POV: Amber Hayes
The voices woke me at exactly 3:47 AM.
"Marcus Chen needs to disappear before Friday's hearing."
I sat straight up in bed, heart slamming against my ribs. The voice was male, cold, and coming from my wall. The wall that faced nothing but a brick exterior and a twenty-foot drop to the alley below.
"Make it look like suicide," a woman's voice answered. "He's depressed. Everyone knows it. Stage it in his office Thursday night after the cleaning crew leaves."
My hands shook as I grabbed my phone from the nightstand, nearly dropping it twice. This wasn't real. This couldn't be real. I'd been stressed, sure. Barely sleeping, definitely. But hearing voices discussing murder through solid brick?
I was losing my mind.
"Use his own pills," the man continued. "Overdose, plus alcohol. Security footage shows him working late all week. No one will question it."
I pressed record on my phone and held it against the wall, my breath coming too fast. The voices were so clear, like the speakers were standing right next to me. I could hear the woman's fingernails tapping against something hard. I could hear ice clinking in a glass.
"What about his family?" the woman asked.
"Wife's cheating on him. She'll be relieved. The mistress won't talk—she's married too. Chen's clean, easy, profitable."
My stomach turned. They were planning to kill someone named Marcus Chen, and they talked about it like ordering coffee.
The conversation continued for three more minutes. They discussed timing, security cameras, how to access his office building. Every horrible detail laid out like a business meeting.
Then silence.
I sat frozen, phone clutched in my sweaty palm, staring at the wall like it might sprout mouths and start screaming. My tiny studio apartment suddenly felt like a coffin. The early morning darkness pressed against my windows. Outside, San Francisco slept, completely unaware that I was either going insane or somehow hearing murder plans through impossible walls.
I stopped the recording with trembling fingers and played it back.
Silence. Just my own ragged breathing and the creak of my mattress.
"No," I whispered. "No, no, no."
I played it again. Same result. The voices that had been crystal clear were now just... gone. Like they'd never existed.
I dropped the phone and pressed both hands against my face. This was it. I'd finally snapped. Eight months of hell had broken something in my brain, and now I was hallucinating murder conspiracies through my walls at 3:47 in the morning.
My therapist—back when I could afford a therapist—had warned me about this. Extreme stress, isolation, trauma. She'd used words like "disassociation" and "psychotic break" in that gentle voice they use when they think you're fragile.
Turned out she was right.
I grabbed my laptop from the floor and opened it, squinting against the blue light. My fingers flew across the keyboard, typing everything I'd heard before I forgot the details. Old habits died hard—even broke, disgraced journalists documented everything.
Marcus Chen. CEO. Thursday night. Office. Suicide staging. Friday hearing.
I stared at the words. They looked insane typed out like that. But what if—
No. I wasn't doing this. I wasn't chasing another story based on "anonymous sources" and gut feelings. That's what destroyed my entire life last time.
I slammed the laptop shut and lay back down, pulling my threadbare blanket up to my chin. Sleep. I just needed sleep. In the morning, this would seem ridiculous. A stress dream. An overactive imagination.
But I didn't sleep. I stared at the ceiling, counting the water stains and trying not to think about the voices. Trying not to think about anything.
At 6:30 AM, my alarm screamed. I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled to my pathetic excuse for a kitchen—a hot plate, a mini fridge, and a microwave that only worked half the time. The apartment was the size of a shoebox, with peeling paint and a bathroom so small I could touch both walls while sitting on the toilet.
This was my life now. This shoebox. This poverty. This crushing, suffocating failure.
I made instant coffee with lukewarm tap water because my hot plate was broken and drank it while checking my bank account on my phone.
Balance: $127.42
My chest tightened. I had three articles due today for the clickbait website that paid me fifty dollars per piece. If I wrote fast and didn't eat lunch, I could make $150 by tonight. That would cover this week's bus fare and maybe some ramen.
It wouldn't cover the $8,000 I owed the hospital.
My phone buzzed. A text from the hospital billing department, because apparently they started work at the crack of dawn specifically to torture people.
PAYMENT OVERDUE: $8,000 balance must be paid within 14 days or treatment will be suspended. Contact our office to discuss payment options.
I threw my phone onto the bed and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes, refusing to cry. Crying was useless. Crying didn't pay for my little sister's cancer treatment.
Lily. Sweet, brave, sixteen-year-old Lily who'd done nothing to deserve leukemia except have the bad luck of being related to me. She was dying, and I couldn't save her.
The voices whispered in my memory. Marcus Chen needs to disappear.
I shook my head violently. No. That was my broken brain inventing problems I could solve because I couldn't solve the real one. Classic avoidance behavior.
I spent the morning writing garbage. "Ten Celebrity Breakups That Shocked Us!" "You Won't Believe What This Child Star Looks Like Now!" "These Kitchen Hacks Will Change Your Life!"
Each word felt like swallowing glass. I used to write articles that mattered. Investigations that exposed corruption and protected people. I'd been nominated for a Pulitzer at twenty-seven.
Now I wrote clickbait about celebrities I didn't care about for an audience that would forget the article thirty seconds after reading it.
By noon, I'd finished two articles and felt like I'd aged ten years. I ate saltine crackers for lunch because they were cheap and didn't require cooking.
My phone rang. Lily's number. I answered before the second ring.
"Hey, bug," I said, forcing brightness into my voice. "How are you feeling?"
"Tired." Lily's voice was softer than last week. Weaker. "But I wanted to hear your voice. You sound weird. What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. Just working." The lie tasted bitter.
"You're a terrible liar, Amber." A pause. "Is it the money? Did they call again?"
Guilt crashed over me. My baby sister, fighting cancer, was worried about me and money. "Don't think about that. That's my job."
"I heard the nurses talking yesterday. They said if you can't pay—"
"I'll pay," I interrupted. "I promise, Lily. I'll figure it out."
Another pause. "You always figure it out. You're like... a superhero or something."
I laughed, and it sounded broken even to my own ears. "I'm not a superhero, bug. I'm just your sister."
"Same thing," she said firmly. Then, softer: "I love you. Even when you're being weird and won't tell me what's wrong."
"I love you too. More than anything."
After we hung up, I sat on my bed staring at nothing. Superhero. Right. A superhero who'd destroyed an innocent man's career with a fake story, lost everything, and now couldn't even afford to save her own sister.
Some hero.
I opened my laptop to write the third article and saw my notes from this morning.
Marcus Chen. CEO. Thursday night. Office. Suicide staging. Friday hearing.
Against my better judgment, I opened a browser and typed "Marcus Chen CEO San Francisco."
The search results loaded. My heart stopped.
Marcus Chen. CEO of BioLife Pharmaceuticals. Currently under investigation for securities fraud. Major SEC hearing scheduled for Friday morning.
My hands went numb.
The hearing. They'd mentioned a hearing. And he was real. Marcus Chen was a real person.
I clicked on his photo. Fifty-something, tired eyes, thinning hair. He looked exhausted. He looked... depressed.
Make it look like suicide. He's depressed. Everyone knows it.
"No," I whispered. "This is coincidence. You heard a name, your brain invented the rest, and now you're connecting dots that aren't there."
But my fingers were already typing: "Marcus Chen depression."
News articles from three months ago. Chen's wife filing for divorce. His company's stock plummeting. Rumors of mental health struggles.
Wife's cheating on him. She'll be relieved.
I slammed the laptop shut so hard the screen cracked. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening.
The voices weren't real. They couldn't be real.
But what if they were?
What if someone was actually planning to murder Marcus Chen on Thursday night and make it look like suicide? What if I was somehow hearing real murder plans through my walls?
And if I did nothing, would I be responsible when he died?
My phone buzzed with an email notification. Another rejection from a newspaper I'd applied to. The subject line read: RE: Your Application - Position Filled
The body of the email was two sentences: Thank you for your interest. Unfortunately, given your history of fabricated sources, we cannot consider your application at this time.
My history. The article about Dante Cross, the prosecutor I'd destroyed with fake evidence I thought was real. The article that had ruined us both.
I couldn't trust my own judgment anymore. My "sources" had been fabricated. My "instincts" had been wrong. I'd destroyed an innocent man because I'd been too arrogant to verify my facts.
And now I was hearing voices through walls and playing detective again?
I'd learned nothing.
But what if I was right this time?
I grabbed my phone and pulled up Marcus Chen's company website, found his office address. Downtown San Francisco, fourteenth floor.
Thursday night. After the cleaning crew leaves.
Today was Tuesday.
I had two days to decide if I was crazy or if I'd somehow stumbled into hearing real murder plans. Two days to figure out if I should do something or if doing something would just destroy another innocent person's life—or my own sanity.
The smart choice was obvious: do nothing. See a doctor. Get back on medication. Ignore the voices and focus on earning money for Lily's treatment.
The stupid choice was equally obvious: investigate. Try to verify. Maybe save a life.
I'd made the stupid choice before, and it had cost me everything.
But Marcus Chen's tired face stared at me from my cracked laptop screen, and I thought about Lily saying I was a superhero, and I knew—with absolute certainty—that I was about to make the stupid choice again.
Because that's what broken people do. We keep breaking things, hoping that eventually, something will fix us instead.
I picked up my phone and typed a name into the search bar, my heart pounding so hard I could barely breathe.
Dante Cross prosecutor.
His photo loaded. Ice-blue eyes, sharp jaw, an expression that could cut glass. The man I'd destroyed. The man who probably hated me more than anyone alive.
The man who prosecuted murderers for a living and might actually believe me.
Or might destroy me completely just for the satisfaction of revenge.
The cursor blinked in the search bar. My finger hovered over his office contact information.
And then my apartment went completely dark.
Not just the lights—everything. My laptop died. My phone screen went black. Even the digital clock on my microwave disappeared.
But my apartment was on a different circuit than the hallway. A building-wide outage wouldn't affect just my unit.
Someone had cut my power specifically.
My hands started shaking again, but this time not from stress or fear of insanity.
This time from the very real understanding that someone knew I'd heard something I shouldn't have.
And they were coming to make sure I never told anyone.
The doorknob rattled in the darkness.