The knife was lighter than she expected.Clean. Cold. No blood. Not yet.
Mara stared at it in her hand, her fingers trembling more from memory than fear.
Jonathan Pierce, gagged and wide-eyed, thrashed against the ropes.Not pleading.Not apologizing.Just afraid of what he knew he deserved.
Behind her, the Architect said nothing. He simply watched.No pressure.No instruction.
"You were the first one to hear her scream," he said quietly. "And now, you're the last one who gets to choose."
Mara turned.
"This is what you wanted? Some warped performance?"
He shook his head.
"I already won. This isn't about him. It's about you. Whether you were ever different than me."
She stepped closer to Pierce. His breath hitched.Mara's mind flashed:
Camille's cracked voice.
Her own silence.
The boy in the corner drawing grins with broken crayons.
The way she'd told herself she wasn't like them.
But wasn't she?
She had ignored it. She had survived. And then she had joined them.
She pressed the blade to Pierce's throat.
He whimpered behind the gag.
And then—a click.
A shutter.
A camera.Mounted in the corner. Blinking red.Recording.
She turned to the Architect.
"You wanted this recorded?"
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate.
"It already has been. All of it. From the moment you arrived."
Mara's throat tightened.
"So that's it? I kill him, you leak it. I'm your final statement."
He paused. His face unreadable. And then:
"You already killed, Mara."
The room stilled.
"You don't remember, do you?"
She froze.
"Room seventeen wasn't just Camille's," he whispered. "Not when they moved her body."
"They put someone else there after."
Mara's pulse thundered.
She remembered being sedated.A fistfight.A face.A scream.Then… the sound of plastic bracelets.
"You lashed out," he said. "You thought you were protecting yourself."
"But it was me you hurt."
He unbuttoned his shirt slowly, revealing a scar across his ribs.
Curved. Deep. Precise.
A knife wound.
"That's when I stopped speaking. That's when they labeled me unfit for rehabilitation."
"You tried to forget. They helped you. Gave you pills. Papers. Praise."
"But you and I—we were the same."
Mara dropped the knife. It clattered like thunder.Her hands went to her face.
The blood…The scream…
She remembered.
She had stabbed him.
Not in hate.In fear.In blind, drugged, twisted fear.
And he had never told anyone.
Until now.
He walked past her. No blade. No threat.
"You can walk out, Detective Vex. No one will stop you."
"Or… you can finish what you started."
He left the room.
The camera kept blinking.
Pierce sobbed behind her.
The knife waited.
And Mara…stood between the monster she ran fromand the one she made.