The world was made of syrup. That was the only way Ace could describe the feeling in his head. Thick, slow, impossible to think through. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed like angry hornets, and the scratch of the teacher's marker on the whiteboard was a dry, endless scrape against his skull.
Algebra. Or maybe history. He'd lost track about twenty minutes into the period. The words on the board weren't letters or numbers anymore; they were just grey smears, swimming in and out of focus behind the gritty sandpaper of his own eyelids.
His chin hit his chest.
His body jerked, a sudden shot of panic-fueled adrenaline shocking his system awake. His heart hammered against his ribs as if he'd just dodged a claw in the dark, not nodded off in a classroom. He blinked, forcing his eyes open. The kid in front of him, Kevin or Kyle or whatever, was dutifully copying notes. The clock above the door taunted him. 10:17 AM. He'd been here for an eternity, and the day had barely started.
A week and a half. Ten days of this. The routine was a closed fist, crushing him day by day.
Morning: Drag himself out of bed after maybe three hours of fitful sleep. Shove toast in his mouth while his mom watched him with those quiet, worried eyes. Stumble to the bus.
Day: Sit in hard plastic chairs, fighting a losing war against sleep while teachers talked about parabolas or the causes of some forgotten war. The real war—the one with claws and bad energy and rituals—felt a million miles away, and yet it was the only thing that felt real.
Afternoon: Go straight from the final bell to the RV or the house, where Axl and Garath would have new, musty books pulled from his dad's study. They'd point at diagrams of circles and weird symbols. They'd talk in low tones about "energy convergence" and "sacrificial thresholds." Ace's job was usually to fetch coffee or flip through pages until his vision blurred.
Night: The stakeout. Standing in the cold, windy dark of that perfect, quiet, suburban hellscape. Watching identical houses sit in silence. Listening to nothing. Hating every manicured lawn, every cheerful garden gnome, every car parked neatly in a driveway. The neighborhood was a stage set for normal life, and it felt like a sick joke.
Nothing had happened. Not a single thing. The peak of excitement was three nights ago, when a middle-aged man, reeking of cheap beer, had tripped over his own feet and toppled headfirst into a green plastic garbage bin. The clang had been the most action they'd seen. Cedric had nearly pissed himself laughing. Ace had just felt a hollow sort of rage.
Axl said the silence was their victory. "No bodies means we're winning," he'd grunt, his eyes never leaving the shadowy spaces between houses. Garath would just nod, a silent statue of agreement. But for Ace and Cedric, the silence wasn't a victory. It was a slow, draining torture. It was boredom with a sharp, anxious edge. It was the mental fatigue of being constantly, uselessly alert, and the physical fatigue of running on empty.
The syrupy feeling pulled at him again. His head, so heavy, lolled to the side. The cold, slick surface of the desk met his cheek. It was a shocking relief. It felt like the hood of the RV in the dead hours of the night—a small, solid island in a sea of exhaustion. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding, and the classroom noise—the rustling, the whispering, the droning lecture—faded into a distant hum.
He was gone.
A dark shape blotted out the light behind his eyelids. Then a voice, sharp and vinegar-clear, cut the cord of his sleep.
"WHAT IS THIS BEHAVIOUR, ACE?"
He exploded upward. His chair legs shrieked against the linoleum floor, a sound of pure panic. He blinked, wild-eyed, the classroom snapping into a nauseating, too-bright focus. Mrs. Gable loomed over his desk, arms folded tight across her chest. Her expression was a masterpiece of disapproval—pursed lips, raised eyebrows, the whole bit.
Seeing him flounder only stoked the fire. "Every. Single. Day." She bit off each word. "I look at you, and you are asleep. What is the problem? Is your home not conducive to rest? Do we need to have a conference?" Her voice was rising, climbing into that register teachers used to publicly shame. A few snickers rippled from the back of the room. "This is a place of learning, not a dormitory! Do you think your future employers will tolerate you sleeping on the job?"
On the job.
The phrase, so mundane in her mouth, was almost funny. A harsh, bitter laugh clawed at his throat. Lady, if I slept on my real job, I'd wake up dead.
He said nothing. Just stared at her, his brain still rebooting, his mouth dry. The expectation hung in the air—he was supposed to apologize, to promise to do better, to show remorse.
All he could muster was a flat, hollow sound. "Sorry."
It wasn't an apology. It was a dismissal. A verbal shrug.
Mrs. Gable's eyes narrowed. She'd wanted a performance, and he'd given her a brick wall. For a second, he thought she might really unleash. But she just let out a tight, frustrated sigh, the sound of a professional dealing with a lost cause. "See me after class, Eldren. Don't think this is over."
She turned on her heel, her sensible shoes tapping a sharp retreat back to the whiteboard. The lecture resumed, the same dry drone about variables and constants.
Ace didn't hear a word of it. He slowly sank back into his chair, the adrenaline bleed leaving him feeling even more hollowed out than before. He propped his throbbing head in his hand, elbow slipping on the desk. He stared at the swirling grey smears on the board until they dissolved again, pulling him back under into a shallow, uneasy doze. His body was trapped in the bright, buzzing classroom.
But the rest of him was already back in the cold, windy dark, waiting for the silence to finally break.
***
The night felt different. It wasn't just dark, it was choked. A thick blanket of cloud had smothered the moon and stars, turning the sky into a low ceiling of bruised purple-black. A restless wind had kicked up, not howling, but hissing through the power lines above the convenience store parking lot and tearing at the plastic bags caught in the chain-link fence. It was the kind of wind that sounded like whispers.
The RV was a familiar island of weak yellow light in the vast dark. The four of them piled out, the doors groaning shut behind them. The routine was muscle memory by now. But the silence among them was heavier than usual.
Axl took a deep breath of the damp, charged air and let it out slowly. He looked at the two youngest ones first. Cedric was leaning against the RV's cold metal side, his head tilted back, eyes already half-closed. Ace just stared at the ground, his shoulders slumped in a permanent-looking curve of exhaustion.
"Alright," Axl said, his voice cutting through the wind's hiss. "What's wrong with you two? Spit it out. Especially you, Ace."
Cedric didn't even look at him. He was studying the cracked pavement of the parking lot as if it held the secrets of the universe. "Are you seriously asking us that?" His words were flat, stripped of all their usual heat. They were just facts, dropped on the ground between them.
Axl rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. He looked from their tired faces to Garath, who stood a few paces apart, a silent observer. Garath met his gaze and gave one slow, deliberate nod. It was enough.
"Look," Axl started again, his tone softening just a fraction. "I know you're tired. I get it. But it's all part of..."
"Part of the job. Yeah. I get it." Ace finished the sentence for him, his voice a low, rough monotone. He finally looked up, and the dark circles under his eyes looked like fresh bruises in the parking lot's harsh light. "We hear it every night. It doesn't make it suck less."
Axl held his gaze for a long moment. He saw the stubborn anger there, but underneath it, he saw the genuine drain. These weren't kids complaining about chores. They were hunters running on empty. He glanced again at Garath, who gave another, smaller nod.
"Fine," Axl said, the word decisive. "You two are off-duty tonight. Crash. Garath and I will handle the watch."
The effect was instant. Cedric's head came up. Ace straightened his spine a little, a flicker of something like hope breaking through the numb fatigue on his face.
"Really?" Cedric asked, the word tinged with disbelief.
"Really. You're no good to anyone like this. You'd probably sleepwalk into traffic. Just stay in the RV. Keep the door locked. Get some actual rest."
Ace didn't need to be told twice. He was already moving toward the RV's side door, a sudden, desperate energy in his steps. Cedric was right behind him, a weary grin touching his face for the first time in days.
"Don't make me regret this," Axl called after them, but there was no real bite to it. "And for god's sake, don't touch anything!"
The door slammed shut behind the boys, cutting off the sound of the wind.
Inside, the RV was quiet and dim. It smelled like old coffee, gun oil, and the faint, sweet-stale smell of energy drink cans. They moved past the cluttered galley and the worn seats to the small back bedroom.
The room was tight, just enough space for two narrow beds bolted to opposite walls. A small, dusty smart TV was mounted between them. The difference between the two sides was stark.
Garath's bed was a lesson in military precision. The grey wool blanket was pulled tight enough to bounce a coin. The single pillow was placed squarely at the head. There was nothing on the bedside shelf, not even a speck of dust.
Axl's side was a disaster zone. The blanket was a tangled nest, half on the floor. Two pillows were lumped in a heap. The shelf was a chaotic museum of loose bullets, a dog-eared paperback with a cracked spine, empty chip bags, and three different charger cables in a snarled knot.
Ace didn't hesitate. He kicked off his shoes and fell forward onto Garath's perfect bed with a groan of pure relief, burying his face in the crisp, clean pillow.
"Hey!" Cedric protested, but it was weak. He was too tired for a real argument. He just shook his head, a faint smile on his face. "Unbelievable. You're a terrible person, you know that?"
"Finders keepers," Ace's voice was muffled by the pillow. "Enjoy the laundry mountain."
Cedric looked at Axl's messy bed with mild disgust. He sighed, a long, surrendering sound. Then he just flopped onto it, clothes and all, sending a few crumbs and a loose pen skittering to the floor. He didn't even bother getting under the blanket. He pulled a corner of it over his legs and was out.
Within minutes, the only sound in the small room was the deep, rhythmic sound of two people breathing in perfect, heavy unison. The tight coils of tension that had been winding inside them for over a week finally, mercifully, snapped. In the clean bed and the messy one, sleep hit them like a truck, pulling them down into a black, dreamless void where there were no neighborhoods to watch, no rituals to fear, and no alarms to set.
***
Cedric woke up because a dog was losing its mind.
It wasn't a friendly bark. It was a sharp, frantic, panicked series of yaps that cut through the deep velvet of his sleep. It came from nearby, maybe the house behind the convenience store.
He cursed into the pillow. He tried to shove his head under it, but the sound was like a drill. He lay there for a minute, listening to the stupid animal, willing it to shut up. He glanced over at Ace, who was still out cold on Garath's bed, a motionless lump under the blanket. The guy could probably sleep through a gunfight.
Cedric sat up, rubbing his face. His hair was a tangled mess and his mouth tasted like something had died in it. But the heavy, drugging exhaustion was gone. His body had taken the three hours of crash-sleep and wrung every bit of fuel from it. He felt functional. Wired, even. This was how they were trained—to run on fumes, on fragments of rest. He was operational now, not restored, but he could think.
He swung his legs off Axl's messy bed. He needed to pee. That was the simple, stupid mission that had pulled him from oblivion.
He stood, his joints popping softly. The RV was silent except for the distant, angry dog. He took a step toward the small bathroom.
Then he stopped.
The barking stopped.
It didn't taper off. It didn't turn into a growl. It just cut.
The sudden silence was louder than the noise had been. It pressed against his ears. The only sound now was the low, constant moan of the wind outside, pushing at the sides of the RV.
Cedric stood frozen in the middle of the small bedroom, listening. It was a hunter's listen, the kind that tuned out his own breathing, that filtered the white noise of the wind.
There.
Not the dog.
Underneath the wind's moan, from the same direction as the silenced barks… a human sound.
A slow, wet, muffled breathing. The kind of breath you take when you're trying to be quiet but your lungs are burning. The kind that hitches, like a sob is being choked back.
Someone was hiding.
Someone was terrified.
Every nerve in Cedric's body went cold and sharp. The last fog of sleep burned away in an instant. He took a slow, silent step toward the bedroom door, then another, his eyes fixed on the wall as if he could see through it to the dark house beyond.
The quiet neighborhood wasn't quiet anymore. It was holding its breath.
And in that breathless dark, something had finally started.