Detective Mara Vex found the package waiting on her kitchen counter.
She hadn't left it there.
No forced entry, no tripped alarm. The door locks blinked a reassuring green when she tested them—like nothing had happened. But there it sat: a flat, brown envelope with no return address, marked simply:
VEX. PRIVATE. DO NOT SHARE.
Her breath stilled. She put on gloves before she touched it. Something in her spine told her she'd regret opening it, but she peeled the flap back anyway.
Inside lay a single folder—its edges worn soft by time—and a strip of Polaroids, each dated.
The top document read:
PATIENT FILE: MARA VEXInstitution #8 Psychiatric Wellness InitiativeClassified.
Her vision blurred for half a second. She hadn't seen that name in years. No one was supposed to know. Even the official record had been sealed by court order after she was discharged.
She flipped the folder open.
Scans of her intake forms. A therapy log. A black-and-white photograph—her teenage face, hair hacked short, eyes swollen from crying.
And beneath it all, a handwritten note in elegant block letters:
You don't remember who else was there, do you?
But I remember you.
— Smile.
She dropped the file, bile rising in her throat. He had been there. He—whoever the Smile Architect truly was. A fellow patient. A ghost she'd overlooked.
She gathered the photos, studying each one. They showed children lined up in a recreation room—most staring blankly. Some smiled, but not with their eyes. In the third photograph, a boy in the far corner held a composition notebook to his chest, glaring at the camera.
There was no name on the back.
Across the city, in the hush of his hidden room, he watched a live feed on a flickering monitor.
Mara Vex, standing in her kitchen, clutching her past like it might burn her fingers.
He'd broken into her apartment hours before dawn. Not to hurt her—yet—but to remind her. She was part of this story. Just like all the others.
The ones who'd called him unstable. Dangerous. Unworthy of a name.
She was the final piece.
He reached for his notebook, opened to the next name on his list. The name she'd find on tomorrow's corpse.
Councilman Reed.The man who'd funded the institution.
He picked up a red marker and carefully drew a grin across the page.
In the kitchen, Mara closed the file, fighting the tremor in her hands. She had two choices: report the evidence and risk her own secrets becoming headlines, or keep it hidden—and play his game.
Her phone buzzed. A text from an unknown number:
Tomorrow. 3AM. City Hall underground garage. If you want to save him. Smile.
She deleted the message.
And for the first time in ten years, she felt her mouth twitch into something like a smile—except it had nothing to do with happiness.
It was the same smile she'd worn the day they locked her in the padded room.
She whispered to the empty air:
"Game on."