The call came through an encrypted channel.
No ringtone.
No warning.
Just a screen lighting up in the dark.
The gorilla mask sat alone in the room, the faint hum of hidden servers breathing behind the walls. The mask reflected the glow of the incoming video—harsh, white, unforgiving.
He didn't move.
Because he already knew.
The connection stabilized.
Static peeled away layer by layer until a silhouette formed on the screen. Not clear. Not blurred either. Intentionally wrong. Like someone who knew exactly how much of himself to reveal.
The gorilla mask leaned back slowly.
"I know it's you," he said.
The voice on the screen laughed softly. Not amused. Not surprised.
"So you recognized me that fast," the man said. "After all this time."
"You don't just appear," the gorilla mask replied. "You only show up when something breaks."
A pause.
Then the man on the screen tilted his head slightly. "You mean the boy?"
The gorilla mask's jaw tightened beneath the latex.
"He doesn't just get my number and call me," he said coldly. "That wasn't curiosity. That was manipulation."
"Relax," the voice replied. "He made the call. His choice."
"You pushed him to the edge," the gorilla mask snapped. "You've been circling him since the orphanage files surfaced."
Silence stretched.
Then the voice spoke again—lower now.
"He isn't a game," the gorilla mask continued. "He isn't a variable you poke to see what happens. These are real people. Real lives."
The man on the screen exhaled slowly.
"You should have said that," he replied, almost gently.
A beat.
"Before they removed me from the picture."
The words landed heavy.
The gorilla mask stood.
"They didn't remove you," he said. "They buried you."
A faint smile tugged at the shadowed outline of the caller. "Funny. Buried things tend to come back around here."
The screen flickered—just for a second—and in that glitch, the gorilla mask saw something familiar.
A corridor.
A badge.
A past that refused to stay quiet.
"You're destabilizing him," the gorilla mask said. "Too much information. Too many coincidences. You're waking him up before he's ready."
"That's exactly why he's interesting," the man replied. "Most people stay asleep their whole lives."
"He's not collateral," the gorilla mask growled. "Touch him again and I stop cleaning up after you."
Another pause.
This one longer.
"He already knows your voice," the man said calmly. "Even if he doesn't realize it yet."
The gorilla mask froze.
"You think you're protecting him," the voice continued, sharper now. "But you're standing in the way of something bigger. Something that started long before either of us put on masks."
The gorilla mask leaned forward, hands braced on the table.
"If she finds out you're still breathing," he said, "everything collapses."
A soft chuckle.
"She already feels it," the man replied. "You don't lose that kind of past and stay sane."
The screen began to glitch again.
"This isn't over," the gorilla mask said.
"No," the man agreed. "It's finally aligned."
The connection cut.
The room fell back into darkness.
The gorilla mask didn't sit down.
He stood there, staring at the dead screen, replaying one thing in his head—
Ethan's voice on the call.
The hesitation.
The recognition that shouldn't exist.
Somewhere, miles away, Ethan Cole unknowingly stepped deeper into a story that had been waiting for him since childhood.
And for the first time, the gorilla mask understood one terrifying truth:
The past wasn't chasing them anymore.
It had found them.
---