CHAPTER 19 - Madeline
The apartment feels like a tomb. I didn't even turn on the lights. I just collapsed onto the sofa, the skin that no longer feels like mine, now stiff with dried blood and city grime.
My arm throbs with a rhythmic, pulsing heat, a constant reminder of the needle Deimos used to stitch me back together.
When I close my eyes, the vault rushes back: the smell of ozone, the bone-white mask, and the terrifying, fractured look in Deimos’s eyes. He looked like a man who had finally looked into the abyss and found it staring back.
I had to leave. The thought loops in my mind until exhaustion finally pulls me under into a dreamless, heavy sleep.
The sun is a harsh, unforgiving blade cutting through my blinds when I wake up. My body feels like it’s been crushed, but the clock on the wall is a relentless taskmaster. 8:00 AM. In the world of the living, deaths don't stop just because I had a brush with my own.
I shower with mechanical movements, careful not to soak the professional bandage Deimos applied. I dress in my usual scrubs, the fabric clean and smelling of lavender. A desperate attempt to mask the scent of gunpowder that still seems to cling to my hair.
By the time I reach the Medical Examiner’s office, the adrenaline of the night has been replaced by a hollow, jittery caffeine high. I walk through the sliding glass doors, bracing myself for the cold air and the smell of formaldehyde.
"Morning, Dr. Foster," Sarah, the morning receptionist, says without looking up from her screen. Her voice is flat, but I notice the way her fingers are tapping restlessly against the desk.
"Morning, Sarah," I rasp, my throat feeling like it’s filled with sand.
"Anything urgent on the slab today?"
Sarah finally looks up, and for the first time, I see the genuine flicker of unease in her eyes.
"Not on the slab, no. But... have you heard from Bryan this morning?"
I freeze, my hand hovering over the badge scanner. Bryan. He’s always there when I leave late. Charming, a bit too bold, always ready with a joke or a paper cup of terrible coffee to make me smile after a long shift. I completely forget about him since Deimos forced himself into my life.
"No," I say, my heart giving a sudden, uncomfortable lurch.
"Why? Is he late?"
"He left all of his things here after his shift ended," Sarah whispers, leaning over the desk.
"His car is still in the parking lot. His phone is going straight to voicemail. The Chief is already talking to the police. They found his flashlight and his radio in the stairwell, but Bryan... he’s just gone."
A cold sweat breaks out across my neck. I think of the cameras Deimos said he would never turn off. I think of the white-hot rage I saw in his eyes when I told him I was leaving.
The hallway feels narrower, the fluorescent lights suddenly too bright. Bryan was a flirt. He was a distraction. He was a piece of my "normal" life that Deimos watched through a lens.
"He’s probably just... sick," I lie, my voice trembling.
"His locker was open, Madeline," Sarah adds, her voice dropping to a terrified breath.
"And someone wrote something on the inside of the door. The police won't let us near it."
I walk past her, my legs feeling like they belong to someone else. I head toward the security office, my breath hitching in my chest. If Deimos did this... if he took the one person who represented my safety just to prove a point...
The hallway air feels unnervingly cold, the smell of industrial cleaner mixing with the metallic tang of my own fear. I see a Detective standing by the security office, his back to me as he talks into his radio.
The yellow crime scene tape is already being stretched across the entrance to the locker room. A plastic barrier between my life and the nightmare I tried to leave behind in that vault.
I don't call Deimos. I can't. If I hear his voice right now, I’m afraid I’ll hear the monster Charles claimed he was.
Instead, I slip into the side maintenance corridor. I know these vents and service doors better than anyone; I've spent two years walking them at three in the morning.
I reach the rear entrance to the staff locker room, my fingers trembling as I swipe my keycard. The light blinks green with a soft, mocking chirp.
I edge inside, the shadows stretching long across the tiled floor. Bryan’s locker, number 114, is standing wide open, swinging slightly on its hinges. His gym bag is still there. His spare uniform is neatly folded. It looks like he just stepped away for a second.
Then I see it.
The inside of the metal door has been scratched, the grey paint gouged away with something sharp, a blade or an industrial tool. The letters are erratic, as if written by someone who had lost the ability to feel anything but rage.
I don’t need a detective’s degree to translate the scratches. The handwriting is violent. Deep, gouged strokes that look like they were carved with a scalpel. There’s no name, no signature, just a chillingly impersonal observation:
"HE WAS WATCHING YOU. I WAS WATCHING HIM. NEGLIGENCE IS A TERMINAL ILLNESS."
It’s a clinical insult. A mockery of Bryan’s job, his flirting, and his very existence. To Deimos, Bryan wasn't a person; he was a security flaw. A distraction that dared to look at the sun while the eclipse was already happening.
"Negligence is a terminal illness?"
The detective mutters, rubbing his jaw. I flinch at his voice.
"What kind of psychopath writes like a medical textbook? Have you ever seen this phrase in any of your psych-evals, Doc?"
I swallow hard, the bile rising in my throat. I know that voice. It’s the cold, detached logic Deimos uses when he’s decided someone is redundant.
"No," I lie, my voice sounding thin and brittle.
"I... I’ve never seen it."
He eventually gave me a dismissive nod, telling me to focus on my "cadavers and paperwork" while the real police handled the kidnapping. He thinks he’s protecting me from a gruesome reality, unaware that I’ve already stepped through the glass, looking into a world he can't even imagine.
I retreat to my floor. My sanctuary. The morgue.
The heavy stainless-steel doors hiss shut behind me, sealing me in with the chill and the silence. The dead don't lie, and they certainly don't play games. But today, the silence is suffocating.
I sit at my desk, staring at the blank monitor of my computer. My bandaged arm feels like it’s being gripped by an invisible hand.
Since I walked out of that bunker, Deimos has been a ghost. No calls. No encrypted messages. Just that terrifying, gouged riddle in a locker and the photo of Bryan. A living warning that my "normal" life is nothing but an illusion he allows me to have.
Every flicker of the security camera above my desk feels like his obsidian gaze. He’s watching, I think, my breath hitching. He’s always watching.
The realization that he kidnapped Bryan, not for information, but simply because Bryan looked at me, is a poison in my veins. It’s a level of possessiveness that borders on insanity. Deimos isn't just protecting me from the Elite; he’s erasing the world around me until he is the only thing left.
I reach into my pocket and pull out my phone, my thumb hovering over the dial pad. I want to scream at him. I want to beg him to let Bryan go. But I remember the look in his eyes when he mentioned his father. That raw, jagged vacuum of a man who had lost his tether.
The hours pass in agonizing crawl. I bury myself in the cold, repetitive rhythm of the morgue.
Filling out death certificates, cataloging personal effects, and reviewing toxicology reports until the words blur into meaningless symbols.
Every time a door creaks or the ventilation hums, I flinch, expecting a shadow to detach itself from the wall.
But there is nothing.
No texts. No silent black sedans idling in the parking lot. The absence of him is more suffocating than his presence ever was. It’s as if Deimos has vanished, leaving me alone with my thoughts. The silence feels like a test, a psychological game designed to make me break.
By 10:00 PM, the morgue is a tomb of fluorescent light and white tile. I’m the only soul left in the building.
I’m staring at a photo of Bryan on my computer. A staff ID image where he’s smiling, oblivious to the fact that his kindness would one day become a "terminal illness."
Suddenly, the monitor flickers.
The image of Bryan distorts, the pixels bleeding into static, before being replaced by a live feed. My heart stops. It’s a camera angle I’ve never seen, low to the ground, positioned at the end of the hallway leading to Autopsy Room 4.
At the very edge of the frame, a tall, dark figure moves past the door. It’s a flash of a tailored black suit, the unmistakable silhouette of a man who moves like a predator in his own territory. Then, my desk phone rings. The caller ID is blank.
I pick it up, my fingers trembling.
ME: "Deimos?"
There’s no voice. Just the sound of rhythmic, heavy breathing and a distant, metallic clink. The sound of a scalpel hitting a stainless-steel tray.
Then, a low hum starts coming through the office speakers, a song I recognize. A haunting, classical melody that feels like a funeral march.
The monitor on my desk flickers again, but this time, the static doesn't resolve into a hallway. It snaps into a sharp, high-definition overhead shot of Autopsy Room 4. My own workspace.
There is a body on the dissection table.
It’s laid out precisely where I usually perform my exams, under the clinical, unforgiving glare of the surgical lights. The figure is pale, stripped to the waist, and secured to the stainless steel by heavy, industrial nylon straps at the wrists and ankles.
"Bryan," I choke out, the name catching in my throat like a shard of glass.