A familiar tension coiled between us. We stood there, locked in our usual standoff of silence. Some days I wondered if either of us remembered how this started or why we kept it going.
* * *
As the day dragged on, the anxiety from the morning didn’t fade. It tightened, settled into my chest, and stayed there, pressing against it.
At first, it was small things.
Phones buzzing more than usual. Staff stepping away to answer calls and coming back different—rigid shoulders, darting eyes, voices a little too controlled. One of the volunteers left mid-shift without saying goodbye, merely grabbed her bag and walked out. I watched her go, her breathing shallow and fast, and she didn’t look back.
Nobody said anything.
That part bothered me. Nobody said anything, but everybody knew something.
Even the aquarium seemed off. The tank’s blue-green glow seemed too bright, almost feverish. Fish darted in tighter circles than usual, their movements jerky and quick.
Around mid-afternoon, my phone rang.
Sadie.
I stared at her name on the screen. My jaw tightened. We hadn’t spoken since yesterday morning, since the fight.
I considered letting it go to voicemail.
But—some low, distressing feeling I couldn’t name—made me answer.
“What?” I said flatly.
All I heard was screaming.
Not yelling, but full, raw panic, the kind that strips a voice down to something animal.
“Callan!” she sobbed. “They’re trying to get in!”
I straightened immediately. My whole body became rigid.
“What? Who’s trying to get in?”
Her words tumbled over each other, broken apart by gasps and sobs.
“I don’t—these people outside—oh God, they’re not stopping, one just—” A sound tore out of her that didn’t sound human. “He’s tearing at her throat. With his teeth. There’s so much blood—Callan, they’re trying to break through the glass—”
My stomach dropped. Everything dropped. The sounds of the aquarium, the glow of the tanks, the normalcy of the afternoon—all of it fell away and left me standing cold and off.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded. My voice came out harder than I meant it to, louder. “Sadie, slow down.”
Then a crash on her end. Glass breaking. Not a window cracking—glass exploding, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the floor.
She screamed again, this time much worse. This time there were other voices behind hers.
“They’re coming inside—Callan, they’re cominginside—”
My grip on the phone became so tight that my hand shook.
“Sadie, listen to me,” already moving, already turning toward the hallway, though I didn’t know where I thought I was going. “Lock yourself in a room. Lock the door. Do it now.”
“I—I can’t—I—”
The line went dead.