Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I will write your name in the ruin of them. I will paint you across history in the color of their blood.” 

– Seth Dickinson, The Monster Baru Cormorant. 

-

After the first few weeks, she barely cares about the mandatory leave they forced on her after the disgraceful incident with some harass delinquent that ended with him in a hospital bed.

She spends her days sprawled on her old, threadbare couch, the sagging cushion now molded to the shape of her body; a personal nest, where she sinks in to binge 16 straight hours of true crime documentaries, shoveling Doritos into her mouth. The grease from the chips clings to her fingers and smudges the ridiculous charity event T-shirt she is wearing—something she fished out of a neighbor’s hand-me-down box after all her clean clothes mysteriously vanished. Or, more likely, all piled somewhere waiting for that trip to the laundromat she has been avoiding since before the three-day disciplinary suspension that preceded the forced leave.

Her spineless idiot of a boss had the nerve to tell her she could only come back with the FBI shrink’s clearance. He knows she won’t ever go near to that fucking floor. He is a weak, stupid man, she genuinely has no idea how was able to climb so high up the food chain without being devoured by his peers. Agatha hates his pathetic ass. 

Thirst forces her to rise, and her bones make an embarrassing crackling noise as she stretches. When she passes by the mirrored surface of the kitchen cabinets, she laughs—a low, bitter sound. 

What a fall from grace she’s become, standing there in a filthy, stained, threadbare T-shirt, her hair tangled into a wild nest.

It is a far cry from the woman she used to be. She was always at her peak whatever it took, on top, charging ahead. Now, she looks at a hollow-eyed reflection of her former self, barely making an effort to crawl out of the trenches of grief she dug for herself as she waits there, lying, numbly, waiting for a death that won’t ever come. 

She gulps down orange juice that tastes suspiciously too bitter on her tongue straight from the cranked box she pulled from the fridge, just as her phone starts vibrating where she left it on the kitchen counter.

She frowns. Although Alice has made it a habit to call weekly to check if she is still breathing—and already did at some point earlier this week—she does not really expect calls from anyone else.

When she picks up the phone, the screen lights up with some missed calls. And, now, flashing like an annoying siren in her hands, it is Ralph again—her excuse for a boss.

“Hello, babe, missing me already?” she sings-song in that dripping sweet tone she knows drives him mad. 

“We need you here, Agatha. Now.”   

He has never sounded so serious, so worn out. It’s so surprising, unnerving, it almost sends a shiver down her spine—almost. 

The next step after a disciplinary action and forced leave is surely mandatory retirement. If that’s where this is heading, she will not let herself be dismissed wearing a Dorito-stained shirt. 

She tames her hair and brushes her teeth. She finds some old clothes still hanging in her closet—a white button-up blouse that does not need ironing, and a clean pair of pants she pulls from a drawer. The weight of the fabric feels strange against her skin, accustomed as she’s been lounging around in nothing but underwear, apparently. She grabs a navy-blue coat from the rack by the door to fend off the cold outside before leaving. 

The lounge hums with frantic energy when she arrives—a hive of motion, bodies darting, voices overlapping in hushed murmurs. It’s the familiar rhythm of chaos that accompanies something big. The moment right after the start of, as she calls it, a  ‘Supernova Case’—mass murder, serial killing, terrorism attacks; the top-shelf goods.

But when she steps out of the elevator, the noise dies. All eyes turn to her. The weight of their stares crawls under her skin, sharp and unnerving; her heartbeat quickens, her breath catches—a tight knot lodges in her throat, unyielding, like a tangled thread.

The last time this happened, her world had shattered. 

Her son was gone, and every gaze was filled with terror and pity, as if her mourning were a living thing they might catch if they got too close. They had walked on eggshells around her, unsure how to comfort a woman hollowed out by loss. 

Grief had carved her into something harder, sharper, leaving no room for sweetness, as the only sweetness she had known in life had been taken from her. And now, she senses it again—that looming shadow, ready to strip away the only fragile piece keeping her upright. Death whispers to her like an old lover, patient and seductive, calling her back to the abyss she has been teetering on.

Ignoring their stares, she moves forward with purposefulness, cutting through the tension like a blade as she heads straight to Ralph’s office.

Inside, more chaos. 

Lilia, Alice, and Jen are there, their voices colliding as they speak over each other. Ralph, caught in the eye of it, sits at his desk, his stress visible in the slump of his shoulders and the deep lines etched into his forehead.

The scene almost pulls a laugh from her lips.

“All this for me?” she quips as her knuckles rapps lightly against the doorframe. She adjusts her coat on her shoulders with a feigned nonchalance that borders on defiance. When they all turn to face her, she smirks. “I knew you couldn’t last long without me.”

Jen reacts first, rolling her eyes with predictable disdain. She huffs, though something that might be relief flickers behind her sharp expression. Lilia and Alice step toward her next. Alice, despite her tough, punk-rock veneer, always offers a quiet compassion that is as disarming as it is desperating. She is unable to ignore that instinct of gentleness in her, no matter how insufferable they might be.

Lilia is different—kind, but wary. A woman shaped by time, her edges worn rough by the weight of everything she had once known and lost. Agatha sees herself in the woman, and that silent resemblance is what makes them share an unspoken kinship.

“We are glad you’re okay,” Alice says softly to her. 

Agatha frowns. Her voice is sharp in contrast when she asks: 

“Did something happen?”

Jen rolls her eyes again, her impatience biting, but Lilia freezes her with a glance. 

At the head of the table, Ralph, leaning back in his chair, exhales a long, beleaguered sigh. 

“We have a problem,” he says. 

Agatha rolls her eyes. He is always so pathetic and useless. 

We need this. We have that. But they have yet to tell her what the hell is happening. 

Sighing, Agatha’s eyes drift to the whiteboard at the far end of the room. As she steps closer, her pulse quickens, confusion creeps in like a white fog, veiling her thoughts.

Six photos are pinned there, carefully arranged in a neat line. The images burn into her mind—six men, likely in their thirties, pale and lifeless. All dark-haired. Each body lies amidst a bed of flowers, their petals in a vibrant red color that purposefully contrasts against the starkness of death.

Her chest tightens.

This is her work. 

The staged, almost tender display of flowers around the mutilated forms is unmistakable. But there’s something new. Something deliberate. Her eyes lock on the first victim’s chest, where a clean, indented incision forms the outline of a letter in the teared flesh of his body. 

A.

This is new, she thinks, as she moves her eyes to study the next images, paired side by side like a children’s puzzle. 

A. 

G.

A.

T.

H.

A.

A. G.A. T. H. A.

She stumbles back, startled. Her body collided with a chair and she clutches its back for support. Her lungs seize, air refusing to fill them, while her heart pounds erratically, as if the blood were rushing to all the wrong places at once.

On the flesh of the victims’ chests, carved with brutal sharpen precision, the letters form a single word. 

Her name. Agatha.

“What the hell is this?” she shouts at the four others trapped in the room with her.

Lilia and Alice are seated, leaned against the chair as if they’d been expecting her outburst.

Ralph exhales heavily from his seat, his fingers kneading his temples in a futile attempt to ward off a headache. Meanwhile, Jen leans casually against the table, watching Agatha with an unreadable expression.

“Looks like she wants to talk to you,” Alice’s voice cuts through the tense silence.

Agatha laughs something sharp and bitter out of her chest. The sound echoing faintly off the walls

“And you just let me come here on my own? No escort? What if she’d killed me—or kidnapped me—on the way, huh?”

“We’ve long established she only kills men,” Jen replies flatly.

“Oh, yeah? We also thought she didn’t kill children, but guess what—turns out we were wrong!” Agatha’s voice crack with fury as she yells. 

The room falls into an oppressive silence after that, thick and suffocating. Lilia and Alice avert their eyes, their discomfort palpable, but Jen holds her gaze, unflinching.

“You know the conclusions were not certain about her role in the case,” she points out evenly.

Agatha unleashes another harsh laugh, louder this time, edged with a wild, almost feral quality.

She wants to smash the glass table into shards, shred every photograph with her name carved into the victims, but most of all, she wants to kill the woman who murdered her son.

“Oh, really?” she shouts, spinning and jabbing a finger toward the board with her name drawn in bloody evenly precise letters. “Because this sure as hell looks like a goddamn confession to me!”

Jen sighs as crosses her arms. 

“Agatha, we’re not getting into this right now,” Ralph interjects, and his voice is tired but firm.

It takes every ounce of restraint she has not to lunge at his throat.

“She wants to talk to you,” Lilia says, “These bodies were found over the last few weeks—all on the same day, at the same time, near the same area.”

“It’s a message. An invitation.” Alice explains. 

Agatha barks a humorless laugh, the sound so raw it's scary. 

“Great. She could’ve just looked me up on Tinder and saved everyone the trouble!” she snaps. 

“Agatha. Listen. This is the closest we have been to her in years,” Ralph says, “We’re going to catch her. We’ll set up an operation—this is our chance.”

“You’ll have to cooperate, though,” Jen adds with a tone that says it is a non-negotiable term. Her gaze holds steady, but her tone softens just slightly as she continues, “If we get her, you’ll get the chance to talk to her. About Nicky.”

The mention of her son’s name hits Agatha like a blow to the chest, knocking her out of the spiral of rage and chaos threatening to consume her. Talk to the woman who killed her child?

The very idea stirs a cruel, bitter laugh deep in her spine, but she swallows it down, sharp as it is, ripping out her throat along the way. 

She does not want a conversation. She wants blood.

But fine, she thinks. If this is the path that will lead her to the woman she has hunted for the last years, she’ll walk it. She will play her game. 

And then, she will kill her.

“Alright,” Agatha says, her voice steady, eyes sharp with purpose. “Let’s trap this fucking bitch.”

She sits alone in the dimly lit room, the harsh glow of fluorescent lights casting long shadows across the walls. The building was silent, empty save for her and a few security guards making their rounds. Their footsteps echoing faintly in the distance from time to time. 

All her colleagues thought she was obsessed, whispering behind her back, changing weary glances when they thought she could not see. She paid them no mind. 

Not when she could still hear the echoes of his laughter, silenced by the cruel whiff of death; when she could still feel the coldness of his lifeless form cradled in her arms; still smell the scent of the flowers around his bed, a cruel imitation of a crib for her little boy.  

She had become a shadow of her former self—adrift, consumed by the hunt, driven by the need to grasp the ghostly, razor-sharp claws of the monster who took her son’s life away.

It haunts her, day and night. She had failed her little boy in life; she had not protected him as she should have and Death had claimed her boy right under her nose. It tormented her like a nightmare she could not wake from. She, whose sworn duty was to serve and protect, had been powerless to shield her own child. 

She came home one night after work to the sight of her neighbor’s lifeless body sprawled in a pool of dark-red crimson. Empty blue eyes stared back at her, glassy and hollow. Her heart thundered as she bolted up the stairs, boots caked with mud and blood, her breath catching in her throat with each frantic step.

And there he was. Her boy.

His small, still form lay cradled in a crown of spider lilies, blood-red petals curling like claws around him—a wreath of death.

The guilt was a weight she carried every waking moment. It gnawed at her insides, turning her resolve into iron, her heart into stone. But she would not let him down again. 

Not in this. 

She would catch the one who had stolen her son’s light, the one who left behind a bed of red lilies where laughter used to echo through during late night bed stories and tickles time. 

She had been hunting the killer long before her son was taken, but what once began as a quest for justice had transformed into a relentless crusade for a bloody compensation. And now, she could finally catch her.

Agatha’s fingers trembled slightly as she reached for another photo. The faces blurred together in her mind, all of them connected by the same dark thread; her name written in the ruin of them. 

The crown of Lycoris Radiata, also known as Red Spider-Lilies, encircling the lifeless bodies was what earned her the notorious name Lady Death.

It seemed suitable: Flowers of Hell. Flowers of Death, sucking up the blood of the dead.  

The serial killer was meticulous in her craft, treating her victims with an uncanny reverence in their final moments. 

She would arrange around their stiff bodies a bed of flowers, tending it to its perfection. A chilling juxtaposition of death adorned in the garb of life, beautifully orchestrated, almost methodical, royal, with an overwhelming sense of ritual, more than anything else. 

The early crime scenes sent the FBI into a frenzy, with agents torn between those who were horrified by the grotesque nature of the murders and those who were captivated by the… artistic elegance of it all.

In truth, it was like a masterpiece waiting to be framed. Every detail was flawlessly executed, each element precisely placed as if guided by the hands of a painter. Yet, no signature was left on the edges, no traceable flaw, no anomalies that could hint at the identity of the artist behind the picture. 

The killer was a woman, Agatha knew from the start. Her touch was too delicate, too intricate. The way she arranged the flowers, the gentle curve of each petal, the almost loving placement of the bodies. It spoke of a different kind of mind, one driven by a desire not merely to kill, but to create. 

As the body count grew, so did the fascination. Theories abounded in the press—was she a scorned lover, a mad artist, or perhaps a florist with a taste for blood? 

But she knew they were dealing with someone who saw murder as a form of expression, who valued death as the natural order of things, something not inherently evil, not a mean entity—until she disrupted it. 

Agatha’s team had kept her in the shadows until it was impossible to go forward without her. 

Now, as the operation took shape, they all had demands and restraints to pour over her.

Two officers had been assigned to guard her house overnight until Friday, the day of the operation. She was strictly prohibited from stepping foot on the ground where the victims had been found, and where their meeting would take place. And Ralph had made it abundantly clear—she was not officially back.

Agatha put on a show of defiance, though it was less a protest and more her signature flair for theatrics.

They were all fools, blind to the trap within the trap. 

She was far too astute, too smart and sharp minded, to fall so easily into the FBI's waiting arms after a two-year lull in her killings. 

Since Nick. 

Now, she has claimed six lives in a single stroke. 

To speak with her.

One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know that the moment the FBI recognized the nature of the murders and the bloodstained little notes between the lines, an operation would be set into motion to capture her. 

But they know each other. 

Five years spent studying the murderous nature of the woman, peering into the abyss of her soul, had clouded her perceptions. Now, instead of seeing a faceless killer, she sees her own reflection, as if separated from her by only a water mirror; an echo to her shadow. 

A hunt is never one-sided. There’s always the prey and the hunter, and they have been in this messed, fucked-up roleplay, changing the parts here and there, for time enough to see through their personas. 

Lady Death spent three years in deliberate slaughter, two years in hiatus, and now, six bodies at once, each marked with a letter of her name.

Twenty-four known victims.

Her son is one of them.

She is luring her in. She knows she is going to bite the bait. 

Her view of things, of the world, has never been clear—she has always seen it through the veil that hung before her eyes. First came the oppression of her mother, which molded the confused girl into a weapon of self-defense. Then came grief, a Leviathan that devoured with its open mouth her spirit and life, and now, vengeance, the thing with feathers she had been searching for all along.

But She knows Agatha will see through the set-up surrounding them. 

/

It is so easy to slip past the police at her house, it’s almost pathetic. She leaves through the back door like a thief, wearing a dark-purple hooded coat she found among her things. 

It’s Tuesday, early autumn, and she stuffs her hands into her pockets, confident in the gun nestled in her back holster and the blades at her ankles. She will surely be searched for weapons, and soon enough, her precious ones will be taken. But she touches her waist, finding the small, nearly imperceptible knife hidden there, pressed against her skin. The leather sheath is cold, and the chilling effect anchors her in the moment. 

She turns down a few streets, her steps light, careful not to arouse any suspicion from the neighbors. She pulls her hood lower when she is far enough not to be recognized and grabs a cab for a ten-minute ride. 

Around the corner, she sees the soft glow of the neon sign, where the words ‘The Road’ blink, shimmering brightly just for her.

The bar hums with life for a Tuesday night when she gets in, its customers mostly in their twenties and thirties, and Agatha remembers the university nearby. 

The place bursts with youngish laughter and energy all around. It doesn’t seem like six men were murdered just around the corner. Either they lack any sense of self-preservation, or the FBI is doing an exceptional job of keeping it all under wraps.

She settles onto an empty stool at the curve of the counter, and a young man behind the bar approaches her.

“What can I get you?” he asks.

“Whisky. Neat.”

She will need her mind as sharp and clear as it can be for what’s ahead, but a touch of liquid courage won’t steer her wrong.

When the whisky arrives, she restrains herself from downing it in one go, instead turning the glass slowly in her hands. She rolls up the sleeves of her sweatshirt and stares at the amber liquid within. 

When she sips, it burns the insides of her mouth. She craves for it, the burning, the bitterness, to fill her screaming guts. 

She has tried everything the past two years to placate it. Alcohol, sex, starvation, cuts. But nothing seems able to stop that animalistic hunger from its descend. 

Something else in her veins burns like molten fire. 

She thirsts for the killer's blood. 

Never before has she been this close to uncovering her son's assassin—the murderer of all those other victims as well. Seventeen bodies before all of this: her boy, the six recent ones. 

The cruel honesty that defined Agatha forced her to admit she did not truly care about any of them. Men whose names she could not recall, men she saw only as pathways into the twisted, diseased mind of a psychopathic killer. 

But if she had stopped her at the Twelfth body, when she became the SSA of the case—or at the Thirteenth, or the Fourteenth—her son would not have been victim number Eighteen. She had messed up everything. When it mattered most, she had failed. 

Things changed when she started to have a more prominent role in the hunt. The scenes were different. A bit more romantic. And grew slightly and almost imperceptibly bloodier every time Agatha was not a vocal part of the Task Force to catch her. 

From the thirteenth, the crown received an additional kind of flower among the red spider lilies, a single one : a hybrid plant native from California with a small-diameter flower, broad and curved petals in a deep-purple hue called mallow, also recognized as ‘Black Heart’.  

The change sent everyone into a frenzy once again, questioning the reason behind it. Was it a clue? Was it the next target? Did it give away her location? 

But Agatha knew what it was: courtship.

The bar empties as the hours slip by, and the liquid in her glass has vanished along with the crowd. 

Someone bumps into her on their way in. She lets out a sharp ‘Hey?’ toward the young woman’s retreating back, but it went no further than that. 

Every now and then, she feels the sharp, distinct sensation of being watched. 

It’s unnerving—her blood simmers, her heart races. It’s ride or die, she thinks, ride or die from now on.  

Because she knows the killer is there, watching her, studying her.

Agatha has no intention of leaving without seeing her, but she also recognizes the test. She scans the room subtly, eyes sweeping for anyone watching her too closely, but no face stands out.

And yet, the feeling clings to her skin, like melted candle wax.

She glances at the watch on her wrist. 1:30 a.m. Hours past the time when the murders occurred. 10 p.m., Friday, on the corner to the right.

They still have Wednesday and Thursday to play their game. 

As she leaves, she tosses the money onto the counter, the weight of watchful eyes pressing against her back.

Jen has been droning on for half an hour about the plan for Friday, outlining every detail with the precision of a clockmaker. SWAT agents will join the operation, she says. They will go undercover, thirty agents to one woman, they will circle her, ambush her, but Agatha isn’t listening. She sinks deeper into her chair, her mind elsewhere, as she entertains herself with a chocolate donut Alice brought to the briefing.

Her boss had made a point of reminding her yet again that her presence was strictly unofficial. Closer to her civilian role than of Special Agent. Bait, plain and simple, for the woman who had spilled more blood than any other female killer in this century.

Oddly enough, her time on forced leave has been more thrilling than the past few months on duty combined. They’d punished her long before the disciplinary action, burying her under trivial cases and cold files that led nowhere. Now, they had to bring her into the hunt of her career; never before it felt so real, alive, the air itself humming with inevitability, two years after the killer had escaped them, slipping through their fingers, under their eyes. 

When the room thins out, leaving only the four of them—and Billy, the wiry rookie Lilia had taken under her wing—the lecture begins. Again.

Agatha leans back, her sharp gaze fixed on the dark-haired young man, watching as discomfort blooms across his face. His lashes tremble and she enjoys the quiet power of making him squirm under her stare. It makes her want to bark just to see him jump. 

“Agatha, we understand how badly you want this—but she needs to be taken alive.” Ralph says. 

“No matter how tempted you are.” Alice adds with her soft but firm voice. 

Agatha exhales a long, exaggerated sigh, her eyes rolling skyward.

“Agatha this, Agatha that,” she mimics using her tone tinged with mockery. “I’m trying to play nice here.”

“No games, Agatha. Before or during,” Lilia warns, her words sharp as flint, gaze steady on her. 

“Alright, Mom,” Agatha quips as she brushes invisible dust from her lap. “Am I excused now, Boss?”

“You can go,” Ralph concedes with a weary, resolute sigh. 

Agatha rises, brushing crumbs from her lap with deliberate indifference. A faint smirk tugs at her lips. They all knew, deep down, that rules had never been her forte.

Apparently, Wednesdays are karaoke nights.

This must be her punishment, she thinks—drunken students slurring their way through off-key serenades on a makeshift stage. The sixth circle of Hell. 

It must have something to do with the neighbor's baptism shirt she used to mop up her grimy kitchen floor last week. She stained the Holy Spirit with spilled coffee roast, thus she must pay. 

Heresy and lesbianism go hand in hand, after all.

In the first few months after Nicky's death, her neighbors would leave boxes of all sorts of things in her always-open garage or by her front door. Casseroles, clothes, dry goods, water bottles. She barely remembers collecting these things; everything about that time is blurry in her mind. She did not remember much back then either—changing clothes, putting food in the fridge before the house started to smell too suspiciously and the neighbors got too close to calling health services. But apparently, there's a lot she stuffed into one of the upstairs rooms or the kitchen, things she still stumbles upon from time to time: Tupperwares she never bought, clothes, and personal hygiene items enough to keep her house stocked for months. 

She takes the same seat she had the night before and orders another dose of whiskey.

The same boy—pale skin, scar on his right cheek, dirty-blond hair—slides the glass toward her with a small nod of recognition.

She scans her surroundings carefully, searching for any movement she deems suspicious. A young man stumbles, nearly toppling over as he reaches for the screen where the lyrics glow, laughing as he steadies himself.

Agatha shakes her head and checks her watch. 10:30 p.m.

She does not know what she’s waiting for, not really. That the killer will slip into the bar, take the stool beside her, share a drink, and then silently stab her under the dim light of the Bar? Could she be tired of the cat-and-mouse game?

This is, after all—though she has been avoiding the thought—an almost suicidal gambit. Perhaps Lady Death wants her as dead as she wants her. They are mirrors of each other, in a twisted sense, after all. 

Agatha knows she will only find peace when she sees the woman tossed into a shallow grave, left to rot. Perhaps all the lady killer needs to fully reclaim her bloody legacy of lilies is Agatha out of her way as well. 

For all that is fair, she has nothing left to lose. Her son is gone. Her career is on the line. All that fuels her now is an unhealthy obsession with the woman who killed her little boy.

In some way, killing her would also sever the last living connection Agatha has to him—his murderer, the last person to touch him, to see him alive, to speak with him one final time. The one who stole her son and all those moments that did not belong to her. 

A mother should never have to bury her child but, by the hands of an impostor of a brute divine, the natural order of things was now fractured to shreds. 

When it’s all over, she knows she will be nothing more than the hollow shell of a woman. She is already broken beyond repair, but without revenge to keep her upright, what will she do? What will remain of her? If every atom of her is charged with it? 

She sips her whiskey, letting it burn slowly. 

The children’s off-key songs fade at some forgotten hour, and she tires of playing the anxious deer, standing exposed in the open, waiting for the hunter’s eyes. 

She showed up, she proved her reliability. It's time to go. 

When she steps into the night, the cold wraps around her like a hug, making her shiver, though she refuses to bury her hands in her pockets. 

Her steps are careful. Her eyes sweep the street, her posture coiled, a hand always near the hidden weapons pressed close to her skin.

Ahead, a couple stumbles by, their drunken laughter ringing out. She recognizes them from the bar—the girl leaning heavily into her companion, almost falling, only to be caught in a moment of shared mirth. Their laughter still echoes, even when they disappear around the corner, pulling her focus for a fraction too long.

She doesn’t see the shadow slipping closer, doesn’t sense the danger until it’s too late. The fabric smothers her nose and mouth, damp and reeking with something pungent. A slender body presses hard against her back, pinning her in place. It all happens so quickly she barely reacts. Her hand falters, never reaching the knife at her waist.

The world narrows to the weight of that touch, the suffocating cloth, and the sound of her own heartbeat as the darkness pulls her.

She blinks her eyes, struggling to adjust to the dim light. 

Her hands, arms and legs are bound in expert knots. She tugs at it uselessly, but her movements are limited. 

The place seems to be large, spacious, poorly lit by flickering spotlights struggling to stay on. From where she sits, she can not see doors and the room seems to expand forever beyond her vision, enveloped in darkness. Plastic sheets hang from the ceiling, rustling lightly. From its slow, erratic motion, she can say there’s likely no window in the space; at best, an air vent. It is damp and the air is thick with the smell of mildew strong enough to make her nose itch.

Something drips irregularly with a plip-plop, plip-plop, plip-plop against a water-puddle on the cold concrete floor in a dark corner.

It feels too much like a slaughterhouse.

She does not know how much time has passed. There’s no light beyond the artificial ones and no sound except the droplets hitting the ground. It must be raining heavily outside, though the acoustics of the space won’t let her know for sure. 

She grows accustomed to the thought she might not leave the place alive tonight. 

Perhaps she will die here, face-to-face with her son’s assassin, at the hands of the same executioner. 

She lets the idea settle, lets it weave itself into the depth of her bones, the way grief once did. It doesn’t terrify her as it should; instead, it feels like a cold epiphany. Perhaps that is enough. To die by the same hands that took him from her; to cross the distance between them. An act of final surrender, the last step on her crusade, the deflagration of some cruel symmetry—because, in that final moment, she would be as close to him as she could ever hope to be. To die in his killer’s grip would be to step into the same darkness, the same oblivion, and find herself, if only for a moment, in the same eternal flame that claimed him. 

Perhaps it’s all she has ever wanted.

“My ropes look good on you.” 

She hears a muffled voice coming from her back. 

Agatha’s hands and body strain involuntarily against the cords binding her wrists. 

The voice, unmistakably feminine yet toned, stops her thoughts cold. For a moment, there’s nothing—just an empty void, an echo reverberating in her skull. Then, all at once, everything crashes in. Nicky’s face. His smiles. His cold body against her skin. Her tears falling onto his lifeless face, dripping onto the closed lids of his vacant eyes.

Her blood boils, surging so hot it feels like it might sear her veins, burning enough to implode her from the inside out.

She’s in the same room as her son’s murderer. She’s in the same room as the woman who destroyed her life.

“Everything looks good on me,” she spits, twisting her face toward the voice.

It's a cat and mouse game, a wicked one, and she may be the one tied but she won’t let her have the upper hand. 

The woman laughs, a rough, rasping sound that echoes in the room. It’s loud and seems almost genuine, as if she’s truly entertained by her.

The silence that follows is thick, charged, though. Agatha’s heartbeat pounds erratically in her ears, and her breathing comes in ragged bursts as she forces herself to remember the need of exhaling. 

Somewhere in the distance, the steady plip-plop continues, indifferent to her rage.

“Are you just going to hide back there?” Agatha taunts, her voice sharper now. “I thought you were braver than that.”

A beat passes, stretching long enough to feel like a lifetime. Agatha wonders if this is it—if she will die like a cornered rat, never knowing what struck her until the serpent’s coil tightens and squeezes the life out of her.

Then, footsteps. Faint but deliberate, echoing softly through the room. Agatha turns her head sharply, and there she is—circling her like a predator assessing its prey.

The woman is clad in dark clothing, of course. A hood covers her head. The skull-shaped disguise that completely covers her face has the inhuman and spooky quality of the masks in a Wes Craven movie. 

Agatha can not stop the scornful laugh that escapes her lips.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Her voice drips with venom.

The assassin tilts her head, as if amused, saying nothing but continuing her slow, calculated movements. The air between them crackles with tension, the kind of suffocating energy that makes Agatha force herself still on the chair. 

Agatha studies the figure before her, even though the mask hides the woman’s face. Beneath it lies the visage of the woman, the killer, she has been hunting. 

The sheer weight of the moment crushes her, the reality of being face-to-face with this woman, this ghost who has haunted her for years, suffocating in its intensity. 

This is what she has spent half a decade chasing. This is the culmination of her grief, her anger, her obsession, her thirst for revenge. 

She is here. After all this time–she will finally end Lady Death, because if she’s burning to ashes tonight, then she will burn with her.

And as the masked woman stands before her, unmoving and inscrutable, Agatha feels the ground beneath her shift completely. 

“Did you like my gifts?” the woman breaks the silence, her voice muffled by the mask but carrying an almost childlike curiosity.

Agatha doesn’t flinch. Instead, she tilts her head with mock indifference.

“I was on leave. Took me a while to get the note,” she replies. 

The woman chuckles—and it gets on Agatha’s nerves.

“I heard about that,” she teases. “Beating a suspect unconscious? Tsk. ” She clicks her tongue mockingly. “Not a good look for the FBI’s finest.”

“It was a single punch. He should be ashamed,” Agatha rolls her eyes. 

The skull mask gives nothing away, but Agatha swears she can feel a smirk radiating from beneath. The woman shifts her weight and steps closer.

Every breath feels shallow, forced, as if the air itself has turned heavy and refuses to fill her lungs.

Agatha forces her body into stillness, even though she feels her body raging like a thunder. The restraints on the iron chair bolted to the floor hold her tight, but fury makes her feel capable of breaking free and tearing the killer in front of her apart with her bare hands.

“Why don’t you untie me, and we settle this, face to face?” Agatha breaks the silence with her proposal, her voice full with sweet venom. “I bet you want me at my best again. That’s why you sent those bodies, isn’t it? Wouldn’t talk to anyone else but me.” Her tone grows more taunting when the woman doesn’t interrupt. “You want me dead as much as I want you dead. Let’s end this tonight, then.”

The skull tilts to the side, a mockery of contemplation. Agatha holds her breath.

“So you want me…” the woman whispers, her voice dripping seductively as she lets out a soft laugh.

“In the ground,” Agatha snarls. “Horizontal. In a grave.”

“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Agatha,” Death chides, wagging a gloved finger at her. “That’s no way to end our little date,” she says, drawing out the word with a childlike energy, as if they are talking about an encounter at a  Michelin-starred restaurant. “No bloodshed tonight—unless it’s something you’d like,” she adds teasingly, twirling a small dagger in her hand.

Agatha’s restraint snaps. She thrashes against the chair, but the bindings dig deeper, refusing to budge.

The woman ignores her tantrum as she kneels in front of her. Her presence is oppressive, the room’s energy shifting into something unbearable.

“The chase was fun for me,” the assassin redirects. Agatha frowns. “God, those other Special Agents were sooo dull. None of them appreciated my work. I did my best to break each of them. But you—oh, you made it a delight.” Her tone is almost wistful, mockingly fond. “What’s Agatha going to do? Will Agatha like this one?”

The air in the room thickens. 

“You sound like you’ve got a crush,” she spits.

“Of course I do,” the assassin coos, her voice dripping like honey. “Letter 'H' would have been your boss if he kept refusing to call you back.”

The words keep hitting Agatha like a gut wrenching punch. 

“You ruined the crime scene,” The killer accuses then. It takes a moment for the meaning to settle in but when it does, Agatha seems to forget how to breathe. She flinches. 

Because she did. 

She ruined everything the moment she saw Mrs Hart’s lifeless body. Protocol vanished from her mind the second she saw her son surrounded by the wreath of crimson lilies.

She remembers so little of those seconds, but it’s still vivid; and it shatters her under its weight. 

The smell of the flowers. The echo of her own pained screams. The sirens. Her colleagues. 

No one had dared mention it aloud, with those words—the chaos she’d caused in her grief, the operation she’d derailed in her rage.

“Or you would’ve noticed it was a poor imitation of my work,” the woman says, her tone sharp, as she continues with a mockery of disappointment: “I thought we understood each other,” she adds, deceptively hurt. But her voice is low and serious when she says: “I didn’t kill Nicky.”

The sound of her son’s name from the woman’s lips sends Agatha into a frenzy. She thrashes again, the iron chair creaking under her force.

“You filthy bitch! Don’t you dare say his name!” she screams, spitting at the mask.

The woman calmly wipes her gloved finger where the drop of her saliva landed, smearing it onto the skeletal lips of her mask with a chilling laugh.

The silence that follows is thunderous, every second weighing on Agatha’s chest. Her heart slams against her ribs, each beat roaring aloud. She wants to scream, to get ripped off the ropes, and tear her apart. 

“I didn’t kill your son,” she repeats, her skull mask seeming to stare directly into Agatha’s soul. “I wasn’t the only killer—or the only dangerous person—you’ve chased, Agatha,” she says, her tone maddeningly calm. “You’re an easy person to hate, really. So many enemies, why would you be surprised if they banded together for this?” Her voice grows sharper. “But… What happened? It was cruel. Even for me.”

Agatha freezes, her breathing erratic.

“It was an imitation, honey,” the woman says softly, but her words land like punches.

“No.” Agatha’s voice breaks into a scream, raw, defiant, feracious. “You killed my son.”

The words reverberate through the cavernous space, clashing with the assassin’s calm. Agatha refuses to let the venomous lies of this serpent coil around her mind. She refuses to believe anything that comes out of this woman's butchered tongue.

The response is clipped and cutting.

“He was beautiful. Saw you and him once, playing hide and seek at the park. You were a good mother.”

Agatha screams again, her body writhing against her bonds. Her vision blurs as heat pools behind her eyes, a cold salty tear spilling down her cheek. Death wipes it away calmly, a shadow of a nail grazing over her cheekbones and the scar on her chin. 

“I never thought about killing a child. Not even yours. No matter how much you annoyed me sometimes, darling,” she jokes indifferently. “You have some powerful enemies. Even within the FBI. Maybe they got jealous when your attention wandered. Or perhaps they didn’t like it when you put that beautiful nose of yours too close to their shitty mess. Maybe they wanted you hurt, confused and away,” she explains calmly. “But I’m not the one responsible for killing your little boy.”

The woman moves, reaching into the pocket of her dark pants under Agatha’s eyes. She pulls out a small, black flash drive, holding it between her gloved fingers like a prize.

“And I can prove it.”

Agatha feels the ground swaying under her as her world turns upside down. 

The words are a dagger thrust into Agatha’s chest, twisting deep. 

She stares at the device, her breathing uneven. What the fucking hell is happening? Agatha’s entire body feels frozen, caught in the grip of something primal and unrelenting. Her heart hammers wildly in her chest, faster and harder than it ever has before, each beat a deafening drum pounding against her ribs. Her thoughts, usually sharp and precise, scatter like leaves in the wind, spiraling out in every direction, untethered and chaotic.

She can not focus—can not grasp onto a single line of reason. For a fleeting moment, doubt weaves itself into her anger. But she snatches it away, squeezing her fist around the only truth she knows. 

“I needed quite some time to research and put everything together. God, people really hate you.”

“What are you trying to pull now?” she spits with a trembling voice.

“Nothing,” the skull tilts its head to the side, almost lazily. “I guess I grew a bit tired of the hunt?”

Agatha, recovering some part of herself, lets out a bitter laugh, the sound sharp and cutting in the still air.

“You are on the FBI’s most-wanted list,” she snaps.

“Everyone has a dark past,” the woman retorts, “Doesn’t mean we can not move forward.”

The mockery makes Agatha huffs. 

“Past, as in, like, six days ago?” she counters, her words dripping with sarcasm. “What do you want from me? You’ve already taken everything. My son. Soon, my job.”

The skull-faced figure tilts her head upward in an exaggerated gesture, as if rolling her eyes.

“You’re impossible,” she drawls, and her voice is edged with amusement. “Lucky for you, I like that.”

The words hang between them, heavy besides the lightness of mockery. Agatha glares at the woman, the fire in her eyes unyielding despite the weight of the ropes biting into her skin. Every word exchanged feels like a blade—parrying, slashing, testing the limits of each other’s resolve and of everything she once was certain of. 

“You can keep the file,” the killer says, her voice light, almost playful. “It’s my gift to you.”

“What the hell am I supposed to do with this?” Agatha snaps again then, voice raw in its fury. “You’re insane if you think I’ll believe a single word that comes out of your mouth, or any garbage you’ve put on this thing.”

The other woman simply shrugs, the motion casual, dismissive.

“That’s for you to decide. You have come all this way–okaaay, part of it–willingly, might I remind you.”

Agatha jerks against the restraints, the metal of the chair groaning under the force. 

“I won’t rest until I see you dead,” she spits, venom dripping from every word.

The woman tilts her head slightly, as if considering Agatha’s declaration, and hums thoughtfully.

“Well,” she says in that infuriatingly calm tone, “I guess we’ll be seeing each other again, then. Te veo.”

The room falls silent except for the faint plip-plop of dripping water, as Agatha glares daggers into the skull mask. The woman lingers for a moment longer, before covering Agatha's head with a dark cloth. 

Agatha fades once more.

/

She wakes hours later, disoriented, her body still heavy. 

She is alive. 

In an instant, she sits up, her breath sharp and quick, as though Lady Death were waiting for her in the corner of the room, sitting patiently in the armchair. 

The flash drive rests innocently on her nightstand, the soft morning light casting a glow over it as if mocking her. Agatha’s fingers twitch at the sight, an overwhelming urge to throw it into the toilet and flush it away, to rid herself of everything she has touched as well. But when she reaches for it, her fingers tremble. She feels the weight in her hand, all that it might mean, and her head hurts, as if the thing has been cursed.

Everything that happened, however, remains alive in her mind, almost as if it were permanently etched into the folds of the flesh of her memory. The words ‘I didn’t kill your son’ spin non-stop in her head, reverberating through her body like the ricochet of a gun that leaves Agatha trembling for a second too long after.

Years spent relentlessly searching for her, hunting her through shadows and across streets, peering into her mind through unalive bodies, imagining every possible way she could make the woman suffer. The terror that woman had awakened in her life, the cruel theft of her heart, of the very thing she most loved and that kept her alive, her boy —everything she had once lived for, torn away so brutally. Every night was haunted by thoughts of vengeance that felt like a fire in her chest, burning hotter with each passing day. But when she stood at the precipice of that moment, the world was turned upside down for her. Death rattled her breathing, and left her bereft and reeling with the deflation of the revenge she had been craving for. 

Now, she feels something foreign and unwelcome crawling its way within her—an energy that shakes all her beliefs, refusing to be ignored. Doubt creeps through her veins like poison. And revenge, once so sweet in her dreams, now tastes like ash in her mouth.

She ruined everything and hindered the analysis of any evidence that could identify the killer, that’s what they had said between the lines to her, all a little hesitant in presenting their findings with her in the room. But she had refused to leave. She knew what she had seen. The cameras hadn’t picked up anything substantial, there was nothing but a messy crime scene and the lilies of Death.

She had been so close to catching Lady Death back then, the chase reaching its perfect climax. It only made sense that the woman would change her course, make an unexpected move to throw Agatha spiraling off her trail.

She stands in the cold silence of her room, staring at the flash drive with an intensity that feels like it could burn through the very air. Her thoughts churn, mixed with rage and confusion, but one thing remains crystal clear to her—she can not ignore it. She will not be able to. 

The talk she had the night before feels like a distant dream, a fevered hallucination. She has been so sure of what she knew, so convinced of the one truth she had been chasing—her son’s murderer—just to have it all shattered by the hands of that fucking killer, once more. 

For hours, she wrestles with herself, pacing the small room, unable to make sense of it. Every step she took, every decision she made to follow this path—was it all a mistake? They were all misled? Was Lady Death telling the truth, or was this another game, another twisted way to manipulate her?

Her fingers curl tighter around the flash drive as she stares at it. Her mind flickers back to the skull-faced woman, the mocking yet calm demeanor. Every word, every gesture was calculated, nothing accidental. 

Nothing gave away what she wanted by pulling this, what she would gain. She had the trouble of killing six men to send her a message. To tell her a truth she believed in, despite the fact she knew Agatha would not accept. She gets it. It’s like a sickness—one that demands she push forward, no matter the cost.

Her hand steadies as she plugs the flash drive into her laptop, the screen flickering to life. The folder opens, revealing a set of files, each one labeled in cryptic code. She clicks on the first one, her fingers trembling with anxiety, and it’s like her entire world shifts again.  

Her eyes widened, her heart skipping a beat. Some of the names she superficially eyes she recognizes. The document spills out—a list of names, dates, locations. All of them tied together. Connected. A network. A web of corruption. 

And at the center of it… her.

Although they were deep into the Lady Death case at the time, combing through every scrap of evidence to unmask the killer, Agatha was working in the Task Force to bring down the Salem Seven, a shadowy terrorist group threatening national security. They had drawn the sharpest minds in a cross-agency work effort to their trail. CIA, NSA and FBI working together to uncover them. 

Agatha spent sleepless nights bent over encrypted conversations and classified reports, searching for patterns in the chaos of flights, explosions and targets. 

She sketched and charted the path of the Salem Seven, and her diligence stopped Hell from swallowing the New York subway. She discovered the connection between them and DarkHold Industries, the country’s primary supplier of weaponry. 

At first glance, the case was a perfect un-puzzle—every piece disconnected, every thread unraveling into nowhere. But they slipped somewhere around their path. And Agatha caught them. A single call before an explosion in the heart of Manhattan traced back to a federal government building. She would need IT's expertise to decrypt the rest of the calls, to stitch coordinates into a grim roadmap of destruction. 

They kept quiet, no movements as she kept studying them. 

Before the week ended, she had asked Ralph to assemble the task force.  

But her world came crashing down that Thursday when she returned home.

The Salem Seven dissolved into the background, her findings forgotten in a file on her work computer. When the agency finally allowed her back, Ralph delivered the blow. Dr. Schmidt, the FBI psychiatrist she had been forced to see—a man she loathed as much as the tedious sessions he prescribed—had considered her unfit to work in high pressure-stress cases. 

Later that night, she had imagined herself marching back to his office, ripping that ridiculous red crystal skull off his shelf, and hurling it at his smug face.

Even as she entertained the thought with cruel pleasure, she did not do it. And she has been avoiding that damned floor since them. For everyone’s sake—and her own.

Now, the name ‘Salem Seven’ blazes across her screen, mocking her in fluorescent defiance once again.

She bites her fist to muffle the scream rising from her throat.

Other known names came to light: Holden Radcliffe, former Section Chief, and Le Fey, the executive Assistant Director, both directly tied to the Salem Seven and DarkHold. Her path had crossed with them enough times to piss them off throughout her career, or so it seemed. 

CIA operatives, NSA directors. A web of federal agents and influential politicians determined to cover up the entire coalition and the government’s involvement in orchestrating terrorist attacks within their own borders; all to justify the expansion of authoritarian surveillance programs, military weapons and manipulate the public opinion, of course. 

The Salem Seven was nothing more than a government-backed conspiracy, funded and orchestrated from within. 

There was evidence of everything—the connections, the messages exchanged, keeping everyone updated on the developments Agatha had uncovered. They were monitoring her computer, her home. They had set their plan in motion to remove her the moment she became a threat to their agenda.

Killing her outright would raise too many suspicions. But they had something else in their sleeve—someone else.

Agatha’s tears fell. Anger. Pain. Grief. 

Her son had been taken from her because she had dared to fly too close to the sun.

It could be a lie, an attempt by the woman to manipulate her, get rid of her and clear her own name. But the evidence laid out before her was undeniable. A conspiracy so meticulously crafted, so flawlessly executed. They had exploited her role in the Lady Death case, and everything that followed—every step she had taken—had been part of their plan, carried out unknowingly by her own doing.

She finds pics in the file. Videos. 

She screams until her throat burns apart. 

She wakes to the sound of the phone ringing. A sense of emptiness fills her. She feels lost, adrift as everything feels out of place, spiraling in a whirlwind with her at its center.

It's Jen. But she lets the call go straight to voicemail.

/

She took a drink before finding her way to The Road, yet everything remains starkly clear in her mind even though her beliefs, her truth have shattered into a thousand pieces, too small to gather. Her blood hums with the yearning for revenge once more, a hunger so raw and old it feels unearthly, fueled by the fire of a murderous woman. 

Darkness fills her from the inside out. It’s as liberating as it is suffocating. 

Her mother, when she was just a child, used to say she could see the evil in her eyes. A small girl that left the womb carrying the Beast within her and branded on her forehead. 

And now, all those years spent bending, pruning herself to fit the neat, proper boxes others demanded of her—those years of trimming away her wild, untamable nature—are unraveling. 

She feels the tightly bound edges of her life begin to tear, the skin she once wore, now too small, giving way. 

She rips at it. 

Pain has not been, since longer, just a feeling to her. It has been a companion, a phantom limb. She cannot see it, cannot touch it, but it has always been there, a part of her.

And that fury has been the fire that kept her warm and alive, breathing with purpose. But now, that same fire burns with such intensity that it threatens to consume her completely. She knows this flame will not simply guide her to the end—it will be the end. 

When she arrives at the bar, she drinks a little more. Just enough to blur the edges of the world and flirt with a young student, barely old enough to be her daughter, though it’s all innocent.

By the time she leaves, around 11 p.m., she waits for the black cloth around her mouth. 

When it comes, she welcomes its embrace.

She wakes up laughing, tied to the same chair.

She is sober enough now and admits that perhaps she didn’t think this through entirely. It’s a bit late to undo things, though, and here she is again.

This time, however, there’s another chair in the room, placed in front of her, and Lady Death sits forward, elbows on her knees, her skull-masked face resting in her hands, seeming amused.

“Well, that was an unexpected development,” she begins.

Agatha laughs.

“Well, I like to surprise.” She says.

“Did you like the drink at the bar?” The woman asks with a childlike curiosity. 

“Meh.” Agatha clicks her tongue and rolls her eyes.

“And the girl? Did you like her?” The muffled voice asks and Agatha raises an eyebrow.

“Jealous?”

“No.” She leans in, spinning the small curved dagger in her hand. “Not a jealous person, no.”

Agatha laughs. Man, this is messed up—even for her. How many agents can say they have had this kind of conversation with a serial killer? She just seems to have a knack for crossing paths with sick people. Figures—she’s always liked bad boys in books.

“Our first date didn’t go as I expected.” The skull head tilts to the side, empty eyes seeming to pierce through Agatha.

“Well, you killed six people just to talk to me, for a start.” Agatha reminds her. “It’s a bad omen.” 

She shrugs, “It’s unconventional, sure, but it got the job done annnd you are back for a second one. So, Yay! ” a falsely shy laugh and a joyful twist of hands in the air after, she asks: “Did you like it?”

Agatha scoffs.

“No, no. Tell me. Indulge me. We didn’t have much time last time.” She leans forward. “Is it different? When you see all those bodies with your name on them, does it feel different to you?”

Agatha stares into the dark eyes of the mask. The truth is—Agatha didn’t think about them. The men who had to die so she could be here. She doesn’t remember their names, where they were born, if they had children of their own. 

“We’re the same, then, you and I.” 

She leans back on the chair in a slow confident movement. 

The silence in the room is deafening. Agatha wants something to throw at her face, but there’s nothing.

“God,” the masked woman suddenly bursts out laughing, slapping her thigh like she just thought of the funniest thing. “It’s been sooo long since I’ve dated.”

“You call—this —dating?” Agatha spits. “A trail of dead bodies, my son in the middle, and bloody messages?”

The atmosphere shifts then, and the muffled voice becomes sharper, more shrill as she asks:

“Why don’t you want me?”

Agatha laughs.

“You are a killer. I am a cop. You know, incompatible work dynamics, and all, not exactly recommended. It can jeopardize the whole thing, can you believe it?” Agatha opens her mouth and eyes in a perfect imitation of disappointment and surprise.

Lady Death remains silent for a moment, then she laughs. Heartily. 

“The relationship or the work?” She questions, the skull-face mask tilted in that nonchalant way. Agatha only rolls her eyes. “In another life, I think you would really enjoy being with me.” Unfazed, she continues. 

Something lingers in her muffled voice, raw somehow. The detective scoffs mockingly and averts her gaze. Her heart is a steady thump-thump in its cage. 

The silence that meets her is weird—charged with something unknown to her. She can understand rage, anger, the tension that makes them pause to regroup and refill their weapons, but this one is new, sharper, personal, as if she knows something Agatha does not. 

Agatha sneers, “Ha. Ha. Over my dead body.” Her defiance is laced with poison. 

“I suppose you’ve seen the file.” The muffled voice redirects. 

Agatha shifts as best as she can in the chair and watches the serial killer before her. There’s no way to read her expression or her body, and none of the things she has learned about body language and analysis apply here. Except that in their dynamic, they always played the same game, and Agatha has indulged her far more than she should have. Jen was always there to remind her that she was evil incarnate, and had always been a little too fascinated by her killer.

“Why did you give me that?”

The woman shifts in her chair, leaning back against the rest, her arms crossed over her chest.

The silence hangs heavy in the air for a moment, thick with tension.  

“You really believed I caused your son’s death,” she finally says. Agatha furrows her brow.

“But why?” she growls.

“I don’t know, Agatha.” The woman snaps, “I suppose I have some principles, after all?” She half mocks, half sighs, as if tired of it all. “I didn’t do it. I would not accept being blamed for it.” 

Though it seemed impossible to believe, Agatha felt, deep down, the raw sincerity in those words like a physical blow that left her empty right after. Something in that statement, a cruel honesty, made her mind pause, if only for a splitting second. 

She had always been the one in control, the one who wielded lies and mind games like weapons, now she felt the noose tightening around her neck and she didn’t know how to react.

“And you needed closure.” The voice was cold behind the muffled tone, but something more lurked beneath her lines. “We can drag this out forever, if you want. We can stretch it till death do us part. But the truth, honey, is that it would mean you’d never truly know what happened, would you?” She feels a growing anger, mixed with something even more unsettling: understanding. “You’d waste away, consumed by your thirst for revenge.” The voice continued, now with mocking amusement. “And that, my dear, would be no fun for me at all.”

Agatha was left speechless, and the silence between them stretched out. Her heart thundered against her chest. Her mind scrambled, the words landing like a gut punch.

“The truth is: killing without you hunting me down has no appeal.”

It was so absurd, so wildly disproportionate, that Agatha had to resist the urge to look around for hidden cameras. This can’t be real. It felt like one of Ralph’s jokes, a cruel trick to force her crumble and sign a retirement letter. 

“You’re insane,” she hisses, the words leaving her lips almost involuntarily, a knee-jerk response to her bewilderment. 

“Ouch, my love. I thought that was already established.” The reply came swift and sharp. 

“Your name will always be stained in what happened.” She seethed. “Nothing in that file will ever see the light without bloodshed. There are too many big names in it, it will never hold up and I will never be able to make them pay for what they have done.”

“You know now.” She spoke, her voice almost sweet. “That’s what matters.”

Another silence followed, filling the room between them, and Agatha could feel the fury bubbling up again. 

The casual indifference with which the words fell from her lips stoked the flames of her anger, fueling the hatred that boiled in her veins. 

She fought against the restraints in the chair, her body trembling as she lashed out.

“What the hell do you want from me?” she screamed. 

“Nothing. The truth was a gift, for both of us,” she said. “You just have to accept it for what it is.”

“The truth will do me no good.” Agatha shrilled, her voice thick with disdain. “I wanted revenge.”

Revenge. The Cross she carried and would die on without true reparation. 

The assassin leaned back against the chair, relaxed, almost detached. 

“And now, you won’t get it.” She spoke with quiet understanding. “Are you trying to bargain with me?”

Her thrill is unmistakable, almost as if she had already anticipated this moment. 

The thought had not crossed Agatha's mind before, or perhaps it was left simmering behind the curtains, but now she sees it, feels it—the dangerous, seductive proposition. 

Justice would never come through the Court. Those files would be buried, erased, long before they ever reached the light of day. 

The CIA, the NSA, all tangled in the same web of corruption, with a line of influential names from the FBI pulling the strings in the shadows, would never allow it. 

The temptation was undeniable. 

Agatha’s mind drifted to the Salem Seven, her superiors, all of them—lying lifeless, their blood staining the bed they had made for themselves in a wreath of flowers crafted by her. 

Lady Death sat there—as the Serpent fallen from Eden—offering blood on a silver chalice with everything Agatha had ever wanted. 

The promise hung in the air between them like the knot on a rope ready for her to suffocate. 

“What would you want? What do you gain with all of this?” Agatha whispers. 

She is curious. And when in Hell, you might as well strike a deal with the Devil.

She remains still, her gaze locked on her, expressionless. 

The woman stands and steps closer, leaning down toward Agatha. The air grows thick with the closeness of her, the warmth of her body radiating toward Agatha’s own.

“You want redemption, is that it?” Agatha chooses to provoke when she is met with silence. The assassin stays by her side, so close that her covered arm brushes Agatha's shoulder. Agatha is trembling with anger. “Want to cleanse the blood of your hands on your way to Heaven?”

The laughter that bursts from the woman’s lips is loud, manic, an unsettling sound filling the room and creeping its way through her bones. But Agatha does not flinch. 

Lady Death moves closer to her face, her nose almost touching the plastic bones of the mask. Agatha is not able to see the true eyes behind the two narrow black holes, but it’s almost as if she can feel them.

“My love, I will get close to Heaven when I get what I want from you,” she chuckles into her ear.

There’s no way to avoid the shiver that runs through her whole body and the surprised breath that escapes her lips.

“Hell, then,” she corrects once she recovers.

“Call it what you want. We’ll be together anyway. Isn’t that perfect?” The voice behind the mask sounds unbearably sweet. A mix of a huff-laugh that is half mockery, half desperation escapes Agatha. “I would make Atonement for you. I would spill their blood for you, paint it in the history between you and me.” She whispers the offer in her ear. “I can bring you the revenge you want.”

The way the word rolls out of her tongue—it’s a poisonous elixir Agatha is dying to taste. 

“What are we playing?” she laughs scornfully. “Girls against God?” 

“No. But Death is a divine thing, we both know.”

Their gazes lock, unrelenting, a silent war simmering in the space between them. Agatha sneers, baring her teeth like a cornered predator. 

“Do you still want me dead?” The question slices through the moment, pulling it apart.

Agatha freezes, the words settling into the cracks of her resolve. What does one do when the object of their revenge no longer feels like the worst enemy?

Lady Death is still the bane of her existence, the shadow and echo in every corner of her thoughts, and likely the end of her career. But the certainty that once fueled Agatha’s rage waved.

Agatha does not know what to think. She may have not killed her son, but a lingering anger is still there, on the surface of her thoughts. She played with her. And the only way Agatha knows how to end something is winning it.

“I don’t think I know.” 

The answer comes out of her with an unsatisfied grunt. Agatha is good at lying, at manipulating, at bending others to her will, but there is something big and significant here, unknown and dangerous. 

She should have proceeded carefully from the start, but caution had never been her strength—she was the bullet in the chamber: once fired, there was no pulling her back. She had sealed herself and aimed blindly when she first went after her, a shot in the dark. From there, everything spiraled out of control.

A stray bullet wreaks more chaos than a targeted one. 

“Hmph. Guess we can work with that.” 

Agatha watches her intently. 

She is taller, slender, and carries with her a feline grace in all her movements; a sharp mind and a twisted spirit.  

People tend to dehumanize serial killers, thinking of them as monsters—some as a way to rationalize their fear, others to justify the violent fantasies, notions of justice in their own minds. But standing this close, Agatha can see clearly. She is no abstract nightmare, no sleepless terror. She’s made of flesh, blood and bones. And dangerous. 

“I still have to catch you.” Agatha's fingers twitch slightly, as if to reach something—control, resolve, the scrap of her sharpness. “It’s my job.”

“Oh, but I like to see you try,” the woman replies, her laugh dark and amused. The challenge is thick in the air and Agatha’s jaw tightens, her gaze narrowing. 

“You think you have all of me figured out, don't you?”

She steps closer, “I will do it when I get what I want from you,” she murmurs, her voice echoes in the air like the whisper in a sea-shell. “I’ll want something of yours—” she pauses and Agatha can feel the warmth of her breath against her ear, hear the edges in her tone. The sharp, hollow scrape of the mask’s bone-like lips brushes against Agatha’s skin; a kiss of death to seal the deal. “–No one else has. Something no one can take.”

Agatha exhales sharply, her thoughts racing. That’s easy, she thinks bitterly. There’s nothing left for her to lose. Anything this woman could want has already been taken.

/ 

Friday morning, she is back at the Bureau.

She notices the organized chaos as soon as she steps in, the task force finalizing the details for the operation.

Jen, Lilia, Alice, and the Teen are in a meeting room, a large board in front of them where Jen meticulously pins everything, color-coded. A total control freak.

Far away, Ralph is talking with someone on the phone as he moves his hands frantically in front of him. 

“Well, look who decided to show up,” Alice calls out. There is just a hint of reproach in her voice, but Agatha figures she can live with that.

Jen barely turns from where she’s standing, and Lilia and Billy only look mildly curious.

Agatha takes off her sunglasses. “One hell of a hangover…” she sighs dramatically.

The older woman rolls her eyes but slides a flask with coffee to her side.

The first sip makes Agatha spit it right back into the cup. “It’s cold.”

“It’d be hot if you’d been here on time.”

The bad taste in her mouth is definitely going to take a while to get over. 

Jen reviews the plan, informing her about the positioning of the undercover agents, the protocol, and the procedure they will follow. 

Across from her, Agatha lounges lazily in her chair. At one point, she closes her eyes and feigns sleep, a mischievous smirk tugging at her lips just to piss the other woman off. Jen’s patience snaps, obviously, and she launches a pen in Agatha’s direction. A low chuckle escapes her when she hears the dull thud of the thing meeting her shoulder. 

“You’re far too calm and lenient,” Jen says, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. “I don’t like it.”

At her words, every head in the room turns in Agatha’s direction. She exhales sharply, rolling her eyes at the sudden attention. 

“Relax,” Agatha says, her tone flippant. “I’m not in the mood for another lecture. And anyway, there’ll be sixty agents watching me like hawks to make sure I don’t pull out a special pen or whatever.” She shrugs. 

“Agatha,” Alice begins, her voice dipping into that maddeningly understanding tone—a tone that, coming from anyone else, would sound condescending. From Alice, though, it's just care. “We know how much you want to catch her.” 

Agatha bites back a laugh, the bitterness rising in her throat. Two years of her life had been sacrificed to a chase that only led her back to where she started.

Alice presses on, oblivious. “We really do understand. But if you’re planning anything—” 

Agatha shifts in her chair, her patience fraying with every word. The sympathy, no matter how well-meaning, grates against her, like a knife. 

In the end, her colleagues could never fathom what she has endured. If they knew even a fragment of the pain and grief she has lived with, that wounds her soul, they would understand; they would not be able to sit there, playing empathy, waiting for things to happen.

Her fingers curl into fists, and for a moment, she contemplates replying—laying it all bare. But there was no point doing it. 

Without a word, Agatha pushes herself up from her chair and leaves.

At 10 p.m., she is properly stationed at the bar, equipped only with a simple black Glock. The undercover agents are tactically scattered around the bar, with a tactical team on standby and snipers in position.

Unbothered, she hums and enjoys her whisky, her fingers drumming lightly on the bar, following the melody of a Jeff Buckley song the jukebox of the Bar is now playing.

At exactly 10:30 p.m., the bartender slides a sealed bottle of whiskey across the counter to her. A quick glance at the label tells her it’s one of the good ones—expensive, top-shelf.

Behind her, there’s a subtle stir of movement, but she focuses on the bottle. Tied around the cap is a small yellowish post-it note.

She knew the woman would not show up—not after their last two encounters. But of course, she still managed to leave a gift. Typical. She always had to have the last word. Agatha’s fingers move quickly, tearing the note off the cap, her heartbeat thundering in her ears as her eyes scan the message.

Just two words in bold, blocky Spanish: Te Veo.  

But what truly catches her off guard is the verso. The note is flipped to reveal a sketch: two different hands at opposite edges of the small paper, their index fingers extended toward each other. It is impressively realistic. A thin red thread, drawn with a red pen, winds sinuously across the paper and ties the fingers together. 

Her gaze drops to the bottle’s neck, where a small black heart dangles, tied with a ribbon.

They bombard the bartender with questions about the identity of the delivery person, but he doesn’t have an answer. The delivery was made by an Uber driver, who handed him the bottle along with her name and photo for identification and he eagerly handed them the crumpled paper he stuffed in his back pockets. He is so nervous he does not mention the post-it glued at the top of the bottle. 

They carefully pack the glass container to send to the forensic team, hoping to find a lead that could bring them closer to the serial killer.

But Agatha, silent and deliberate, tucked the note into her pocket. Its meaning, its weight pressed against her skin with the warmth of a secret. 

/

Apparently, she has finished every True Crime episode available, and now, with nothing else to watch, she flips through TV channels. The restless noise fills the void of her anxious, unoccupied mind until a chaotic scene on CNN catches her attention.

The name Lady Death flashes across the headline. Behind the reporter, planes and helicopters swarm like agitated hornets, her voice strained as she shouts the breaking news live on air.

“The bodies were discovered this morning. However, we’ve learned that signs of decomposition on some of them suggest the killings may have begun three days ago,” the journalist yells into the microphone.

The identities of two victims have leaked to the press: Radcliffe and Le Fay.

Agatha sinks into the sofa, her heart pounding as the realization crashes over her.

“We have yet to identify the other seven victims, but early reports indicate they are also federal agents–”

She rises abruptly, the reporter’s voice fading into static in her mind. Agatha doesn’t need further confirmation.

Lady Death has killed the Salem Seven.

The red thread of fate that binds them is woven in blood.

Agatha doesn’t know what to think, how to move, so she drinks. Whether to celebrate or to warm her frozen core, she cannot tell. She accessed the case from her home computer, her login granting her entry into the grim scene. The photos confirmed it—the signature was there. Nine lifeless bodies, pale with the bruise of death, each resting in a bed of red-spider lilies. But this time, two black hearts were entangled between the lilies of hell.

They are dead.

She can not stop the shiver that ripples through her or the frantic drumming of her heart against her throat. Her insides twist in on themselves, a storm of emotions so tangled and raw that she feels she might shatter. Her entire body shakes as she leans over the sink, retching twice, her shock spilling out in bitter waves.

Lady Death, the woman she’d sworn to kill less than a week ago, had killed the murderers of her son.

There is a cruel satisfaction in knowing they met their end by her hands. 

Two years searching for justice, vengeance. She has had them both. 

But what now? Now that the blood has been spilled, debts repaid—what is left?

She had been so consumed by her thirst for revenge that she never truly faced her grief. The lines between them blurred until she no longer knew where one began and the other ended. And now, she must face the tidal waves of mourning she had stuffed into a tiny boat, letting vengeance’s winds carry it far away.

Perhaps one day, she will see grief as the perseverance of the love she held for her son.

But today, she drinks.

She met Death. 

Death gave her a gift. 

She never had a pure, unblemished heart, so she accepted it. 

/

When Agatha's forced leave comes to an end, she steps out of the elevator cutting through the floor like a dancing star. 

But her confidence falters the moment she pushes open the glass door to the meeting room—only to find it locked.

She eyes the room. Everyone is inside, likely in the middle of the morning briefing that precedes any new cases or changes on the Upper Floors, all entertained, and no one acknowledges her presence. 

Agatha throws her hands up in frustration, exhaling sharply.

She never thought she’d feel this way, but she’s oddly relieved to see Teen coming in her direction. She frantically points to the closed doorknob and gestures for him to open it, but the little rascal merely looks at her with something bordering on pity and fear in his eyelined eyes, pressing a piece of paper against the glass.

It's a photo of her with a big red X slashed across her face. Below, the words ‘Entry forbidden until clearance from the Psychiatrist’ are written in bold letters. She blinks, then reads it again—then a third time, just to be sure. She peers at her own reflection in the glass, the X boldly marked over her face.

Oh, those little shit-heads. 

Of course this must be Jen’s and Ralph’s doing.

Agatha grunts, wanting to grab the paper and crumple it, but her hands find only air, and her nails click against each other in frustration.

When she lifts her gaze to Billy, he only shrugs, looking like a bird caught in the middle of a catfight.

She narrows her eyes at him and drags her finger in a torturously slow movement across her neck, her expression deadly serious until he hurries, wide-eyed, to his chair beside Lilia. 

She sighs in annoyance, stomping out of the building, her mind already racing with schemes to avenge her humiliation. 

The Health and Welfare Department floor—or whatever the hell the shithole it’s called—stands a few buildings away, and Agatha’s ears and head are practically steaming with frustration by the time she arrives.

The reception area is small and sterile, and a blonde woman is typing with her long nails at a computer behind a counter. The entire space feels clinically clean and minimalist, as if any color other than gray, white, or beige could send someone into a sensory overload. A soft classical melody hums quietly in the background.

Agatha marches toward her with a determined stride.

“I’m Special Agent Harkness. I believe you have an appointment for me.”

If they have gone to such lengths to prevent her from entering the fucking meeting room, they must have scheduled an appointment for her, too.

The woman types in her name and federal ID, and after several minutes of clicking that make Agatha shift her weight restlessly and huff impatiently, the woman looks up.

“Oh yes. It appears they’ve booked an entire morning for you, unsure of the hour you would come.”

Agatha huffs in exasperation. She’ll either be in and out of that room in two minutes, or Johann Schmidt will have a very different look by the time she’s through.

“Just wait here,” the woman says.

Agatha strides to an open window and gazes out at the calm street below. The movement of the trees in the gentle breeze and the soft hum of passing cars seem oddly peaceful at this time of day. Every minute, she checks the clock and the door she entered through for the last time years ago, as if her gaze could bewitch the doctor inside to appear.

When the clock strikes its eleventh minute and fifty seconds, Agatha feels her pulse quicken, her eyes glued to the door as though willpower bordering on witchcraft might force it open.

A faint creak after, the door opens and Agatha moves toward the wooden thing like a Maserati on a highway. But as she lifts her face, expecting to see Schmidt’s angular, cheekless face with overly bushy eyebrows, she stops short. 

No. This isn’t Schmidt.  

Instead, Agatha’s gaze locked onto a pair of round, chocolate-brown eyes that seemed to hold too much at once—curiosity, calculation, and something unreadable. The woman stood poised, dark hair cascading loose down her back, framing a sharp face. She wore tailored black pants and an emerald-green blouse, the fabric catching the light just enough to hint at its silken texture, and unbuttoned to suggest confidence without crossing into provocation. Her full lips, painted in a deep wine hue that teetered on black tint, curled into a thin, controlled smile.

Bold, Agatha thought, but it suits her elegantly. 

Her smile didn’t falter as she met Agatha’s furrowed brow, but it gained a sharper edge. 

“Where’s Dr. Schmidt?” Agatha demanded, her voice carrying an irritated tone that she didn’t bother to conceal.

It was a long trip to get here, and she wasn’t in the mood for surprises.

The woman’s eyes flickered—if with amusement or annoyance, Agatha could not tell.

“He has been reassigned to another department,” the woman replied, her voice smooth, her tone almost languid. “I have held his position for over a year now.”

Agatha blinked. A year? How she has never heard of this?

Standing in the center of the reception area, Agatha glanced around, shifting her weight on her feet, the sterile modern decor suddenly feeling stifling, as though the walls were closing in.

She does not like being taken by surprise. No, not at all.

Devils that you do not know can raise worse hells than the ones you do. 

Agatha’s eyes returned to the woman, scrutinizing her with quiet suspicion. She seemed young—early to mid-thirties, maybe, though her composure carried the weight of someone far more seasoned. Agatha was certain she’d never seen her around the main building before, and her instincts always screamed at her to tread carefully with every new person she met. 

The woman stepped aside, the fluid motion deliberate and unhurried as she gestured for Agatha to step through the open doorway, the invitation clear, though the faintest smirk tugged at the corners of her lips.

“I’m Agent Harkness,” Agatha said, her boots clicking against the polished floor as she stopped just short of the threshold.

The woman tilted her head slightly, testing the name on her tongue.

“Agent Harkness,” she repeated, her voice softening at the edges, wrapping around the syllables like she was tasting something sweet. Then she smiled—not the thin, guarded smile from before, but something warmer. Softer. 

“I am Dr. Rio Vidal,” she said at last, her tone steady, detached. “I have been waiting for you.”