Morning light crept into the hotel room, but none of them had slept properly. The code 5993 was still written across the paper, staring back at them like it was mocking their efforts.

Angelo rubbed his eyes. “We’ve tried patterns, locations, timings… nothing fits.”

Henry leaned back on the bed, staring at the ceiling. “What if we’re overthinking it?”

Ben looked up. “What do you mean?”

Henry picked up a calculator from the desk. “Sometimes codes aren’t… codes. Sometimes they’re just signals.”

He typed 5993 into the calculator, flipped it upside down, then froze.

“Guys,” he said slowly. “Look at this.”

Angelo leaned in.

So did Ben.

Upside down, the numbers spelled a word.

EGGS.

The room went silent.

Angelo’s chest tightened. “That doesn’t make sense…”

Henry swallowed. “It does. Think about it. The first place we stopped. The first thing we ordered.”

Scarlett Green.

The smashed avocado.

The poached eggs.

Ben’s voice dropped. “That means someone knew. Someone was watching us before we even knew there was a mystery.”

Angelo stood up, pacing. “So the code wasn’t meant to be cracked by a machine. It was meant to be remembered.”

A memory.

A place.

Henry looked toward the door, uneasy. “And if they knew that… then they’ve been following us from the very start.”

No one said it out loud, but they all felt it.

The café wasn’t random.

The order wasn’t random.

And the warning suddenly made sense.

Angelo clenched his fists. “We’re not just chasing a mystery anymore.”

Ben nodded slowly. “We’re inside it.”

Outside, a chair scraped softly in the hallway.

Footsteps paused.

Then moved on.

But the feeling stayed.

Someone was still watching.