Morning passed. Noon came, twelve o'clock.
Fahad still hadn't woken up.
Juliana entered the room and called to him softly.
What had happened the night before, what she had heard with her own ears, what she had felt in her bones, was enough to steal sleep from any ordinary person.
But Fahad slept as if nothing had happened.
As if the world had not shifted.
Tonight, a phone would ring.
He wouldn't have to answer it.
Yet that single call could cost countless lives.
It could drag buried truths out of the ground.
It could make lies fall away like dead leaves from a rotten tree. It could turn withheld tears into rain.
Carrying all of this, every consequence, every possibility,
Fahad finally opened his eyes.
Frostbite stepped in front of Fahad and asked,
"I've never seen you sleep this much. Why now?"
Fahad wiped the last traces of sleep from his eyes and stood up.
"I don't know what tonight will bring," he said calmly.
"What I expect might happen. What I don't expect might happen too."
He paused, choosing his words carefully.
"Keeping all of that in my head would only rot me from the inside."
He met Frostbite's gaze.
"So I chose sleep instead."
A beat.
"That doesn't mean I'm weak or lazy."
His voice was steady, resolved.
"It means I'm preparing myself for tonight."
Fahad spent the entire day on the balcony, waiting. Waiting for night to fall. Waiting for the phone to ring.
In all of history, perhaps there had never been a man like him. Someone who keeps himself sharp in the shadow of danger, who waits, patient, while the threat drags itself slowly toward him.
Night came. Ten o'clock struck.
The phone did not ring.
Frostbite believed the phone wouldn't ring.
Fahad knew it would.
Because those words had come from his uncle. Jafar Al Faris. And within Fahad, within his family, there was no such thing as a lie.
Frostbite said quietly,
"It's ten ten now. The call isn't coming."
Fahad glanced once at the clock.
Once at the phone.
Then, with absolute certainty, he said,
"It will ring."
At 10:15, the phone rang.
The sound cut through the room and stunned everyone into silence.
Fahad's heartbeat spiked, so did everyone else's. Breath came faster, heavier.
Not from surprise.
But from understanding.
Because they all knew,
the time had come.
Fahad and Frostbite didn't waste a second.
They left immediately,
but in the rush, they forgot to end the call.
When they reached the location, both of them stopped at once.
Four figures stood ahead of them on the location.
Strange.
Identical.
Dressed like scientists.
Without a word, without hesitation, each of them drove a blade into his own chest.
They collapsed right there, in front of Fahad and Frostbite.
Frostbite couldn't process what he had just witnessed. His mind rejected it outright.
But Fahad stood frozen.
Eyes wide.
Unblinking.
He stared at the bodies as if something inside him had been unlocked.
As if this wasn't the first time he had seen a scene like this.
And that realization frightened him more than the deaths themselves.
Then Fahad looked to his left.
A green car stood there.
Something inside him collapsed.
The men had died the same way.
The same posture.
The same choice.
The wound on his brother's chest,
that exact mark,
they had replicated on themselves.
And the green car beside him,
It was the one Fahad had been searching for all this time.
The one that had never been found.
Tears slipped from Fahad's eyes, silent and uncontrolled.
He turned to Frostbite and said, his voice hollow,
"My brother wasn't murdered."
A pause.
"He killed himself."
On the other hand,
Juliana had been carrying a quiet, tightening dread, one that had nothing to do with noise or chaos, but with absence. Fahad and Frostbite. The way they had left. The way the call had never been ended. Some mistakes do not demand immediate punishment; they wait. And when they return, they collect with interest.
The phone rang.
Juliana stared at it for too long before answering, as if some instinct deep inside her was begging her not to. When she finally pressed accept, the room seemed to lean inward, listening with her.
From the other side came a slow, rhythmic sound, drip… drip… drip, water falling somewhere hollow and endless. Beneath it, breathing. Not rushed. Not panicked. Intentional. As if whoever was breathing knew they were being heard.
"Hello?"
Her voice trembled, thin and fragile, barely her own.
The breathing stopped.
For a moment, there was nothing. No water. No air. No sound at all.
Then a scream tore through the phone, raw, violent, close enough to feel inside her skull. Juliana gasped, stumbling backward as the lights above her began to flicker, struggling as if they were drowning in darkness. The air turned sharp and cold. Curtains snapped. The wind howled through a room that had no open windows.
Her skin prickled. Her thoughts scattered. The room no longer felt like a room, it felt like a place that was being entered.
And then, without warning, the lights died.
Total darkness.
Not the kind that comes from the absence of light, but the kind that presses against the eyes, heavy and deliberate. Juliana stood frozen, phone still in her hand, aware of only one thing:
She was no longer alone.
To be continued...