DATE OF DEATH:December 15, 2025
NUMBER OF KNOWN VICTIMS:10
CONTAINMENT DATE:February 16, 2026
HANDLING NOTES:Tongue kiss in front of him as often as you can
CHAPTER 54
I’ve loved many things in my life, but I’ve never loved anything the way I love my team. Leaving them will be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
—Journal of Donald Dellman, December 2025
I help Benji with research, trying to find the anchor tethering Morrow to this world. We spend hours poring over case files and old interview transcripts, which is extremely boring, but it gives me something to do. Donny’s name comes up often in our reading. It doesn’t hurt as much as I expected. Benji says it’s like he’s checking in on us.
I’m starting to get used to doing everything one-handed. Opening jars requires wedging them between my knees. Typing is a one-fingered poking situation, and don’t get me started on trying to put my hair in a ponytail, but I’m managing. My stump is pretty cool. Griffin helps me unwrap and redress it every day, and the way the skin is healing over where my fingers used to be is metal as hell. I don’t regret doing it. I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant keeping Nico safe.
What I can’t get used to is the silence from Nico.
His infection hasn’t been responding to antibiotics as well as mine did, so his hospital stay keeps dragging on longer and longer. I’m so scared someone is going to recognize him and throw him in jail, but the police already came to talk to him and nothing bad happened. He pretended to have amnesia, and because his injuries didn’t so clearly come from circumstances that suggested foul play like mine did (hard to explain a cleancut through half my hand), they didn’t press him hard. It helped that, at the time they came in to talk to him, his face was still swollen to the point of being nearly unrecognizable. DJ says the swelling has gone down now, but apparently, Nico’s beard has grown, and between all that and the surgical changes to his face, he looks nothing like he did in high school.
I just want him to come home.
I want to call him so badly my fingers hover over DJ’s contact every couple of hours, ready to ask her to put him on the phone, but I can’t make myself do it. There are too many things I want to say to him, and I don’t want to say any of them over the phone. I’m too scared of what the answers are going to be.
Griffin and Benji spend three full days at the abandoned hospital, scrubbing it clean and removing all evidence that anything untoward ever happened there. They go through Henley’s car and house meticulously, getting rid of all traces that could link Henley to the story I told the police. I don’t know if Henley will ever fully move on from what happened to him, but DJ will follow up with him and explain everything that happened in detail once Nico is home.
Apparently, Donny had measures in place to help victims go into hiding and even fake their own deaths if necessary, but as long as the police don’t find any evidence incriminating them, Henley and Ed will continue living their normal lives.
Donny also had measures in place for making the police go away. They never follow up with me again about the story I told them. When I ask DJ why, she tells me she placed a call.
“Donny kept in touch with one of his old colleagues at the FBI,” DJ explains. “The agent doesn’t know the details of what we do, but he trusted Donny enough that he looks out for us when we need him—he called the local police and handled it.”
I wonder if this colleague knows about Nico. Whoever it is would have had to trust Donny a ridiculous amount not to turn Donny in for that.
DJ calls me on a Wednesday afternoon. I pick up so quickly that I drop the phone.
“Wanted you to be the first to know I’m bringing Nico home this afternoon,” she says. “We’re leaving in about an hour. Should be there by three.”
I watch the dust motes spiral in the sunlight, every second expanding around me. “He’s really coming home?”
“Really really.” DJ pauses. “But, Eden, I need to warn you… He’s not acting right. I know nothing about what happened other than what you said. He won’t tell me anything the Game Master did to get him to break, but… manage your expectations, okay?”
I told the others why Morrow switched his target from Griffin and me to Nico and me, but I didn’t give up any of the details. They belong to Nico and me. If he wants to tell anyone, he can.
I struggle to find even one word I remember how to say. “Okay.”
“See you soon,” she says, and hangs up.
I sit there, staring at my phone, trying to wrap my head around her words.
Nico’s coming home.
I spring into action, going straight for the shower. My hair’s been in this braid for four days and probably smells like a locker room, and I can’t let that be the first thing he notices when he comes through the door. I’ve become kind of a pro at wrappingmy bandages, and I let the hot water sluice over me for a good half hour before getting dressed.
I wheel back out to find Griffin there, ready to carry my wheelchair down the stairs. A sandwich is waiting for me on the coffee table.
“You spoil me,” I say up at him.
