Captain Ramesh Kapoor leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach. The blinds behind him were half-closed, letting in thin slashes of morning light. His tie was crooked. His patience, already worn thin.
"Anaya," he said, voice calm but tired, "you're bringing me fan fiction."
"It's not fan fiction," she said. "I found that body yesterday. The exact one from the story. Word for word. Even the note was the same."
Kapoor raised an eyebrow. "So you're saying a writer predicted a murder?"
"No. I'm saying someone wrote about it after doing it. Or worse—wrote it before, then made it real."
He looked down at the printouts she'd placed on his desk. Neatly stacked. Highlighted. Labeled. She'd even added photos from the scene.
He didn't touch them.
"Listen," he said, leaning forward, "I know you've been running hot lately. Ever since the Linton case, you haven't taken a breath."
"This isn't about Linton."
"Isn't it?"
She said nothing. Her jaw clenched.
Kapoor sighed. "You're one of my best. Always have been. But this?" He tapped the stack of papers. "It's a creative writing class gone dark. You want me to open a murder investigation based on a story posted on a dead forum by a user we can't trace?"
"Yes," she said flatly.
He gave a short, humorless laugh. "Come on. If this person is real, let the cyber team chase him. You've got real work on your desk."
"I am doing real work," she said, standing now.
Kapoor held up a hand. "Anaya. I'm not saying stop. I'm saying don't make it your obsession."
Too late.
She picked up the papers, turned, and walked out without another word.
Outside his office, the noise of the station returned all at once. Phones ringing. Doors creaking open. The copier grinding out pages no one would read.
She walked straight past her desk. Out the door.
If no one was going to help her, she'd follow the thread herself.
/////////
Anaya sat cross-legged on her couch, a stack of old printouts beside her, cold takeout on the coffee table, untouched.
The rain had returned—soft and steady this time. It tapped against the window like fingertips.
She flipped through the second story from the archive again.
It was one of the simpler ones—no named character, no dramatic twist. Just a body hidden somewhere quiet.
"She rested in the shadows of the red door, her breath stolen by silence. The old factory welcomed her like a grave welcomes bones—without question."
That line.
She had skipped past it before.
But now it stuck.
The red door.
She read the paragraph again. The story described a woman crawling through a broken side entrance. Torn sleeves. Rust on her lips. A bracelet with tiny silver bells.
Then, stillness.
She opened a search tab on her laptop.
Red door textile factory. Abandoned.
It took only a few minutes to find it.
An old textile mill on the outskirts of the city. Shut down six years ago after a fire. No alarms, no lights, no security. Just a tall chain-link fence and weathered brick walls. In one photo, almost hidden in shadow—there it was.
A red metal door.
Anaya stared at the screen.
No one had ever linked the building to any crime. No calls, no reports, no investigation.
But the story made it clear: someone had been inside.
And someone never came out.
She checked the timestamp on the original story file—dated eleven months ago.
If there was a body, it would be bones by now.
Still, bones were enough.
She grabbed her keys.
//////
The factory stood like a sleeping giant, half-swallowed by weeds and rust. The brick walls were cracked. Vines curled up the sides like veins.
A chain-link fence surrounded the property, but the padlock was missing—replaced by a loop of wire and an old sock tied to keep it from rattling in the wind.
She stepped through.
The red door was on the far side, facing away from the road. It looked like a bloodstain in the wall. Dull. Chipped. Still red.
Anaya tried the handle.
Locked.
She stepped back, scanned the ground. Found a stone the size of her fist.
Three swings, and the lower panel gave way with a sharp, tearing sound.
Inside, the air was cold and smelled of mold and ash. Light came through a shattered skylight above, casting long beams across broken sewing tables and rusted machines.
She moved slowly. No flashlight. Just her phone, low to the floor, its beam angled wide.
Dust covered everything.
Except for a narrow path.
She followed it—faint footprints disturbed the dust, leading toward the far wall.
Behind a stack of crates, near an old boiler, she found it.
A sleeping bag, half unzipped. Torn.
A bracelet, caught on the zipper. Tiny silver bells. Just like the story said.
And the smell…
Old. Dry. Sour.
She knelt down. Parted the flap of the sleeping bag.
Empty.
But inside, in the bottom corner, was a small, curled-up bone. Not big. Human, though. A finger, maybe.
She stood slowly. Heart thudding.
Someone had died here.
No police had come. No cleanup. No report.
But The Storyteller had known.
Had been here.
She took photos. Bagged the bracelet. Made a note of the position of everything. But deep down, she already knew:
This wasn't a guess.
//////
The city lights flickered through the windshield as Anaya drove back, one hand on the wheel, the other gripping a plastic evidence bag that held the silver-belled bracelet. The bones were too small, too old to prove much. But she didn't need a full skeleton to know what had happened back there.
Someone had died.
Someone had been placed there.
She pulled over on a side street, engine running, and scrolled through the photos she'd taken on her phone: the sleeping bag, the bracelet, the dusty footprints leading in—but not back out.
Then she opened the story again.
"She was never listed missing. She was never searched for. She simply faded into the brick, tucked between machines like a secret no one ever meant to find."
He had written it as if it were poetry.
Not regret.
Not horror.
Just... calm.
That's what made it worse.
The killer wasn't venting. He wasn't afraid. He wasn't bragging.
He was crafting.
The death was a line.
The body, a paragraph.
The scene, a setting.
And now that Anaya was reading, he was turning the pages for her—one by one.
She sat back in the seat and looked at the sky. Clouds hung low, streetlights blinking like eyes trying to stay open.
She whispered aloud, almost without meaning to:
"You're not just writing stories, are you?"
And for the first time, she didn't feel like she was chasing a murderer.
She felt like she was being led.
Like a reader turning pages she could never skip.
---
End of Chapter 3.