Chapter 6: The Voice in the Vent

There are moments when silence becomes louder than screams.

Rei had grown used to the predictable hum of the artificial lights above. To the quiet, clinical clink of the meal tray sliding through the wall. The shuffling of fabric as he folded and unfolded the same blanket for the hundredth time. But tonight—no, whatever “time” meant anymore—was different.

He heard a knock.

Faint. Like bone against metal. Three short taps, then silence.

Rei froze, crouched near the toilet where he'd been practicing breathing drills. His heartbeat spiked, fists clenching. For a moment, he questioned reality. Was it another hallucination? The room had done that to him before. The blurred footage on the TV. The voice of Aiko crying for help in his dreams. His own voice arguing back in paranoid monologues.

But then, it came again.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He stood and moved toward the far corner—the coldest one. He placed his ear against the metal paneling and held his breath.

“...hello?” he whispered, his own voice sounding foreign. Weak.

Silence.

Then:

Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

Morse code.

Rei's pulse surged. He scrambled to the notebook he'd been using to track patterns, flipping to the back page where he had written the alphabet in Morse. Quickly, he jotted down the sequence, translating.

“They lied.”

He blinked. Swallowed.

He knocked back:

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap. Tap-tap.

“Who?” he asked.

A long pause. He thought maybe it was over. Maybe he’d imagined it after all. His fingers hovered above the metal.

Then a new series of taps came, slower this time. Harder.

He scrambled to decode again.

“They’re watching.”

Rei swallowed hard. His eyes darted to the corners of the room, the single black dot on the ceiling — possibly a camera, possibly not. He never knew for sure. He whispered, almost inaudibly, “Who’s watching?”

More taps.

“Don’t trust her.”

Rei froze.

Her?

“Who?” he mouthed.

But no response came. The tapping stopped. A hush fell again, heavier than before, like the room was holding its breath.

---

He didn’t sleep that cycle.

He lay on the cold floor, eyes open, tracing the cracked lines in the metal above. The last message repeated in his brain like a looping siren: Don’t trust her. Don’t trust her. He didn’t know who the message referred to. Yukari? But she was dead. Or was it someone else? Someone who orchestrated this? Someone still alive?

His mind spiraled. Every memory became suspect. Every word Yukari ever said. The pendant. The day of the fire. His own breakdown. The blood. The screams.

The image of Aiko, wide-eyed, sitting cross-legged on the living room floor flooded his mind.

“Daddy, are ghosts real?”

He remembered laughing. “No, sweetheart. Just old stories.”

But now? He wasn’t so sure.

---

Later, while finishing what little food he’d been given — lukewarm rice, a slice of boiled egg — the TV turned on.

No flicker. No static.

Just a scene: His living room. Intact. Peaceful.

Aiko’s drawing taped to the fridge.

Then Yukari walking into frame, humming a song.

Rei’s breath caught.

The footage looked real. Not a recreation. Not fake. This was their home. A time before the incident.

Aiko ran into Yukari’s arms. The screen trembled slightly. Then—

Static. Loud and sudden.

Then black.

Rei stumbled back, knocking over the food tray.

His hand trembled.

“Why are you doing this?” he whispered to no one.

The screen stayed black for a few seconds more… then came the voice.

Aiko’s voice.

But wrong.

Distorted. Echoing.

“You killed us… didn’t you, Daddy?”

Rei screamed.

He lunged forward and smashed the food tray into the wall beneath the screen. Again. And again. He hit until the edge bent and broke, until his hands were bleeding, until he collapsed, shaking.

“NO! I didn’t! I didn’t!”

He curled on the floor, nails scratching at his scalp.

“I tried to save you… I TRIED!”

The screen flickered once more. A still image appeared.

The pendant.

That same pendant—its crimson glow shining faintly. Hanging from a woman’s neck.

Not Yukari.

Someone else.

He stared at the image until the screen blinked off.

---

Later That Cycle…

Rei sat cross-legged, eyes closed. Breathing. In. Out. In. Out.

He had to stay focused. The voice, the tapping, the footage — it was all manipulation. All part of some test. Or conditioning. Or worse. He thought of his training in criminal profiling. Of how prisoners were sometimes broken not by pain, but by isolation and suggestion.

He whispered to himself: “You are not broken. You are not broken.”

He walked to the wall again.

Tapped softly.

No answer.

---

Entry - Scratched into Wall

“I will not fall into madness. They want that. They want me to believe I am guilty. But I know what I saw. The fire. The pendant. That man—no, that thing. It wasn’t human. Yukari knew something. Aiko... I have to hold onto her memory. I must remain. I must survive. I must find the truth. I will.”

---

That night, before the lights shut off, Rei thought he saw something in the corner of the room.

A flicker of red.

Like flame.

Gone in a blink.

He didn't chase it.

Instead, he whispered into the silence: “I know you’re watching.”

And then, to the shadows—

“Whoever you are… you won’t win.”

---