Chapter 21 You Could Start a Cult
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
YOU COULD START A CULT
THE WHISPERING KILLER
The room hums.
It always hums, even when no machines are running and no one is speaking.
As if the concrete itself is full of trapped whispers that wander the walls when the world is quiet.
Sometimes I think the building is breathing with me.
Sometimes I think it is breathing instead of me.
The difference has begun to slip like worn fabric, and I am not sure which version is real anymore.
The memories of the past flutter in and out of a time that I forbade myself to remember.
The two on the floor have stopped pleading.
They sit bound to the pillar, heads drooping, their breaths shallow and uneven.
The louder one ran out of voice hours ago, his throat too raw to shape the questions he kept repeating.
The quieter one is still watching me, their gaze steady in a way that grates under my skin.
I do not like when people look at me as if they know something.
People think silence makes them mysterious, but I have always been able to hear the truth inside it.
I pace the length of the room, fingertips dragging across pockets of cold air that drift through the cracks.
Each flicker of the fluorescent light above scrapes across my senses, sharp enough to make my vision stagger for a heartbeat.
Some moments feel clear, crystalline, precise.
I hear every drip of water in the pipes, every faint movement from the two behind me.
Other moments smear at the edges—reality slipping like wet paint—and I have to blink several times to keep the world from splitting open.
Something is approaching. I feel it like a pressure in my spine, an echo that tightens every time I inhale.
Hazel and Zack. Those two…they’re moving closer, stitching their way toward me with a persistence that borders on irritating.
They don’t fucking know how to leave things buried.
Let the past stay dead. They keep dragging the past into the light, unaware that some truths burn hotter than they expect.
They believe they can save what has already been claimed.
People like them always believe they can make things right.
They never understand that some endings have already chosen them.
A soft groan pulls my attention toward the louder captive.
His head lifts a fraction as he tries to track my footsteps, eyes glazed with exhaustion.
I crouch in front of him, watching the way fear scrapes awake in his expression.
It is almost peaceful, the honesty of fear.
Humans mask everything except that. No matter how hard they try, fear always reveals them.
“Are they coming?” he whispers, his voice shredded and uneven. “Are they really coming?”
My chest tightens, knowing my little game is coming to an end sooner rather than later.
The pair of them are stronger and more confident together.
I know everything there is to know about these two, but I didn’t put together just how powerful their joining would be, how much it would derail all my fucking plans!
My plans were perfect, and I hate that I was so close to having everything, just for it to crumble around me as the truth comes out.
I can only hope my plan stays true—true and clear like I placed into fruition years ago.
My smile feels wrong on my face, too tight at the corners and too sharp to belong to something human. “Of course, they are. I’ve sent them on a little goose chase first.”
His breath catches, and he looks away. The quiet one shifts slightly, eyelids fluttering open, their gaze steady and full of anger they do not bother hiding anymore.
The fury is almost soothing. Pure emotion always is.
It reminds me that they are still mine to manage—still within the lines I have drawn.
I rise and turn toward the metal table, the tools laid out in perfect order.
Their presence steadies something inside me.
The cool steel quiets the restless noise in my head and anchors me, if only for a moment.
I run my fingertip along a handle and breathe in the cold.
It helps me focus. Focus is becoming difficult these days while thinking of the past, who I was, what I lost, and who I had to become.
The light flickers again—harder this time—and the hum beneath the concrete deepens in pitch.
My control wavers at the edges, something sharp and unstable whispering beneath the surface.
Hazel and Zack are getting closer. I feel the air tightening around their names, and I can’t pinpoint why that bothers me more than I want to admit.
They are variables I did not plan for, threads pulling at seams I stitched carefully.
The captives behind me shift, their movements soft and weak. Their presence keeps me tethered but also frays the line of my sanity. There is only so long I can hold everything in place. Only so long before the crack opens wider.
Hazel and Zack are getting close. I fucking hate that they are, but it’s inevitable at this point. The room hums again, low and growing.
And for the first time in a long while, I am not entirely certain what will happen when they do.