The homicide unit's briefing room was too bright for the conversation they were about to have.White walls. White ceiling. A rectangle of harsh fluorescent light buzzing overhead. A long table scored with pen marks and old coffee stains. A whiteboard at the far end, wiped clean but still faintly shadowed with the ghosts of past diagrams—names, arrows, circles that had refused to make sense.Lara Hayes stood at the whiteboard, arms crossed, jaw tight. Captain Doyle sat at the end of the table, fingers steepled, expression carved from stone. Two detectives Adrian knew only by last name—Mendez and Farrow—occupied chairs along the side, their open notebooks like shields in front of them.Adrian placed his phone face-up on the table.Three lines of text glowed on the screen.You see her now, don't you?
She was tired. You would have let her keep suffering.
I'm glad you're watching.
It's lonely being the only one who understands what mercy looks like.No number. No ID.Lara had already read them once in the corridor, her face draining of what little color it had left. Now she stared again, as if sheer focus might squeeze more information from the pixels.Doyle hadn't spoken since he'd walked in, taken one look at the messages, and sat down slowly."You're sure this isn't some sick joke from a reporter friend?" Mendez asked, trying for flippant and landing closer to nervous.Adrian didn't look at him."No reporter I know uses the word 'mercy' without three adjectives and a metaphor," he said.Lara almost snorted. Almost.Doyle dragged his hand down his face, as if wiping off a mask that wouldn't come off."Walk me through this," he said, voice low. "From the store to now. Slowly."Adrian did.He told them about the convenience store, about Aziz, about the years of late-night coffee and energy drinks. About Lena asking if his head ever felt full of wasps. About the hooded figure waiting on the corner three weeks ago, still as a nailed-down shadow.He told them about standing where that man had stood, feeling the shape of the street. About the balconies, the worn stool that faced the door. About the sense of a stage, of ownership.He told them about the messages.He did not tell them about the faint, traitorous flicker of relief he'd felt when the second text appeared. That part belonged only to him.When he finished, the room was quiet.Mendez tapped his pen against his notebook, soft, quick clicks. Farrow watched the phone like it might start bleeding.Lara broke the silence first."We can trace it, right?" she said, looking from Adrian to Doyle. "Number or not, there's a record. Towers. Servers. Something."Doyle nodded once, already reaching for the phone."With your permission," he said to Adrian.Adrian slid the device closer across the table."Of course," he said. "I've backed up the messages. You can keep it until your techs pull what they can."Doyle picked up the phone with a care he didn't usually show fragile things."We'll get Cyber on this immediately," he said. "Even if he used a burner, there's routing, timing, something. People like to believe they're ghosts on the network. They're not.""He knows enough to hide his number," Farrow said. "He might know more.""He might," Adrian agreed. "But he sent this while I was still parked in front of Lena's building. That's impulsive, for him."Mendez frowned. "Impulsive? He wrote a full sentence about mercy. Doesn't scream impulse to me."Adrian shook his head."In his own structure, it is," he said. "The crime scene was meticulous. The sentence on the wall was curated. This—" he nodded at the phone in Doyle's hand "—was immediate. Responsive. He saw an opportunity and took it.""So?" Mendez said. "What does that give us? Besides the knowledge that he knows your number."Lara's gaze sharpened."That's a point," she said. "How did he get your number, Adrian? It's not on your card, just your name."Mendez and Farrow both looked at him now, curiosity edged with suspicion.Adrian's hands rested flat on the table, fingers relaxed."Possibilities," he said. "He could have accessed internal police records—Hayes has me listed as a consultant on multiple cases. He could have gotten it through someone like Elias Ward, if he's been following coverage of old investigations. Or…" He let the word hang for a moment. "He could have had it before this ever started.""Before Lena," Lara repeated. "Before the messages.""Yes," Adrian said.Farrow leaned forward. "You saying he might be someone you know?""I'm saying he might be someone who has known about me for some time," Adrian replied. "Directly, indirectly. My lectures. University. Past cases."Mendez whistled under his breath. "Great. So our suspect pool is now 'every unstable mind Adrian Cole has ever impressed.' That's, what, half the city?"Lara shot him a look. He shut up. Mostly.Doyle turned the phone so the messages faced him again."'You see her now, don't you?'" he read aloud. "That implies… what? That you should have seen her before?""He believes I overlooked her," Adrian said. "Or that the world did, and I am the world's representative in his mind.""Arrogant," Farrow muttered."Lonely," Adrian corrected. "The last line says it plainly. 'It's lonely being the only one who understands what mercy looks like.'"Lara laced her fingers together, knuckles whitening."Let's talk about that word," she said. "Mercy.""It's not a word you use to describe slicing someone's throat," Mendez said. "Unless you're sick."Adrian considered that."Mercy implies suffering beforehand," he said. "You don't speak of mercifully killing someone who was perfectly content. In his mind, Lena's life was worse than her death. He sees himself not as the origin of her pain, but as its end.""He thinks he put her out of her misery," Lara said slowly."Yes," Adrian said. "And that's important. He's built himself a moral framework. Twisted, but coherent to him. That makes him more dangerous than someone who kills for chaos. He has rules."Doyle's eyes narrowed slightly."Rules can be used against him," he said. "If we understand them."Adrian inclined his head in agreement."He researches," he continued. "He observed Lena long enough to know about her sleep, her scars, her routine. He chose someone whose suffering was quiet, invisible. That allows him to maintain the illusion that he is… correcting an injustice.""By making her worse off," Farrow said. "By making her dead.""In his calculus, those aren't equivalent," Adrian said. "That's what we need to grasp. Not accept, not sympathize with—but understand. To him, death is a final stillness. Suffering is an ongoing scream. He believes he traded one for the other. That's the 'mercy' in his mind.""So he targets people he sees as… already broken?" Lara asked. "People who won't be missed loudly?""Yes," Adrian said. "At least at this stage. People who slip between cracks, whose pain is private. That gives him two things he wants: a justification, and a reduced risk."Mendez flipped his pen between his fingers."Justification I get," he said. "He tells himself he's doing them a favor. Reduced risk?""Less noise," Adrian said. "Fewer people looking for her in the crucial hours before and after. Fewer cameras, fewer witnesses. If she had a loud social circle, she'd be flooded with calls, messages, visits. Someone would notice a silence quicker. With Lena, the gap was wider."Lara nodded reluctantly."Her work didn't expect her this morning," she said. "She had taken two days off. Her landlord only found her because he does early rent rounds. If he hadn't… she could have sat there until the weekend.""And he knows that kind of detail," Adrian said. "Or he intuits it. He's choosing cases where the world is already looking away."Farrow's jaw worked."So he thinks he's a kinder executioner than life itself," he said. "Perfect.""Not kinder," Adrian said. "More decisive. Life, to him, tortures slowly and incompetently. He gives what he perceives as a clean end."Lara's voice came out sharper than before."You're speaking like you admire his logic," she said.Adrian met her eyes."I respect the danger of any coherent logic applied to murder," he said. "That's different from admiration."Doyle cleared his throat."Focus," he said. "Practical questions. What does this change for us?""It confirms communication," Adrian said. "He wants a dialogue. Not with the city. With me, or with whoever he imagines I represent.""Then we cut off the dialogue," Mendez said quickly. "We ignore the messages. No replies. No attention."Adrian shook his head once."That will escalate him," he said. "You ignore him, he doesn't vanish. He shouts louder. In his language, that means… more elaborate deaths. Bigger 'mercies.'""So we talk to him?" Farrow asked incredulously. "We indulge him?""We guide him," Adrian said. "We define the arena. If he wants a conversation, better it happens through controlled channels than through bodies."Lara stared at him."You want to answer him," she said."Yes," Adrian replied simply."Absolutely not," Mendez said. "We don't negotiate with—""We're not negotiating," Adrian said. "We're gathering data. Every word he sends is a fingerprint. Structure. Rhythm. Timing. We can use that."Doyle was silent, eyes distant, weighing risk against scarcity of options.Lara broke in before he could decide."If we let you answer," she said, "you don't do it alone. Every word you send, we see. We approve.""I expected nothing less," Adrian said.Farrow raised a hand slightly, as if in class."What exactly would you say?" he asked.Adrian thought for a moment."Not what he wants," he said. "Not immediate validation. He wants to be understood and praised for his 'mercy.' So we pivot.""Pivot to what?" Lara asked."To responsibility," Adrian answered. "To choice. Force him to articulate his reasoning instead of hiding behind poetic phrasing. The more he talks, the more he exposes."Doyle finally spoke, voice firm again."Before we get ahead of ourselves," he said, "I want tech to look at this. If we're dealing with some kid in a basement pranking you from a meme app, I'll feel very stupid about all this 'mercy' philosophy."He stood, gesturing to Mendez."Take the phone to Cyber. Priority. I want tower logs, routing, everything they can legally—and almost legally—pull."Mendez nodded, grabbed the phone, and left with the kind of speed reserved for orders that came with implied terror if ignored.Doyle turned back to Adrian."Meanwhile," he said, "I want profiles. On my desk in twelve hours. Lena first—every detail that could have drawn him to her. Then a theoretical model of his ideal victim. If we know who he thinks deserves 'mercy,' maybe we can predict where he'll look next.""I can start now," Adrian said.Lara unfolded her arms."I'll get you everything we have on Lena's medical records and work history," she said. "We'll need warrants, but the judge owes Doyle three favors and a decent bottle of whiskey."Doyle didn't deny it."And Adrian," he added, "until we know how he got your number, you don't go anywhere alone without telling someone first."Adrian raised an eyebrow."I'm not under protective custody," he said."Good," Doyle said. "Because I can't spare the men. Consider it a… professional courtesy request. Humor an old man, and don't get yourself carved up in an alley for the sake of a dramatic insight."Lara's lips pressed into a line that might have been approval."I'll drive him if we need to go anywhere connected to the case," she said. "Fair compromise?"Adrian considered objecting, then decided he didn't care enough about the logistics to spend energy arguing."Fine," he said. "For now."Doyle grunted, halfway between satisfaction and resignation."Meeting adjourned," he said. "Farrow, start digging through any unsolveds from the last three years with similar… clean scenes. Quiet victims. Don't assume he's new just because we noticed him now."Farrow nodded, already scribbling.As the others gathered their things, Lara lingered."You really want to talk to him," she said quietly, once Doyle had stepped out.Adrian stacked the files in front of him with precise movements."I don't want to," he said. "Want isn't the relevant verb. It's the most efficient way to narrow the gap between what he thinks and what he'll do next."She studied him."You said earlier he wants the right pair of eyes," she said. "You think that's you.""I think I fit his narrative," Adrian replied."And how do you feel about that?" she asked.He paused."How I feel doesn't change the facts," he said."That's not an answer," she replied.He looked up at her."It's the only one that matters right now," he said.A muscle jumped in her cheek."You're not the only one who can see him," she said. "Don't let him convince you of that. That's how they pull you in. They make you feel… chosen."Adrian held her gaze."They don't have to make me feel anything," he said. "I already am chosen. Not by him. By the role. I stepped into this space years ago. He's just walking onto a stage that was already there."She exhaled, frustrated, and shook her head."Just remember you're not the only actor," she said. "And that there are people in the audience who bleed."She left before he could respond.Alone in the too-bright room, Adrian sat back down.He took a blank sheet of paper and, with a black pen, wrote at the top:Subject: "Mercy" Killer – Preliminary Cognitive-Emotional FrameworkHe didn't like the label. But it was practical shorthand.Below it, he began to list:•Self-Perception:
– Not "killer," but "reliever of suffering."
– Sees himself as morally above apathetic society.
– Likely long history of witnessing ignored pain (family, institutional, professional).•Victim Selection:
– Chronic, quiet suffering.
– Minimal social noise.
– Psychological exhaustion visible to trained or obsessive observer.
– History of self-harm or attempts likely common.•Control Needs:
– Crime scene neatness, minimal struggle.
– Prefers consent or at least resignation.
– Will avoid overtly violent chaos; sees it as "crude."The pen moved steadily, the pattern of his own letters a familiar comfort.As he wrote, his mind drifted—not away from the killer, but alongside him.He thought of years ago. Of a hospital room. Of a man on a bed with machines doing the work his body had stopped wanting to do. Of voices arguing in the doorway about quality of life, about hope, about miracles.He remembered standing at the foot of that bed, watching the rise and fall of lungs under plastic, the slow beeps that measured not just heartbeats, but the distance between what a person was and what they'd become.He remembered thinking, very quietly:If this is living, what does mercy look like?He had buried that question under layers of theory and ethics and professional language.The messages had dug it up.He underlined mercy on the page once.Twice.The door opened a crack."Hey."Lara's head appeared."One more thing," she said."Yes?" Adrian asked."You said you backed up the messages before Doyle took your phone," she said. "On what?"He tapped his temple. "Here."She gave him a look."And also," he added, "my laptop. Encrypted. Why?""Because when tech starts pulling that device apart, they might wipe something," she said. "I want to make sure we didn't lose the initial timestamps. Minute accuracy matters.""It's all there," Adrian said. "Screen captures with metadata."She nodded once."Good," she said. "Send me a copy. And Adrian—"He waited."Don't answer him until Doyle signs off," she said. "No matter how much he sounds like he understands you."She closed the door again.Adrian stared at the word he'd underlined twice.Mercy."What mercy looks like," he murmured, echoing the message.He flipped the page and began a new list.This one he did not label.At the top, he wrote a single question:What would he consider an unforgivable life?He let his mind wander through possibilities.Someone who hurt others without remorse? Someone who pretended to be a healer while deepening wounds? Someone who took away choices instead of offering them?His own face did not appear in that category.Not yet.His laptop dinged softly in his bag—an automatic sync with the cloud, the quiet shuffling of data from one invisible drawer to another.He pulled it out, opened it, and began transferring his notes into a cleaner document.Lines of text marched across the screen, clinical and cold.Behind them, beneath them, between them, something warmer and more dangerous pulsed.Not admiration.Recognition.Outside, the day dragged on in its grey sameness.In a different part of the city, in a room no one was watching yet, someone might have been underlining the same word on a different piece of paper.Mercy.Waiting for the next name that deserved it.Waiting for the next pair of eyes to finally see.