Prologue

Scott Harris wiped his hands on his pants as if friction alone might undo what had happened. The fabric absorbed nothing. It only smeared the blood wider, darkening the navy cloth into something almost black.
There was too much of it.
The metallic smell hung thick in the air, clinging to the back of his throat. It felt warm. Alive. He could taste it every time he swallowed.
Scott yanked at the headphone cable. The cord snapped tight against his neck before the buds popped free. One fell against his collarbone. The other hit the carpet and disappeared beneath the bed. When he dragged his phone from his pocket, it slipped from his fingers and bounced once against the matted fibers, leaving a faint red arc where it struck.
A curse tore out of him, raw and unfiltered. Maybe because of the blood. Maybe because his hands would not stop shaking. Probably both.
He crouched, snatched the phone up again, and stabbed at the screen. Nothing responded. His fingertips were slick, prints filled with drying crimson, the blood hardened into the fine lines that made him identifiable.
Over the past few days, everything about him had become unrecognizable.
“How the hell did I get here?”
The words sounded thin in the room, swallowed by overturned furniture and the low hum of the bedside lamp still glowing uselessly in the corner.
He wiped his hands again. Shirt. Bedspread. Carpet. The motions were frantic and repetitive, like someone trying to erase a mistake from paper that had already torn through. Finally, the phone recognized him. The lock screen dissolved.
He found the contact.
Pressed call.
Each unanswered ring sounded like approaching footsteps. Police boots closing in from down the hallway. Every tone grew louder, more accusatory. Sweat slid down his temples and into his collar. His heart battered his ribs like a trapped animal throwing itself against a cage.
His thoughts scattered in all directions, splintering under pressure.
He was about to hurl the phone at the wall when the line connected.
“Jesus Christ, Scott. I told you to destroy your phone. Do you realize the danger you’ve put me in? Put us both in?”
Xavier’s voice arrived sharp and immediate, as though he had been expecting this moment.
“I—I didn’t know who else to call.”
A pause. Not long. Just long enough to calculate.
“What’s happened, Scott?”
Scott’s gaze drifted despite himself. The room looked as though it had been shaken violently and then abandoned. A chair lay on its side. The lamp had been knocked askew. A picture frame face down on the floor, glass fractured in a spiderweb of fine cracks.
“I don’t know,” he said. The words felt useless. “I started the app before you could delete it.”
“Goddammit, Scott. I told you to stay away from it.”
“And now I’m here. And—”
“And what?” Xavier snapped. “What’s happened?”
Scott’s voice faltered. “I don’t know if I… or someone…”
“Scott!”
The name struck like a slap.
Scott looked down.
At the center of the room lay her body.
The white nightgown was no longer white. It clung to her in heavy folds, saturated and dark, the fabric nearly translucent where it met skin. The knife handle protruded from her chest at a slight angle, obscene in its stillness. Blood had pooled beneath her, seeping outward across the carpet in slow, deliberate expansion.
He turned away too quickly. Bile surged up his throat. He swallowed it back and squeezed his eyes shut, but the image remained, burned into the inside of his skull.
“It’s bad, Xavier,” he said hoarsely.
“How bad?”
“Very bad.”
“Define that for me.”
Scott forced himself to look again. To confirm it. To anchor it.
“I think she’s dead.”
The silence on the other end stretched longer this time.
“Jesus Christ,” Xavier said quietly. “Get out of there, Scott. Do you hear me?”
Scott tilted his head slightly. Beneath the pounding of his pulse, beneath the low electrical hum of the lamp and the faint buzz of city noise beyond the window, something else cut through.
Sirens.
Distant. But growing.
“I can hear them,” he whispered.
Xavier swore again, but this time it was controlled. Measured. The sound of steady breathing followed, as if he were forcing himself to calm.
“Where are you?” Xavier asked.
Scott looked around as though the room might offer an answer. The walls felt unfamiliar. The furniture displaced. Even the air seemed wrong, thick with something other than blood.
“I—I don’t remember.”
“Fuck.” Another pause. “I’ll track you. Stay where you are. For the love of God, don’t touch anything.”
Scott glanced down at his hands.
“I think I’ve already touched everything.”
For a moment, Xavier said nothing. Then, more carefully, “Don’t say a word to anyone.”
Scott had no intention of speaking. Beyond this call, he was not sure he could form a coherent sentence. Language felt distant. Optional.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The call ended without a goodbye.
The silence that followed was not empty. It pressed inward from all sides, defined by the presence of a dead body in a room that suddenly felt too small to contain it.
Scott lowered himself onto the edge of the bed. The mattress squeaked beneath him, a small, absurd sound in the aftermath of something irreversible.
He didn’t want to look again.
He did.
He shouldn’t have.
Her face was turned slightly toward him, as if she had fallen mid-sentence. Her eyes were half open, unfocused. Accusing. Or maybe that was his projection. A strand of hair clung to her cheek, matted with drying blood.
“I’m so sorry, Samantha,” he whispered. “So, so sorry.”
The sirens grew louder now, their wail rising and falling in waves. Closer. Near enough he could almost count the seconds between them.
Scott sat very still.
And for a fleeting, terrifying moment, he could not remember whether this was the beginning of something…
or the end.