The world tasted like copper and battery acid. It always did when Leo was close to breaking. Ezra could smell it on him the sour tang of fear masquerading as control. He'd smelled it in Breckenville, too, in the seconds after the match left his fingers. Leo had hidden in the hydrangea bushes, a silent, trembling statue, while the world burned bright and loud.
Some things never changed.
Now, Leo was trembling over a boy. A pretty, skittish thing named Avery who drew pictures and bit his lip and didn't know he was already a belonging. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetic. Leo's love was a quiet, creeping mold. Ezra's was a wildfire. Both got the job done, but only one was honest.
He'd let Mila go. A tactical decision. A kindness, for Leo. A piece moved on the board. But the game was getting crowded. The new player the ghost in the wires, the one who called themself 'U' was interesting. They had style. Flickering lights. Unlocking doors from afar. It was a clean, modern kind of terror. Ezra respected it, even as he planned to gut it.
He stood in the shadow-draped parking lot behind the all-night grocery, watching Avery's apartment building. Leo thought he was the only one who watched. Leo was an idiot. Watching was boring. Ezra was waiting for the pull.
That's what he called it. The magnetic tug in his gut that told him when the chaos was ripe, when the fracture lines in someone's sanity were about to split wide open. He felt it for Leo constantly. He'd started feeling it for Avery the moment he saw the boy's photo on Leo's wall not the posed ones, but the candid, the one where he was crying. Beautiful.
His phone vibrated. U.
U: He's alone in the dark. The door is unlocked. The lamb is in the field. Where is the wolf?
Ezra's mouth curved. The ghost was trying to direct him. To use him as a blunt instrument. Cute.
He typed back, his thumb smearing grease from the knife he'd been sharpening earlier onto the screen.
E: Wolves are predictable. I'm the lightning strike. I come when I want.
He shoved the phone away and lit a cigarette, the flare of the match a tiny, satisfying echo of a bigger fire. He didn't need a ghost to tell him when to hunt. He could feel Avery's fear from here, a thin, high-pitched whine only he could hear, vibrating through the concrete and night air.
He thought about going up. Not to hurt him. Never to hurt him that was the rule, the one line Leo had drawn in blood and Ezra, for once, had agreed to. No, he'd go up to look. To stand in the doorway of that dark room and let Avery see him. Let him understand that the monster wasn't under the bed; it was holding the door open, smiling.
But that was Leo's move. The dramatic reveal. Ezra's work was messier, and it happened in the wings.
His real problem wasn't Avery, or even the digital ghost. It was Leo. His brother was softening, getting lost in the fantasy of romance, forgetting what they were. What he was. He needed a reminder. They both needed to remember Breckenville.
The memory was a warm, familiar blanket. The smell of gasoline, not the cheap kind, the good, high-octane stuff his father kept for the boat. The sound of his mother's shrill voice finally, finally stopping. And Leo's eyes, through the kitchen window, wide as dinner plates, full of a terror so complete it was almost worship. In that moment, Ezra had understood his purpose: he was the fire. Leo was the one who got to stand in the warmth afterwards and pretend he'd never seen the match.
Avery was their new warmth. And Leo was forgetting who provided the heat.
The pull in his gut intensified, sharpened, twisting from Avery's building towards the affluent part of town. Not towards prey. Towards another predator.
The ghost. U.
They'd gotten sloppy. Sent a signal just a fraction too long. Ezra had people not friends, but useful, broken people who lived in the digital sewers and he'd put out a simple bounty: find a signal that shouldn't be there, hunting the same thing he was.
A location pinged back. Not a home address. A place. The old city archive building, mostly digitized, mostly empty at night. A perfect nest for a ghost who liked to dig up the past.
Ezra crushed his cigarette under his heel. A smile split his face, the kind that showed too many teeth. He wouldn't tell Leo. This wasn't about protecting Avery anymore. This was about claiming the hunt.
He loved his brother. He really did. It was a corrosive, possessive love, the only kind he knew. And part of loving Leo was protecting him from his own weakness. Protecting their secret. Protecting their property.
The ghost in the archive was a threat to all three.
He got in his car, a nondescript, powerful thing that smelled of oil and old violence. He didn't speed. He drove with a serene purpose, the knife a comfortable weight against his ribs.
He didn't think about what he would do when he found them. The action would reveal itself. It always did. Maybe he'd just talk. Maybe he'd show them the knife. Maybe he'd show them what the knife could do. It depended on the ghost. Were they a talker? A screamer?
The archive building loomed, a dark slab of concrete and glass. A single light glowed on the top floor, in the records room. Of course.
Ezra slipped inside through a service door he'd jimmied weeks ago during a different game. The interior was a maze of shelving units holding dusty boxes of dead people's paperwork. The air was cold and still.
He didn't bother with stealth. His boots echoed on the linoleum. Let the ghost hear him coming. Let them sweat.
He found the stairs and took them two at a time, a rising tide of anticipation in his chest.
The door to the records room was ajar. Light spilled out. He could hear the frantic, quiet click of a keyboard.
Ezra paused at the threshold. He could see the back of a chair, a head of hair, lit by the blue glow of multiple monitors. The screens were a mosaic of stolen moments: Avery in class, Avery walking home, security feeds, chat logs.
His own face flashed on one screen a grainy still from a traffic camera.
The ghost wasn't just watching Avery. They were watching everything.
"Nice setup," Ezra said, his voice loud in the silent room.
The figure in the chair jerked, spinning around.
It wasn't a man. It was a woman. Younger than he expected. Plain-faced, with sharp, intelligent eyes that held no fear, only a furious, calculating shock. She wore librarian clothes, but her hands were poised over the keyboard like a concert pianist's.
She recovered quickly, her shock hardening into something cold and assessing. "Ezra Maddox. Or should I call you Elias?"
He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms. "Call me whatever you want. You'll be screaming it in a second anyway."
She didn't flinch. "You're more impulsive than your brother. I calculated a 70% chance he'd come first. I underestimated your… territorial instincts."
"You've been digging in our box," Ezra said, taking a step into the room. His eyes scanned the screens. He saw a birth certificate. His. With the name Elias Blackwood. He saw the police report from Breckenville, the word "ARREST" redacted but visible. He saw a photo of his parents, pre-fire, smiling. Rage, hot and sweet, flooded his veins. "That's not your stuff."
"It's history," she said calmly, though her knuckles were white on the armrests. "Public record. Avery deserves to know the history of the men who are obsessed with him."
"Avery," Ezra said, rolling the name around like a hard candy, "is ours. You're just noise."
"He's a person," she snapped, a flicker of real emotion breaking through her clinical facade. "Not a prize for you and your psychotic brother to fight over."
Ezra laughed, a short, sharp bark. "You're one to talk. Look at this!" He gestured wildly at the wall of screens. "You've got more cameras on him than we do. What's your excuse? Huh? 'True love'?"
Her expression tightened. "It's not about love. It's about understanding. He's perfect. A perfect subject. And you… you're a variable. A fascinating, violent variable, but one that needs to be… accounted for. Or eliminated."
He was in front of her desk now, looming over her. He could see the pulse hammering in her throat. Finally, a little fear. Good.
"Eliminated?" he purred. "You and what army, ghost?"
She looked up at him, and in her eyes, he didn't see terror. He saw a fanatic's gleam. "You think you're the most dangerous thing in this room?"
It was the wrong thing to say.
The pull in his gut became a singular, clear command.
His hand shot out, not for the knife, but for her throat. He wanted to feel the flutter of her panic under his palm, watch the understanding dawn that her data, her calculations, meant nothing against the pure, physical fact of him.
But as his fingers brushed her skin, a searing, white-hot pain exploded in his side. He gasped, looking down.
She'd stabbed him. Not with a knife. A sleek, vicious-looking titanium pen, driven hard between his ribs.
He stumbled back, more surprised than hurt. The pain was a distant, interesting thing. He looked at the pen protruding from his jacket, then back at her.
She was standing now, breathing hard, the clinical mask gone, replaced by the feral look of a cornered animal who'd just bitten the wolf.
"Variable accounted for," she hissed.
Ezra looked at her. Really looked. At the fury, the obsession, the complete lack of self-preservation. She wasn't a ghost. She was a mirror. A cracked, distorted mirror reflecting his own madness back at him.
A laugh bubbled up from his chest, wet and pained. He pulled the pen out, a fresh bloom of warmth blood spreading under his shirt. He tossed it on the desk with a clatter.
"Oh," he grinned, blood on his teeth. "This is so much better than I thought."
He took a step toward her again, and this time, he drew his knife. The real one. The steel sang in the fluorescent light.