The world slammed back into focus with the sound of a choked gasp—his own. Miles stumbled backward, away from the frozen ballerina, his legs turning to rubber. He would have collapsed onto the cold marble floor if Izzy hadn't been there in an instant, grabbing his arm, her grip a painful, grounding pressure.
"Miles! What was it? What did you feel?" she demanded, her voice a tight coil of anxiety.
He couldn't answer. His teeth were chattering with a violence that shook his entire frame. An impossible, bone-deep cold radiated from his core, a phantom hypothermia the warm gallery air couldn't touch. He felt as if he had been dipped in liquid nitrogen himself, and his very soul was struggling to thaw. He wrapped his arms around himself, but the shivering was internal, a seismic event in his nervous system.
"It wasn't… it wasn't just the cold," he finally managed to say, his words fragmenting between chattering teeth. "It was… wrong."
"Wrong how?" Izzy pressed, her dark eyes searching his, trying to decipher the raw horror etched there.
"It was peaceful," he whispered, and the confession felt like a madness. "At the end. Underneath all that agony, there was this… wave. A release. Like she wasn't afraid. Like she welcomed it." He shook his head, the motion jerky and uncontrolled. "Death isn't like that, Izzy. I've felt it. It's ugly and terrified and confused. This was… curated."
He looked past her, at the serene, frozen face of Alita Romero. She was a beautiful lie. Her body was a testament to a horrifying death, but the final sensation the killer had imprinted upon her was one of sublime tranquility. The dissonance was a new kind of terror. This wasn't a murder. It was a baptism.
"And something else," Miles added, his mind latching onto the other anomaly. "Just before the cold got bad. A prick. In her arm. Like a needle."
Izzy's focus sharpened. "A needle? Where?"
"Left arm. The crook of the elbow."
She immediately relayed the information into the small radio clipped to her shoulder, her voice crisp and professional again. "Thorne, you hear that? Check the victim's left arm, antecubital fossa. Our consultant felt something."
A weary, static-laced voice crackled back. "Copy that, Rossi. Don't tell me he's having one of his episodes on my crime scene."
"Just check, Aris," she snapped back, a protective edge to her tone.
Miles leaned heavily against her, the echo's icy residue slowly receding, leaving behind a familiar, hollowed-out exhaustion. The ghosts in the room seemed to have retreated, sated by the fresh, potent horror he had just fed them. He was a lightning rod for the final moments of the dead, and the storm had just passed.
Two hours later, Miles sat in the sterile, white-tiled observation room of the morgue, nursing a cup of scalding hot coffee that did little to warm him. Through the large glass window, Dr. Aris Thorne, a man who looked more like a tired librarian than a Chief Medical Examiner, was working on the partially thawed body of Alita Romero. He moved with a practiced, respectful slowness, his examination a stark contrast to the violence of the crime.
Izzy stood beside Miles, arms crossed. The door opened and a detective with a slicked-back ponytail and a cheap suit swaggered in. Detective Serrano. A man who climbed the ladder by polishing the rungs with his tongue and kicking down anyone below him.
"Well, well," Serrano said, a smug curl on his lip. "If it isn't the department's official ghost whisperer. What'd the body tell you, Corbin? Did she give you the winning lottery numbers?"
"Piss off, Serrano," Izzy said without turning around.
"Hey, I'm just curious," he sneered, ignoring her. "The brass is putting all this stock in your… what do you call it? Voodoo forensics? I just want to know if it's worth the taxpayer's money."
Miles didn't look at him. He kept his eyes fixed on Thorne. Engaging with men like Serrano was a waste of what little energy he had left. They saw the world in black and white, in reports and procedures. They couldn't comprehend the gray, screaming chaos he was forced to inhabit.
"Find any actual evidence, or are we just waiting for Corbin to have another seizure?" Serrano pressed.
Before Izzy could retort, the intercom on the wall crackled to life. It was Thorne.
"Rossi. You're going to want to see this. Both of you."
Serrano's smirk widened. "Oh, this should be good."
Izzy shot him a look that could curdle milk and led the way into the autopsy suite. The smell of disinfectant was sharp and clean, a welcome antidote to the cloying scent of Serrano's cheap cologne.
Thorne stood over Alita's left arm, which was now free of ice. He pointed with a gloved finger to the crook of her elbow. "Your ghost whisperer was right."
There, almost invisible against her pale skin, was a single, perfect puncture mark.
Serrano leaned in, his smugness momentarily evaporating into surprise. "A needle mark? Was she a user?"
"No," Thorne said, shaking his head. "Look at the lack of tracking, the absence of any other marks. This is a professional job. A single, clean injection. I've drawn blood and sent it for a full tox screen, but I'm not expecting to find heroin. Whatever was in that syringe, it was meant to be there. Part of the killer's process."
Miles felt a cold sliver of vindication. It wasn't just a feeling. It was a lead. "The peace," he said, his voice low. "It was chemical."
Thorne looked at him, his tired eyes holding a flicker of understanding. "It's possible. A powerful neuroleptic or a dissociative agent could induce a state of euphoria or detachment. It would explain the serene expression. He didn't just kill her. He drugged her to feel a specific way while he was killing her."
The calculated cruelty of it was staggering. The killer wasn't just an artist; he was a pharmacologist and a psychologist. He was a puppet master pulling the strings of his victim's final sensory experience.
"So we're looking for a killer with medical training," Izzy stated, her mind already building a profile. "Someone with access to exotic chemicals and the equipment to flash-freeze a human body. That's a small list."
"Getting smaller by the minute," Serrano grumbled, clearly annoyed that Miles's "voodoo" had produced a tangible result. He was already trying to reclaim the narrative. "I'll get a team started on lists from university labs, medical supply companies, cryogenic firms…"
As Serrano rattled off his procedural checklist, Miles tuned him out. He was staring at Alita's hand, the one he had touched. He remembered the pirouette, the perfect grace. Why her? Why a ballerina? Why this pose? It was all part of a message. He was sure of it.
"Aris," Miles interrupted, his voice cutting through Serrano's monologue. "Check her fingernails. Specifically, the thumb on her right hand."
Thorne raised an eyebrow but complied, picking up a magnified fluorescent lamp and wheeling it over. He carefully cleaned the nail and examined it, his brow furrowing in concentration.
"What am I looking for?"
"I don't know," Miles admitted. "A mark. A scratch. Anything."
Thorne was silent for a long moment, carefully manipulating the light. Serrano scoffed, about to make another sarcastic remark, but Izzy silenced him with a single, sharp glare.
"My God," Thorne finally breathed.
He stepped back from the lamp, his face pale. "It's an etching. Microscopic. You'd never see it with the naked eye. It looks like it was done with a laser or a diamond-tipped stylus. Incredibly precise."
"What is it?" Izzy asked, moving closer.
Thorne adjusted the lamp. "It's a letter. Greek, I think."
He stepped aside so they could see. There, etched with impossible delicacy onto the smooth, pale surface of the ballerina's thumbnail, was a single, elegant symbol.
Λ
"Lambda," Izzy identified.
Serrano grunted. "A Greek letter? Maybe our killer is a frat boy."
But Miles barely heard him. His blood ran cold, a chill far deeper than the echo's residue. It wasn't just a letter. It was a signature. And its placement wasn't a coincidence. The killer hadn't just left his mark on the victim.
He had left it on the exact spot he knew Miles would have to touch.
He had left it for him.