I woke up slick with cold sweat, staring at a ceiling where the fan dragged through the air like a dying man’s breath. The peeling paint smelled of the sewers—a stench that clung to the walls like a bad reputation. These sheets hadn't felt the touch of water in years; bone-dry, gray, and grit-filled. It meant I was back in City Central Hospital, the kind of place we used to visit before the massacre turned this town into a graveyard.

  I cut my eyes to the bedside table. It was a rickety wooden thing held together by prayers and splinters. Resting on it was a calendar featuring some gravure girl—or a streetwalker, not that this city bothers to draw a line between the two anymore. According to the dates, I’d been lost in dreamland for three days since that night.

  Sorry, Piers, but you’ve got it wrong. I’m done playing the damsel.

  Next to a bowl of bruised fruit sat a note: "Sir, get better. You scared me to death when the hospital called — Jane." That’s Jane for you. Always the saint. Maybe I’ve been too quick to pin Juniper’s ghost on her. Maybe it wasn't her fault we fell apart. Maybe I was the one who drove the getaway car into the abyss.

  I buzzed for the nurse. A moment later, a woman slid into the room, her uniform fitting like a second skin—less medical professional, more back-alley burlesque. Suddenly, the stench of the sewers evaporated, replaced by a perfume so thick the room felt like a funeral parlor for roses. I wondered if the city’s nursing schools had finally been replaced by strip clubs.

  She leaned over the bed, purring with a voice that sounded like gravel hitting silk. "Seems you've got some severe anxiety, honey," she whispered, the smell of cheap gum masking something sharper. "And I know just how to settle those nerves."

  Before I could bark a retort, she was on the bed, her weight pinning me down. She moved with a dangerous, predatory grace, her body pressing against mine in a way that should have been a dream but felt like a death sentence. I wanted to shove her off, but my muscles were water—either from the meds or a base instinct I hated myself for.

  Juniper.

  The name hit me like a slap. The thought of betraying her ghost with this plastic siren gave me the strength the doctors couldn't. As she tried to smother my face against her breasts, I found a surge of jagged energy and shoved.

  She hit the floor hard. The sound wasn't the soft thud of a woman, but the metallic clatter of steel. A dozen surgical knives spilled from the folds of her uniform, glittering like cold teeth under the flickering fluorescent light.

  "I heard you were a hell of a detective," she hissed, her face contorting into something feral. "I guess the rumors were right. Too bad you won't live to file the report."

  She lunged, the blade aiming for my throat. I rolled off the mattress, ripping the IV from my arm in one violent motion. The pain was a white-hot flash, but the adrenaline burned hotter. She circled the bed, but I scrambled underneath, my fingers closing around the cold grip of one of her dropped knives. The handle felt numbing, but the edge was wicked.

  She slashed at me, but I put my kicked the hospital bed, sending the heavy frame skidding into her shins. She went down, and I lunged. She dodged, but my blade found her cheek, leaving a thin red trail across her porcelain mask.

  She scrambled back, perching on the window ledge like a gargoyle. "You survived the night, detective," she spat, blood dripping onto her collar. "But next time, I won't be so gentle."

  She vanished into the night. I stumbled to the window and looked down five stories. Nothing. No body, no retreating shadow—just the empty, rain-slicked street. It was as if she’d turned into smoke. I stood there shivering, holding a bloodied knife in a room that suddenly smelled like the sewers again.

  Pain crashed down on me the second the nurse vanished. The IV puncture throbbed like a dying heart, but I refused to stay down. The devil wouldn't do this one, too sloppy for its style.

  I crawled into the suffocating silence of the corridor, every shadow a fresh cut, knowing she hadn't been the only one after me. The air was thick with the scent of forgotten fear. I slipped into an examination room that reeked of rotten flesh. I found a cadaver wrapped in stained cotton, nicked off a strip with my trophy knife, washed it down, slapped some iodine on my wrist, and bandaged myself up.

  Then I hid, melting behind curtains that felt like they'd been dipped in sewer water.

  Crrrrrk... krrrk

  The sound was a predator's call—metal on tile. I peeked out. A silhouette built like a slaughterhouse wall scraped a giant axe across the floor, a shriek of dying steel announcing her arrival. "Come to momma," she growled, a voice husky with malice. "Sissy failed. Momma finishes the job."

  I stayed still. Not frozen, not praying. Just still, the way prey learns to be. The axe dragged closer, each scrape flaying a nerve. Professionals never rush; fear does half the work for them.

  My wrist burned, the iodine a liquid fire of truth. I breathed slow and quiet through clenched teeth.

  "Poor thing," she crooned, amusement thick in her voice. "Bleedin', crawlin', thinkin' you can disappear in a place like this."

  The axe head nudged a gurney, the metal shriek making me flinch.

  "There you are."

  She yanked the curtain back. Up close, she was a nightmare in a nurse's coat that had never known mercy. Her eyes were empty, hollowed out by a job that broke souls.

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  "Doctor says stress is bad for the heart," she said, lifting the axe like a feather. "Good thing I ain't here to heal."

  I lunged. Not brave, just faster than dying. The scalpel—a toothpick against a storm—kissed her forearm. She hissed and swung. The axe chewed the bed frame where my head had been, spraying splinters.

  I slammed my shoulder into her knee. She buckled, stumbled, then backhanded me across the room. I hit the wall hard.

  She advanced again. "You're tougher than you look. Clients pay extra for that."

  I forced my body into motion, pulling it like a dead weight through a swamp, and closed the door, jamming a rod into the handles. I took a breath, but it died in my throat as her axe bit deep into the door, the wood groaning but holding fast.

  My body was screaming for a dirt nap, but Momma wasn’t the type to tuck you in. I dragged my carcass toward the elevators, slamming the call button with a desperation that went unanswered. No power. The grid was as dead as my luck. Then came the splintering groan of wood from down the hall—she was through the door.

  I ducked into the backup generator room, sliding under a heavy metal table just as she stepped in. She started tapping the floor with that oversized axe, a rhythmic, predatory clinking designed to rattle my teeth. But in the gloom, I saw the truth: she was hunting by ear. She couldn't see a damn thing in the dark.

  I reached into my gut, pulled out the last bit of nerve I had, and pitched my knife into the far corner. It clattered against a pipe, a silver invitation.

  A guttural growl ripped through the air. “Oh, you thought you could hide from Momma?" she said. "I’m going to end you now!”

  She swung the axe wildly in the direction of the noise, the blade biting into something solid with a sickening thud. Sparks flew, and the air crackled with a dangerous energy.

  Scrambling out from under the table, finding the stairwell, I descended to the fourth floor. The hallway stretched out, long, rusted, and dimly lit, but at least there was power here.

  I reached the elevator, but my muscles turned to lead. The air grew thick with a cloying, sugary scent that made my stomach churn.

  A voice purred from the shadows, hitting me like a jagged glass shard. I forced my head around. Another one. Small, delicate, dressed in that same twisted nurse’s garb, but her eyes held a malice that made the others look like amateurs.

  “How… how do you know that name?” I rasped, the words catching in my throat.

  She drifted closer, a predatory doll with a smile that promised a slow, dirty end. She licked her lips, a gesture that had nothing to do with thirst and everything to do with hunger. "How about a kiss of death?" she whispered, a voice like silk wrapped around barbed wire. "First, you lose the words rattling in your skull. Then the poison maps out your veins, clotting the life out of you, drop by agonizing drop. You'll scream, but the only one who'll hear it is the reaper. I'm generous like that."

  My lungs burned, my head spun, and every muscle fiber screamed for a quick dirt nap. I was running on borrowed time and adrenaline fumes. A grin that felt like a crack in a tombstone crawled onto my face. "Generous offer, sweetheart. But I'm not buying."

  I couldn't raise my hand to fight, my body was a wreck. Instead, I let the nurse's knife—the only trophy I had left—slip from my useless fingers. It fell straight down, the point burying itself in her small, white foot. She shrieked, a sound like grinding gears, buying me exactly the heartbeat I needed. I didn't lunge; I fell into the elevator, slamming my weight against the doors. My hands were paralyzed, shaking too hard to hit a button. I mashed the panel with my nose, smelling copper and sweat as the metal doors slid shut on her screaming face.

  When the doors slid open, a real nurse found me sprawled on the linoleum, a mess of blood and sweat. She didn't ask questions; just hauled me to Dr. Karl’s office, her face a mask of stone.

  He had me on a gurney in a flash, jabbing a syringe into my arm, the medicine a warm oblivion against the raw pain of the night. He also cleaned up my face, dabbing at my bloody, probably broken, nose with a cold efficiency, his lips a thin, tight line. The pain eased, but his expression soured, turning gray like a November sky.

  “Doctor, why the long face?” I managed a hollow laugh that felt like gravel in my throat. “I’m the one bleeding out here.”

  He looked at me, his eyes brimming with a grief that didn't belong to him. “I’m remembering Juniper. You two were in here so often, chasing hope. She was finally happy on that damned day.”

  “Happy?” I felt a cold dread settle in my gut, a heavy stone in the pit of my stomach.

  “Yes. She was... expecting. Twins, according to the scans.”

  The floor didn't just fall away; the whole world disintegrated into a million jagged pieces. I hadn't just lost a woman; I’d lost a future I didn't even know I had, a ghost story with no ending. I’d spent years blaming her, insulting her memory, while she was carrying our legacy in her belly.

  “I should have been there,” I whispered, the words tasting like ash and bile.

  Karl gripped my shoulders, his voice trembling like an old man's hand. “It wasn't your fault. I’m the one who should have insisted. I offered her a ride home, but then those two cops showed up here. They told her they’d drop her off, so she took their help instead.”

  The room went silent. A silence so loud it rang in my ears, drowning out the throb of my injuries.

  “Cops? The report said she was alone.”

  The truth started to crawl out of the shadows, a nasty little secret with sharp teeth. The report was a lie. The investigation was a shell game designed to fool the likes of me. The real killers hadn't just gotten away—they were wearing badges, hiding in plain sight.

  The weight of it pressed down on me, heavy and suffocating. My head swam with a mix of pain and disbelief. Cops? People I know? The People I work with? And my children? The thought of it was like a fresh stab wound.

  Dr. Karl's grip tightened on my shoulders, his eyes searching mine. He didn't need to ask what I was thinking. The raw fury, the desperate need for answers, it must have been plain on my face.

  "What do we do now, Karl?" I whispered, my voice rough. The linoleum floor felt cold against my back, but a different kind of cold was seeping into my bones – the cold of a world where justice was a lie and those in power were the monsters.

  Karl looked away for a moment, then back at me, his expression hardening. "We find out who they were," he said, his voice low and steady. "We find out what really happened."

  A flicker of something ignited within me, a grim resolve. It wouldn't bring Juniper back, or the future we lost, but maybe, just maybe, it could stop this from happening to someone else.

  Juniper guess, I have to bring justice to you and our unborn kids.