I stood there, phone pressed to my ear, hearing silence.
I called her back.
It rang and rang and rang.
But nobody picked up.
* * *
Call failed.
My thumb hit redial. My fingers slick with sweat, the phone almost slipped before I caught it and pressed it harder against my ear.
Busy signal.
I tried again, cursing under my breath.
Busy.
Again.
Busy.
My heartbeat erratic—too fast, skipping, tripping over itself. I was aware of the sound of my own blood in my ears. Sweat gathered at my hairline and ran down my temples. The phone slipped again. I caught it, knuckles white, and stood there with my thumb hovering over redial.
This wasn’t Sadie being dramatic.
This wasn’t one of her games.
Something had gone wrong, genuinely wrong, and I was standing in the back hallway of an aquarium holding a phone that wouldn’t connect, and I couldn’t do a single goddamn thing about it.
“Callan.”
I jerked my head up.
Sloane stood in the doorway, her body rigid, one hand gripping the frame so hard her knuckles had gone white. Her eyes moved fast—my face, the phone in my hand, my face again.
I realized I’d backed myself against the wall without knowing it, my shoulders pressed flat against the concrete, every muscle in my body wound so tight it hurt.
My hands were shaking. Not a tremor, shaking, violent enough that I could see it, and I knew she noticed too.
I crushed the phone in my fist until the case groaned.
“The director wants us in his office,” she said, quiet, barely above a whisper. Her jaw clenched so tight that the words had to fight their way out.
She didn’t ask me what was wrong. She didn’t ask who I’d been calling. She stood there, holding the doorframe, waiting.
I nodded once.
I followed her down the corridor. Neither of us spoke. Our footsteps echoed off the tile—hers quick and precise, mine harsh and uneven. My mind still on Sadie’s voice, the glass breaking, the screaming that wasn’t hers.
Jason was already standing in the office when we walked in.
The director stood behind his desk—standing, not sitting. His face appeared pale. The steady, measured calm he usuallycarried—the thing that made him good at his job, the reason none of us ever worried when he was in charge—was gone. Just gone.
He looked ten years older than he had this morning. The lines across his forehead had deepened, his shoulders drawn forward, rounded, as if the weight of whatever he knew was physically pressing him down.
“We need to shut down the aquarium,” he said, every word deliberate, careful, spaced apart, as though saying them too quickly might make them more real. “Immediately.”