The hallway on the twenty-third floor felt colder than usual. Or maybe that was just her nerves messing with her again.
Eris walked slow, each step a muted thud against the overpriced carpet designed to swallow sound. Ahead, three housekeeping staff stood in a crooked line, uniforms neat, hands twitchy.
Good. Fear made people stupid. Fear made them spill.
"So," she said, sweet as syrup, twirling the pen between her fingers, "you three were on duty that day?"
Nods all around. Too fast. Too eager. Lie, something whispered.
Eris shifted her clipboard against her chest like she was just trying to get comfy. Inside, her mind clicked and spun, slotting pieces into place.
"Who cleaned the victim's room last?"
The girl on the left raised a hand, fingers trembling just enough to be interesting. Perfect.
Eris stepped closer, close enough to catch the cheap detergent and knockoff hotel perfume clinging to her clothes.
"Me," the girl whispered, voice thinner than tissue paper.
Eris smiled. Warm. Disarming. Deadly. "What time?" The girl's mouth opened. Closed. Thinking, or scrambling?
"Between one and two p.m.," she finally said.
Eris scribbled something. Nothing useful, just a random line. Let her squirm. Let them all squirm.
She pivoted toward the man on the right, the one with hair slicked back within an inch of its life and hands wiping down his pants like he could rub the nerves away.
"And you?" she asked, mild.
He straightened like a soldier.
"I, I was cleaning the end of the hall. Room 2307," he blurted out.
Wasn't even asked yet. Amateur.
Eris tilted her head, pretending to scan the housekeeping schedule. Except, oops. His name wasn't on it.
Busted.
She bit back a grin.
"Funny," she chirped, voice light, playful, like a kid finding candy on the sidewalk. "Because… according to the roster, you were supposed to be off."
He stiffened like she'd slapped him.
"B-but, I got called in last minute," he stammered. "Somebody got sick."
Eris pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, barely stopping herself from snorting.
A playground lie. Messy. Clumsy. Embarrassing.
"No sick reports filed that day," she said, tapping the pen against her clipboard. Once. Twice. Three times. Tick. Tick. Tick.
Sweat started beading on his forehead.
Amateur hour. Eris almost pitied him. Almost. But the dead girl in 2305 deserved better than half-assed sympathy.
She drifted closer, watched him start to shrink.
"If you're gonna lie," she murmured, voice dipped low enough to cut, "at least rehearse in front of a mirror first."
Silence cracked over them like glass underfoot.
The girl to the left ducked her head deeper, hiding behind her hair. The man's eyes darted, looking for exits he didn't have.
Eris let it simmer. Let the power creep under her skin. Not for kicks. Not really. This was about cleaning the rot out before it spread.
Straightening, she tucked the clipboard against her side and smiled like she was handing out ice cream.
"Relax," she said, already turning away, voice sweet enough to choke on. "We just want the truth laid out clean."
She walked off before any of them could stumble out a response, leaving the tension behind her like a bad smell.
In her head, the math kept running.
Someone was somewhere they shouldn't have been. Someone saw, or did, more than just wipe down a goddamn floor.
And she'd figure out who. Even if she had to peel them open, layer by layer.
Eris leaned against the wall at the corner of the hallway, clipboard pressed tight to her chest. The marble chilled her back through her shirt, but she didn't flinch.
Her mind spun fast, fast, fast, but outside? Cool as ice.
Calm on the surface didn't mean the water underneath wasn't a goddamn rip current.
The back of the victim's head. A wound tucked neatly beneath a mess of tangled hair.
She'd almost missed it. Skimming the crime scene photos earlier, half-distracted, overconfident.
Almost.
But almost was for losers, and she wasn't here to fucking lose. The phone in her pocket buzzed once. Autopsy sim report.
Eris yanked it out, thumb flicking open the notification with lazy precision. Her gaze swept the screen, detached.
And there it was. A punch she didn't see coming. Trace amounts of a paralytic agent. Small dose. Slows you down, doesn't take you out.
Her throat went dry. For half a second, she closed her eyes, let the fact sink its claws in.
Paralysis drug. Minimal. Not to kill. To cripple.
She tilted her head back, stared up at the pristine hotel ceiling, piecing it together like a broken goddamn mirror.
Victim walked into the room alone, security footage said so. But there, in the elevator's mirrored wall, a shadow. Faint, almost cocky, like they wanted to be seen.
Head wound. Chemical sabotage. Jesus. The whole thing reeked worse now. Someone attacked the victim. Not with violence. Not the sloppy, stupid kind.
Quiet. Clinical. Fucking surgical. But why?
If the plan was murder, why use a micro-dose? Why bother with a headshot? No overturned furniture. No struggle.
Security swore the victim's shoes were still perfectly laced when they found the body.
Which meant…?
Eris let out a long breath, the clipboard digging into her ribs as she tipped her head back to thump softly against the wall.
It meant the poor bastard never even knew they were under attack. Her phone screen blurred, then sharpened again under her glare as she scrolled.
No sexual assault. No valuables missing. Personal? Or something... heavier? Something uglier?
The hallway around her was dead quiet.
Too fucking quiet.
The kind of silence that hummed with secrets stuffed inside expensive wallpaper and crystal chandeliers.
She tapped her nails against the clipboard, slow and rhythmic, like a countdown.
Somewhere under the static hunger gnawed at her, tight, sharp. Not hunger for food. Hunger for truth.
One thing was clear: If this was just a simulation, whoever designed it wasn't playing at half-speed.
They wanted her to see something. Or maybe they wanted her to miss it.
The first theory made more sense. Because if they wanted her blind, they wouldn't have left a trail this damn obvious.
She tightened her grip on the clipboard, the metal edge biting into her palm. Fine. If they wanted a show, they'd fucking get one.
She shoved off the wall and strode toward the emergency stairwell, boots hitting the carpet with sharp little thuds.
Her mind was cutting through the noise now, fast, sharp, merciless.
Someone had been somewhere they shouldn't have been. Someone had seen something they shouldn't have seen.
And someone very, very powerful wanted to keep the whole filthy mess buried deep.
Over her dead body.
Before this whole thing spun even harder, like a busted roller coaster on fire, Eris had managed to check the victim's phone.
Laptop? Gone. Poof. Bye-bye, shortcut to answers. But the phone? Still there. Tossed on the nightstand like an afterthought nobody gave a shit about.
Locked, of course. Pattern code. Too damn complicated to guess. Too damn risky to crack with the clock breathing down her neck.
Didn't matter.
She didn't need to break in.
A single notification blinked on the lockscreen. One goddamn line, and it punched her straight between the ribs.
"You were warned. Now you deal with the consequences." Internal Vanguard Corp address.
Eris' fingers tightened around the phone until her knuckles gleamed white.
Someone inside. Threatening the victim. From inside. What the actual fuck?
Her breath left her in a harsh puff, cold and jagged, like someone had shoved her into a frozen lake and left her there to drown.
And that wasn't even the worst of it.
In the bathroom, down by the drain, something else waited for her. Tangled. Wet. Hidden just enough to pretend it wasn't there.
A clump of hair. Not the victim's. Too dark. Too long. Someone else had been here. Stayed long enough. Fought hard enough to bleed pieces of themselves into the room.
Eris didn't want to picture it, but her mind didn't ask permission.
Hold them under. Lift them up. Drown them again. Not to kill. No, no, too easy. To break them. Break the fight inside, not the body.
Classic old-school interrogation. Dirty. Fucking savage. But why? Why so brutal? Why so personal?
Her fists curled tight at her sides, nails biting into her palms until it hurt, until it needed to hurt.
This wasn't just some test.
Too heavy. Too layered. Too goddamn fucked to pass off as a simple intern exercise. Heat prickled behind her eyes, sharp and furious.
Was Vanguard really that desperate they had to fake shit like this? Or was there something else?
Something bigger. Something filthier.
Frustration thickened in her chest, boiling, twisting, turning her stomach inside out. She knew this game. She just hated being the one played.
"Bullshit," she muttered under her breath, the word scraping raw against the silence. Her hand trembled as she shoved the phone into her blazer pocket, too rough, too fast.
A thousand questions screamed inside her skull, rabid and gnawing:
Who sent the threat? Why break the victim before killing them? Why drag an intern like her into this swamp? Were they digging for someone, or burying something deeper?
Noise in her head. Ice and fire crawling under her skin.
She scrubbed a hand down her face, hard enough to sting. The other clamped around her hip like a fucking vice, holding herself together by a thread.
If this was a game, it was rigged. If this was a test, it tasted like poison. And her?
Shit… She was already too deep to back out now.
The stairwell felt wrong. Too empty. Too quiet. Too perfect for shit to go sideways.
Eris slumped onto one of the steps, back hitting the concrete wall hard enough to make a dull thud. She let her head fall back, eyes squeezing shut. A long breath spilled from her chest, but it didn't lighten the pressure pounding inside her skull.
Was she just a goddamn puppet in someone's sick little game? Maybe. Probably. But one thing, one, she knew for sure.
This wasn't some pretty little suicide. There was a hidden wound under the victim's hair. There was paralyzing agent in his blood. There was a threat, bold as hell, sitting in his inbox.
Suicide, my ass.
Fingers curled tight around the dead man's phone in her blazer pocket, the faint rub of the case against her palm grounding her, even as everything else tilted sideways.
The choice squatted in her brain, heavy and rancid. She could break into it. There was a way. Not clean, not polite, but hell, it would work.
One wire. One dirty little program. Screen lock? Gone like tissue in a hurricane. But, If someone caught her?
Goodbye, internship. Goodbye, career. Goodbye, any shot of crawling her way up from the gutter she'd barely escaped.
Worse: she'd be handing Vanguard the perfect excuse to kick her out before she could figure out what the hell was really going on.
Her fingers tapped against her knee. Once. Twice. Hard.
Fuck.
Her head throbbed. It felt like barbed wire was coiling tighter with every heartbeat.
Half of her wanted to do it. Smash through, consequences be damned. The other half clamped down like a steel trap.
She was close. So close. One twitch away from crossing a line she couldn't uncross.
Then… Footsteps. Fast. Getting closer.
Her breath strangled in her throat. She flattened against the wall, heart banging against her ribs like it wanted out.
A door shrieked open somewhere above her, the sound scraping against her spine.
Voices. Rushed. Tense.
"...check the east wing, boss's orders." A man's voice. Sharp. Another answered, heavier, meaner. "Got it. Anyone loitering, report immediately."
Her skin prickled. Security. Goddammit. Her brain kicked into overdrive, calculating risk, calculating fallout.
Stay? Get caught. Run? Look suspicious as hell. Play lost little intern? Still risky as shit.
Eris moved, slow and careful, feet whispering against the concrete as she eased downward. Just a regular staffer. Nothing to see here. Definitely not someone about to commit career suicide over one goddamn phone.
The footsteps thudded closer.
She quickened her pace, barely, enough to reach the ground floor door without drawing eyes. Not so much it screamed panic.
Her hand shoved the heavy door open, slipping into the deserted hallway beyond.
A breath escaped, shaky. Too close. Way too close.
The dead man's phone weighed down her pocket like a stone. Like a sin she hadn't committed. Yet.
Her jaw locked so hard her teeth ached.
If she was gonna crash and burn, she sure as hell was gonna choose when and where it happened.
Eris pulled in a deep breath. Rolled her shoulders back. Shoved down the fear, the rage, the ghost of almost-failure gnawing at her edges.
Not today.
Not like this.
The decision cracked somewhere in the silence.
Eris leaned against the grimy wall, hidden in the backend hallway where even the air smelled like forgotten things. The dead weight in her blazer pocket, the victim's phone, burned against her thigh like a brand.
Clean choice? Polite choice? Safe choice?
Fuck that.
She was way past the point of no return.
A quick, shallow breath, and her fingers slipped into her jacket. Out came the tiny bypass cable, smooth and cold against her palm. Muscle memory kicked in. Click. Program loaded. Walls fell.
The lock screen peeled open like hot wax under a knife. Almost, almost, she smiled. And then the screen flickered.
Once. Twice. A sharp, ugly stutter of light. Data Wiping in Progress. 98%... 99%... The world snapped tight around her.
Her heart punched at her ribs as she stabbed at the screen, fingers frantic, desperate. Cancel. Abort. Reverse.
Too late.
Files. Emails. Threats. Gone. Like water down a gutter.
She caught a glimpse, a folder named PRIVATE, before it vanished into a black hole, swallowed whole by whatever helltrap had been rigged into this phone.
Eris didn't breathe. Couldn't. Her mind spat curses fast and brutal.
Shit. Shit. SHIT.
She ripped the cable free like it mattered, like that would magically rewind everything. The phone screen stayed dead. Cold. Mocking.
As if the owner never existed. Sweat trickled down her spine, icy under her clothes.
Goddamn it.
If this thing had a built-in wipe, it meant the whole fucking setup was a trap. Had been a trap from the second she touched it.
From who? Security? HR? Vanguard itself?
Didn't matter.
Because now, thanks to her dumbass choice to brute-force it, her name was probably flagged in whatever Big Brother system Vanguard kept to catch little rats like her.
Perfect. Fucking perfect.
Footsteps echoed. Closer. Fast.
Eris snapped the cable back into her pocket, slammed her shoulders straight, forced her face into neutral.
The dead phone slid back into her blazer. Out of sight. But the guilt clung to her skin, sticky and screaming.
They'd know. She knew they would. The stomp of polished shoes grew louder, sharper. Her jaw locked until pain spiked down her neck.
Somewhere inside her head, a rough voice growled: If you wanna survive, Eris Moreau, you better learn to fight dirty. Even if it means breaking the fucking rules.
She stepped forward, chin high, eyes locked on the exit sign bleeding red over the door. One foot forward. Two sliding backward, slick with mistakes.
Vanguard thought they had her. Cute. They hadn't seen anything yet.
"Over here."
The voice sliced through the freezing hallway. Flat. Hollow. A razor dressed as a whisper.
Eris lifted her head.
A security guard in a black suit stood a few feet away, expressionless, wooden. His sunglasses, even indoors, sealed him off like a wall she wasn't invited to climb.
Something in her gut twisted tight.
"Why?" Her voice scraped out, rougher than she meant. "Boss wants you to see something." No room to argue. No room to breathe.
Eris moved, stiff-legged, behind him, her heels whispering traitorously across the tile. The hallway coiled tighter, spiraling into something rotten she could smell in her teeth.
The CCTV room hit her like a slap, cold enough to skin you. Gray walls. Brutal white lights. Monitors blinking with mechanical indifference.
The guard punched a button on the control desk. Main screen flickered awake with a snarl of static.
Eris fixed her gaze on it, even though every molecule in her body screamed to turn and run.
The video started.
The woman, the victim, kneeling on the slick bathroom floor. Clothes soaked. Hair pasted to her skin.
Sobbing. Begging. "Please... I won't tell anyone. Please…"
And then… A blow to the back of the head. Her body crumpled like a dropped doll. Two pairs of hands dragging her limp frame to the tub. Holding her under.
Again. And again. No mercy. No hesitation. Eris dug her fingers into the edge of the console until her knuckles bled white.
Bile clawed up her throat. Acid-hot. Punishing. She swallowed it down.
Barely.
Her breath broke in fits, fraying apart like a cheap thread. Vision swimming, blinking back the tears she wouldn't, couldn't, let fall.
Focus. Watch. Don't flinch. Don't you dare fucking flinch.
And then, she saw it. Not just one attacker. Three. Three faces.
The fake housekeeping kid she grilled earlier, the one who couldn't lie to save his puppy-eyed ass. The sweet receptionist who greeted her with a sparkle and a smile. And…
Oh, fuck.
The security guard standing right next to her. The blood in Eris's veins turned into glass shards.
Her spine damp with cold sweat, her mind snapping between scream and sprint and goddamn murder.
From the corner of her eye, she saw him glance at her. Blank. Patient. Like he was waiting for her to catch up.
Waiting for her to realize: Congratulations, Eris Moreau. You just signed your own death warrant.
Her heart punched against her ribs. Hard enough she thought they might crack.
One second.
Two.
The tension thickened, slow and choking, the air itself turning into poison in her lungs.
Eris dragged in a breath. Shallow. Quiet. Careful. Don't let them see. Don't you dare let them see.
Be normal. Be bored. Be stupid if you have to.
She shifted her weight, ready to fake some wide-eyed confusion, ready to throw some wide-eyed bullshit…
Tap.
Something brushed her shoulder. Cold. Wet. Her lungs seized. Breath snapped in half inside her.
She turned. Slowly. So slowly.
In the cracked-open doorway behind her, the victim stood.
Sodden hair draped across her hollow face.
Mouth parted, blood caked along her chin. Water streaming down her frame, pooling at her bare, battered feet.
Dead eyes locked onto Eris. Unblinking. Unforgiving. Eris wanted to scream. Wanted to claw her way out of her own skin.
But her voice was dead, too.
Frozen.
And somewhere, deep in the pit of her racing mind, the realization sharpened like a blade: This wasn't about murder anymore.
It was survival.
And she wasn't walking out of here unless she started fighting dirty.