It wasn't an ascent. It was a brutal kidnapping by physics.

  G-force crushed them to the floor as darkness sped past the grates.

  Then, a magnetic hum braked the ride instantly. The cab stopped with an overly polite ding. Their bodies, betrayed by inertia, collapsed into a human pile.

  ?"If that's your hand on my back, Alex," Tony groaned, muffled by the floor, "I'm leaving you here."

  ?"It's my scanner," Alex moaned. "And technically you're my airbag. You should be honored."

  ?"Get off," Cristy hissed, kicking to free herself. She stood up, adjusting her hoodie, but stumbled immediately. "Oh God... I think my stomach is still sixty feet down."

  ?Alex rolled away, fixing his crooked glasses. "Exponential braking. Painful, but fascinating."

  ?Tony stood up last. He rubbed his cheek marked by the grate. "Fascinating my ass," he growled. But they were whole. They were alive.

  Then, memory returned like a slap.

  ?"Quiet."

  Tony froze.

  Humor vanished, sucked away by fear. They flattened against the walls, waiting for military screams, flashlight beams, the order to get on the ground.

  ?Five seconds. Ten.

  Nothing.

  Just the intermittent buzz of a neon light in the hallway and the distant wind.

  ?Tony exchanged a glance with the others. Cristy had white knuckles on her backpack straps.

  Tony nodded. I'll go.

  He poked his head out.

  ?The lobby of St. Alder was a graveyard of shadows.

  There were signs of recent passage: boot prints in dry mud, overturned chairs, a torn yellow tape.

  But no one was there.

  No soldiers. No armored cars. The silence was absolute, heavy.

  ?"They're gone," he whispered, voice scratching.

  Alex and Cristy stepped out behind him.

  "That's impossible," Cristy murmured. "They were here. I saw them arrive. They locked everything down."

  ?"They were coming for us," Alex whispered, shivering.

  ?"Let's go," Tony cut short. He didn't like that silence. "Out. Now."

  ?They ran toward the glass doors, diving into the night air. The smell of pine and wet asphalt had never been so sweet.

  The lot was deserted.

  Then, Alex stopped, pointing at the old fountain.

  "Hey..."

  ?Cristy brought a hand to her mouth. "No. No, this is insane."

  "What do you mean?" Tony asked, approaching his bike. It was real. Cold metal and flat tires.

  "I saw them, Tony!" Cristy hissed, trembling. "I saw the soldiers loading the bikes onto the vans. I swear! They were taking them away!"

  ?Alex looked at the bikes, then the dark building. "Gaslighting."

  "What?"

  "Psychological warfare," Alex explained, pale. "They're telling us nothing happened. That we're just three kids who imagined everything. They put everything back to make us doubt our sanity."

  ?Tony grabbed the handlebars. His hands shook, but he squeezed until the shaking stopped.

  "It half-worked," he said, mounting the saddle. "I lost my sanity down there, but I still have the will to live. Ride. Now."

  ?They sprinted away as if the building were about to swallow them. Tires bit the gravel, then asphalt. They pedaled with the desperation of escaping a nightmare, but the nightmare was real and had just released them.

  ?They didn't slow down until their lungs burned.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  They stopped only at the old intersection under the blinking streetlight, where the roads home split.

  Tony braked with a skid.

  Everyone's breath formed little clouds of steam. They were out. They were alive. But looking at each other's faces, they understood no one would go back to who they were before.

  ?Adrenaline gave way to cold.

  The sodium lamp sizzled, casting a jaundiced light.

  ?Tony looked at his friends.

  Alex was rubbing soot-stained eyes. Cristy stared into the dark, arms crossed.

  That streetlight. That hum.

  For an instant, the present slipped away, exposing the bone of the past.

  ?Six years ago.

  ?It wasn't a horror movie night. Just a shitty night. Fine, freezing, insistent rain.

  Tony was ten years old and running from silence.

  At home, the TV broadcast static snow. His father stared at nothing with a full glass in hand. Since Mom left, the house was a mausoleum. That night, the weight of absence had become suffocating.

  He had reached the crossroads by inertia, sitting on the guardrail under the only island of light.

  ?"That pole doesn't cover you. You'll just get a fever."

  ?Tony turned his head.

  There was a kid sitting on the gravel. Oversized yellow raincoat, glasses held together by electrical tape. Alex Whitmore. The school's moving target.

  ?"What do you want?" Tony asked, tired.

  ?"Counting drops," Alex replied, writing in a soaked notebook. "Numbers don't lie and they don't ignore you."

  He stood up. Opened a black umbrella reinforced with wire. He sat next to Tony and moved the umbrella to cover both, leaving his own shoulder exposed to the rain.

  ?They stayed like that for twenty minutes. Two forgotten children, united by the noise of the rain.

  Then, a skipping chain.

  A bike slid on the gravel.

  Cristy wasn't crying. She stood up wiping skinned knees. She wore a fancy dress stained with mud.

  ?"My parents were fighting about money. Again," she said. "Then they stopped yelling. It's worse when they're quiet. They pretend I don't exist."

  She looked at Tony and Alex under the umbrella. She climbed over the guardrail and sat on Tony’s other side, pressing against him.

  ?Alex sighed, as if it were a logistical problem, and widened the umbrella until the ribs creaked.

  "We can be a closed system," he murmured.

  ?Tony felt the warmth of their bodies against his side. A violent contrast to the cold inside him.

  "What does that mean?"

  "I read it in a book," Alex explained. "A closed system lets nothing in from outside. It protects itself. Outside is the mess. In here we're safe."

  ?Tony didn't understand books, but he understood loneliness. And he understood that, for the first time, he wasn't alone in the dark.

  "Okay," he said. "No one enters. No one touches us."

  Cristy rested her head on his shoulder. Alex nodded solemnly.

  Some alliances are born of necessity, welded by silence under a sizzling neon light.

  ?Present.

  ?The hum of the streetlight brought Tony back to now.

  The woods were the same. The cold was the same. And they were still there.

  "It's still us," Tony said. It wasn't a question.

  ?Alex put his glasses back on. Behind the lenses, his eyes were steady. "The variables changed. The constant remained."

  ?Cristy sniffled. "A closed system," she repeated, with a bitter half-smile. "No one in, no one out."

  ?Tony gripped the handlebars. He felt the weight of leadership, a heavy cloak he hadn't asked for.

  "Go home," he ordered gently. "Hide everything. Don't talk to anyone. See you tomorrow at school."

  He looked them in the eyes.

  "We aren't crazy. And we aren't alone. Remember that when you're in the dark."

  ?"Goodnight, Tony," Cristy whispered.

  "Night," Alex replied.

  ?The three bikes separated, swallowed by three different paths.

  As he pedaled toward the silence of his house, Tony felt the cold in his stomach was less intense. They had looked into the abyss, and the abyss had looked back. But they had done it together.

  ?Tony’s house welcomed him with the stale smell of a life that no longer belonged to him.

  He climbed the stairs like an intruder, avoiding looking at his father passed out in front of the TV.

  He closed his bedroom door and slid to the floor.

  The dark wasn't empty. It was saturated. His hands hadn't stopped shaking. It wasn't just fear; it was a residual vibration, as if his bones had absorbed the machine's frequency.

  ?He looked at his hands. They had touched impossible technology. They had silenced a sound that killed.

  The shock wasn't a scream. It was a heavy fog.

  ?The phone vibrated. Dry.

  Black icon. No name.

  Tony unlocked. Green code on black. Cristy had turned paranoia into software.

  ?[C]: Ghost protocol active. Frequency-hopping VPN tunnel. If the contractors are looking for us, we're black holes.

  ?[T]: Was that necessary?

  ?[C]: Tony, there were black vans with no plates outside an asylum. Yes.

  ?A cursor blinked. Message from Alex.

  ?[A]: Speaking of necessary things... should we order you a cape?

  ?Tony stared at the screen.

  ?[T]: Go to hell.

  ?[A]: I'm serious. You stopped a sonic weapon with bare hands and hacked a 1940s elevator with bio-electricity. If you're not the Avenger of Stonemouth, I don't know what you are.

  ?Tony felt a nervous grimace. Alex built walls of sarcasm to avoid looking at the horror.

  ?[T]: Not funny. I was about to puking my guts out down there.

  ?[A]: I know. Me too. Just trying not to think about the fact we're alive by a miracle.

  ?The chat stayed inert. The joke had died, suffocated by reality.

  ?[C]: I can't do this. I tried to look at the photos but I get dizzy. It's too much. My brain refuses to accept it.

  ?[A]: Cognitive overload. If we try to analyze tonight we end up straight in the psych ward.

  ?Tony felt exhaustion crash down on him like a landslide. Physical desire to shut down consciousness.

  ?[T]: Alex is right. We can't talk about it now. We're too messed up.

  ?[C]: I feel like I'm in another world. My room feels fake.

  ?[T]: It's shock. Sleep on it. Tomorrow at school, with clear heads, we figure it out.

  ?[A]: Ok. As long as tomorrow you guys confirm it wasn't a hallucination.

  ?[T]: Wish it was.

  ?[C]: Goodnight. At least try.

  ?[A]: Night.

  ?[T]: Night.

  ?Tony turned off the screen.

  The room returned to being a box of shadows.

  He dragged himself onto the bed without taking off his shoes, staring at the ceiling. Silence wasn't peace; it was just a pause.

  He closed his eyes, hoping for dreamless dark.

  But when sleep came, it wasn't rest that took him away. It was the hum.

  Low, constant, right behind his ears.

  The machine was off. But in his head, the circuit was still open.

  Author’s Note ??