CHAPTER TWELVE. Tick tock on the clock

The night stretched long and quiet, but I remained awake. Watching. Waiting.

Emmet had received my message. I knew he would. He was too sharp to ignore it, too drawn into the game, whether he realized it or not. And Karissa? She reacted exactly as I expected. Frustration, fear, desperation—all woven into her every move. She was trying to hold herself together, to make sense of things that were never meant to be understood so easily.

She thought she was safe with him.

But safety is just an illusion.

From my vantage point, the dormitory building stood like a monument to fragile trust and unseen battles. Room 204. The lights were still on. Emmet was pacing. Karissa was sitting still, tense. Even from here, I could feel the weight of her thoughts pressing down on her.

She wanted the truth.

She didn't realize she was already drowning in it.

The video was only a spark—a glimpse of something much bigger. I could tell she was fighting to make sense of it, to fit the pieces together. But no matter how much she searched, she wouldn't find all the answers. Not yet.

Because I wasn't done.

Doubt was a powerful thing. Not just in Emmet, but in Karissa, too. Not because she was lying—no, she wasn't. But because she didn't know everything. And that uncertainty would eat away at her. She would start to wonder what else had been hidden from her.

What else had been kept in the dark?

The wind picked up, carrying the distant hum of passing cars and late-night conversations. The campus never truly slept. There were always shadows moving, whispers drifting through the air. Some people believed they could walk through life unseen, unnoticed. They were wrong.

I saw everything.

I leaned against the [??????] , concealed by the night. My phone buzzed softly in my pocket. A message, but not the one I was waiting for. I ignored it. My focus remained on the two figures in that room, locked in a silent storm of suspicion and fear.

Karissa's hands were curled into fists, her body tense. Emmet's jaw was set, his movements sharp and restless. He was starting to doubt.

Good.

The first cracks in his certainty had appeared. He thought he was in control, that he could protect her, but that was never his decision to make.

A light flickered nearby, casting shifting patterns of light across the [??????]. I reached into my pocket, my fingers curling around the cold surface of my phone. A single message, already typed, sat on the screen.

"You're looking in the wrong places."

I hit send.

I watched the glow of Emmet's phone screen as he checked the message. His entire body went rigid.

Karissa leaned in to look.

The game was moving forward.

And I wasn't done playing.

EJONA SPEAKS !!

A filler chapter mostly.. from the whatchers pov Now i redacted some things cuz whats the fun in knowing everything hehe