Chapter 13 · The File Blinked Back

The Discord wouldn't stop pinging.

I stared at my phone. Four hundred notifications in six minutes. The stream had ended two hours ago and people were still clipping that moment. The howl. My howl. Fifty thousand people heard me lose it on camera and now half of them thought it was the sickest sound design they'd ever heard and the other half were asking what kind of plugins I used.

I threw the phone across the couch.

"You gonna answer any of those?" Cole stood in my doorway holding two mugs of something that smelled like burnt coffee. He'd been camping in my living room since I let him in last night. Still wasn't sure that was smart.

"No."

"They're gonna want to know if you're streaming tomorrow."

"I'm not."

He set one mug on the table in front of me. I didn't touch it. He sat down in the chair across from me and I wanted to throw that too.

"We need to talk about what you saw," he said.

"My mom. Being dragged into a hole. By your people."

"Not my people. Not anymore."

"But it was then." I finally looked at him.