There's a moment right before you kill someone —
where time slows.
You hear everything.
The hum of blood in your ears.
The whisper of guilt brushing your shoulder.
The way the world holds its breath —
as if it already knows what you're about to do.
I wasn't going to kill Remi.
Not yet.
But she needed to know I could.
---
She came to me the next morning.
Hair tangled, face pale, fear in her eyes like lightning waiting to strike.
"You followed me," she said.
I didn't answer.
"You left this."
She pulled out the note.
A single sentence written in red ink:
> "If you lie to me again, I'll write your ending myself."
Her hands trembled. But she didn't cry. That's how I knew she'd been trained.
"What are you hiding?" I asked.
She said nothing.
So I told her everything.
Maya. The Archive. The men who touched me.
The Girl I left in that house.
I poured the darkness between us like wine.
And she drank it.
---
"You're not the only one with secrets," she finally said.
Then she opened her bag and pulled out a thin black folder.
A symbol on it — the same symbol from The Archive.
My blood froze.
"Who gave you this?"
She hesitated.
Then whispered the name I'd been dreading since I was 14:
> "Your brother."
---
It all collapsed inside me.
My brother.
The only person who knew about the basement.
Who taught me how to lie.
Who gave me my first blade.
He had been behind this from the beginning.
Maya was just the smokescreen.
The Archive was just the theatre.
The real story?
Was about him.
---
I took the folder.
Inside — names, dates, death certificates.
And in the middle of it all…
A picture.
Of me.
Younger. Thinner. Bruised.
Labeled: "Subject A-13. Outcome: Incomplete."
---
That's when I realized…
I was never the author.
I was just a chapter.
---
But this?
This is where the book ends.
And I get to write the last page.