"The truth is, Delilah, there never was a choice between Ms. North and Ms. Morgan. That binary decision was simply misdirection, a way to ensure you and Mr. Shepherd would separate and pursue individual rescue attempts. Divide and conquer, as they say in military circles."
The revelation hits me like ice water, and I understand Shaw's real game with crystalline clarity. This was never about forcing me to choose between the women I love—it was about isolating Kent and me from each other, removing the tactical advantage we represent as a team.
"Both locations are rigged to explode," Shaw explains with the casual tone she might use to discuss dinner plans. "Saving one triggers the elimination of the other. The rehabilitation center where Mr. Shepherd is currently attempting to rescue Ms. North, and this charming studio where you're discovering the true parameters of my research."
The timer continues its relentless countdown: 28:23. Twenty-eight minutes and twenty-three seconds until Shaw's carefully orchestrated psychological experiment reaches whatever conclusion she's spent nine years engineering.
"But there is a third option," Shaw continues, and her voice takes on the kind of anticipatory excitement that makes my blood run cold. "A way to save both women, to emerge from this situation with everyone you love intact and breathing."
I wait for the catch, for the impossible condition that will reveal the true cruelty of whatever choice Shaw is offering.
"You simply need to find me, Delilah. Track me to my actual location using the same analytical skills that have made you so successful in your forensic psychology career. And when you find me…." Shaw's pause stretches just long enough to build maximum psychological tension. "You need to kill me."
The words hang in the air like a benediction and a curse combined into a single moment of terrible clarity. Shaw's endgame revealed at last—not just to study killers, but to create one. To document the precise moment when Dr. Lila North's carefully constructed professional identity shatters and reveals Delilah Jenkins, the girl who thanked a serial killer for murder and spent two years learning to think like a predator.
"That's what this has always been about," I realize aloud, speaking to the empty studio and the woman bound at its center. "Shaw doesn't want to document existing killers—she wants to manufacture one from scratch."
"Twenty-seven minutes, Delilah," Shaw's voice reminds me, and the timer confirms her announcement with digital precision. "Twenty-seven minutes to embrace what you've always been underneath the professional credentials and careful distance. Twenty-seven minutes to become the person who can save everyone she loves."
The choice isn't between Janine and Aliyah—it's between my humanity and their lives. Shaw has engineered the perfect psychological trap, one that requires me to become a killer in order to prevent multiple deaths.
But what Shaw doesn't understand is that some transformations aren't traumatic. Some people discover their authentic selves in moments of crisis and find that the person they become is exactly who they were always meant to be.
The realization strikes me with the force of revelation, and I comprehend Shaw's research project with perfect, terrible clarity. This has never been about documenting the behavior of existing killers—it's been about creating one from scratch, about engineering the precise conditions that transform someone from victim to predator.
Nine years. Nine years of watching, waiting, documenting every response to trauma and pressure. Shaw has been manufacturing this moment since the day she first interviewed me about my father's death, studying my "unusual adjustment" to violence and building detailed profiles of how I think and react under stress.
Every interaction, every consultation where she appeared professional and helpful, every casual encounter that seemed coincidental—all of it was data collection for the project she's spent nearly a decade perfecting. The warehouse wasn't a rescue location—it was a psychological laboratory designed to show me exactly what Shaw was willing to destroy to get what she wanted.
Shaw saw something in that sixteen-year-old girl's response to her father's murder, some spark of darkness that could be cultivated and shaped and ultimately weaponized. The girl who thanked a killer for violence. The teenager who helped position her father's corpse and felt gratitude rather than horror. The young woman who spent two years exchanging letters with a serial killer and found it romantic rather than terrifying.
Shaw recognized potential in that profile, potential that could be nurtured and guided and ultimately exploited for her own advancement.
"You've been creating me," I whisper to the empty studio, comprehension flooding through me like recognition. "All of this—the copycat murders, bringing Kent back into my life, separating us to break us down individually—it's all been designed to awaken something you've been documenting for years."
"Precisely," Shaw's voice confirms through the speakers. "And now it's time for the final phase. You have to reach 1247 Oakmont Drive, Delilah. Don't disappoint me by being late to your own transformation."
For nine years, I've been Dr. Lila North, carefully controlled and professionally distant and perpetually fighting the part of me that found violence beautiful when it served justice. For nine years, I've been pretending that the girl who loved a killer was someone I grew out of rather than someone I buried.
Shaw wants me to dig her up, dust her off, and let her hunt.
Maybe it's time to stop resisting.
I close my eyes and let myself sink into the mindset Kent taught me through letters written in careful block script. Think like a predator. Understand your prey. Use their weaknesses against them while protecting your own vulnerabilities.
Shaw has spent nine years studying me, but I've been studying her too. I study everyone I come across, a part of the nature Shaw has cherrypicked only an aspect of. Every consultation, every professional interaction, every casual conversation has revealed details about her personality and motivations that she probably doesn't realize she shared.
She's narcissistic enough to believe her research justifies any amount of human suffering. She's methodical enough to plan this elaborate psychological experiment over nearly a decade. She's arrogant enough to believe she can predict and control my responses to her manipulation.
But she's also sentimental enough to choose locations that carry emotional significance rather than tactical advantage. The rehabilitation center where Janine worked, the warehouse where Aliyah had her studio—Shaw selects hunting grounds based on psychological impact rather than practical considerations.
Which means her actual location will follow the same pattern. Somewhere that carries meaning for me, somewhere that represents the moment when Delilah Jenkins first encountered the possibility of justified violence.
The timer reads 23:17, and understanding floods through me like recognition.
Shaw isn't hiding in some random safe house or anonymous office building. She's somewhere that mirrors the scene of my father's death, somewhere that represents the moment when a sixteen-year-old girl first learned that some people deserve to die.
I turn away from the shattered pottery, walking back toward the elevator with movements that feel like shedding skin. The transformation has already begun—I can feel Dr. Lila North's carefully constructed identity falling away with each step, replaced by something raw and honest and infinitely more dangerous.
