Max sat across from the agent in his haphazardly furnished living room, the tension thick in the air. The man, in a sharp black suit, seemed ill at ease amidst the beige walls and beat-up furniture of Max's humble apartment. Agent Reed was a government agent, and he radiated an unobtrusive sense of power. He was there on official business—business that Max wasn't yet ready to receive.

  Reed placed a manila folder in the middle of the table in front of them, his fingers tracing slowly over the surface as if handling shards of glass. Max recognized that it was shut but no question existed of how important it had to be.

  "Your father, Dr. Alexander Cole, was conducting some. unconventional research," Agent Reed began, his voice low but authoritative. "He was studying sources of power—energy that would change the fate of mankind. But this was not an average scientific test."

  Max moved forward, his heart racing. The words hit him like lightning. His dad was always so smart, but this? This was different. He tried to slow his breathing, but the interest was already beginning.

  "What are you talking about? What kind of energy sources?" Max asked, his voice trembling a little despite himself.

  Agent Reed's gaze clouded, and he surveyed the room with a glance over his shoulder to make sure nobody else was around. He resumed in an even softer tone.

  "I am not at liberty to tell you everything—yet," Reed murmured, strained, "but what I do know is your father was conducting research on supernatural sources of energy. Something out of this world."

  Max blinked, trying to process what he was hearing. Otherworldly energy? Was this a joke? He ran his fingers through his hair, trying to concentrate.

  "Are you saying.my dad was working with alien technology?" Max asked, shocked.

  Agent Reed did not answer directly. Instead, he stood up, walking in the direction of the door. He turned around, looking at Max as if pondering very seriously what to say next.

  "I'm not telling you what he was doing was alien. But it was something we can't ignore. Something that would change the world. or destroy it."

  Max's mind spun as the words of the agent replayed themselves in his mind. The possibilities were endless, and yet, the threats were just as massive. His dad had always been mysterious, but this. this was something Max could have never dreamed up.

  "Why didn't they tell me?" Max demanded, angry. "Why keep me in the dark?"

  Agent Reed stopped and regarded Max with an expression impossible to read.

  "For your own protection," he answered bluntly. "There are people—powerful people—who would kill to get their hands on this information. Your father tried to protect you from it."

  Max swallowed hard. He had always wondered why his father's death had been so abrupt, so unexplainable. Now, the pieces were falling into place, but the picture was no clearer.

  "What do you want from me?" Max demanded, his tone stern but with a hint of suspicion.

  Reed pushed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a white, creased business card. He placed it on the table in front of Max. The card was plain—no name, just a number and an address.

  "If you want to know more, if you want to know what your father was up to. you'll need to call them," Reed said forcefully. "But be careful, Max. Once you head down that path, there's no turning around."

  Max stared at the card for an extended period of time. His mind spun with questions, but the answer to every one of them seemed just out of reach. Reed had said enough to stir Max's interest into a burning flame, but not enough to clear away his confusion.

  "I'll think about it," Max replied, his voice aloof.

  Reed nodded once, his thinking clearly weighing matters before he swung out the door. As the click of its closure followed him, Max was left standing in the middle of the room, staring at the card.

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  "What have you gotten me into, Dad?" Max panted into the empty space.

  He took the card slowly, his hands stroking the borders as if it held the answers to everything he had ever wondered. Yet somewhere in the recesses of his mind, he was very conscious that venturing out to the number on the card might simply lead him into an even more dangerous universe than he had expected.

  The sound of the door clicking shut was the last Max heard before the world appeared to move.

  -----

  Max Reflects on the Visit

  Max stood immobile, the door still ajar from the abrupt departure of Agent Reed. The silence in the room was more deafening than the recently finished conversation. He still heard the agent's words repeating in his head, each of them keener than the last, as if crafted to cut through the fog of misunderstandings that obscured his mind.

  "Your father's work is a matter of national security. You have no concept of how dangerous it is."

  Max panted, the weight of those words slicing deeper with every passing second. His heart was racing, but his head was muddled, like torn pieces of paper blown by the wind. Why had Reed come to him now? Why had he dropped this bombshell in his lap, as if everything he thought—or thought he thought—he knew about his father's company was a fabrication?

  Max trudged laboriously to his workbench, his eyes blurring over the unfinished works scattered on the bench. Each one, a failure, a reminder that he failed to do anything worthwhile, something that could hold up against his father's giant shadow. He ran his fingers over the metal pieces, cold to the touch, his mind in knots of questions.

  "What's there to be so damn important? What's all of this junk?" he mused to himself, just a murmur, half hoping for the inventions to take notice.

  Really, Max felt small compared to his father's brain. Dr. Alexander Cole was a giant—among the smartest guys his generation produced. But to Max, he had always been an absent figure, a man more fixated upon his career than his son. Max had forever struggled with trying to live up to the concept of being as good as a man who altered entire fields of science. He worked around the clock, yet nothing ever quite came close.

  But today, with the surprise appearance by Agent Reed, everything was inverted.

  Max looked about the room, at the blueprints scrawled across the walls, the half-finished gadgets taunting his defeat. For a moment, it was all for nothing, like everything had been wasted. "All of this. none of it matters." His inventions, his attempts to meet his father's expectations, meant nothing compared to something bigger—something waiting in the shadows.

  His eyes drifted to the wall, where a framed photo of his father hung. In it, Dr. Alexander Cole was standing tall, assured—a far cry from the image of the man Max had known. That man had been brilliant, to be sure, but also evasive. Max could never quite get to him, never quite grasp him.

  Max moved over to the photograph, his fingers tracing the glass softly as if he could extend himself and touch the man who'd left him more questions than answers. "What was so covert about your job, Dad?" he breathed, as if the photograph might find some solace, some light.

  That's when his eyes fell on the small box on the shelf—a box he'd never had the nerve to open in years. It was the one his dad had left him with before he died, a memento Max had never properly received.

  "Should I open it? Should I even try?" The question hung suspended, not asked out loud, as Max reached for it.

  His hands trembled as he took hold of the box. The weight of the decision was too much, the pressure too overwhelming to bear. But as soon as he opened the lid, the smell of old paper and leather filled the air—a smell he hadn't realized he'd been craving. Between yellowed pages, at the bottom of the box, lay the journal. The one that had always been just out of reach.

  Max stopped. He knew it. He recognized that it had been there the whole time, right before his eyes, but he had never dared to reach for it before. Dr. Alexander Cole's journal.

  "What in the world did you leave me, Dad?" Max said aloud, as if the words were too fragile for the quiet of the room.

  With trembling hands, Max opened the first page. The handwriting met his eyes, every word undistinguishable. "The answers lie beneath."

  The words struck him like a bolt of lightning, every letter pounding with meaning he could not possibly grasp. Beneath what? Under the surface of his own existence? Under the surface of his father's toil? What was the hidden secret his father had kept from him all these years?

  Max leaned back in the chair, the journal heavy on his lap, his head spinning with possibilities. Every invention, every failure, every lonely night spent looking for something—was it all leading to this? Was this when everything changed?

  "Am I really ready to see what's underneath?" Max whispered, the words almost lost in the emptiness of the room.

  The question lingered, unspoken. Max closed the journal slowly, the weight of the decision wrapping itself around him like a shroud. If he proceeded in this direction, there would be no coming back. The serene life that he had been living would be lost, traded for one of secrets, threat, and revelation.

  Max knew in his heart he'd never go back to the way things were. His mundane life would be only a memory. "What's the truth, Dad?" he whispered into the silence. "What's the secret you left for me to find?"

  The room was still, as if it too was holding its breath, for Max to decide. And for the first time, Max stood at the precipice of something much larger than he ever could have imagined.