The living room carried a strange kind of stillness, the kind that didn't come from peace but from something sinster present.
The lights were on, but they did little to warm the space. They cast a dull glow across the room, stretching soft shadows along the walls and pooling faintly in the corners where the light didn't quite reach. The curtains were drawn halfway, leaving the outside world blurred and distant, as though it had been deliberately kept out.
The television flickered quietly at the center of it all.
Its light shifted across Karen's face, then across Mathieu's, painting both of them in pale tones. Neither of them moved much. They sat apart on tge couch but aligned in attention, their eyes fixed on the screen as if waiting for it to speak first.
And then it did.
A voice came through, encrypted and wrapped in layers that stripped it of anything human.
It spoke in French.
