“Hello, Jex,” the wall says. The voice is a composite of every woman I’ve ever met. It’s the waitress from the diner we robbed. It’s the girl from the white lace portrait. It’s the Mother.
“You aren’t real,” I rasp, my tongue feeling like a piece of dry wood. “We killed you. We buried you in the garden.”
“You buried a body, Jex. You didn’t bury the idea.” The static silhouette leans forward. “The ‘Council’ wasn’t a group of men. It was the boundaries of your own cage. You burned the city, but you’re still in the basement. Look at your hands.”
I look down. My hands aren’t covered in harbour salt and blood. They are clean. Manicured. I’m wearing a white hospital gown. My fingernails are gone, replaced by smooth, plastic caps.
“Where is Ryker?” I scream at the mirror.
“Ryker is being ‘reformatted,’” the voice says. “He was always the record-keeper. He couldn’t handle the emptypages. He’s currently writing a new ledger, Jex. He’s naming you as the architect.”
The room glitches. Suddenly, I’m not in a white box. I’m back in the cellar of our childhood home. The smell of damp earth and rot is overwhelming. I see the old radio on the workbench, its tubes glowing a sickly orange.
“…and the weather today in Oakhaven will be clear…”
I look at the door at the top of the stairs. It’s open. A sliver of light from the kitchen spills down, and in that light, I see a pair of white lace shoes.
“Hallow?” I whisper.
The shoes step down. One. Two. Three.
She comes into the dark. She’s not burnt. She’s not wet. She’s wearing the lace dress, and she’s holding a tray with three glasses of milk. She looks at me with eyes that are perfectly clear, perfectly sane.
“Dad says you and Ryker need to stop playing ‘Soldiers’ now,” she says. Her voice is small, sweet, and utterly terrifying. “He says the neighbours heard the shouting again.”
I look at the corner of the cellar. I see our “tactical gear”—it’s just old hockey pads and spray-painted cardboard. I see our “rifles”—they are lengths of PVC pipe.
And then, I look at the floor.
There are three bodies. They aren’t the Council. They are the family from next door. The ones who came over to check on us because the “Mother” hadn’t been seen in weeks.
The world fractures. The cellar walls dissolve into the white interrogation room. The white lace shoes becomethe sensible heels of a female detective sitting across from me, holding a folder.
“Jex?” the detective asks. She looks tired. She looks human. “Can you tell me where you got the gasoline? Can you tell me why you thought these people were part of a ‘Corporation’?”
I look at the mirror. In the reflection, I don’t see a broken boy in a hospital gown. I see the Mother standing behind the detective, her hand on the woman’s shoulder, her silver eyes looking directly at me.
She winks.
And in my ear, the humming starts again. Louder than the sirens. Louder than the truth.
“Good boy, Jex. The data is perfect.”
The detective’s mouth is moving, but it’s not words coming out. It’s the sound of a dial-up modem, a shrill, digital scream that grates against my teeth.
“Jex? Jex, stay with me.”
Her face is a jigsaw puzzle where the pieces don’t quite fit. One eye is lower than the other, and her skin looks like it’s made of static-heavy television screens. I reach out to touch the table, but my hand passes through the steel as if it’s made of smoke.
“The milk,” I whisper, my voice echoing like I’m speaking from inside a lead casket. “Hallow brought the milk. It had the stabilisers in it. That’s why the cellar didn’t burn.”
“There was no milk, Jex. There was only a gallon of accelerant and a flare gun.” The detective leans in, and for a second, her face snaps into focus—it’s the High Priestess from the ballroom. The same jewellery. The same smell of expensive lilies and decay. “Tell me aboutthe ‘Mother.’ Was she the one who told you to lock the doors from the outside?”
The room pulses. The white walls expand, stretching out until the detective is a tiny speck a mile away. The humming in my bones isn’t just noise anymore; it’s a physical force, a vibration that’s shaking the marrow out of my ribs.
I look at the floor. The shadows are wrong. My shadow isn’t mine—it’s tall, thin, and wearing a lab coat. It’s holding a clipboard.
“I can see the wires now,” I laugh, and the sound is wet, jagged. I claw at my own arm, digging my nails into the skin of my forearm. I’m not looking for blood. I’m looking for the copper. I’m looking for the circuitry. “You didn’t bury her deep enough! She’s under the floorboards! She’s the one powering the lights!”
