking at something he was never meant to see.
Two people. One house. A morning balanced on a knife's edge.
Luke is gambling everything on borrowed minutes. Joel is following a thread that leads somewhere he can't yet imagine. And between them—behind them—something waits. Something that flickers at the edge of vision. Something that doesn't belong in a suburban backyard in Berriedale.
The delivery was supposed to be simple. The bathroom break was supposed to be quick. Nothing about today is going to be what it was supposed to be.
