Chapter 4 — Twenty-Four Hours
The countdown made no sound.
And yet, Élise heard it constantly.
Every second echoed in her mind, steady and oppressive.
48:00:00 became 47:59:59, then 47:59:58.
She could barely look away.
At first, she tried to live normally.
Cook.
Read.
Watch something.
Impossible.
Everything circled back to the same point:
the silent timer, sitting there like a promise—or a threat she couldn’t define.
She slept in fragments.
Waking just to check the screen.
Afraid something would happen if she wasn’t watching.
Silence changed shape.
It was no longer empty.
It was tight.
As the hours passed, her thoughts narrowed to a single obsession:
What happens when it reaches zero?
When the countdown hit 24:00:00, something in her finally gave way.
Not suddenly.
More like a deep fatigue. A quiet surrender.
She wasn’t afraid anymore.
She was waiting.
The muzzle had stayed on the table all this time.
She moved it once.
Then put it back in the exact same place.
As if it needed to remain visible.
— Just to understand… she whispered.
She picked it up without hesitation this time.
The leather was cold, but familiar. Almost grounding.
She adjusted it carefully, deliberately, like a gesture she had rehearsed in her mind a hundred times.
When she locked the first padlock, her breath stopped.
She could have stopped there.
She didn’t.
The second lock followed.
Click.
The sound felt final.
Silence closed in on her—dense, internal.
She sat down, hands resting on her thighs, unable to do anything but breathe and listen to her heart.
Her phone vibrated.
The screen lit up.
24:00:00
Then the countdown vanished.
A message appeared:
“You held on.”
A shiver ran through her.
Another line followed:
“Now open it.”
Relief surged.
She stood quickly, almost eagerly, and went to the drawer where she had kept the keys from the ruins.
Hands shaking, she tried the first key.
Nothing.
The second.
The third.
Slowly.
Then harder.
Nothing worked.
Her breathing quickened.
A cold realization settled in:
these were not the right keys.
The phone vibrated again.
“The keys you kept were only a memory.”
Then:
“Silence does not always end when you decide.”
Élise stood there, muzzled, in the middle of her apartment.
Free in appearance.
Contained in every other way.
And for the first time,
she understood this wasn’t measured in time—
but in choices.