Two hours went by, in the quiet darkness of 2 a.m., amidst papers, maps, and digital photos, seated in Avery's dark apartment. Her wall was being slowly devoured by the puzzle—her sister's obsession, now revived to life in Avery's reality.
Reed pinned a photograph to the board. "This location keeps showing up. Central Station. Platform Seven."
"It's deserted," Avery informed him. "It was closed down after that train accident four years ago."
"Which was the year your sister went missing."
Avery rose to her feet, a fury rising within her unspoken. "We need to go there."
Reed hesitated. "Now?"
"Yes," she said, already reaching for her coat. "Whatever this killer requires, he's drawing me back into the past. I think it's time I walk straight in."
Reed grabbed his keys without hesitation. "Let's go."
***
Thirty minutes later, Central Station loomed above the shadows. A bony husk of what it used to be, interior lights flickered as if tormented by the wear and tear of time itself. They entered through a rusty emergency door Reed had unlocked with otherworldly ease, their flashlights cutting through stale blackness."
Platform Seven was concealed behind the lower reaches of the station. The deeper they went, the heavier the air became—wet, metallic, still.
Avery played her light on something on the edge of the platform. "There."
It was an envelope.
She knelt down beside it, the flashlight trembling in her hand. She slowly opened it. Inside, one Polaroid picture.
Alina.
Standing on Platform Seven. Smiling. Behind her—another figure. Shadowy. Indistinct. But with what looked to be.
A mask.
Avery's breath caught.
There was writing on the back of the photo.
"She attempted to solve the riddle. She failed. Will you?"
Under the note, there were coordinates. And a time: April 15. Midnight.
"Two nights from now," Reed whispered. "He's taking you somewhere."
"No," Avery said, refolding the photo with care. "He's challenging me."
They stood in silence for a very long time.
Then a sound broke the silence.
Clack. Clack. Clack.
Footsteps. On the metal stairs above them.
Reed turned, flashlight on the sound.
Nothing.
Then—a white flash. A mask. For the fraction of a second.
And then darkness again.
They weren't alone.
***
Cold embraced Avery's skin as if darkness itself breathed. She stood on Platform Seven, her eyes following where the mask winked into being and vanished. Her hands grasped the photo—a smile from Alina that towered, and the message written on reverse colder than the ground beneath her feet.
Reed broke the silence. "We have to go. Now."
"But he was here," she gasped. "Watching us."
"Exactly why we leave now," he declared more insistently, tugging on her arm. "This is not a place we are meant to hang around."
Avery nodded, her legs finally moving as the weight of fear gave way to clarity. She trailed Reed up the creaky stairs, each step ringing with sickening slowness. The sound of their breathing, shallow and wary, filled the air between them.
Outside, the night felt colder, as though the station had sucked something from them.
Easy again in the car, Avery spread the photo out once more.
I don't understand," she whispered. "If he was with Alina back then… Why wait so long?"
Reed started the engine but didn't move. "Maybe he wasn't done."
Avery watched the city outside the window, the lights blurring in the distance.
The ride home from the station was subdued, but beneath the subduedness thudded a tension so taut, it would split Avery down the middle. She hugged the photo in her lap like a talisman. Not for solace—but as testament that Alina had been real. On that platform. In that moment. With a smile, oblivious or pretending.
And standing behind her, that presence—the one with the mask.
"I can't help but think of her smile," Avery spoke up at last. "The grin looks staged. Too serene. As if she'd had a thought."
Reed glanced over his shoulder. "Or someone made her smile. Made her."
A chill slid up her neck, icy fingers tracing the back of her neck. "The killer is bringing us both into something unfinished. This isn't a game any longer. It's personal. It was personal."
"And now he's taking you to the edge of it."
Avery trailed the Polaroid's edge, lips parted as if to say something else, but her mind splintered on too many memories. Alina laughing in the kitchen. Alina bent over a puzzle book. Alina whispering, "Some riddles aren't meant to be solved. They're meant to keep something locked away."
April 15. Midnight.
Coordinates under that instant that had been carved into memory now—premapped, witnessed. Why? Where? Some abandoned observatory in the woods past the outskirts of the city.
A deserted backdrop. Isolated. Perfect.
"An observatory?" Reed had breathed.
Avery looked out the window, her voice faint. "It was one of Alina's favorite places. Our parents used to take us up there in the fall. She said the stars looked like constellations from old myths. She was obsessed with the idea that the sky had secrets."
"She wasn't wrong," Reed said. "Seems like you've both lived under a constellation of secrets."
Avery stood facing him, her eyes distant. "She called it The Devil's Lens. Said it could see things people weren't supposed to. Maybe that's why he chose it."
Reed pulled up in front of her apartment and turned off the engine, the silence dropping like snow.
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
Avery opened the door and stepped out. "I want to know what he's hiding."
***
Inside her apartment, the photography wall and sketch walls, riddle walls, had transformed the living room into a tapestry of crime scene tape. It was no longer hers—it was his. The killer's voice, her sister's riddles, each photograph, each symbol, each chain of reason, they all seemed to point towards intent.
She filled a glass. Not because she had a thirst for it, but because she wanted something to suppress the din inside her head.
"You should get some rest," Reed shouted from the hallway.
She shook her head. "If I get some rest, he gets a night. And I lose some hours."
"Hours for what?"
Avery gazed at the corkboard upon which a row of riddles created a spiral shape. "To comprehend the rules of this game. Because I believe the next move… will not afford me the opportunity to fail."
***
Two Days Later — April 15, 11:07 PM
The observatory loomed up like a deserted monster. Fogs churned the air, and trees that ringed the compound stood tall and still, like sentries who would not turn their backs.
Avery strolled with Reed, flashlight clutched tightly in her hand, the leather cover of her sister's journal draped over her arm. She had brought it tonight as a talisman. Or a sword.
The building was in shambles—paint peeling, dome of the telescope corroded, windows covered with interior blacking. The coordinates deposited them on top of the iron gate, long neglected and half-buried in grime.
Reed stepped ahead, pushing it open with a groan.
"Midnight," Avery panted. "He chose an hour for a purpose."
They came in through the middle corridor—once a path for eager stargazers and scientists, now taken over by moss and quiet. A clock that had stopped at 12:13 on its face.
How lovely, Avery thought. Time, broken. Much like us.
Reed scanned the area. "We divide and conquer?"
"No," Avery said curtly. "That's what he wants."
They moved together, precise and vigilant, their flashlights illuminating plaques, broken computer screens, graffiti-scarred walls—and with symbols.
Avery froze.
"Wait."
Red-painted on a busted-up desk in the same subway symbol.
"Another ouroboros," she whispered. "But this one's… different. A second tail. Spiraling into another serpent's mouth."
"Double ouroboros," Reed said. "Infinity inside multiple layers. Recursion."
Avery's hand trailed over to her sister's notebook, opening it up. Between the pages lay the same symbol sketched.
Under it, a poem:
"What has no end, no beginning, but holds you prisoner after you've entered?"
"What devours time, devours thoughts, and causes reality to spin?"
"Labyrinth," Avery whispered. "She didn't mean a maze of roads. She meant a mental one."
"She realized," Reed said. "Alina realized whatever was driving this was using riddles to capture people."
"And now I'm going into the same one."