Hidden-Game
Amelia stood before the Grand Central Library, but it was nothing like the place she’d left. The steel and glass facade still rose into the sky, but its surface was fractured and scarred. Deep cracks spiderwebbed across the grand arches, climbing the columns that had once inspired awe. Now
Hidden-Game
Amelia didn’t want to go inside. She stood outside the gate on Sycamore Lane, rain tapping against her hood, and told herself she was just catching her breath. Just letting the bus ride settle. Just giving herself a minute before she had to face the house, the silence, the
Hidden-Game
The blinds were closed, shielding the room and its occupants from the night beyond the window. Thin slivers of streetlamp light slipped through the gaps in the slats, carving restless shadows across the parquet floor. Neville Browning perched on the edge of a leather chair, his weight barely denting the
Hidden-Game
The fresh air hit like an ice bucket—sudden, sharp and overwhelming—as Amelia stepped back out into the world. Autumn’s bite dragged her back to a reality that looked very much the same but had been fundamentally altered underneath. It had been daylight when they arrived at Helpmann’
Hidden-Game
Sir Richard Helpmann sat behind a large, ornate desk. Its dark surface gleamed like still water. At its center, a banker’s lamp rose from a solid brass base. Light pooled beneath the emerald green shade, illuminating the pages of a leather-bound journal that rested on the desk below—the
Hidden-Game
School didn’t feel like school anymore. It felt like something else. The canteen still buzzed with gossip and chatter. The teachers still wore their paper-thin smiles. Bryony and her crew prowled the halls looking for easy prey. Nothing had changed. It was the same as it ever was. But
Hidden-Game
The crowd spilled from the Grand Central Library, drawn back to their lives like a tide receding from the shore, gradually revealing the gilded skeleton of the atrium beneath. The cavernous space—a mosaic of glass panes, bound by dark iron beams—held its silence the way a shell swallows
Hidden-Game
The stage shimmered beneath precision lighting, its polished surface catching glints of different colors, like restless echoes trapped beneath stained glass. Amelia leaned back in her seat, but found no comfort there. Beside her, Marv was practically vibrating. Every finger tap, every fidget told the same story: his idol was
Hidden-Game
As Amelia left the house, she bent to tie her sneakers. Her gaze lifted, catching herself in the mirror. The face in the glass was hers. The jaw, the cheekbones, the lines she had lived in all her life. But now she saw something else. Her mother surfaced first: hazel-grey
Hidden-Game
The ceiling stretched out above her—flat, colorless, and striped with shadows. Amelia lay motionless, eyes open. Her bedroom was silent, but her thoughts were not. She wasn’t sure if she’d slept. It felt like she’d been lying here for hours—one of those long, weightless nights
Hidden-Game
The next day, the world carried on as it always did. Lessons drifted past in a blur. The teacher’s voices sounded distant and muffled, as if they were trapped behind glass. Pens scraped. Chairs shifted. Nothing had changed, but somehow everything had. Amelia stood outside the school gates, her
Hidden-Game
Amelia didn’t move. Not a breath, not a blink. Her eyes fixed on the photo, the weight of it slamming into her chest. Her parents looked back at her. Faces she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Not since the night the police dragged her out of