The glass from the windshield lay scattered across the asphalt like diamonds in the dirt. Alex didn't brush the shards off his coat. He stood perfectly still, the second yellow ball gripped in his hand. The painted red eyes on the rubber seemed to stare back at him, a mockery of his own genetic anomaly.
Leo descended from the roof in a blur of motion and redirected rage. By the time he reached the street, his face was flushed, his breathing shallow. He snatched the ball from Alex's hand, his thumb smearing the wet paint.
"He's playing with us," Leo spat, his voice trembling. "He was right there. Ten stories up, and he just... drops it. Like a toy."
"He wasn't trying to hit me," Alex said, his voice a flat line. "He was showing us his range. He's observant, Leo. He knows we're watching him, so he's watching us back."
They returned to the precinct in a borrowed cruiser, the silence between them heavier than usual. The station was a hive of controlled chaos. The Sterling murders had set the city on fire, and the higher-ups were screaming for blood.
Leo bypassed the main floor and headed straight for the forensics lab. He didn't wait for the elevator. He didn't wait for anyone.
The head forensic tech, a weary woman named Sarah who had seen too many decades of this city's rot, was already hunched over a microscope. She didn't look up when Leo slammed the evidence bag onto the metal table.
"Tell me something I don't know, Sarah," Leo demanded.
Sarah exhaled a cloud of menthol-scented breath. "The paint on the first ball? It's a mix. Standard yellow acrylic, the kind you buy at any hobby shop. But the binder... that's the problem. He's thinning the pigment with human blood."
Leo's jaw tightened. "Whose?"
"Multiple donors," Sarah said, finally looking up. Her eyes were rimmed with red. "It's a cocktail, Leo. We've identified at least four different blood types. Some of it is fresh. Some of it is... older. It's been preserved with anticoagulants. He's been collecting it."
"Like a trophy," Alex murmured from the doorway.
"Like a palette," Sarah corrected. "He isn't just killing. He's composing."
Leo didn't stay to hear the rest. He turned on his heel and headed for the basement. The archives.
The archives of the 4th Precinct were a graveyard of paper and dust. Row after row of floor-to-ceiling shelves held the failures of the last fifty years. This was where his father's legacy lived—in cardboard boxes that smelled of mildew and forgotten grief.
"I'm staying here," Leo told Alex, not looking back. "The '88 Slasher. There has to be a connection. The signature, the numbers... it's all in the old files."
"Leo, you haven't slept in twenty hours," Alex said.
"I'll sleep when the city is at peace," Leo snapped.
Alex watched him for a long moment. He saw the way Leo's hands were shaking, the way he kept reaching for the silver chain tucked under his shirt. Alex knew that look. It was the look of a man trying to outrun a silence that had finally caught up to him.
"I'll bring you coffee," Alex said, and left.
The first twelve hours were a blur of yellowing paper and faded polaroids. Leo mapped out every murder from 1988. The victims had been random then, too. A baker, a schoolteacher, a homeless man. No pattern, no motive, just the signature: Date. M.
The "M" stood for Miller. His father had been the lead detective. The killer hadn't been signing his own name; he had been signing the name of the man hunting him. It was a taunt. A long-distance conversation between a predator and his prey.
By the twenty-four-hour mark, the coffee Alex brought had gone cold and oily on the desk. Leo's eyes were bloodshot, the green of his irises clouded with exhaustion. He had moved from the '88 files to his father's personal journals, which had been donated to the archives after his retirement.
The handwriting was cramped, filled with the bitterness of a man who had lost his soul to the job.
The boy won't stop crying, one entry read, dated 2004.
He's weak. Like his mother. He doesn't understand that in this city, if you aren't the hammer, you're the nail.
Leo slammed the journal shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the empty basement. He felt the phantom weight of his father's hand on his shoulder—not a gesture of comfort, but a shove toward the floor.
Handle it yourself.
"I am handling it," Leo whispered to the empty room.
Thirty-six hours. The fluorescent lights above his head began to hum, a low-frequency buzz that felt like a needle drilling into his temples. The walls seemed to pulse. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the jagged grin of the Smileball. He saw Julian Sterling's paper crown. He saw the red eyes of the second ball.
He began to pull files on every "M" in the city's history. Mentally ill patients, paroled convicts, former police officers. He was looking for a ghost in a city of eight million people.
He didn't eat. He barely drank. His focus had sharpened into a dangerous, jagged edge. He was no longer a detective; he was a machine fueled by spite and old soap-scented memories.
At the forty-hour mark, Alex came back. He didn't bring coffee this time. He brought a jacket.
"Leo. Enough."
Leo didn't look up from a spread of crime scene photos. "The '88 killer didn't stop because he was caught. He stopped because he was satisfied. Why is he back now? Or why is someone using his voice?"
"You're hallucinating, Leo. Your pulse is visible in your neck," Alex said, his voice low and firm.
"I found a name," Leo muttered, his voice a dry rasp. "A janitor who worked at the hospital when my mom... he was there. He was always there."
"That was twenty years ago. Let it go for tonight."
"I can't!" Leo screamed, spinning around. The chair skidded across the floor. "If I stop, I hear it, Alex! I hear the house! I hear him telling me I'm nothing! I have to find this guy!"
Alex didn't flinch. He just stood there, his red eyes reflecting the harsh light of the archives. He looked at Leo—not with pity, which Leo would have hated, but with a terrifyingly clear understanding.
"You're not at home anymore, Leo," Alex said. "And I'm not the kid in the sandbox. We're out. Both of us."
Leo stared at him, his chest heaving. For a second, the anger flickered, replaced by a raw, naked exhaustion. Then the mask slid back into place.
"Get out, Alex. I'm close. I can feel it."
Alex stayed for another hour, watching from the shadows of the stacks, but Leo had crawled back into his hole of paper and ink. Eventually, the silence of the archives won, and Alex retreated to the upper floors to handle the mounting pressure from the Chief.
The forty-eighth hour arrived with a freezing rain that hammered against the high, barred windows of the basement.
Leo was standing on a rolling ladder, reaching for a box on the top shelf. The label read: UNSOLVED - MISC - 1985-1990.
His vision blurred. The world tilted forty-five degrees to the left. He felt a sudden, sharp pain in his chest—not a heart attack, but the sheer physical manifestation of a body that had reached its breaking point.
He reached for the ladder's rail, but his fingers felt like lead.
He slumped. His knees hit the metal steps first, then his shoulder hit the floor. The sound was dull, muffled by the layers of dust.
He lay on the cold concrete, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He couldn't move his legs. The darkness at the edges of his vision began to swallow the room.
In his delirium, he wasn't in the archives anymore. He was six years old, sitting on a plastic chair in a hospital room. He could hear the beeping of the machines. He could smell the soap and the old books.
"So you don't forget," his mother's voice whispered in his ear.
His right hand moved instinctively to his neck. He grabbed the silver necklace, his fingers curling around the simple metal chain. He squeezed. He squeezed until the links bit into his skin, until the edges of the small pendant pierced his palm.
He needed the pain. The pain was the only thing that kept the silence from becoming absolute.
"I'm sorry," he wheezed into the dust. "I'm sorry I'm not good enough."
Alex found him twenty minutes later.
The basement door was ajar. He didn't hear any movement, no ruffling of paper. Just the steady, rhythmic drip of a leaky pipe.
He found Leo sprawled at the base of the ladder. To anyone else, he looked like a victim. But Alex saw the tension in his arm.
He knelt beside Leo, his movements swift but calm. He checked for a pulse—it was thready and fast, like a trapped bird.
"Leo," he said, rolling him onto his back.
Leo's eyes were rolled back, his face a ghostly pale against the black of his hair. His right hand was balled into a white-knuckled fist against his chest.
Alex tried to pry the hand open, thinking Leo was holding a piece of evidence, a clue he'd found at the last second.
He had to use his full strength to break the grip.
When the fingers finally gave way, Alex felt a chill that had nothing to do with the basement air.
Leo wasn't holding a clue. He was clutching the silver necklace so tightly that the metal had sliced deep into the meat of his palm. Blood, dark and thick, pooled in the creases of his hand, staining the silver red.
Leo's eyes flickered open for a fraction of a second. He looked up at Alex, but he didn't see his partner. He saw a shadow.
"Don't tell him," Leo whispered, his voice barely a breath. "Don't tell him I cried."
Then his eyes closed again, and his head slumped against Alex's arm.
Alex stared at the blood on the necklace, then at the box Leo had been reaching for. It had fallen with him, its contents spilling across the floor. Amidst the old reports and yellowing files, a single, modern object sat nestled in the dust.
It was a small, digital voice recorder. And on the back of it, written in fresh, wet red paint, were the words: PLAY ME.