Darkness Between Us

Julia — First-Person POV

The photo on the screen was me.

Asleep. In this bed. In this house. In the room I had believed was the safest room in the world because Alan had rebuilt the security around it personally and the new monitor ran on hardware that touched nothing of the compromised infrastructure and I had checked the locks myself before closing my eyes.

Me. Asleep. Taken tonight.

Tick tock, Julia. Your family is running out of time.

I looked at it for exactly as long as it took to understa