Mason's house looks like a haunted mansion that got hit by a hurricane. The windows? Smashed. The door? Hanging on by a thread. The whole place? Giving off very bad idea energy.
Mason, being Mason, just walks right in like it's no big deal. I follow, because I have poor decision-making skills.
Inside, it's eerie. Everything's covered in dust, but nothing's been looted or wrecked. It's like his dad just left one day and never came back.
Mason leads me to the back, to his dad's study. And wow. If I thought the house was unsettling, this place is on a whole other level.
The room is filled with stacks of papers, blueprints, and research notes pinned all over the walls. There's a desk in the center, covered in files that probably contain the key to why the world went kaboom.
Mason doesn't waste time. He starts rifling through everything, muttering to himself. His hands are shaking, just slightly.
"The project was supposed to change everything," he says. "Make life better. But somewhere along the way, it just got so... twisted."
I watch him dig through his father's past, and for the first time, I realize, Mason's not just looking for answers. He's looking for a way to fix something that's already broken.
That's... not going to end well.