The melody becomes clearer as I focus on it, delicate and beautiful and completely out of place.
“It’s a waltz,” I say, my brain scrambling to place it. “Blue Danube, maybe?”
“You know Strauss?” Nico asks.
“I took a lot of music classes.” My family wasnota classical music family, but when I was in middle school and still convinced I could be a Broadway star, Mom and Dad scraped together money for a keyboard and enrolled me in lessons. I practiced all the time. It must have driven my parents crazy listening to it, but they never complained, and Dad even sat in my room with me while I struggled through my scales because he said he liked to listen.
I slam the lid back on my box and sling it to the very back of my mind so it can’t trip me up again. “You really don’t hear that?”
He really doesn’t, until we’ve climbed enough steps to reach the next floor and I don’t have to strain to hear the notes. There are no emergency lights up here. It’s pitch black.
At Nico’s silent command, I turn my flashlight on. Avoiding Morrow’s attention won’t matter if we bump into him in the dark. Better to have a couple of seconds of warning.
I expect a maze of dilapidated tables, machinery, and belts, but my flashlight almost immediately hits a wall with a few grimy windows set into it. We’re on a mezzanine level overlooking the factory floor.
I step closer to the windows. I thought my fear was what made our journey up the stairs feel so long, but we’re higher thanI expected—far above the ceiling beams we walked under earlier. From here, the factory floor looks like it’s bathed in blood.
The mezzanine continues, following the factory wall. It’s really just a narrow hallway, with more filthy windows spaced along it.
“It probably wraps around the entire inner perimeter of the factory,” Nico says, his voice low. His flashlight is secured to his shoulder, the beam moving in time with his breaths.
I imagine Morrow standing in that elevated hallway, right above the door we came through.
“Eden.”
At the end of the hallway, light spills under a closed door in a thin golden line.
I get an uneasy feeling. My eyes flick back to the production floor, find the door we came through, and trace the path we just walked to the utility stairwell. I see a faint rectangle of light, fractured by columns and belts, shining onto the floor. I’m sure it wasn’t there before. We would have practically walked through it.
It’s possible that we missed it. Against the floor, the difference in hue is subtle, only making the reflection from the emergency lights look slightly less blood-like, but the window it’s coming through? When the entire mezzanine is shrouded in darkness? A lump lodges itself in my throat.
This light wasn’t on when we entered the building. We would’ve seen it immediately.
Meaning someone just turned it on.
Nico holds up his closed fist, pinning me in place with wide eyes that suggest he’s thinking the same thing. I turn off my flashlight and grab the shotgun from my back, aiming it at the door and gripping it as hard as I can as I rest my finger on the trigger.
Nico waves for me to follow him. He places one foot soundlessly in front of the other, like a panther stalking its prey, until we come to a stop in front of the door.
He counts down on his fingers.Three. Two. One.
He kicks the door in with aboomthat echoes through the space, swinging his weapon into the room as the door crashes against the wall. I charge in behind him.
It’s some kind of old supervisor’s office. Loud classical music pours from a CD player in the corner, and in the center of the room, Donny hangs from the ceiling by chains around his wrists.
My brain can’t process what I’m seeing fast enough. A deep gash runs across Donny’s throat, pouring blood down the front of his body in a steady stream that has already pooled on the floor under him. A piece of paper has been nailed into his ribcage. Words are written on it in blood:
LOVE FAILS
CHAPTER 36
I’ve made my peace with dying. My only regret is that I won’t be here to see the leader Alexander becomes.
—Journal of Donald Dellman, November 2025
Nico’s fingers press against Donny’s neck, searching for a pulse I already know he won’t find. His hand trembles before he pulls it back and stares at the blood on his gloves.
My brain keeps trying to tell me this isn’t real. That we’re on some kind of movie set and Donny’s going to lift his head any second and we’ll laugh about how convincing the makeup looks. But the copper smell filling my nose is too strong, and the blood pooling under him is too real.
