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“Why would he give this to us?”

“Not to you—only me,” Atlas said as he studied the box once again. He pointed at the letters written on the side of it. "Atlas, slash Sal. I don’t know who Sal is.”

You sat down on the couch as you flipped the pages of the notebook. “None of this makes any sense at all. I’m confused.”

“You’re not the only one,” Atlas muttered.

He sat next to you and looked over your shoulder as you flipped through the pages. “What exactly are we even looking at? This is a very old record, dating from the late 1940s."

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“Late 40's, you say?" Atlas took the notebook from your hands. “It’s a very slim chance, but I think that’s the time when the Old Helios got cursed—or whatever happened to it.”

Atlas scanned the pages. Each page has ten names along with their ages and a check mark. The notebook is thick. Most of the names have black check marks, while some have red.

You could hear Atlas’s heavy breathing as he stopped on one page. “These people... I’ve been in the library archives as well, searching about this whole thing, and I came across this list of names—a list of the residents who managed to escape Old Helios but were later killed, right? You remember?”

You nodded.

“Well, all of their names have red check marks. They are the names I found in the old newspapers,” Atlas said. “This is not just a list of patients. This is some sort of kill list.”

——

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