9. The Space Between #3
Turning his head slowly, Garrett knew his gaze was hollow and dark because it was how he felt on the inside, and he couldn't change it. "You couldn't last night, Syd. You felt the void. I was lying in bed beside you, and I was gone."
The words were a direct hit, a brutal truth that knocked the wind out of her.
Her jaw tightened as she absorbed the hit while refusing to offer a hollow reassurance or a soft lie.
He was so glad she didn't tell him everything would be fine, but instead acknowledged the tactical reality of the failure.
"Then I'll learn how.” Sydney promised, her voice striking the morning quiet like iron.
Garrett stared at her, the hard line of his mouth softening just a fraction.
It was a vow from a Warrior who recognized they were losing ground and was already changing her strategy.
He could see the conviction in her eyes; Syd would figure out how to follow his soul, no matter what void it dropped into.
Garrett and Sydney stepped back into the kitchen as Darcy clicked her bag shut. Her expression was tight and analytical.
“What the Dragon King described does not fit a single known neurological trauma model.
And before you ask, Han's sudden breakthrough didn't frighten me. It intrigued me,” Darcy stated flatly, looking over at Carrick and Grey.
"A dissociative fugue state can explain memory loss or automatic physical actions.
It cannot explain a spiritual void that takes a very old and experienced Winged Warrior offline from the inside out. "
Carrick crossed his massive arms. "Are you saying this is a Magical invasion, Doctor?"
"I'm a scientist, Elder," Darcy countered smoothly, clicking her bag shut. "I'm not saying this is Magical. But I am saying I can't prove it is medical. We keep both variables active."
Sitting down at the island, Garrett tracked his pen across the pages as he systematically re-analyzed the evidence matrix.
Dates. Times. Specific symptoms.
The Creek Bank: Caked gray clay. Stride uniform.
The Vanity: The missing blue hair ribbon.
The Closet: Carrick's golden-mounted tie tack.
The Digital Log: The 3:42 AM ink entry.
Sydney leaned over his shoulder, her eyes tracking the precise columns of his handwriting. Suddenly, her finger dropped onto the page, tapping the ink. "Look at the timing, Garrett. It’s not just the notebook."
Darcy stepped closer, her interest piqued. "What do you see?"
“The mud was already bone-dry at 6:15. That puts whatever happened hours earlier. And twice now, we've got 3:42 staring us in the face. Maybe it's coincidence, but I don't think we can treat it like one anymore.” Sydney calculated rapidly.
Darcy narrowed her eyes. "Why 3:42?"
The room went quiet. Nobody had a medical diagnosis or a Dragonkin legend that mapped to those specific digits.
"What happened at 3:42?" Carrick asked suddenly, his deep voice cutting through the diagnostic static.
Garrett looked up from the page. "When?"
"The first time," Carrick clarified, stepping toward the table. "Was there a specific tactical event during your captivity or your rescue that occurred at that exact time? Did something happen to your Bond with Han at 3:42?"
The question reframed the entire problem.
The numbers shifted from spooky, unexplained window dressing into hard tactical evidence.
Carrick immediately pulled up the secure archives on his tablet, bringing up the classified logs from the day the Dragon Guard breached the filthy hole in the ground to pull Garrett out of the dark.
Sydney scanned the official rescue timeline line by line. Her heart hammered so loudly Garrett could hear it without their Mating Bond or the use of Magic.
02:15 — Perimeter breached.
03:10 — Lower containment levels secured.
04:05 — Garrett’s cell located.
Nothing matched. Garrett hadn't been rescued or extracted at 3:42 AM. The number remained completely unexplained by the empirical data of his survival.
As night fell, the cottage became a silent, high-tech observation post. Darcy had meticulously rigged her specialized neurological monitors to the headboard. Their faint blue lights pulsed in perfect rhythm with the green indicator of the security camera in the corner.
Grey was back in his heavy wooden chair in the hallway, his posture rigid and alert. The thermos of coffee Sydney had made him close by, with a bag of doughnut holes right beside.
Garrett lay flat on his back beneath the sheets, his mind perfectly calm– not because the terror had faded, but because the Warrior had successfully cataloged the parameters of the threat.
They were collecting data now. They were hunting the blind spot.
Sydney climbed in beside him, her fingers wrapping firmly around his hand, anchoring him to the mattress.
"Coffee tomorrow?" she whispered into the quiet room.
"Absolutely," Garrett murmured.
Closing his eyes, he let his breathing slow as he prepared to step onto the battlefield of his own subconscious. He waited for the heavy world of dreams to take him under.
“Lad.”
The mental voice was a sudden, sharp whisper that vibrated from the absolute floor of his soul. It wasn't Han's usual grumpy rumble. It was thin, tight, and completely shaken.
Garrett went entirely rigid beneath the blankets, his conscious mind freezing at the very edge of sleep. “What is it, Han? What did you find?”
Through the Bond, Garrett felt the phantom sensation of a massive wall cracking open, a final, isolated fragment of last night's missing dream bleeding through the structural blockage. Han hadn't recovered a face, a location name, or a Magical rune.
He had recovered a terrifying physical perception.
“There was a door,” Han whispered into the dark of his mind, his voice trembling with a chilling, systemic dread.
Garrett’s heart hammered against his ribs. “A door? Where? What was behind it, Han?”
A long, agonizing silence stretched through their shared consciousness, the moonlight outside the window casting long, skeletal shadows across the bedroom floorboards.
“You were,” Han whispered.