And yet, for a brief moment as I stood at the base of the staircase, gaze cast on her—the only light on this drab fucking rock—I felt like I could breathe.
I switch on the monitor to my left, toggling through the security feeds until she appears on the screen. And hell, there it is again, that blissful disruption.
An immediate rush that feeds the craving.
Her presence resonates with a hypnotic melody. A vibrating current that strums against my skin, softens the battering tide in my head.
Over the past week, I’ve watched her, lured closer as if by a receding tide. And I savor this feeling until she disappears from the screen. Even after she’s faded away, her lingering notes remain, a haunting echo of a tune. It’s stirring and melancholic, and it’s the reason I lost myself when I first glimpsed her in my lecture hall, rocked by the force of that first powerfully struck chord.
It’s been years since I’ve been able to hear any music.
Removing my glasses, I push away from the desk and stalk toward the controls. The shutters groan open, revealing the panoramic view of the ocean.
Over five years ago, my algorithm identified the coming solar eclipse as the thirteenth celestial event, with Shorehaven directly in the path of totality. It will align with a cosmic event so violent and powerful, I’ll be able to capture echoes beyond anything I’ve recorded.
I glance back at the screen, where names flicker too quickly to register. My algorithm has been searching all this time, filtering, recalculating.
And I’m still waiting for one final name.
A ray of sunlight appears past the stormy horizon, and I inhale deeply, bracing myself for the cycle to begin again. As each celestial event draws nearer, the pull intensifies—stronger, more urgent—until the tidal force is inescapable, stripping away more of my will.
I have no choice but to surrender.
It started as a shadow, a lurking silhouette at the edge of my awareness—yet with every alignment, every kill, the shadow darkens, forming a dense umbra at my core.
It’s the interplay between life and annihilation, radiance and void, where matter and its absence converge. A gravitational wound punched into the universe.
You have to look beyond what can be seen, past the horizon.
To even comprehend it, you have to abandon the comfort of known physics. You have to reach into the unknown, into the void itself, and fucking hope some semblance of humanity survives.
Unable to mount an effective chemical defense of her own, thePhoturisfemme fatale is compelled to spend her nights in pursuit of firefly prey to slake her thirst for toxins.
These insects employ surprisingly sophisticated hunting tactics, including a behavior known as aggressive mimicry.
—DR. SARA LEWIS, EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGIST,SILENT SPARKS
5
Lie in Wait
Never came poison from so sweet a place.
—SHAKESPEARE
COLLINS
There’s something haunting about the misty, windswept town of Shorehaven. Despite its quaint veneer, an underlying melancholy burrows in its bones. It feels solemn.
Tragic, even.
With its soaring Gothic buildings that stand in muted tones of gray and black—cold, chipped, faded—it’s like the town has been carved right from the surrounding stone by the relentless ocean winds.
I pass the high gate abutting a library as timeworn as the other towering, collegiate structures. Overhead, red- and yellow-capped trees form a broken canopy, their branches trembling.
Every morning, I walk the half-mile of the Professor’s Walk from the residence hall to the university—Orion’s umbrella looped around my wrist, just in case—until I reach the stone bench in the West Quad. The spot I’ve claimed as my own for the past three weeks.
Today, the briny scent of sea mingles with the smell of decaying leaves, the air charged with the anxious note of passing time. The hollow tick of the clocktower sounds right before the low rumble of an engine, announcing his arrival.
