The morgue was empty.
Fluorescent lights flickered overhead, casting a sickly glow across steel slabs and drawers stuffed with secrets. The silence pressed against the walls like breath held too long.
Detective Nina Alvarez stepped in, her heels echoing.
She was done waiting.
Her gun rested at her hip, hand close.
He was here. She could feel it.
She walked past the cold chamber doors and toward the last table—where the latest victim, Evelyn Cross, had been autopsied.
Where he had stood.
Where his fingers traced the wire.
Where his voice whispered madness.
"I know it's you," she said to the silence. "Drop the mask."
A voice answered from the shadows.
"But I like this face, Detective."
Jay emerged from behind the lockers.
Black scrubs. Surgical gloves.
Golden eyes.
Smiling.
"Dr. Reid. Or is it Jay?" she asked, her tone razor-sharp.
"Jay's dead." He stepped forward. "They killed him. Shot him through the chest. Watched his family die in front of him."
His smile never reached his eyes.
"What's standing here… is what's left."
Nina drew her gun.
"Hands where I can see them."
Jay didn't move. Didn't flinch.
"Do you really want to end it here?" he said softly. "You haven't even asked why."
Nina's jaw locked. "I don't need to ask why. You're a psychopath."
Jay's eye twitched.
"They burned my sister alive. Shot my father in the mouth. Made my mother beg. And you call me broken?"
He laughed—a low, bitter sound that echoed in the sterile room.
"You're just like them. Another dog in uniform chasing ghosts with guns."
She stepped forward, gun raised.
"You're under arrest."
Jay looked up at the ceiling, as if speaking to someone unseen.
"You hear that, Lina? She's going to arrest me."
He looked back at Nina.
"She thinks laws still matter."
Then he moved.
Too fast.
She fired.
The bullet grazed his shoulder.
He staggered—but grinned.
"That all you got, detective?"
He lunged.
They collided with the autopsy table, instruments crashing to the floor.
Nina elbowed him in the ribs, shoved him back, aimed again—
But Jay was gone.
Gone into the maze of cold drawers and flickering lights.
His voice trailed behind like smoke.
"You're close, Nina."
"But are you ready to see what I really am?"
The doors slammed shut.
The morgue was silent again.
But she knew now—
This wasn't just a hunt.
It was war.
And she had just seen the monster's true smile.