The walk to town square took eleven minutes.
Leah counted each one.
Not because she was nervous, she'd stopped feeling nervous about these things two years ago, but because counting gave her something to focus on besides the way the streetlights seemed to flicker as she passed beneath them.
One minute. Two minutes. Three.
The sirens were louder now, converging from multiple directions. Red and blue light strobed against the houses, painting suburban normalcy in emergency colors.
A dog barked as she passed the Morrison house.
Then stopped mid-bark, like someone had cut the sound.
Leah kept walking.
Four minutes. Five.
She'd learned not to look at the animals anymore. They always knew. Dogs would cower or attack. Cats would vanish. Birds would go silent. Once, a entire flock of crows had followed her for six blocks, perched on telephone wires and fences, just watching.
Mrs. Morrison said it was because Leah smelled like death.
Mrs. Morrison died three days later. Heart attack in her sleep.
Leah added her to the list.
Six minutes. Seven.
The town square came into view.
Yellow tape. Police cars arranged in a loose perimeter. Officers standing in small clusters, not talking, just staring at something in the center of the square.
At the bodies.
Even from a block away, Leah could see them, three dark shapes under white tarps, arranged in a triangle like some kind of ritual offering.
The pressure behind her eyes spiked.
She stopped walking.
Eight minutes.
This was different.
The other deaths, Mr. Hendricks, Sarah Lim, the Martinez family, all forty-three of them, those had been normal. Heart attacks, accidents, gas leaks. Terrible, but explainable. The kind of deaths that happened every day.
But this?
Bodies falling from an empty sky?
This was the universe dropping its mask.
This was the thing inside her finally showing itself.
Leah took a breath, tasted copper, tasted ash, tasted something older than either, and started walking again.
Nine minutes.
Officer Chen saw her first.
He'd been standing near the fountain, radio in hand, trying to explain to dispatch that no, there were no tall buildings, no planes, no logical explanation for how three bodies had appeared in the town square.
Then he looked up and saw the girl.
Seventeen, maybe eighteen. Dark hair pulled back. Black jacket despite the mild night. Walking toward the police line like she had an appointment.
Something about her made his skin crawl.
Not her appearance, she looked normal enough. Tired, maybe. Pale. But normal.
It was the way she moved.
Too steady. Too deliberate. Like she was walking on a stage and knew exactly where her mark was.
"Hey," Chen called out, stepping toward her.
"Miss, you need to stay back. This is a crime scene-"
She stopped at the yellow tape.
Looked at him.
And Chen forgot what he was going to say.
Not because she was intimidating. Not because she was beautiful or strange or anything he could articulate.
But because when her eyes met his, he felt something shift inside his skull, like a hand reaching through his thoughts, brushing against memories, searching for something specific.
His daughter's name flickered in his mind, Emma...and for half a second he couldn't remember if she was six or sixteen.
"What-" he started.
The girl looked past him, toward the bodies.
"They fell at 3:17," she said quietly.
It wasn't a question.
Chen's hand went to his temple. The disorientation was fading, but the wrongness remained. "How did you...."
"The second one fell around sunrise. The third just after noon."
Chen stared at her.
Those details hadn't been released. The department was still trying to figure out what the hell was happening before they caused a panic. Only the officers on scene knew about the timing.
"Who are you?" he asked.
The girl's gaze shifted back to him.
"I'm the reason they're dead," she said.
Officer Sarah Park heard the commotion and jogged over.
Chen was backing away from a teenage girl at the tape line, one hand on his radio, the other hovering near his service weapon like he couldn't decide if he should draw it.
"Marcus, what's-"
"She knows," Chen said, voice tight. "She knows about the timing. She knows things she shouldn't..."
Park looked at the girl.
Up close, she could see what Chen meant. There was something off about her. Not threatening, exactly. Just wrong in a way that made Park's instincts scream.
"I need you to step back, miss," Park said, keeping her voice calm and professional. "This is an active investigation–"
"They were marked," the girl interrupted.
Park frowned. "Marked?"
"Three days ago. Maybe four. I don't always know exactly when." The girl's eyes were distant, like she was reading from a script only she could see. "But they were near me. Somewhere. A grocery store, maybe. Or a gas station. I don't remember all of them anymore."
"All of them?" Park echoed.
The girl reached into her jacket pocket.
Both officers tensed.
She pulled out her phone, unlocked it, held it up so they could see the screen.
A notes app. A list of names. Dates. Locations.
Park stepped closer, squinting at the text.
September 14 – Mr. Hendricks, heart attack
October 2 – Sarah Lim, car accident
November 19 – Martinez family, gas leak
The list went on. And on.
Forty-three entries.
Forty-three deaths.
"Jesus Christ," Park whispered.
Chen was already on his radio. "Dispatch, I need a supervisor at the square immediately. We have a–" He paused, looking at the girl. "–a person of interest."
The girl lowered her phone.
"You can call me whatever you want," she said. "It doesn't change what I am."
"And what's that?" Park asked, not sure she wanted the answer.
The girl looked at the bodies again. At the ash radiating outward from beneath the tarps. At the way reality seemed just slightly bent in that spot, like space itself was recoiling.
"The warning," she said.
Ten minutes.
They didn't arrest her.
They didn't know what to do with her.
More officers arrived. Then a detective–Harrison, an older man with grey at his temples and the kind of face that had seen too much. He took one look at Leah's list, at the dates and names and details, and went pale.
"Where did you get this information?" he asked.
"I wrote it," Leah said. "Every time someone dies after being near me, I document it."
"Why?"
"Because I needed to know if I was insane."
"And?" Harrison's voice was careful. "Are you?"
Leah looked at the bodies. At the ash. At the way the officers were all standing too far away from her now, like she might be contagious.
"No," she said quietly. "I'm something worse."
Harrison opened his mouth–
–and the fourth body fell.
It hit the fountain with a sound like meat against marble.
Water sprayed. Officers shouted. Someone screamed.
The body slid off the fountain's edge and landed in a crumpled heap on the stone, one arm bent at an impossible angle, head twisted too far to the left.
A woman. Sixty, maybe. Wearing a nightgown.
And covered in the same black ash.
Harrison staggered backward. Park swore and grabbed for her radio. Chen just stood there, frozen, staring at the sky like he was waiting for more.
Leah didn't move.
She'd felt it coming–the spike of pressure, the taste of copper intensifying, the way her hands had started vibrating again thirty seconds before impact.
She looked down at her palms.
They were covered in black dust.
Not a lot. Just a fine coating, like she'd run her hands through fireplace ash.
Except there was no fireplace.
No source.
Just her.
She tried to wipe it off on her jeans.
It didn't move. Didn't smudge. Just sat there on her skin like it was part of her now.
Harrison turned, saw her hands, saw the ash, and his face went white.
"Get her in a car," he said. "Now."
Eleven minutes.
They put her in the back of Officer Park's patrol car.
Not under arrest–they kept saying that, like it mattered, but for her "safety" and "questioning."
Leah sat in the back seat, hands resting on her knees, and watched through the window as more officers arrived, as crime scene tape went up, as someone covered the fourth body with another white tarp.
The ash on her hands still hadn't come off.
She rubbed her thumb across her palm.
The dust shifted slightly, swirled, then settled back into place.
Like it was alive.
Park got in the driver's seat, looked at Leah in the rearview mirror.
"You okay back there?"
Leah met her eyes in the reflection.
"No," she said honestly.
Park's expression softened slightly. "Look, I don't know what's happening here. But we're going to figure it out. Okay?"
Leah almost laughed.
They thought this was a mystery. Something that could be figured out with evidence and logic and forensic analysis.
They had no idea.
This wasn't a mystery.
This was an unveiling.
"Officer Park," Leah said quietly.
"Yeah?"
"You should transfer. Request a different assignment. Leave town if you can."
Park frowned. "Why would I–"
"Because you touched the tape line. You got close to me. And now you're marked."
Silence.
Park's hands tightened on the steering wheel.
"That's not funny."
"It's not a joke."
Park turned in her seat, staring at Leah directly now. "You're saying I'm going to die?"
"Within seventy-two hours. Maybe less. The marks are getting faster."
"That's–" Park's voice cracked slightly. "That's insane."
"Yes," Leah agreed. "It is."
Park stared at her for a long moment.
Then she turned back around, started the car, and drove toward the station without another word.
Leah watched the town square recede in the rear window, the lights, the bodies, the ash spreading like a stain across the stone.
And she thought:
This is just the beginning.
[To be continued in chapter 3]