Location: Washington Corridor – Two Miles from Bureau West Annex
Time: 6:43 AM
Lydia Doyen clutched the encrypted drive like it was the last thing tethering her to the world of the living.
She hadn't slept in 30 hours. Coffee was the only thing in her system. Her hair was tied back in a messy knot, and her breath came in uneven bursts as she moved briskly through the concrete skybridge between the Analyst Tower and the West Annex.
A black messenger bag was slung over her shoulder. Inside it; a locked data capsule containing printouts, visual reference files, and the CerebrumX audit trace. She'd followed protocol exactly as it was taught in the academy, encrypting everything and wiping the node. It should have been safe, and with any other case, it would have been enough.
But tonight, a bigger threat already worked its way towards her.
The hallway was quiet without the typical foot traffic and chatter of other employees. She didn't notice subtle camera movement in the ceiling. She didn't register the micro-pulse in her badge scanner when she left the secure tower. She didn't feel the charge in the static around her.
Not until the man appeared behind her.
He wasn't wearing a FBI uniform. He approached in a gray suit, with a face designed to be forgotten.
"Miss Doyen," he said softly.
She spun, instantly clutching her bag. "I didn't authorize any intercept."
He smiled gently, like someone offering a condolence. "You weren't supposed to."
She took a step back. "I work under Director Harker's authority," she said quickly. "This transfer is direct to Agent Cale. I have clearance."
The man didn't stop smiling. "I know."
Then he stepped forward and struck her throat with practiced ease, just below the larynx at a nerve collapse point. She gasped and dropped to her knees, still conscious. Then he wrapped one gloved hand around the back of her head and pressed a tiny black needle against the base of her skull.
One soft hiss.
Lydia twitched once. Then slumped sideways—alive, but gone. Her body would register a seizure. Her vitals would stay intact. But everything she knew about this case connected to her short term memory would be lost.
The man picked up the bag, unzipping it and removing the drive.
He examined the simple collection of forbidden knowledge, and crushed it with a single twist. Then he placed a small folded note in Lydia's lap.
> "INTERNAL TRANSFER DELAYED – MEDICAL HOLD – CODE B-33"
And walked away.
---
Thirty Minutes Later – Bureau Medical Wing
Mara stood outside the glass observation room as Lydia lay unconscious inside, connected to machines that reported her status as stable.
There was no evidence of physical trauma. Kwan read the fabricated report on a clipboard.
"Random seizure," he said. "No warning. Doctor says high stress with a possible underlying condition."
Mara wasn't buying it. "She was en route. She had the file. She said it was big."
"She also said she wiped the node. There's nothing left to pull."
Mara stood still. A part of her knew this would happen because they weren't chasing ghosts anymore. They were now on someone else's board. And whoever this was, they didn't just want Nex erased. They wanted the truth buried with him.
---
Location: Elena Voss's Apartment – Los Angeles
Time: 11:22 PM
The lamplight was low, casting warm circles across scattered files and her untouched dinner. Elena Voss sat cross-legged on the floor with her laptop propped on a stack of case binders, hair in a loose braid, a pencil between her teeth.
The space was minimalist but warm. Hardwood floors. A deep green couch with a navy throw. Books stacked in quiet towers beside the windows. A single framed photo sat on the shelf of her and her sister when they were younger, laughing under a canopy of fireworks.
There was something calm about the place. It was focused and everything had its place.
She had soft music playing to keep the silence from feeling like a void. The latest psych profiles flickered on her screen. She'd read them twice. This time, she was reading between the lines. Something tugged at her.
Victim 14: Reported "extreme déjà vu episodes" three weeks before death. Wrote in a journal that she felt like the world was "lagging behind" her.
Victim 9: Confided to a psychiatrist that he sometimes heard people speak before they opened their mouths.
Victim 4: Claimed that certain rooms "looped." Walked through the kitchen, blinked, and was back at the door.
It wasn't psychosis. It was consistency.
Elena sat upright, heart rising. They weren't just random victims. They were temporal sensitive anomalies. Nullus wasn't just killing. He was removing certain people with purpose.
She pushed her laptop aside and rose to her feet, the pencil dropping to the floor. Her mind raced, drawing connections, overlaying mental timelines.
This could change everything. It would explain the pattern of impossible silence surrounding his kills. These murders weren't the result of random acts of violence perpetrated by a master mind that left no conceivable pattern.
These people were being erased.
She glanced at the clock: 11:29 PM.
Too late to call anyone, unless it was Miles.
She reached for the phone, scrolled to Miles, and pressed send.
He answered on the second ring, voice slightly groggy. "Voss?"
"I found something," she said. "And you need to see it now."
---
Location: Miles Arden's House – West Los Angeles
Time: 12:03 AM
Elena parked across the street from Miles's house and killed the engine, her fingers still wrapped around the wheel long after the engine went quiet.
The neighborhood was unnervingly still. It was one of those nights where the wind refused to blow, and the world looked frozen in place. Porch lights cast amber glows on cracked sidewalks. A dog barked once, far away, then nothing.
She stared ahead through the windshield, her reflection faint in the glass. She looked tired, and her braid was half-loosened from the frantic pacing she'd done before leaving the apartment.
The manila folder on the passenger seat seemed to carry the weight of something much larger. Three psychiatric reports. One transcript. Notes she'd written twice and still didn't believe.
It wasn't what they said.
It was that they were saying the same things.
These were people who had never met; victims from different districts and timelines, but the pattern was there.
She opened the door and stepped out, clutching the folder like a lifeline.
Miles's house sat low and square beneath a dark tree. His porch light was off, but the living room window was lit faintly with the glow of monitors.
She knocked and waited. After a moment she heard Miles call out from inside, dry and casual:
"Door's unlocked. You bring apocalypse or insight?"
She stepped in without answering, the manila folder tucked under her arm and something heavy in her eyes.
He was already back at his workstation, barefoot in sweats, coffee in one hand, focus narrowed to the screen like he hadn't blinked in an hour.
"Didn't expect you to come this fast," he said.
"I didn't want to say it over the phone," she replied, setting the folder down.
He nodded toward the extra chair. "Good timing. I was about to call you."
She frowned. "Why?"
He hit pause on a grainy video, one frame forward from nothing.
"Because I think I just found our ghost."
She set her manila folder on the table and moved beside him, eyes drawn to the paused surveillance feed on the center monitor. It showed an apartment door mid-frame in a narrow hallway. Nothing remarkable.
"What is it?"
"Victim 9," he said. "I've been running passive audits on the case archive. There was a three-second compression spike in the original hallway cam file—enough to flag it for corruption. I was scrubbing through it when you called."
She leaned closer, curiosity overtaking fatigue. "You think it was tampered with?"
"Don't know yet," he replied. "But I just got to the flagged segment."
He hit play. Slowed the playback to quarter speed.
Frame 3273: empty hallway.
3274: nothing.
3275—
Nullus.
Standing outside the door. Completely still.
Elena inhaled sharply. "There."
Miles froze the frame. "One frame?"
"Go back."
3274: empty.
3275: Nullus.
3276: empty again.
Miles narrowed his eyes. "Not walking up or approaching… placed."
He hovered the cursor over the image. Nullus was facing the door, posture relaxed, head slightly tilted.
"This doesn't make sense," he muttered. "It's not a glitch. It's clean."
They both leaned in. The frame was still frozen.
Then—without warning—Nullus turned his head and looked at them.
Inside of the frozen frame.
Elena gasped and stumbled back from the screen. Miles jumped, his hand jerking off the mouse.
Neither of them spoke. They stared at the screen, trying to comprehend what just happened.
Elena's voice trembled. "Did you—did he just move?"
Miles swallowed. "That's not possible… it's a single frame."
His voice dropped. "Look at his face."
They both leaned in. The frame wasn't distorted, but his features were off.
His expression looked fractured. His mouth was smiling on one side, but his jaw was tightened in anger on the other. One eye was wide, the other narrowed in concern. It was as if the frame couldn't choose which moment to hold.
The only thing consistent was the person behind the expressions—the one that stared straight into the lens. Into them.
They blinked, but the frame didn't flicker. There was just that one impossible moment.
Miles backed out. Reloaded the file. Jumped to the exact timestamp.
3275.
Nullus stood facing the door again. Still. Neutral. Unmoving.
Elena stared at the screen, her voice low. "Do it again."
Miles reloaded the file and repeated the process, freezing the frame.
Nothing changed.
Nullus didn't turn.
He just stared at the door passively, now silent and unaware. As if the moment had never happened at all.
Elena whispered, "He saw us."
Miles sat back, pale. "No. He chose to."
They stared at the screen—at a static image that had, for one breathless second, acknowledged them.
Then, quietly, Elena asked:
"What are we dealing with?"
Miles didn't answer.
And for once, he didn't have anything clever to say.