Red.
Blue.
Red.
The flashing lights struck the walls of the country house, tearing the darkness into separate, incompatible frames.
In one, a police officer knelt beside Simon, pressing two fingers to his neck.
In another, Jacob strained against the chair, and the heavy chains gleamed across his bare chest like metal ribs that had grown outward through his skin.
In the third, Ashley stood in the splintered doorway.
She did not move.
Cold air rushed into the house behind her, stirring her short blue hair and whipping the tails of her black jacket. One of the officers was saying something to her, ordering her to step away from the entrance, return to her car, stop interfering — but the words never reached her. She stared inside, unable to force what she saw into a single coherent picture.
Simon lay on the floor.
His white T-shirt had ridden up along his side. One arm was thrown out at an unnatural angle, his fingers half-curled, his lips pale. He looked smaller than usual — almost like a child who had fallen asleep somewhere no one intended to cover him with a blanket.
And Jacob was chained to a chair.
Not Simon.
Jacob.
The man who had always occupied too much space could not move an inch now. His wrists were torn open, blood running down his palms. A blanket rested across his shoulders, carefully tucked beneath the chains. He was not looking at the police, the weapons, or even the metal binding his body.
He was looking only at Simon.
— He has a pulse, — the officer repeated into his radio. — Weak. Possible overdose. We need an ambulance immediately.
Jacob's head dropped forward.
A sound escaped him — short and broken, more like a convulsive breath than relief.
— Help him, — he rasped. — Please. Him first.
The officer beside the chair reached for the chains.
Jacob jerked away.
— Don't waste time on me! He took pills. I don't know how many. There's a bottle by the phone... and the liquor. Take everything. Just do something.
Ashley heard his voice and did not recognize it.
Nothing remained of the man who smirked in hallways and made everyone else lower their eyes. The lazy superiority was gone, along with the hidden threat and the certainty that the world would submit before he ever had to ask.
Now he was begging.
Not for himself.
Ashley looked at Simon.
One officer tilted his head back and checked his breathing. Another lifted an empty orange prescription bottle from the floor. Somewhere outside, an approaching siren was already wailing — quiet at first, almost lost beneath the rain, then louder and louder.
She should have felt relief.
She had made it in time.
That was why she was standing here.
But there was no relief.
Yesterday, everything had seemed almost simple. There was a tormentor. There was a victim. There was a system that had spent too long pretending nothing was happening. Ashley knew how to work with equations like that: gather the facts, name the guilty party, force the machinery to move.
But now the tormentor sat in chains.
The victim lay between life and death.
And on the floor beside the fireplace were a pair of long scissors, a cut-open black T-shirt, and several opened packages of pills.
What had happened here?
Who had brought whom?
Who had held whom captive?
Whom had she saved?
An officer approached the door and blocked her view.
— Ma'am, you need to leave. Now.
Ashley did not step back.
Over his shoulder, she met Jacob's eyes.
He recognized her.
It did not happen immediately. For several seconds, his gaze remained unfocused, flooded with panic. Then it fixed on her face.
Understanding flickered there.
Not a question about how she had found them.
An answer.
Her.
She had brought the police.
Ashley pressed a hand to her mouth. Her fingers shook so badly that they struck against her teeth.
— Oh God... — she breathed.
Jacob stared at her, still breathing hard.
Ashley remembered the cafeteria video. The napkin against wet hair. A hundred laughing mouths. Simon standing in the rain and saying, "Stay out of our relationship."
And the words escaped before she could stop them.
— Jacob... what have you done?
Jacob's face changed.
As though even now — chained, bloodied, and helpless — he had still been struck.
He opened his mouth, but never had the chance to answer.
The officer forced Ashley back across the threshold and pulled the door shut as far as the broken frame allowed.
Red and blue light continued to pulse across the wet porch.
Ashley remained outside.
Only then, staring at her own trembling hands, did she allow her memory to rewind through the previous twenty-four hours — to the moment when everything could still be dismissed as a bad feeling.
The university parking lot was nearly empty the previous evening.
The rain had not started yet, but the air already smelled of wet asphalt. Low clouds cinched the sky tight, and the lamps had come on earlier than usual, stretching long, dull reflections across the pavement.
Ashley descended the broad steps of the main building, holding a folder of material for the next issue of the newspaper against her side.
The day had been awful.
After their conversation in the stands, Simon had avoided her. During the lecture, he sat far away near the exit and left before the bell. In the director's office, he had called Jacob his friend and destroyed in a single sentence everything she had spent years collecting.
Formally, the case had stalled.
Without testimony from the victim, the file became nothing more than a file again.
Ashley was angry with him.
Not because he refused to testify — she knew too well what fear looked like. Something else angered her: that possessive "our relationship" he had spoken in the rain. As though there could be something sacred between pain and the person inflicting it, a place outsiders were forbidden to enter.
She had decided it was a trauma bond.
It sorted chaos into compartments and allowed her to believe that what was happening could be fixed through the proper intervention.
Ashley had reached the middle of the steps when she noticed Simon.
He stood at the edge of the parking lot.
Alone.
An oversized dark hoodie made his body look even thinner. A large duffel bag rested at his feet, too heavy — the fabric stretched tight, and the handles dug into his palm when he lifted it.
Simon did not look around or check his phone.
He simply waited.
A black car stopped in front of him.
Ashley recognized the vehicle before she could make out the driver.
Jacob.
The window lowered. They exchanged a few words that could not be heard from that distance. Jacob asked something, glancing toward the bag. Simon answered. Calmly. Almost casually.
Then he opened the passenger door and got in.
Willingly.
Ashley froze on the steps.
She had expected coercion — a sharp movement, a rough hand, at least the familiar fear on Simon's face. There was none. He placed the bag at his feet himself. Fastened his own seat belt. Closed the door himself.
The car pulled away.
For a moment, Simon's face was lit by the dashboard. He did not look at Jacob. He sat motionless, facing the windshield, and his expression was so calm that a chill ran down Ashley's back.
Not peaceful.
Final.
She took several steps down.
She could have called out.
Made them stop. Walked up to the car, demanded an explanation, told Simon again that he did not have to go anywhere with the man who humiliated him.
But then what?
He had already answered her in the rain.
"Leave us the hell alone."
Ashley stopped on the bottom step.
The rear lights flared red as Jacob let another car pass, then drifted toward the exit.
The red points grew smaller.
Vanished beyond the gates.
The evening became ordinary again.
Several students crossed the parking lot, talking about the upcoming game. Someone laughed near the athletic building. A bus drove past on the street.
Nothing screamed danger.
Only the duffel bag would not leave Ashley's mind.
Too heavy.
And Simon, looking as though he were not going to have a conversation, but somewhere he never intended to return from.
She took out her phone and opened his contact.
The name stared back at her.
Simon Thorne.
Ashley looked at the call button for a long time.
Then locked the screen.
She told herself she had no right to follow someone simply because she disliked his decision. Simon was an adult. After the meeting in the director's office, Jacob would not dare hurt him. Perhaps they really were only going somewhere to talk.
None of the explanations sounded convincing.
But there was no evidence.
Only a feeling.
And Ashley did not trust feelings.
The next morning, Simon's seat in the lecture hall remained empty.
Ashley noticed at once.
Not because she had been watching him. After the past few days, her eyes simply checked the far row by the exit on their own — the dark hoodie, the lowered head, the notebook aligned perfectly with the edge of the desk.
Nothing.
Jacob was absent too.
The professor began the lecture without acknowledging the empty seats. Ashley opened her laptop, typed the date and topic, and realized ten minutes later that she had not heard a single sentence.
She sent Simon a message.
"Are you okay?"
One check mark.
Several minutes later, a second appeared.
The message had been delivered but not read.
She wrote another.
"Reply with one word."
Nothing.
After the lecture, Ashley went to the athletic building. The team was practicing without its captain. The coach stood at the edge of the field, shouting more loudly than usual. When she asked about Jacob, he answered irritably.
— Didn't show. Phone's off. If you see him, tell him he can forget about the captain's armband.
There was more anger than concern in his voice.
For Jacob, disappearing overnight without explanation probably did not count as a catastrophe. When people like him vanished, everyone treated it as one more expression of freedom.
No one had noticed Simon's absence at all.
By noon, anxiety was no longer a feeling.
It had become a sequence of facts.
They had left together.
Neither had come to class.
Neither was answering.
The last known location was Jacob's car.
Ashley wrote it all down on her phone the way she recorded testimony for articles.
The facts did not calm her.
They only gave her fear a shape.
She found Craig by her locker.
He leaned one shoulder against the metal door and spun a ball in his hand. His blond hair was still damp from the shower, his white T-shirt clinging to his chest. When he saw Ashley, his face settled into its usual self-satisfied smile.
— Blue Hair, — he drawled. — I was just thinking about you.
— That explains the smell of burned wiring.
Craig smirked.
— One day you're finally going to admit you like me.
— I'll admit mold is intelligent first.
Ashley opened her locker.
Craig did not leave.
He had never known how to recognize the moment when his presence stopped being welcome. Or perhaps he recognized it perfectly and stayed for that very reason.
— You're alone today, — he observed. — Where's your new little friend?
Ashley froze, her hand not quite reaching the top shelf.
— Who?
— Our sad prince. Simon. You're his bodyguard now, aren't you?
She turned slowly.
— Have you seen him today?
The question came too quickly.
Craig caught it. His smile sharpened with attention.
— No. Why?
— No reason.
— Did he complain about me again?
— You don't need to know everything, Craig. Just remember the basic commands: sit, stay quiet, don't bite anyone without your owner's permission.
His smile vanished.
He pushed away from the lockers.
— Watch your mouth.
Ashley slammed the locker shut.
— Or what? You'll call Jacob?
Craig stepped closer.
— I don't need to call anyone.
— Really? Then why do you always look around for him before you open your mouth?
The hit landed cleanly.
Craig tensed, and Ashley was already expecting a threat when rapid heels clicked down the corridor.
Priscilla appeared beside them abruptly, as if she had not walked here but had been pursuing someone the entire way.
She looked flawless only from a distance. Up close, Ashley noticed poorly concealed exhaustion, movements that were too sharp, and a phone clutched so tightly in her hand that her fingers had gone white.
— Craig, where is Jacob?
He blinked.
— How would I know?
— You're always with him.
— Haven't seen him since yesterday after class.
— He hasn't answered me since last night.
Priscilla unlocked her phone and nearly shoved the screen into his face. A chain of messages remained unanswered.
— If he decided to disappear to some party without even telling me—
— I thought he was with you, — Craig interrupted.
They looked at each other.
The confidence vanished from both faces at the same time.
Ashley felt something cold settle into place inside her.
Priscilla did not know.
Craig did not know.
None of the people Jacob usually informed about his every move had any idea where he was.
Except her.
She had seen who left with him.
— What car was he driving? — Ashley asked.
Priscilla spun toward her.
— What?
— Yesterday. Was he in his own car?
— Of course he was. Why do you care?
Ashley was already taking out her phone.
— Hey, — Craig called. — Do you know something?
She looked at him.
She could tell them.
Jacob had left with Simon.
But one thought stopped her.
Craig was the man who had guarded the door while Jacob stayed alone with Simon. The man who had pushed Simon's head beneath the water with his own hands. The man Simon hated almost as much.
Bringing Craig to wherever they were could be worse than doing nothing.
— I know both of you are useless, — Ashley said, and walked away.
— Cooper! — Priscilla shouted after her. — Where are you going?
She did not turn around.
Simon did not answer.
His messages remained unread. Calls to Jacob's phone went straight to voicemail.
By noon, the anxiety had stopped being a vague feeling and become a sequence of facts.
They had left together.
Neither had appeared at the university.
Neither had contacted anyone.
Priscilla did not know where Jacob was. Craig did not know either. The coach was convinced the captain had simply skipped practice, but even he admitted that Jacob usually sent a message.
No one asked about Simon.
His absence passed almost unnoticed — as though he had finally achieved what he had wanted all those years and become truly invisible.
Ashley returned to the empty student council office, closed the door, and called him again.
It rang for a long time.
No one answered.
She placed the phone on the desk and stared at the screen for several seconds, trying to decide whom else she could call. Simon had no friends. His classmates knew nothing about him. Even the professors barely remembered his name.
That left his father.
Using the university directory, Ashley found the number Simon had listed as his emergency contact. She did not know what she expected from the call. Perhaps his father would say Simon was home. Perhaps he had returned during the night and was simply asleep with his phone turned off.
The possibility was weak, but Ashley still allowed herself to believe it for several seconds.
She pressed call.
It took a while for someone to answer.
— Yeah? — an irritated male voice said.
A television played loudly in the background. Someone laughed in a studio, followed by the clink of glass.
— Mr. Thorne?
— Who is this?
— My name is Ashley Cooper. I attend university with your son.
The man exhaled heavily, as though the mere mention of Simon was enough to ruin his evening.
— What did he do?
Ashley tightened her grip on the phone.
— I'm trying to find out where he is.
— How the hell should I know?
— Simon didn't come to the university today.
A short silence hung on the other end.
— What do you mean, didn't come?
— He wasn't at any of his lectures. He isn't answering calls or messages.
— He left this morning, — his father said irritably, though uncertainty had already entered his voice. — Or yesterday. I don't track every step he takes.
Ashley remembered Jacob's car disappearing beyond the parking lot gates.
— Yesterday evening, I saw him leave with another student. Neither of them has appeared since, and neither is answering anyone.
— What other student?
— His name is Jacob Voss.
The name meant nothing to him.
— And what am I supposed to do? — the man snapped. — Run around the city looking for him? He's an adult. If he wants to skip class, let him skip.
— Simon doesn't look like someone who suddenly decided to go have fun.
— You don't know him very well.
— Maybe not. That's why I'm calling you.
An irritated snort answered her.
— Just wait until he comes home, — his father said through clenched teeth. — I'll deal with him. I'll fucking kill him. He's gotten completely out of control. Thinks he can disappear whenever he wants?
There was no fear in his voice.
Ashley closed her eyes.
She wanted to hang up. She wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of a man who learned his son was missing and immediately promised to kill him.
But right now, she needed information.
— Does your family have anywhere Simon might go? Another house, a cabin, a garage, some land outside the city?
— No.
The answer came too quickly.
— Think.
— I said no.
— Two people have been missing for almost a day. One of them left with a heavy duffel bag. Their phones are silent. Please, just check.
— What bag?
Ashley heard the man set down a glass.
More carefully this time.
— A large black duffel bag. It looked heavy.
Silence.
Then a chair creaked.
— Wait.
Footsteps moved away. The television continued playing somewhere in the distance. Ashley heard a door open, something strike a wall, and then Simon's father swore.
— Fuck.
— What happened?
He did not answer.
Metal hooks clinked, a cabinet door slammed, and he cursed again.
When the man spoke again, his voice trembled with anger.
— The keys are gone.
Ashley straightened.
— What keys?
— To the country house.
Her heart struck harder.
— Where is it?
— In the woods. Outside the city. It was my sister's old place. No one lives there now. We go sometimes in the summer.
— Does Simon know the way?
— Of course he knows the way, — his father nearly shouted. — That little bastard took the keys without permission. Just wait until he comes back. I'll kill him with my own hands.
— When did you last see the keys?
— I don't know. They always hung in the entryway.
— So he could have taken them yesterday?
— Then he could have.
Ashley was already opening a map on her laptop.
— Give me the address.
— What do you need it for?
— Because your son may be there with another missing student.
— Then let him sit there. When he gets back, I'll deal with him.
— Mr. Thorne, I'm not asking whether you plan to punish him. I need the address.
— You're planning to go there?
— Give me the address.
The man cursed.
For several seconds, he searched for something, rustling papers. Then he began dictating. Ashley wrote down the highway, the turn by an old gas station, and the lot number. The house did not appear on a standard map, so his father described the route by landmarks: a dirt turnoff, two stone pillars, a narrow road through the forest.
— There's almost no signal out there, — he said at the end. — That's why the idiot isn't answering.
The sentence was meant to sound like an explanation.
To Ashley, it sounded like confirmation of the worst.
— Are you going there? — she asked.
— Not a chance.
— Your son is missing.
— He isn't missing. He stole my keys and ran off to have fun. Just wait until he gets home. I'll break his legs. And his little friend's too, if he's there.
Ashley ended the call without a word.
For several seconds, she sat motionless before the map.
Now she had an address.
And a father who knew where Simon might be but intended only to wait for him to return so he could beat him.
Ashley grabbed her jacket and car keys.
There was no time to place her faith in the police yet.
She would go herself.
She should have called the police immediately.
The rational part of Ashley understood that.
But what could she tell them?
Two adult students had willingly left together. They had been out of contact for less than a day. One had taken the keys to a family house. There was no message containing a threat and no direct evidence of violence.
They would tell her to wait.
Perhaps they would call his father and receive the same indifferent response.
Perhaps they would send a patrol car several hours later.
Ashley did not want to wait.
She sent the address to herself, wrote nothing to Craig, and got into her car.
The highway quickly fell behind her.
First the gas stations and streetlights disappeared. Then the houses. The road narrowed, and the forest pressed close on both sides, dense and black.
Rain began to fall.
Drops burst against the windshield. The wipers worked at full speed but still could not clear her view fast enough. The headlights caught wet trunks, road signs, and occasional bends, beyond which there was only darkness again.
The navigation app lost its signal several times.
Ashley drove with both hands clenched around the wheel.
The farther she left the city behind, the more absurd her decision seemed. A girl alone at night, heading toward an abandoned house where there might be two men, one of whom had systematically beaten the other.
It was not brave.
It was stupid.
She knew the difference.
But every time she wanted to turn around, Simon's face in the parking lot appeared before her.
Not frightened.
Final.
She almost missed the turn.
A narrow dirt road slipped into the forest between two old stone pillars. Branches scraped the roof. The tires sank into the softened earth.
The house appeared suddenly.
Dark, two stories tall, almost swallowed by ivy. Wet leaves clung to the walls, with thorns and occasional purple flowers dark among them. Only one ground-floor window glowed with warm orange light.
Jacob's car stood beside the porch.
Ashley stopped at a distance and switched off her headlights.
Her heart began to beat faster.
They were here.
The first fact.
She called Simon.
Somewhere inside the house, nothing rang.
Or the walls and rain swallowed the sound.
Ashley got out of the car.
Cold water immediately ran down her collar. She raised her hood and walked toward the house, trying not to step on the gravel, though the rain swallowed every sound anyway.
The door was locked.
Voices came from inside.
One was loud, male, and ragged.
The other was quieter.
She could not make out the words.
Ashley approached the lit window. The glass was dirty, long streams of water running down it. She carefully wiped her palm over the cold surface, clearing a small patch, and looked inside.
For several seconds, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing.
A wooden chair stood in the middle of the living room.
Jacob was chained to it.
Chains wound around his chest, waist, arms, and legs. His red-and-white jacket lay to one side. His black T-shirt had been cut open, exposing his torso. He thrashed against the metal and shouted something.
Simon stood in front of him.
Wearing a white T-shirt.
Calm.
A pair of long scissors was in his hand.
Ashley recoiled from the window.
Her back struck the wet wall. For a moment, she could not breathe.
Everything had been reversed.
She had come looking for a victim being held by his tormentor.
But the tormentor was bound.
The victim held the weapon.
She should have felt relief, at least because Simon was alive.
Instead, she became more afraid.
Because now she recognized the expression on his face.
The same calm she had seen in the parking lot.
The same calm with which he had looked at her in the rain and spoken of Jacob as though he belonged to him.
Ashley approached the window again.
Simon was kneeling before the chair.
The scissors lay on the floor. He looked up at Jacob and said something. Tears ran down his face.
Jacob answered.
Angrily.
Sharply.
Then Simon rose, touched his cheek, and walked toward the large black bag.
The same one.
Ashley saw the orange prescription bottles.
She stopped trying to decide which of them posed the greater danger.
It no longer mattered.
A person standing at the edge of a roof may hate the one who drove him there. He may dream of pushing him first. He may love him. He may want all three things at once.
But .
You begin sorting out the truth afterward.
Ashley crouched around the corner of the house, hidden from the window by the wall, and pulled out her phone.
Her fingers slipped across the wet screen.
She dialed emergency services.
They answered almost immediately.
— Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?
Ashley glanced back at the lit window.
Two shadows moved inside.
One sat motionless.
The other bent over the open bag.
— My name is Ashley Cooper, — she said. Her voice shook, but the words came clearly. — I'm at a country house in the woods. Someone is being held captive here.
— Can you see a weapon?
— Scissors. And chains. A man is chained to a chair.
— Is the person with the weapon near him?
Ashley looked at the window.
Simon straightened. An orange plastic bottle was in his hand.
— Yes.
— Do you know these people?
— Yes.
— Does the attacker pose a danger to the hostage?
Ashley opened her mouth.
She did not answer.
Behind the glass, Simon stood before Jacob — thin, pale, almost weightless beside his enormous bound body.
Who was the attacker?
Who was the hostage?
For three years, Jacob had kept Simon captive without a single chain.
— Ma'am? — the dispatcher repeated. — Who is in danger?
Ashley pressed the phone more tightly to her ear.
— Both of them, — she said. — Please send the police and an ambulance. As fast as you can.
She gave the address.
Then she remained sitting in the rain and mud behind the wall of the house, never taking her eyes from the lit window.
She did not know whom she was saving in that moment.
She did not know whether they would arrive in time.
But it was her call that started the countdown ending with a broken door, red and blue lights, and a police officer's fingers pressed against Simon's weak pulse.
For the second time, the first real shield in his life was her.
Only this time, Simon could no longer step out from beneath it on his own.
The screen fades to black.
To be continued in the next episode.