Ethan ran the tap. Water flowed like a blessing.

He paid in cash. And for the first time in a week, he made coffee without fear of what might be brewing beneath the surface.

On the monitor, Thomas smiled. He stood up, walked through the shimmering wall, and vanished into a warm yellow light. The camera feed went dark, then showed nothing but clean, dry copper pipe.

“Professor Grunge didn’t just build drains,” Margot explained. “He built resonators. Every time you ran the tap, you were singing a frequency that kept that boy—his name is Thomas—in a loop between ‘just washed’ and ‘still dirty.’ A ghost in the plumbing. But not anymore.”

He turned. His face was smudged with soot. He held up a sign that said: “Can you hear me? The pipes talk. They said someone would come.”