Chapter 3: The Echo of a Scream
The safe house was a stale-aired apartment above a shuttered bakery, smelling of dust and forgotten bread. Nancy Drew sat on a worn floral couch, her fingers tapping a silent, frantic rhythm on her laptop case. Pennyworth stood at the window, peering through the blinds at the rain-slicked street below. The silence between them was a live wire, humming with the unspoken words from McAfee's note: CHARACTER 'N. DREW' — PENDING REVIEW.
Morsh's voice, gruff and urgent, crackled from Pennyworth's phone on speaker. "We've got a problem. A big one."
"Define it," Pennyworth said, his gaze not leaving the empty street.
"It's Emily Page."
The name landed in the room like a stone down a well. Nancy's head snapped up. "The federal prosecutor? The one who took down the DeLuca syndicate?"
"The same. Her assistant found her in her home office twenty minutes ago. Preliminary report says cardiac arrest. Natural causes."
Pennyworth turned from the window, his expression hardening. "How old is she?"
"Forty-two. Fit. No history." Morsh's pause was heavy. "And get this. On her desk, right next to her cold coffee, was a page from a legal pad. Two words written in her own hand, like she was drafting a note to herself."
"What did it say?" Nancy asked, her voice tight.
"It said: 'I AUTHORIZE.'"
The air in the safe house turned to ice.
I AUTHORIZE. The final, terrible echo of Jonathan Briggs' ledger. Not a record of a crime committed by others, but a confession. A signature.
"She was one of them," Nancy breathed, horror dawning. "A client. The prosecutor. She authorized hits from the bench."
"Worse," Pennyworth said, the architecture of the conspiracy snapping into a clearer, more horrifying shape. "She wasn't just a client. Look at the pattern. Briggs was the bookkeeper. McAfee was the banker. Page was the legal authority. She didn't just authorize payments; she authorized outcomes. She closed the cases. She made the 'edits' legally tidy." He began to pace, the pieces falling into a monstrous order. "They're not just killing people. They're erasing them, with every step of the process managed by a professional: finance, law enforcement, the courts. A full-service annihilation package."
Morsh grunted in agreement over the line. "Forensics is all over Page's house. But it's clean. Impeccably clean. Just like Briggs' alley. Just like McAfee's lobby."
"Cardiac arrest can be induced," Pennyworth stated flatly. "Air embolism. Undetectable poison. It's an edit that writes its own cause of death: 'natural.' The cleanest cut of all."
His phone buzzed in his hand—a second call, from a blocked number. He looked at Nancy, then at the phone. "Morsh, stand by."
He switched lines, putting the new call on speaker. "Hale."
The voice was different this time. Not the calm, smooth tone from the alley. This one was older, weary, with a gravelly texture that spoke of authority and exhaustion. It was the voice of a headmaster, or a funeral director.
"Detective Hale. You're assembling the cast, I see. The Miser, the Banker, the Judge." A sigh whispered through the speaker. "You're a perceptive reader. But you're reading too fast. You're missing the genre."
"What genre is that?" Pennyworth asked, his voice devoid of emotion.
"A tragedy," the voice said simply. "One about a good detective who followed a plot into a labyrinth with no exit. Emily Page understood tragedy. She appreciated the necessary, sad endings. Her death, while regrettable, preserves the dignity of the larger narrative."
"You killed her because we were getting close."
"Weedited her," the voice corrected, a hint of sharpness entering its weary tone. "Her chapter was concluding with a lack of conviction. She was wavering. Sentiment is the enemy of a good story. It creates loose ends." The voice paused. "You have a loose end with you right now, Detective. The journalist. Her draft is… melodramatic. Unprofessional. It lacks the subtle hand."
Nancy stiffened, her knuckles white where she gripped the couch.
"She's under my protection," Pennyworth said.
"Your protection?" The voice actually chuckled, a dry, rustling sound. "You are a character in this story, Detective Hale. Not the author. You do not grant protection. You can only delay the inevitable punctuation." The tone shifted back to business. "Emily Page's passing creates a vacancy. A position of narrative oversight. The story must continue to be told cleanly. We are offering you a choice."
Pennyworth's eyes met Nancy's. "What choice?"
"Close the book on the journalist. Rule her a suicide, driven by the guilt of fabricating her wild conspiracy theories. In return, you assume the vacant seat. You become the new arbiter of justice. The detective who knows when to stop detecting. You would have power, Hale. Real power. To not just solve stories, but to choose which ones are worth telling."
The offer hung in the dusty air, grotesque and terrifying in its logic. It wasn't a bribe. It was a promotion to editor.
"And if I refuse?" Pennyworth asked.
The weary sigh returned. "Then you cease to be a compelling character. You become a plot hole. And plot holes… get filled." The line went dead.
Silence pressed in on the safe house. The rain tapped against the window.
Nancy stared at him, a thousand questions in her eyes, but only one mattered: What do we do now?
Morsh's voice barked from the other line, which Pennyworth had kept open. "Hale? Hale! What the hell was that?"
Pennyworth switched back. "That was the casting director." His mind was racing, the map of the labyrinth now showing its first true turn. "Emily Page's death isn't a setback. It's a clue. A huge one."
"How? She's dead!"
"Exactly.She was the legal arm. With her gone, the system has a weakness. They can't make the edits stick legally, not without a new prosecutor in their pocket. That takes time. It creates a bottleneck." He looked at Nancy, a new, fierce intensity in his gaze. "It creates a deadline. We have until they appoint or compromise her successor to expose this. After that, the machine is oiled and running again."
"So we go public with what we have?" Nancy asked, hope flaring.
"No," Pennyworth said. "What we have is a dead accountant, a dead lawyer, a dead banker, and a notebook of paranoid scribbles. It's a conspiracy theory. It gets laughed out of the room and we both have 'accidents.'" He picked up the evidence bag with the etched bullet, the pen nib gleaming. "We need the pen. Not the ink. We need the Author."
His own phone buzzed again. A text, from the same blocked number. It was a photograph.
It showed a quiet, tree-lined street. A modest colonial house with a cheerful yellow door. A bicycle lay on its side in the driveway.
Beneath the photo, a caption:
Setting: 221 Marigold Lane. Characters: The Hale Family. Current Status: Uninvolved.
Genre: Can be changed from Domestic Drama to Tragedy.
Author's Discretion.
A cold, primordial fear, one he had disciplined himself never to feel, shot through Pennyworth's veins. It was his parents' house.
The next text arrived:
The choice is yours, Detective. Write the next chapter.
Will it be a promotion… or an obituary?
The screen went dark.
Nancy saw the color drain from his face. "Pennyworth? What is it?"
He didn't answer. He was no longer just in a labyrinth.
He was standing at its center, and the walls were closing in on everyone he had ever loved.
The game had just become personal. And the Author, it seemed, knew his protagonist's backstory intimately.