Chapter 4
The Blood Arithmetic
The basement smelled like fear and old laundry.
I'd been standing in the shadows for eleven minutes—I'd counted, because counting was the only thing keeping me from shaking apart—watching the light spill through the gaps in the floorboards above.
The house was a duplex in a neighborhood that had once been working class and was now mostly abandoned.
The man I was hunting lived in the bottom unit.
He'd been a guard at the Institute. I'd found his name in a file I didn't remember stealing, on a page I didn't remember reading, in a language I didn't remember learning.
The words had been there when I woke up. Typed into my phone. No sender. No context. Just an address and a name and the certain knowledge that this man had watched girls like me and done nothing.
His name was Harold.
Or maybe David.
Or maybe something else entirely.
I couldn't remember. The name kept slipping, changing, rearranging itself into different letters. I'd stopped trying to hold onto it. Names didn't matter. Faces didn't matter. Only the information mattered—what he knew, what he'd seen, where Gabriel had gone.
"You're ready."
For this.
For basements and blood and the slow, methodical work of breaking a man open until he told you everything.
I pressed my palm against the concrete wall and breathed.
The stairs creaked under my weight.
I'd learned to move silently—Gabriel had seen to that—but this house was old, and the wood was tired, and every step groaned like something waking from a long sleep.
The man inside would hear me. He would know someone was coming.
He would have time to prepare, to arm himself, to decide whether to fight or run.
Let him.
Let him try.
I was faster. I was stronger. I was more desperate.
And I had nothing left to lose.
The kitchen was dark. The living room was empty. The bedroom door was closed, a sliver of light bleeding through the gap at the bottom. I could hear him moving inside—footsteps, the creak of a floorboard, the click of a safety being released on something I couldn't see.
He knew I was here.
He was waiting.
I kicked the door open.
The gun went off before I could see him.
The bullet passed close enough to my ear that I felt the wind of it, the heat, the promise of what would have happened if he'd aimed an inch to the left. I didn't flinch. I didn't duck. I moved forward, into the room, into the dark, and I found him with my hands before my eyes could adjust.
He was shorter than I'd expected. Soft around the middle. His hands trembled when I grabbed his wrists, and the gun clattered to the floor, and he made a sound like a wounded animal—high and thin and desperate.
"Please—I have money—I have—"
"I don't want your money."
My voice didn't sound like mine. It was too calm. Too steady. Too much like the voice I'd heard in the pink room, the voice that had asked questions while Gabriel watched and waited.
"I want to know where Gabriel Mire is."
His body went still.
Recognition. Terror. The certain knowledge that there was no escape, no bargaining, no mercy.
"I don't know. I swear. I was just a guard—I didn't work with him directly—I only saw him from a distance—"
"You watched him work."
"I—yes—but I didn't—"
"You watched him condition women. You watched him break them. You watched them cry and beg and fall apart, and you did nothing."
"I was just following orders—"
"So was I."
I pressed the knife against his throat, and he stopped talking.
I don't remember tying him to the chair.
I remember the rope in my hands. I remember the way it felt against my palms—rough, familiar, the kind of rope Gabriel had used during our sessions. I remember wrapping it around his wrists, his ankles, his chest, pulling it tight enough to bite into his skin.
But I don't remember deciding.
I don't remember choosing the chair, positioning his body, securing the knots. I just remember looking down and seeing him there, bound and helpless, his eyes wide and wet and white with fear.
Gabriel's hands on my throat.
The memory surfaced as I reached for the knife.
Two versions.
One: gentle. His palm resting against my windpipe, his thumb tracing my jaw, his voice soft as velvet. "You're so beautiful when you trust me."
Two: cruel. His fingers pressing into the soft hollow of my throat, his grip just tight enough to make spots dance behind my eyes, his voice flat as a scalpel. "You don't get to say no. You don't get to decide. That's not how this works."
Both felt real.
Both felt like lies.
I didn't know which one had actually happened.
Maybe neither.
Maybe both.
Maybe I was inventing the gentleness to make the cruelty bearable, or inventing the cruelty to justify the hate I needed to survive.
I pressed the blade against the man's cheek, and he whimpered.
"Where is Gabriel Mire?"
"I don't know. I never knew. He kept to himself. He only came out for the sessions—"
"Where did he go after the Institute fell?"
"I heard—I heard he left voluntarily. Someone helped him disappear. Someone inside."
"Who?"
"I don't know. I wasn't important enough. They didn't tell me anything."
"You're lying."
"I'm not—please—I'm telling you everything—"
The knife moved lower. Tracing his collarbone. Pressing just hard enough to draw blood.
"Where is he?"
"I don't know. I swear. I don't know."
"Where?"
"I don't—"
The blade bit deeper, and he screamed.
I don't remember how many cuts I made.
I remember the blood. The way it welled up from his skin, dark and thick, tracking down his chest in paths that looked like rivers on a map. I remember the sounds he made—whimpers, sobs, pleas that blurred together until they were just noise, just background, just the static of a dying radio.
But I don't remember deciding to keep going.
I don't remember choosing each incision, each question, each moment of pressure that made him gasp and beg and promise things he couldn't deliver.
I was operating on instinct.
Gabriel's training.
"When you need information, you don't ask. You take. You peel away the layers until there's nothing left but the truth."
Or maybe he'd said something else.
Maybe he'd told me to be merciful.
Maybe he'd told me that pain was inefficient, that there were better ways, that a skilled interrogator didn't need to draw blood. Perhaps he didn't train me to kill at all? None of it made sense.
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't remember anything except the man's face and the blood and the way his voice cracked when he said the words I didn't want to hear.
"He left voluntarily."
"He was never taken."
"He chose to go."
"He chose to leave you."
I stopped asking when he ran out of answers.
The blade was still in my hand. The blood was still warm. The man was still breathing—shallow, ragged, wet—but he'd stopped begging. He'd stopped pleading. He'd stopped saying anything at all, because there was nothing left to say.
He didn't know where Gabriel was.
He'd never known.
He was just a guard, just a man who'd watched and done nothing, just another body in a long line of bodies I'd left behind.
Gabriel had left voluntarily.
He hadn't been taken.
He'd chosen to go.
He'd chosen to leave me.
"You're ready."
For what?
For this.
For being alone.
For waking up in motel rooms with blood on my hands and no memory of how it got there.
I looked down at the man's face—Harold or David or no one—and I didn't feel anything.
No anger.
No satisfaction.
No grief.
Just emptiness. A vast, hollow space where something had once lived and died and left behind nothing but echoes.
I killed him.
Clean. Efficient. The knife sliding between his ribs, finding his heart, ending it before he could suffer anymore.
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.
I couldn't remember anything.
And that made me more angry than anything.
The basement was quiet when I finally stood up.
The man's body was still in the chair, his head lolling forward, his blood pooling on the concrete floor. The rope had cut into his wrists, leaving dark grooves in his skin. His eyes were open, but they weren't looking at anything.
Another body.
Another death.
Another name I wouldn't remember.
I tried to count them. The ones I'd killed since Gabriel left. Since I'd woken up in that motel room with clean hands and a gun on the nightstand and no memory of how I'd gotten there.
The handler.
The man in the warehouse.
The guard.
And before that—
I couldn't remember.
I tried to list them, to put them in order, to assign numbers to the faces that surfaced from the fog.
One. The handler. The one who'd been waiting for me in the apartment Gabriel had left me in.
Two. The man in the warehouse district. The one who'd known someone who might know.
Three. The guard. Harold or David or no one.
Or maybe there were more.
Maybe I'd killed four. Or five. Or a dozen.
I tried again.
The handler. The warehouse. The guard.
That was three.
But I remembered another. A woman. Blonde. In a building that smelled like rot and old blood. I'd killed her, hadn't I? Or had I dreamed it?
The girl who wasn't there.
Batch 39.
S or M.
I'd killed her.
Or she'd never existed.
Or I'd killed someone else and confused her face with a memory that wasn't mine.
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't trust my memories. I couldn't trust anything.
Four. Maybe four.
Or maybe seven.
Or maybe I'd lost count because losing count was easier than facing the number.
The blood was drying on my hands.
I looked down at my palms—red-brown and cracking, the way it always looked when it had been there too long. The creases were full of it. The spaces between my fingers. The half-moons of my nails.
"A good girl keeps her hands clean."
Gabriel's voice, or maybe my own, or maybe something I'd read once, in a book I'd never owned.
"Blood attracts attention. Blood leaves trails. Blood marks you as what you are."
And what was I?
A killer.
A hunter.
A woman who'd traded her name for a collar and her freedom for the promise of love.
I walked to the corner of the basement and sat down with my back against the wall. The concrete was cold. The air was thick with the smell of copper and fear and something else—something sweet and rotten that I couldn't identify.
"Daddy."
The word came out before I could stop it. Soft. Broken. A prayer whispered to no one, to the empty air, to the man who'd left me behind.
"Daddy, where are you?"
I waited for an answer.
None came.
"I've been looking for you. I've been killing for you. I've been waking up in strange places with blood on my hands and no memory of how it got there, and I've been doing it all for you."
"Because you said I was ready."
"Because you said I was yours."
"Because you said you'd come back."
The silence pressed against my ears like water.
"Where are you, Daddy?"
"Why won't you answer?"
"Why won't you come home?"
The tears came without warning—hot and sudden and silent, tracking down my cheeks in paths that felt like burning. I didn't sob. I didn't shake. I just sat there, against the cold concrete wall, with a dead man's blood drying on my hands, and I cried for reasons I couldn't name.
Gabriel.
Where are you?
Why did you leave?
Was it something I did? Something I said? Something I became?
"You're ready."
For what?
For being alone.
For hunting a ghost.
For killing strangers in basements and calling it love.
I pressed my palms against my face and felt the blood smear across my cheeks. It was still warm. It was still wet. It was still the only thing that reminded me I was alive.
The count.
I tried again.
One. The handler.
Two. The warehouse.
Three. The guard.
Four. The woman.
The blonde.
Batch 39.
S or M.
Had she been real?
Had I killed her?
Or had I dreamed her, the way I dreamed Gabriel's hands on my throat, gentle and cruel and neither and both?
I stopped counting.
The numbers didn't matter. The bodies didn't matter. Only the hunt mattered. Only the search. Only the desperate, endless need to find the man who'd made me and demand to know why he'd left.
"Daddy."
Another whisper. Another prayer.
"Daddy, where are you?"
The basement didn't answer.
The dead man didn't answer.
The only sound was my breathing, ragged and wet, and the distant hum of the city waking up above me.
I needed to move.
I needed to clean the knife, wash my hands, find the next lead, the next name, the next body.
But I stayed sitting against the wall, with my face pressed to my knees, and I let myself cry for the girl I'd been before the Institute, before Gabriel, before I learned that love meant bleeding.
"Daddy."
"I'm still your good girl."
"I'm still hunting for you."
"I'm still killing for you."
"Please."
"Please come back."
The sun rose higher outside. The basement grew warmer. The blood dried on my hands and flaked off in red-brown pieces that scattered across the concrete like confetti.
The count.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
I stopped.
I would never know the number.
I would never know if the woman was real or a dream or a memory I'd stolen from someone else.
I would never know anything for certain, ever again.
But I knew Gabriel.
Or I thought I did.
Or I needed to believe I did, because if I didn't know him—if I'd never known him—then I was just a woman sitting in a basement with blood on her hands and no reason for any of it.
"Daddy."
The word was barely a breath.
"Where are you?"
No answer.
There was never an answer.
I pushed myself to my feet and walked toward the stairs, and I didn't look back at the body in the chair, because looking back meant counting, and counting meant facing the number, and the number was a wound I couldn't close.
"Daddy."
The prayer followed me up the stairs, into the morning, into the city that didn't care whether I lived or died.
"Where are you?"
"I'm still here."
"I'm still waiting."
"I'm still yours."
"Please."
"Please come home."