Chapter 2
The camera lens hummed quietly, its tiny red recording light pulsing with a steady, mechanical rhythm that felt like a heartbeat in the silent garden. Clara stared directly into the glass eye, her small hands growing numb from the weight of the cake as the wind picked up and made the candle flames lean dangerously to the left. The frosting on the "Happy Birthday" inscription began to soften in the humid air, tiny droplets of brown moisture beading up like sweat across the sugary letters. She could hear the muffled sound of Dr. Harrison's heavy footsteps fading away toward the detached garage, but a much stranger sound caught her attention—a faint, rhythmic clicking noise coming from the dense bushes near the American flag.
"Please wish me happy birthday," Clara whispered, her voice a fragile, pleading tremor that seemed to hang suspended in the heavy afternoon heat.
She shifted her weight in the wheelchair, the worn leather cushion groaning under her movement, and noticed for the first time that the red recording light on the camera wasn't just blinking—it was flashing an erratic double-pulse. That was the secret signal her older brother Leo used to send whenever he was watching her feed from a hidden terminal inside the house. Leo had disappeared three nights ago, right after the loud argument in the study and the sound of breaking glass that had left Clara with the bandages wrapped tightly around her skull. No one else knew Leo was still nearby, hiding in the dark crawlspaces beneath the floorboards, desperately trying to send her warnings through the household's automated security network.
Slowly, without breaking eye contact with the lens, Clara angled the birthday cake slightly to the left so the flickering light illuminated the torn hem of her yellow dress. Hidden inside the fabric fold was a small, silver thumb drive that Leo had slipped into her pocket while the nurses were changing her bandages that morning. The drive contained the unedited security footage of the night of the accident—the exact proof of what Dr. Harrison had really done in the hallway when the lights went out. But to access the drive's contents, Clara needed a master decryption password that only existed on the main tablet locked inside the estate's office.
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A sudden, sharp rustle came from the hydrangea bushes behind the flag pole, and a small, dirt-smudged hand reached out from the foliage, clutching a crumpled piece of paper before vanishing back into the shadows.
Clara’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird as she carefully rolled her left wheel forward an inch, using her shoe to drag the fallen paper toward the footrest of her chair. With trembling fingers, she unfolded the note while keeping her body positioned to block the camera's wide angle from capturing the movement. Scrawled in Leo's familiar, messy handwriting were four words that made the blood run cold in her veins: HE FOUND THE DRIVE.
