Free Web NovelChapter 34: Emily
Kai stared at the two messages.
One sat in his Discord DMs.
The other sat in an entirely different window.
Different accounts. Different people. Different motives.
Yet somehow they had both arrived at the exact same battlefield.
Don’t trust Derek.
Ask her about Emily.
The apartment felt strangely quiet.
Not peaceful. Not calm.
Waiting.
Outside his window, the city continued as if none of this existed. Headlights drifted through the streets below. Neon signs reflected faintly against nearby buildings. Somewhere in the distance, a siren wailed before fading into the endless hum of nighttime traffic.
Normal sounds.
A normal city.
A normal world.
Unfortunately, Kai’s life had stopped being normal somewhere around disaster number seventeen.
His gaze drifted toward Discord.
Toward Luna’s name.
The call timer continued climbing.
Neither of them spoke.
For the first time since meeting her, Kai genuinely didn’t know what to say.
Every option felt wrong.
If he ignored the messages, the questions would stay lodged in his brain, growing sharper every minute. If he asked about them, something would change.
And lately every change seemed to make everything worse.
His phone vibrated again.
Derek.
Kai didn’t even bother opening it.
The notification remained on his screen, unread and ignored.
His brain was already carrying too much weight.
Adding Derek to the pile felt irresponsible.
"Kai?"
Luna’s voice came softly through his headset.
The sound immediately eased some of the tension in his chest.
That was becoming a problem.
A serious one.
The sort of thing future therapists would probably highlight with several different colors.
"Yeah?"
"You’ve been quiet for almost a minute."
Kai glanced at the call timer.
Forty-three seconds.
It had only been forty-three seconds.
It felt like ten minutes.
His exhaustion was beginning to distort time itself.
He leaned back in his chair, listening to the familiar creak of old metal and worn-out cushions. The apartment suddenly felt smaller than usual.
Smaller.
More isolated.
More distant from everyone except the girl currently speaking through his headphones.
"Kai."
"Hm?"
"What’s wrong?"
The concern sounded genuine.
That was the problem.
It wasn’t forced.
It wasn’t manipulative.
It wasn’t fishing for information.
It sounded like someone who honestly cared.
Someone who had spent hours talking him through panic and paranoia.
Someone who stayed awake long after they should have gone to sleep.
Someone who always answered.
No matter what.
Kai swallowed.
Then made what was almost certainly a terrible decision.
Which, admittedly, was becoming something of a personality trait.
"Who’s Emily?"
The silence arrived instantly.
Not normal silence.
Not thinking silence.
Not the brief pause before someone chose their words.
This was different.
Complete.
Absolute.
The kind of silence that followed a crack appearing in something important.
Kai’s pulse quickened.
Five seconds passed.
Then ten.
Then fifteen.
Nothing.
His phone buzzed again.
Derek.
Ignored.
The OriginalLuna account began typing.
Stopped.
Started again.
Stopped once more.
Kai ignored that too.
His entire attention remained fixed on the call.
Because Luna still wasn’t speaking.
And somehow that frightened him more than the anonymous texts.
More than the photographs.
More than the figure outside his apartment.
Because Luna always had an answer.
Finally he heard a breath.
Small.
Barely audible.
Then:
"Where did you hear that name?"
Her voice sounded different.
Not angry.
Not scared.
Careful.
The word immediately reminded him of Derek.
Which somehow made everything worse.
Kai rubbed at his forehead.
The headache lurking behind his eyes was becoming self-aware.
"Someone messaged me."
"What account?"
The question came too quickly.
Kai noticed it immediately.
And judging by the silence that followed, Luna realized it too.
The apartment seemed to hold its breath.
Neither of them spoke.
Neither of them moved.
The tension settled over the call like fog.
Finally Luna sighed. ƒгeewёbnovel.com
A tired sound.
A human sound.
Not mysterious.
Not frightening.
Just tired.
"You’re talking to them."
It wasn’t a question.
It was a statement.
Kai frowned.
"Them?"
"OriginalLuna."
His stomach dropped.
The room suddenly felt much smaller.
Because he had never told her the username.
Not once.
Not aloud.
Not in a message.
Not anywhere.
Slowly, he turned toward the dark television screen across the room.
His reflection stared back at him.
Messy hair.
Exhausted eyes.
The expression of a man making increasingly catastrophic life decisions.
"How did you know that?"
The question came out quieter than he intended.
Luna didn’t answer immediately.
Another sigh escaped her.
Not frustrated.
Not annoyed.
Resigned.
Like someone facing a problem they’d already dealt with before.
When she finally spoke, her voice sounded softer than ever.
"Because she always does this."
Kai froze.
She.
Not they.
Not the account.
She.
His pulse accelerated.
The photograph.
The messages.
Emily.
OriginalLuna.
Everything suddenly felt connected.
The problem was that he still had absolutely no idea how.
The typing indicator appeared beside Luna’s name.
Vanished.
Appeared again.
Then disappeared entirely.
When she spoke, it wasn’t through text.
It was through the call.
"I didn’t want you getting dragged into this."
Kai laughed.
A short, exhausted sound.
The kind people made when reality became too ridiculous to process properly.
"That ship sailed like eight Chapters ago."
To his surprise, Luna laughed too.
A tiny sound.
Brief.
Real.
For a single second everything felt normal.
Comfortable, even.
Then reality remembered it existed.
His monitor flashed.
A new message from OriginalLuna.
Kai opened it.
The account had sent a photograph.
Old.
Grainy.
Years old, at least.
Three teenage girls sat together on a park bench beneath bright summer sunlight.
One of them had been circled.
A caption sat beneath the image.
Emily.
Kai studied the photograph.
At first nothing stood out.
Three teenagers.
Summer clothes.
Normal smiles.
Normal lives.
Then he noticed the girl sitting beside Emily.
His stomach tightened.
Because he recognized her immediately.
The eyes.
The smile.
The shape of her face.
There was no mistaking it.
It was Luna.
Younger.
But unquestionably Luna.
Before he could process that realization, another message arrived.
Ask her what happened after this picture was taken.
The room suddenly felt colder.
His pulse hammered against his ribs.
Slowly, he looked back toward Discord.
Toward Luna.
Toward the girl who had somehow become one of the most important people in his life over the course of a few chaotic weeks.
The girl who always answered.
The girl who stayed.
The girl who knew too much.
The girl he trusted despite having every reason not to.
"Kai."
Her voice was barely above a whisper.
He swallowed.
"Yeah?"
A long silence followed.
Then:
"Please don’t listen to her." freēwēbnovel.com
The words hit harder than he expected.
Not because of what she said.
Because of how she said it.
She sounded scared.
Not for herself.
For him.
And somehow that made everything infinitely more difficult.
Before Kai could answer, his apartment door camera suddenly came back online.
The feed opened automatically across one of his monitors.
The hallway outside appeared.
Empty.
The mysterious figure was gone.
Nothing remained except fluorescent lighting and worn apartment carpeting stretching in both directions.
Kai released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
Then the camera moved.
By itself.
The angle shifted slowly, mechanically rotating away from the hallway.
Kai sat upright.
The camera continued turning.
Past the elevators.
Past the emergency exit.
Until it pointed directly across the corridor.
At apartment 7B.
The supposedly vacant apartment.
The apartment connected to the master key.
The apartment that kept appearing in conversations nobody could explain.
Its door stood slightly open.
Just enough to reveal darkness beyond.
The camera remained fixed on it.
For several seconds nothing happened.
Then, from somewhere deep inside the apartment—
a phone began ringing.
