Vivienne thought it would feel different.
She thought giving herself over would bring peace—a clean break from the parts that ached and flinched and remembered.
It didn't.
It felt like drowning slower.
It felt like learning to breathe water.
Carmen didn't coddle her afterward. She handed Vivienne a knife—smooth, cold, beautiful—and nodded once like a queen bestowing a crown.
Julian just watched, half-amused, half-bored, as if he had seen a thousand pawns rise and fall and was already counting the seconds before Vivienne crumbled too.
Vivienne clutched the knife tighter.
She wouldn't crumble.
If she was going to be hollowed out, she would make it matter.
---
Hargreave made his move the next night.
He didn't wait for permission.
Didn't wait for backup.
He found a man arrested for public drunkenness—a man who had scrawled spirals into his own cell wall, his mouth full of broken teeth, his mind cracked wide open.
Hargreave dragged him from the station before dawn, no paperwork, no explanations.
He took him to an abandoned warehouse near the river, threw him down onto the stone floor, and lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
"Who are they?" Hargreave demanded.
The man laughed—high and broken.
"You can't catch the wind," he croaked. "You can't catch the devil dancing."
Hargreave kicked him once, hard enough to crack ribs. The laughter broke into wet, gurgling coughs.
"You'll tell me," Hargreave said.
Not a threat.
A promise.
The man didn't speak after that.
He couldn't.
When the sun rose, Hargreave left him bleeding in the dark.
No names.
No leads.
Only blood under his nails.
And another ghost in his ribs.
---
Vivienne's first real assignment came two days later.
Carmen slid a photograph across the table without a word.
A man. Middle-aged. Clean-shaven. Expensive coat. Dead eyes.
"Lawyer," Julian said lazily, tapping ash into a cracked plate. "Defends the ones who pay enough to hide the bodies."
Vivienne picked up the photo with careful fingers.
"You'll make the first cut," Carmen said.
Vivienne nodded.
Her heart didn't race.
Her hands didn't shake.
She didn't know whether to be proud or terrified of that.
---
They caught him behind the theatre district, staggering drunk, jacket askew, mouth full of slurred apologies meant for women whose names he never bothered to remember.
Vivienne lured him easily.
A soft smile.
A flash of ankle.
A whispered promise of something he didn't deserve.
He followed her into the alley.
The knife was in her hand before he even realized the danger.
Carmen watched from the mouth of the alley.
Julian lingered further back, arms crossed.
Vivienne hesitated once—a flicker, a ghost of pity, the memory of the girl she used to be.
Then she drove the knife into his side, sharp and deliberate, and twisted.
The man gasped, blood bubbling from his lips.
Vivienne stepped back, watching him crumple with detached fascination.
Julian moved in quickly, finishing the work.
Carmen smiled—small, private—the way a teacher smiles when a pupil passes their first true test.
Later, back at the flat, Vivienne washed her hands under scalding water.
She scrubbed until her skin went raw, but the heat never touched the cold gnawing at her core.
She looked up into the cracked mirror and saw herself—pale, hollow-eyed, stitched together from bone and desperation.
And she smiled.
Because there was no going back.
Because Carmen had been right.
You don't survive by being good.
You survive by being useful.
Hargreave sat in his crumbling apartment, red thread stretched across the walls like a spiderweb spun by a mad god.
He lit another cigarette, the smoke thickening the air, and stared at the photo pinned at the spiral's center.
It wasn't Carmen.
It wasn't Julian.
It was Vivienne., Smiling
Unaware.
Already too far gone.
Hargreave tightened his grip around the whiskey bottle.
He wasn't chasing the monsters anymore.
He was chasing the ones they left behind.
And he was running out of time.
That night, Carmen stood on the rooftop with Julian, watching the city sprawl out below them like a wounded animal waiting for the final blow.
"They're starting to notice," Julian said, lighting a cigarette.
Carmen smiled faintly.
"Let them."
Julian blew out smoke, the wind tearing it apart.
"And if they come for us?"
Carmen turned to him, her eyes dark and endless.
"Then we show them what it means to bleed for nothing."
Julian smiled back—sharp, crooked, real.
He loved her most in moments like this.
Not when she was beautiful.
But when she was monstrous.
Not when she was a woman.
But when she was an idea.
Unstoppable.
Unforgivable.
His reflection in better skin.
They stood together, side by side, as the city gasped and trembled below them.
the spiral turned tighter.
And the knives stayed sharp.
And the night promised blood.