Chapter 17 Dark Adaptation
Dark Adaptation
The eyes may be confused in two ways—by a change from light to darkness or from darkness to light; and the same thing happens to the soul.
— PLATO
COLLINS
Each steady blink of the cursor mocks my faltering pulse.
A distressing hitch catches beneath my rib cage, and I press my palm hard to my chest as the realization crashes into me, dread sinking further with each flashing line of code. So cloying, so deep, it seeps past the callused leaflets and hardened muscle.
Years spent inside ViCAP, training on one of the most elite database systems, and yet, this was too easy. I shouldn’t have been able to crack Orion’s security protocols this quickly.
Once I realized the server was air-gapped, I should’ve backed out of the system and erased my tracks. Waited for him to return and try another tactic. My male apparently has a whole other habitat, and I’ve spent precious months gaining access to the wrong one.
A setback—but there’s another way in.
That’s not what chokes my heart with dread, however. To anyone else, the data flickering on the backlit screen might look like an intricate star chart. The lines of right ascension, the degrees of declination. The celestial coordinates measured down to the hour, minute, second—
I recognize the pattern.
And I’ve made a grave error.
“Shit,” I whisper harshly.
With numb fingers, I grab my phone and bring up the image of the brass instrument. I didn’t fully comprehend what the device was at the time. But now, staring at the highlighted node on the screen, comparing it to the star chart, and then the dialed coordinates on the astrolabe in the image—
I drop my phone to the desk surface, spearing shaky fingers into my hair before I plunge deeper in search of the dark-sky data.
Before I even set foot inside Stonehurst, I knew my hunter was different. I knew once he found what he was searching for, I would lose him. He’s unlike other predators of his kind.
He has an expiration date.
And his pattern all came down to where he’d strike next.
Shorehaven. Gemini. Solar eclipse.
I zoom in on the data—and my heart stutters.
Blue Hills Preserve. Gemini. Comet outburst & Tidal disruption event (TDE).
“No,” I whisper. Panic drives me to my feet, and a surge of dizziness slams into me. I grip the edge of the desk to steady myself.
Twelve.
Twelve constellations. Twelve celestial events. The final one had to be the eclipse.
I fumble for my phone and pause, thumbs hovering over the display—one, two, three.
“Goddammit, why don’t you have a phone, Orion.”
My breathing shallows, chest constricting under the pressure. I reach into my pocket for my silver case, and it slips from my fingers. Pills scatter across the floor.
“Dammit.”
Fury lights up my body as I drop to my knees and pluck a pill from the floor, forcing it down.
There’s still time.
I tell myself this, even as my heart fails to find a stable rhythm. I tell myself this, even as my gaze is drawn to the brass orrery above, the bladed arcs slicing through an orbital countdown.
As I gather the pills, stuffing them and the case into my pocket, my fingers brush the slender piece of brass buried there.
I found him once.
Perched on my knees, I draw in an aching breath and open a browser window on my phone. I search up the address to the dark-sky preserve. An hour and a half away. With a tight swallow, I lift my gaze to the darkened sky beyond the windows.
A fusion of rage and despair tangles in my chest until, in a burst of anger, I hurl my phone at the orrery. It ricochets, disappearing somewhere over the platform. Fire licks the walls of my throat as I bite back a scream.
Get the fuck up.
On shaky legs, I shove the telescope ladder toward the wall and hurriedly climb onto the catwalk. After I recover my cracked phone, I pull in a ragged breath and fling the balcony door open, letting a hit of cool night air fill my stinging lungs.
Just a moment—I just need a moment.
One. Two. Three. Breathe.
I exhale a long, foggy breath as I take in the stretch of starry sky. From up here, it is beautiful. Vast. Endless. I can see why Orion spends time here, gazing out over the ocean and sky, like viewing a clean slate.
I brush my thumb over my wrist, counting each faint beat as I let my gaze pick out the three stars along the hunter’s belt, knowing Orion has stood right here. His hands braced to this iron, connecting us by time and space.
When I warned Orion he was a danger to himself, it wasn’t exactly a manipulation. Despite ultimately going against my own objective, my evaluation was an honest one.
Orion’s psychological profile is complex, layered with obsessive methodology. Regardless of the number of offenders I’ve studied, he defies classification. Driven by grandiose delusions of purpose, he maps death like a symbolic ritual, aligned with cosmic symmetry.
He isn’t merely a serial murderer—he’s an existential killer.
Hunting his victims right along with his own annihilation.
Gemini, the constellation of twins, technically counts as more than one victim. The person he’s chosen—
And Orion himself.
Born May 21st, his sun sign straddles the cusp, aligning with Gemini. Once he completes his ritual, he’ll end the cycle suicide by proxy.
I understood this as I first walked the shadowed corridors of this institute, feeling the chilling presence grip my soul like the Grim Reaper.
And I had a plan.
Fingers curled around the railing, I let a bitter laugh slip free. Did I honestly believe it would be that simple? Get the information I needed. Send Darby the evidence and have him intercept Orion before his next kill. Then just vanish.
In death, she will have her revenge.
Revenge won’t change the past.
For the first time since I stood on that beach and knew I could find him, uncertainty churns in my chest. Each ticking second frays another thread of my resolve, raging a war within as I desperately cling to that revenge. Without this purpose, Collins doesn’t even exist.
I can’t lose Orion.
I clutch the rail until the rough edge bites into my palms. Desperation flares hot in the pit of my stomach, and with it comes the brutal strike—the phantom sensation of cold steel.
The scent of damp earth. The screech of insects.
Forest trees overtake the salty air, the roar of the ocean overwhelmed by my roaring blood.
Gasping, I lift my gaze once more to the constellation. Orion, cast into the abyss of night, defiantly burning amid the endless dark.
“I can find you,” I whisper, pleading there’s enough time to intervene.
Swallowing hard, I light my cracked phone screen, preparing to make the call to Darby—
And my gaze catches shadowed movement past the hazy cliffside.
Waves crash against the rocks below. The tide pushes against the dark shore. And there, bathed in the silvery moonlight, his familiar silhouette stands stark against the night.
A strangled sound escapes my throat. Relief seeps into me like the mist, slowly filling me with a mix of relief and dread.
My breath trembles. “Orion…”
Then I’m moving, my heart barely managing to keep up. My pulse suspends, not wanting to waste a beat. I escape the dome, time hanging motionless and speeding as I search the quickest path to him.
Standing torn at the edge of the cliff, I waver between the pier in the distance, and the steep descent down the rocky slope. Pressing my palm to the aching hollow beneath my left breast, I feel the frantic kick of my heart.
“Fuck it.”
I kick off my ankle boots and slip over the edge, toes feeling for purchase along the narrow stone shelves. Rough rock scrapes against my bare feet, fingers digging into toothed edges as I cling to the jagged wall, lowering myself inch by inch toward the shore.
Icy water seeps up through the hard sand, mercifully numbing the raw soles of my feet as I weave an unsteady path between slate sea stacks. Arms tucked around myself, I brace my trembling body against the whipping wind, coming to a sudden stop.
Orion stands off to my right, as motionless as the stones surrounding him, his gaze cast out over the gray, rolling waves.
For a brief second, I let a tendril of relief curl through me. “Orion,” I call his name, my teeth chattering. He doesn’t respond.
Something in the way he’s just standing there tightens a band of apprehension around my chest. My gaze drops to his boots sunk into the wet sand, the foamy tide washing over them before retreating.
I tilt my head back, anxiety pouring through my veins as I gauge the nearly half-lit moon hung in the black sky.
Muttering a curse beneath my breath, I lift the hem of my skirt and creep closer. “Orion, what does a half-moon mean for the tide—”
My voice dies as I come around to face him, breath seizing at the devastating sight before me.
Dark red streaks his skin, spattered in brutality across his face.
His gray thermal is stained and torn, hair caked in gore.
Bathed in blood and violence, the light has vanished from his eyes, those blue-green waters churning with turmoil.
Something fierce and cold stirs beneath their surface, as wild and desolate as an ocean abyss.
“Orion.” His name escapes on an unsteady whisper. A question, a plea—a helpless echo of the horror crashing through me.
I draw another hesitant step closer. Beneath the salt and mist and his own heady scent, I taste the sharp note of iron.
In this slant of moonlight, with the ocean spray misting his skin, the crystallized blood glints along his jaw and throat as though he’s been anointed by the violence of the stars themselves.
Beautiful, and devastating.
Whatever happened tonight, however he got himself here in this state—this isn’t the calculated Reaper standing before me now. This is something untamed, primal. Merciless.
The hunter.
I’m terrified. But not of the blood, or even of him. It’s the vacantness of his eyes, the empty dissociation shadowing their depths.
The fear that he’s lost.