Chapter 28: It Was You
The cold of the floorboards seeped into the soles of Scott’s feet, a grounding counterpoint to the furnace roaring in his skull. Move. Now. He turned from the closet door, his body moving on a shaky autopilot fueled by pure animal terror. He crept to the bedroom, each step a calculated silence. The door was still ajar. Inside, the dark mound of Luke’s body was visible, his breathing deep and regular.
Scott’s clothes were a scattered trail from the door to the bed. He snatched his boxer briefs from the floor, his hands trembling so violently he could barely get his legs through. He found his jeans, pulled them on, the stiff denim catching on his damp skin. He didn’t bother with the button. His t-shirt was by the nightstand. He leaned over, the scent of Luke’s skin and sex on the sheets flooding his senses, making his stomach clench. His fingers brushed the cool plastic of his phone. He grabbed both, shoving the phone into his back pocket.
He was turning to go when the mattress shifted.
“Where you goin’, baby?”
Luke’s voice was thick with sleep, lazy and soft. It was the voice that had comforted him a thousand times. Now, it froze the blood in his veins.
Scott turned, forcing his face into what he hoped was a relaxed slackness. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I just… I gotta go see Michelle. She texted. Sounds like an emergency.”
He took a step backward toward the bedroom door.
Luke pushed himself up on one elbow. In the gloom, his eyes were two dark pools, unreadable. He studied Scott—the hastily donned clothes, the rigid posture, the way he was edging away. The sleepy affection evaporated from his face, replaced by a flat, analytical calm. “Michelle,” he repeated, the name a neutral sound. “At four in the morning.”
“Yeah, it’s… you know her. Drama.” Scott’s laugh was a brittle crack. He was at the bedroom door now. The front door was just ten feet beyond. Freedom.
“Come back to bed,” Luke said, his voice dropping into that familiar, commanding register that usually made Scott’s knees weak. “Whatever it is, it can wait till sunrise.”
“I really can’t,” Scott said, taking another step into the living room. “I promised.”
Luke moved. It wasn’t a frantic scramble. It was a smooth, unhurried uncoiling of power. The sheets whispered as he rose naked from the bed and in three strides was blocking the path to the front door. He didn’t look angry. He looked profoundly disappointed. “You’re a terrible liar, Scott. You always have been.” His gaze flicked past Scott, to the slightly ajar hall closet door. “You looked in my closet.”
Scott’s heart hammered against his ribs. “I was just getting a towel,” he whispered.
“You were putting your clothes on to run.” Luke took a step forward, forcing Scott to retreat until the back of his legs hit the arm of the couch. “You saw something. And now you know. Don’t you?”
The pretense shattered. Scott’s breath came in short, sharp gasps. The fear was a physical thing, a metallic taste at the back of his throat, a cold sweat beading on his spine. “The coat,” Scott stammered. “The mask. Is that… is that what you wore when you killed Rebecca? When you killed Dale?” He swallowed, the question tearing itself from him in a horrified rush. “Was I next? Was I just… the last one to die? Was any of it real?”
Luke’s head tilted. Before he could speak, the soft, definitive click of a key turning in the front door lock echoed through the apartment.
Both men turned.
The door swung open, and Nancy walked in as if it were a Tuesday afternoon. She carried a paper grocery bag in one arm. She was dressed for the day in sensible slacks and a sweater, her therapist’s face composed. She took in the scene: Luke, naked and imposing, blocking a trembling, jeans-clad Scott. She didn’t look surprised. She looked mildly inconvenienced.
Scott’s mind fragmented. The world made no sense. It bounced around his skull, finding no purchase. “Nancy?” he choked out. “What… how did you… figure it out?”
Nancy set the grocery bag on the small kitchen counter with a sigh. She turned, offering Scott a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. It was the same professionally kind smile she used during group sessions. “Oh, Scott. I didn’t ‘figure it out.’ I set the whole thing up.”
Scott stared. The foundation of his world, already cracked, dissolved into ash. His therapist. The woman who had held his hand through flashbacks, who had prescribed his medications, who knew every脆弱 and terror of every survivor in that group.
“You…” he couldn’t form the sentence.
“I’m Luke’s mother,” Nancy said, her voice clinical. “I have been from the start. The group, the therapy, the careful cultivation of your shared trauma… it was the perfect garden. My son needed a specific kind of nourishment to complete his ascension. The energy of those wronged by a corrupt system. You were all so beautifully, perfectly broken.” She glanced at Luke with something akin to pride. “I have to admit, I’m a little disappointed. I thought Dale would deduce it. Or Michelle with her research. Even Rebecca had her suspicions toward the end. But you, Scott? You were so busy clinging to my son that you never looked at the hand that pushed you toward him.”
The clinical dissection of his life, his pain, his love, was more violating than anything physical. Scott felt skinned alive. “What do you plan to do?” The question was a ghost of sound.
“The ritual is clear,” Nancy said, as if explaining a treatment plan. “Six were marked by the original injustice at that wretched halfway house. Five must fall by the Beast’s hand to fuel the final confrontation. We’re down three. Dale, Rebecca, and Nikki. We need two more from your little trio. Michelle, Liv, or Veronica. The last one standing will face Luke. And when he wins—and he will—the accumulated power of the slain will reside in him. He will eclipse the sun. He will be a god.”
The insanity of it was delivered with such bone-chilling normality that Scott almost believed it. “And me?” he whispered, looking at Luke. “What was I for?”
Nancy answered for him. “That’s up to Luke. A final feast before the battle? A prized pet to keep after? It doesn’t matter to the mechanics. You’re peripheral. An echo.”
Luke finally spoke, his eyes locked on Scott. “You were always mine,” he said softly. “From the moment I pulled you from under that monster. My reward.”
A strange, cold clarity cut through Scott’s terror. Peripheral. An echo. They thought he was just a scared rabbit. They’d forgotten the rabbit can bite.
He let the fear show on his face, let his shoulders slump in defeat. Then, with a deliberate slowness, he pulled his phone from his back pocket. He didn’t dial. He simply held it up, the screen facing Nancy and Luke. On it, the video call interface was active. Four familiar faces were displayed in small, horrified rectangles.
James, his face pale and grim.
Michelle, her hand clamped over her mouth, tears streaking her cheeks.
Liv, eyes blazing with furious comprehension.
Veronica, staring with the steely resolve of a soldier.
“You’re right,” Scott said, his voice suddenly steady. “I am a terrible liar. So I didn’t bother lying. I called them the second I saw the knife. They’ve heard everything. The whole fucking thing. So, Nancy,” he continued, taking a savage, trembling pleasure in the way her composed mask finally shattered into stunned fury. “How are you going to trick them now?”
The stunned silence in the apartment was absolute, broken only by the digital rustle of voices from the phone. “Scott, run!” Michelle screamed through the speaker. James was shouting directions about a back door. Nancy’s face, a moment ago a mask of placid control, underwent a terrifying metamorphosis. Her eyes narrowed, not with rage, but with a cold, surgical hatred. She took a step forward, and Luke mirrored her, moving to cut off Scott’s path to the bedroom hallway.
They herded him backward, step by step, until the cold, hard edge of the kitchen counter dug into his spine. He was cornered. The phone still trembled in his hand, a tiny, fragile window to a world that suddenly felt lifetimes away.
“You clever, miserable little cockroach,” Nancy hissed, her voice devoid of all therapeutic pretense. It was pure, venomous contempt. “You will pay for that. You’ll pay for your meddling in ways you can’t even conceptualize.”
Scott’s breath hitched. He looked past her, to Luke. The man’s nakedness was no longer intimate; it was predatory, a testament to the raw, physical power he could wield. “Luke,” Scott pleaded, the word tearing from a place of old, broken devotion. “Please.”
Luke’s expression was granite. There was no flicker of the man who had held him, who had whispered promises into his sweat-damp hair. “I can’t let you ruin everything we’ve worked for, Scott,” he said, his tone almost regretful. “You were never supposed to see the machinery. You were just supposed to be… my good boy.”
“Fuck you,” Scott spat, the defiance a thin, brittle shield over his howling fear.
Nancy laughed, a dry, crackling sound. “Oh, sweetheart,” she sneered, gesturing vaguely at Luke’s unclothed body. “He already did. Thoroughly. Weren’t you paying attention?” She flicked her eyes toward her son. “Get him. We need to contain this.”
It was the dismissal in her laugh, the reduction of every touch, every feverish whisper, to a tactical maneuver, that snapped something inside Scott. As Luke lunged, Scott’s hand flailed behind him along the countertop. His fingers closed around the heavy base of a stainless steel blender. He didn’t think. He swung it in a wild, desperate arc.
The impact connected with the side of Nancy’s head with a sickening, thick crunch. She gasped, a wet, surprised sound, and crumpled sideways into the kitchen table, sending a chair clattering to the floor. Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second, his gaze darting to his fallen mother. It was all Scott needed. He shoved past her stumbling form, sprinting for the front door.
He yanked on the handle. It was chained, the heavy brass links mocking him. Luke was coming, his footsteps heavy and fast. Scott turned, his back to the door, and saw the living room window. Without hesitating, he hurled the blender through the glass. The violent shatter split the night. He used his wrapped arm to clear the jagged teeth of glass still in the frame and launched himself through the opening.
He hit the dew-slicked grass of the front yard, rolled, and was up and running. Shards of glass glittered in his sweater sleeve and a hot line of pain burned across his forearm. He didn’t look back. He just ran, his breath sobbing in his throat, his untied jeans flapping around his thighs. The suburban street was a tunnel of vague, sleeping shapes. He needed a cop. But not just any cop. He needed someone who knew Luke, someone who would have to listen.
He rounded a corner and saw the familiar black-and-white sedan idling under a streetlight outside a 24-hour convenience store. Officer Beckett. Middle-aged, perpetually bored, one of Luke’s longtime partners. Scott staggered toward the driver’s side window, his hands slapping against the cold metal. Beckett lowered the window, a half-eaten sandwich in his hand.
“Beckett—someone—Luke’s trying to kill me,” Scott gasped, the words tumbling out in a incoherent flood. “He’s got a mask, a knife, he killed Rebecca, his mother’s in on it, you have to—”
Beckett took a slow bite of his sandwich, chewing methodically. He studied Scott’s wild eyes, the bleeding arm, the undone jeans. “Scott, right?” he said finally, his voice flat. “Luke’s… friend. You look like you’re having a real bad night. Maybe you should go home and sleep it off.”
“Did you not hear me?” Scott screamed, hysteria clawing at his throat. “He’s a murderer! He’s coming!”
“Luke’s a decorated officer,” Beckett said, rolling his window up. “And you’re clearly in the middle of a psychotic episode. I’m not gonna ruin a man’s career because his fucked-up boyfriend is having nightmares.”
The dismissal, so casual, so absolute, was the final straw. Before Beckett could finish raising the window, Scott’s hand shot through the gap. He didn’t make a fist. It was an open-palmed, resonant slap that cracked across Beckett’s jaw, knocking the sandwich from his hand.
The world shifted. Beckett’s bored eyes ignited with instant, professional fury. “Assaulting an officer,” he snarled, throwing his door open. He was on Scott in a second, all practiced efficiency. Scott’s cries were muffled as his face was pressed into the cold hood of the car. He felt the cold snap of handcuffs on his wrists, the metal biting deep.
“You just bought yourself a world of hurt, you little shit,” Beckett growled, wrenching him upright. He opened the back door of the cruiser and shoved Scott inside. Scott fell onto the hard plastic seat, his arms pinned painfully behind him. Beckett slammed the door, sealing him in the cage of bulletproof glass and stale coffee smell.
Beckett slammed the door, sealing him in the cage of bulletproof glass and stale coffee smell. Scott heaved against the cuffs, the metal grinding into his wrists. He craned his neck, watching Beckett round the front of the cruiser, muttering about paperwork and junkie boyfriends as he slid back into the driver’s seat.
The engine turned over with a low rumble. Beckett picked a piece of lettuce from his uniform, flicking it aside. “You just sit tight and shut up,” he grunted, not looking back.
A shape detached itself from the shadows between two houses across the street. It moved with a silent, terrifying purpose, crossing the asphalt under the sodium glow. Luke was fully dressed now in dark jeans and a black hoodie, his face a placid mask. Scott’s scream died in his throat, transforming into a frantic, muffled pleading against the partition. “Beckett! He’s here! He’s right there!”
Beckett followed Scott’s wild gaze to the rearview mirror just as Luke arrived at his window. He lowered it, an annoyed greeting on his lips. “Luke? What’s up? Your boy here’s having a real—”
Luke’s arm shot through the window. His hand, impossibly large, clamped over Beckett’s face, fingers digging into his temples and jaw. Beckett’s words became a wet, choked gurgle. There was a horrible, muffled crackle, like snapping celery wrapped in wet leather. Beckett’s body jerked, his boots drumming a frantic tattoo against the floorboard.
Scott watched, frozen, as Luke held the pose for three long seconds. He then released his grip, letting Beckett’s lolling head slump against the steering wheel, horn blaring a short, dying bleat into the night. Luke’s eyes, cold and flat, found Scott’s in the rearview mirror.
Scott recoiled, throwing his shoulder against the door handle. It was locked from the outside. He twisted, bringing his cuffed hands down and around his legs in a painful, contortionist’s move, bringing them in front of him. He lunged across the seat, away from Luke’s approaching form.
Luke opened the passenger door. The interior dome light clicked on, painting the scene in a sickly yellow. Beckett’s body slumped toward the open door, held up only by his seatbelt. Luke caught him with one hand, a grotesque parody of care, and gently pushed him back upright. He looked past the corpse, his gaze locking onto Scott who was now pressed against the far door, his cuffed hands searching desperately for a non-existent handle.
“Don’t make this harder, baby,” Luke said, his voice almost soothing over the blare of the horn.
Scott’s fingers, slick with panic-sweat, found nothing. He saw the sparkle of broken glass from his earlier escape littering the footwell on Beckett’s side. He looked at the heavy, mesh-reinforced partition separating him from the front seats. His eyes landed on the hard plastic casing of the police radio mounted between them.
He scrambled onto his knees on the back seat, drew his cuffed hands back, and drove them forward with all his strength into the center of the partition’s window. The polymer was tough, designed to resist. It didn’t shatter, but a web of fractures exploded across its surface with a loud crunch. He hit it again, and again, a wordless scream tearing from his lungs.
On the fourth impact, his fists burst through into the front compartment. Shards of polycarbonate dug into his forearms. He didn’t feel the cuts. He grabbed the radio’s handset, yanking it from its cradle, and whipped it sideways into the driver’s side window. The glass starred.
Luke was coming around the back of the car now, unhurried, a hunter confident the fence is intact. Scott reversed his grip on the handset, the coiled cord swinging. He hammered the hardened plastic end into the center of the starred pattern. The safety glass gave way with a sound like falling ice, collapsing outward in a thousand pebbles.
Scott didn’t hesitate. He thrust his head and shoulders through the jagged hole, glass teeth ripping his shirt and scraping his ribs. He kicked, squirmed, and fell out onto the cold, oil-stained asphalt. He rolled, gained his feet, and ran.
He didn’t look back. He cut between two closed businesses, his feet pounding on the cracked pavement. A chain-link fence loomed, blocking the way to a wider alley. He scaled it, the metal rattling, his cuffed hands making the grip clumsy. He dropped down on the other side and saw it: a long, low warehouse, its windows boarded, a faded ‘FOR LEASE’ sign dangling.
A door hung open on one broken hinge. He plunged into the absolute darkness within, the smell of damp concrete and rotting wood replacing the scent of blood and fear.
His breath came in ragged, sobbing gasps. He huddled behind a massive, gutted piece of machinery, the iron cold against his back. He fumbled his phone from his pocket with his bound hands. His thumbprint unlocked it. The video call was still connected. Four faces stared out, pale and stricken in their little rectangles.
“He killed Beckett,” Scott whispered, the words raw. “He just… crunched his head. He’s here. I’m in some old warehouse off Elm, behind the strip mall.”
“Scott, breathe, just breathe,” Michelle’s voice was a tight wire of controlled panic. “We’re triangulating your phone. James is already in the car. We’re coming.”
“I’m sorry,” Scott choked out, tears finally cutting through the grime on his face. “I’m so fucking sorry. I slept in his bed. I let him… I wanted him to. And he was… the whole time…”
“Stop,” Liv’s voice cut in, sharp. “Survivor’s guilt is his mother’s game, not yours. Don’t play it now. Hide. Move quietly. We are twenty minutes out.”
“Just be careful,” Michelle urged, her face glowing in the dim light of her own screen. “Just stay alive. That’s all.”
Scott nodded, a useless gesture they couldn’t see. He ended the call, plunging himself into silent, green-tinged darkness, keeping the phone’s light off. He listened. Distant traffic. The creak of the old building. The drip of water.
He began to move, sliding along the cold wall, his cuffed hands held before him like a blind man’s. He stepped over piles of debris, his every footfall sounding like a thunderclap in the cavernous silence. He needed a weapon, a place to barricade himself, anything.
He rounded a corner into a section where moonlight streamed through a high, broken skylight, illuminating floating dust. It fell on a grime-covered window set into an office wall. His own reflection, wide-eyed and ghostly, stared back at him from the black glass.
And then another shape, darker and larger, solidified in the reflection behind him.
He spun.
Luke stood ten feet away, framed in the doorway Scott had just passed through. He wasn’t breathing hard. He held Beckett’s service pistol loosely in one hand. His other hand wiped a smear of blood from his cheekbone with his thumb.
“You’re making a mess, Scott,” Luke said, his voice echoing softly in the vast space. “This isn’t how it was supposed to be. You were supposed to understand. To ascend with me.”
Scott backed away, his heels hitting a stack of wooden pallets. “Stay away from me.”
“After everything we shared?” Luke took a step forward, his boots crunching on gravel. “After how deep I was inside you? I know every sound you make. I know the taste of you. You can’t hide from me.”
“You’re a monster,” Scott spat, edging along the pallets.
“I’m your future.” Luke’s pace quickened. “The last light you’ll ever see.”
Scott turned and ran, sprinting deeper into the warehouse’s belly. He heard the calm, measured footsteps behind him, gaining without effort. He saw a metal staircase leading to a catwalk and took it two steps at a time, the clang of his footsteps a death knell.
He reached the catwalk, a narrow lattice of steel above a forest of silent machinery. It was a dead end. He turned, chest heaving. Luke ascended the stairs slowly, the pistol now held at his side.
“It’s over,” Luke said, reaching the platform.
Scott’s phone, still clutched in his cuffed hands, vibrated. A call. Michelle. The screen’s light illuminated his terrified face. He swiped to answer, bringing it to his ear, his eyes locked on Luke. “He’s here,” he whispered.