Lara didn't touch it at first.
She just stared at her name, inked in those same precise, perfect letters. The envelope was thick, matte black, almost like it had been cut from velvet paper. No stamp. No return address.
Kaven crouched beside it. "You recognize the handwriting?"
She shook her head slowly. "It's… too neat. Like it was printed by a machine. But it's not."
"Want me to open it?"
Lara hesitated, then nodded. She didn't trust her own fingers.
Kaven peeled the envelope open carefully, as if expecting it to explode.
Inside was a single photograph.
Black and white. Glossy. Recently printed.
It was a picture of her apartment window — the one Kaven had climbed through.
Taken from across the street. From an angle that clearly showed the inside.
And there was someone in the photo.
Not Lara.
Not Kaven.
A figure — standing inside her apartment, by the curtains.
Tall. Shadowed. Face completely hidden.
She gasped. "That can't be real. That… that wasn't taken today."
Kaven turned it over.
There were numbers written on the back in the same pen:
> Δ: 4.91 MHz
14:17 – Sector 9
"Wait for the silence to break."
Neither of them spoke for several seconds.
Then Kaven whispered, "I think they know I'm here."
Lara's voice was barely audible. "You said someone was chasing you. You never told me why."
"I didn't tell you," Kaven replied, slowly folding the photo again, "because I don't know who they are. Or what they want. I just know… they've been around ever since I found that file."
"What file?"
But he didn't answer.
Instead, he walked over to her window again — carefully.
And this time, the glass was already open.
Just slightly.
Kaven turned to her. "Did you—?"
"No," Lara said, backing away.
That's when both of them heard it.
A low, radio-like hum from somewhere below the building.
A frequency.
Buzzing.
Flickering.
Then silence again.
Dead silence.
They looked at each other.
> "Wait for the silence to break."
---
End of the Chapter 7