Chapter 2
The First Lead
The sky was the color of a bruise when I finally stopped walking.
I didn't know how long I'd been moving. My legs ached.
My boots had worn new blisters over the old ones, and I could feel the skin rubbing raw with every step.
The warehouse district rose around me like a graveyard of industry—skeletal cranes against the pale dawn, loading docks gaping like missing teeth, windows shattered and boarded and shattered again.
How did I get here?
I couldn't remember driving. Couldn't remember parking. Couldn't remember the moment I'd decided to come to this part of the city, to these streets, to this specific corner where the buildings leaned together like conspirators.
The phone was still in my pocket. I'd looked at it an hour ago—or maybe two, or maybe five—and the address was still there. Adams Street. The warehouse. The man inside.
Someone who might know.
I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who had sent me his name, or why, or if I'd found him on my own or if someone had guided me here while I slept. But my body knew what to do. My body had been trained.
Gabriel's voice, distant as a radio signal through static: "When you don't know where to go, let your feet decide. Your body remembers what your mind forgets."
I'd been walking for hours. Maybe my feet had decided.
The office was attached to the side of the warehouse like a tumor.
Small. Windowless. A steel door with a hasp that had been recently oiled. The building around it was dark—no lights, no movement, no sign of life except for the thin trail of smoke curling from a vent near the roof.
Someone was inside.
I pressed myself against the wall and breathed. In through the nose, hold for four, out through the mouth. Gabriel had taught me that. "Controlled breathing controls the heart. A calm hunter is a living hunter."
My heart was not calm.
I could feel it hammering against my ribs, a trapped bird throwing itself at the bars of its cage. My palms were sweating. The knife in my hand was cool and steady, but my hand was not.
Another girl.
The memory surfaced like a body rising from deep water.
Blonde. Young. Hollow eyes like mine. She sat across from me in a room that might have been pink or might have been grey.
We whispered at night—not words, just sounds, just the reassurance that someone else was there.
She told me her name once. It started with an S.
Or maybe an M. I could almost hear it: Sasha.
Mona. Sarah. Something soft, something that tasted like rain.
Or maybe I imagined her.
Maybe I was alone the whole time.
Maybe the Institute kept us separate, never let us touch, never let us speak. Maybe the girl with the blonde hair was just a dream I'd had, a fantasy of companionship my broken mind had invented to fill the silence.
"There's no one else." Gabriel's voice, cold and certain. "You're the only one who survived. The only one who mattered."
Or maybe he'd said something else entirely.
I couldn't trust my memories. They shifted and slid like water through my fingers, impossible to hold, impossible to verify.
Every time I reached for a moment from the Institute, it came back different.
New details. Missing details. Faces that changed and clothes that changed and words that rearranged themselves into different sentences.
The girl. The blonde. S or M.
She was real.
She wasn't.
I was alone.
I was never alone.
The knife slipped in my sweaty palm, and I tightened my grip until the pain brought me back.
The door was unlocked.
I pushed it open with my shoulder, the knife held low, my body angled to present the smallest target. The office was small—a desk, a filing cabinet, a chair. The walls were covered in shipping manifests and calendars and photographs of women I didn't recognize.
The man was sitting at the desk, his back to me, his hands typing on a keyboard that glowed blue in the dim light.
He didn't hear me come in.
He didn't hear anything ever again.
I don't remember making the first cut.
I remember the knife in my hand. I remember the way his body jerked when I pressed the blade against his throat. I remember his eyes going wide, his mouth opening, his hands flying up in a gesture of surrender or prayer or something in between.
But I don't remember deciding.
I don't remember weighing options, considering alternatives, choosing violence over negotiation. My body moved the way Gabriel had trained it—faster than thought, more precise than intention—and by the time my mind caught up, the man was bleeding.
"Who do you work for?"
The words came from my mouth, but they didn't feel like mine. They were too calm. Too steady. Too much like the voice I'd heard in the pink room, the one that had asked questions while Gabriel watched and waited.
"I don't—I don't know what you're talking about—"
The knife pressed deeper. A bead of blood welled up along the blade, tracking down his neck in a thin red line.
"Where is Gabriel Mire?"
His eyes went wider. Recognition. Fear. Something that looked almost like relief, like he'd been waiting for this question, like he'd known someone would come asking eventually.
"I don't know. I swear. I never met him. I only heard the name—"
"From who?"
"A man. A buyer. He said—he said Mire was developing a new product. Something special. Something that would change the market."
"What product?"
"I don't know. I wasn't high enough. They kept me in the dark. I just processed the shipments—I just moved the girls—I never—"
"Where is he now?"
"I heard he went underground. After the Institute fell. Someone helped him disappear. Someone inside."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I swear. Please—I'm telling you everything—please don't—"
I don't remember killing him.
I remember his begging. I remember the way his voice cracked on the word "please," the way his eyes searched my face for mercy, the way his hands trembled where he'd pressed them against the desk.
But I don't remember the moment it ended.
One moment he was alive, breathing, begging. The next, he was still. The knife was in his throat, and his blood was on my hands, and the blue glow of the keyboard painted his open eyes in shades of electric nothing.
Clean.
Efficient.
Gabriel would have been proud.
Or maybe he would have been disappointed.
Maybe he would have said I was too quick, too merciful, too willing to end it before I'd extracted every possible piece of information.
I couldn't remember his voice anymore. The words were there, but the tone kept shifting—proud one moment, cold the next, indifferent always. I couldn't remember if he'd ever been kind. I couldn't remember if I'd ever believed he was.
The floor was cold.
I was sitting on it. I didn't remember sitting down. My back was against the filing cabinet, my knees drawn up to my chest, my hands resting on my thighs. The knife was on the floor beside me, the blade dark with blood that was already starting to dry.
The man was dead. The lead was cold. He didn't know where Gabriel was—didn't know who'd helped him disappear, didn't know where he'd gone, didn't know anything except a name and a rumor and a fear that had followed him into the dark.
Someone who might know.
I'd killed him anyway.
Clean.
Efficient.
Meaningless.
The tears came without warning. Hot and sudden and silent, tracking down my cheeks in paths that felt like burning. I wasn't sobbing—couldn't remember the last time I'd sobbed—just crying, water leaking from my eyes while my face stayed still and my hands stayed limp in my lap.
What was I crying for?
Gabriel?
The girl with the blonde hair?
The woman I used to be, before the Institute, before the contract, before I signed away my name and my memories and my ability to tell the difference between love and ownership?
I didn't know.
I didn't know anything.
I sat on the cold floor beside a dead man's body, and I cried for reasons I couldn't name, and the sun rose higher outside, and the world kept turning, and I stayed perfectly still.
The phone buzzed.
I didn't look at it. I couldn't. The screen was a sun, too bright, too demanding, too full of information I didn't want and couldn't process. I let it buzz until it stopped, then waited for it to start again.
I left it in my pocket.
The warehouse was quiet when I finally stood up.
My legs were stiff. My back ached from the cold floor. My hands were dry—the blood had flaked off, leaving red-brown stains in the creases of my palms, under my nails, between my fingers.
I should wash them.
I should clean the knife.
I should find a motel, sleep for a few hours, let my body recover before the next hunt. Wait, I should go home to my apartment. It's in the city. I know where it is.
But I didn't move.
I stood in the center of the small office, looking at the man's body, looking at the blood, looking at the photographs on the walls—women I didn't know, women I'd never meet, women who'd been processed and shipped and sold while I sat in a pink room and learned to beg.
The other girl.
The blonde.
If she was real, what happened to her?
Was she sold? Was she buried? Was she still out there somewhere, hunting for answers, hunting for justice, hunting for the man who'd broken her?
Or was she just a dream I'd had—a story I'd told myself to feel less alone?
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't trust my memories.
Maybe I was the only one.
Maybe I'd always been the only one.
Maybe Gabriel had told me there were others to keep me compliant, to make me grateful, to make me believe I was special because I'd survived when they hadn't.
"You're the only one who mattered."
I picked up the knife. Wiped it on the dead man's shirt. Slid it back into my waistband.
The phone buzzed a third time.
I pulled it out.
New message.
Different number.
An address on the other side of the city. A name I didn't recognize. A time that was already passing.
Someone else who might know.
Another hunt.
Another body.
Another morning waking up in a motel room I didn't remember checking into, with hands I didn't remember washing, and blood I didn't remember spilling.
Gabriel.
Where are you?
Why are you making me do this?
Why can't you just come back?
I walked out of the office, into the warehouse, into the dawn. The sun was higher now, painting the grime-coated windows in shades of gold and grey. The streets were waking up—a truck in the distance, a siren somewhere, the hum of a city that didn't know or care what happened in its shadows.
I didn't know where I was going.
I didn't know why I was walking.
I just knew that I had to keep moving, keep hunting, keep killing, because if I stopped—if I sat still for too long—I might have to face the questions I'd been running from.
Who am I without Gabriel?
Who am I without my daddy?
Who am I when I'm not performing, not chasing, not bleeding?
I didn't have an answer.
I didn't think I ever would.
The phone buzzed again.
I looked at the screen.
Warehouse district. Fourth and Main. 2 PM.
That was hours from now. Hours to fill. Hours to survive.
I walked toward the address, and I didn't look back.
The sun climbed higher, and the shadows shortened, and somewhere behind me, in a small office attached to a shipping depot, a dead man stared at the ceiling with eyes that would never close.
I didn't remember killing him.
I didn't remember why I'd come.
But I remembered Gabriel.
Two versions of him.
Kind and cold.
Loving and leaving.
Mine and lost.
"You're ready."
For what?
For anything.
For everything.
For the hunt that never ended, the search that never found, the love that was never real and still consumed me like fire.
I walked.
The city stretched ahead, indifferent and eternal, and I walked toward the next lead, the next name, the next body I wouldn't remember making.
Gabriel.
I'm coming.
I don't know who I am without you.
I don't know if I exist at all.
But I'm coming.
And I won't stop until I find you.
The sun burned away the last of the dawn, and the day began, and I kept walking, because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant facing the possibility that the girl with the blonde hair had never been real.
That I had always been alone.
That I would always be alone.
That Gabriel had left because there was nothing left to stay for.
The warehouse district fell away behind me, and I walked into the morning, into the unknown, into the next chapter of a story I was writing in blood and forgetting as I went.