Dr. Miles Sterling sat hunched over his desk, his dark hair falling across his forehead as he leaned closer to a stack of documents spread before him. At thirty-four, he still had the lean build of the college swimmer he'd once been, but years of hunching over microscopes and case files had given him a slightly forward slouch that he unconsciously corrected whenever he caught himself doing it. His gray eyes moved rapidly between crime scene photos and chemical analysis reports, some of which he’d been poring over for more than three years.
His home office occupied what had once been a spare bedroom in the Victorian row house he shared with his fiancée. Miles had transformed the space into a cross between a forensic lab and a detective's war room. Two large monitors dominated the main desk, surrounded by neat stacks of manila folders arranged according to a system only he understood. A massive periodic table poster hung on the wall directly in front of him, marked with various colored pins and notes written in his precise handwriting. Bookshelves lined the remaining walls, filled with forensic science textbooks, chemistry journals, and true crime accounts that he'd annotated with sticky notes and margin comments.
The room reflected Miles's methodical nature in every detail. Pens were arranged by color and type in small containers. Chemical structure models sat in perfect alignment on a shelf beside his Yale diplomas. Even the crime scene photos were organized with military precision, sorted by date, location, and the specific anomalies that had drawn his attention. But despite the organization, there was an underlying chaos to the space—the chaos of obsession barely contained by routine.
Miles had been at this for three years now, ever since a case had crossed his desk at the FBI's Laboratory Division that didn't quite fit the usual patterns. One case had led to another, then another, until he'd built an entire database of deaths that shared certain characteristics. Deaths that everyone else wrote off as unrelated, solved, or simply too complex to pursue further. But Miles saw something else entirely. And since then, it had become his passion project—cases that he worked on during his free time.
He picked up a photograph from a case in Detroit and held it beside one from Portland, comparing the subtle chemical signatures that had been overlooked by the local forensic teams. His pulse quickened as he traced the connections with his finger, following the logic that had eluded him for weeks until this moment.
It was odd how at peace he felt when he realized that his three years of borderline obsession may have paid off. To him, it felt like this was it. This was the thread he'd been searching for. It was a bit hard to believe, actually.
"Miles?" Elena's voice drifted down the hallway from the kitchen. "Dinner's ready."
He didn't respond to his fiancée’s voice right away; he was far too absorbed in the revelation spreading across his desk like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle finally clicking into place. The elements were there, had always been there, but he'd been looking at them individually instead of as parts of a larger design.
Hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium—each death corresponded to an element on the periodic table, moving in sequence through the first row and into the second.
"Miles," Elena called again, her voice carrying a note of familiar resignation. "The food's getting cold."
He frowned because he hated to keep Elena waiting, but this…well, this could be very big. Miles reached for a red penand began drawing connections between cases, his handwriting becoming more urgent as the pattern revealed itself. He'd suspected this for weeks, felt it hovering at the edge of his consciousness like a word on the tip of his tongue, but he hadn't been able to articulate it clearly until right now. The methodology, the precision, the almost academic approach to murder—these weren't random killings, though he completely understood why most law enforcement officials might have assumed so.
No, these were systematic, intentional, following a logic that was both brilliant and deeply disturbed.
A hand fell on his shoulder, making Miles jump. He bit back a shout when he turned around in his seat and saw Elena standing there. She wore an expression of amused exasperation on her face that he'd seen many times before.
“Did you hear me?” she asked, knowing he had. “Dinner is going to get cold, you know.”
"Sorry," he said, running a hand through his hair. "I…I got caught up with all of this.”
She shook her head playfully and said, “Like always.”
Elena Chen was thirty-two, with straight black hair that she usually wore loose around her shoulders. Her dark eyes reflected both intelligence and patience. She was smaller than Miles, barely reaching his shoulder when they stood together, but as a doctor, she carried herself with the quiet confidence of someone who'd earned her place in the competitive world of pharmaceutical research. Tonight she wore jeans and a soft blue sweater that brought out the warmth in her complexion. She looked very relaxed and comfortable.
"What's got you so wound up?" she asked, but her tone was gentle rather than accusatory. "You've been in here since you got home from Quantico." She'd learned long ago that Miles's workconsumed him in ways that went beyond mere professional dedication.
Miles looked up at her, his excitement barely contained. "I think I've finally got it cracked, Elena." He left it at that. She’d known him for the entirety of the time he’d been working on this and knew how much it meant to him. It was something his superiors at work thought didn’t warrant actual department time, so he brought it home as something of a hobby, almost.
Elena moved around to perch on the arm of his chair, glancing at the documents scattered across his desk. She understood his passion for forensic work, even admired it, though the technical details often went over her head. Her world was pharmaceutical development, clinical trials, and molecular chemistry; it was precise and controlled in ways that forensic investigation could never be.
"Walk me through it," she said, settling more comfortably against the chair. "What did you figure out?"
Miles turned back to his desk, his hands moving quickly as he arranged the documents in a new pattern. And as he began, he took a moment to appreciate her interest. Without it, the time he had put into this would have been much more difficult. "Remember how I told you about these deaths that didn't quite fit into any of my theories? Cases from all over the country where the local authorities either solved them quickly or wrote them off as accidents or suicides?"
"The ones you said had unusual chemical evidence," Elena said with a nod.
"Yeah. And it turns out that I was right to be suspicious. Look at this." He pointed to a series of photographs he had arranged in a neat row. "Detroit, 2021. Victim dies from hydrogen cyanide poisoning, but the delivery method was incredibly sophisticated...sophisticated enough that all of the toxicology and medical reports were inconclusive. Portland, 2022. Heliumasphyxiation that was staged to look like a suicide, but the purity of the gas and the equipment used suggested someone with advanced knowledge of gas handling."
Elena studied the photos, trying to follow his logic. "Okay, but those could still be unrelated."
"That's what I thought, too, until I found this one." Miles pulled up another case file. "Phoenix, 2022. Lithium poisoning from what appeared to be a medication overdose, but the victim wasn't prescribed lithium, and the concentration in her blood was exactly the amount needed for a fatal dose—no more, no less. That kind of precision doesn't happen by accident."
"And you think they're connected because of the chemicals involved?"
Miles grabbed a marker and moved to the periodic table on his wall, pointing to the first three elements. He was dimly aware that he was getting carried away while dinner waited downstairs, but he was too deep into it now. "Hydrogen, helium, lithium. The first three elements on the periodic table." He drew a line connecting them. "Then I found a case in Denver from last year—beryllium poisoning disguised as an industrial accident. Number four on the table."
Elena's eyes widened as she began to see the pattern. "They're going in order."
"Exactly." Miles's voice grew more animated as he continued. "Boron in Seattle, carbon monoxide in Chicago, nitrogen in Miami. Seven cases so far, and they correspond perfectly to the first seven elements of the periodic table. Each one uses a different method, but they're all connected by this underlying structure."
