"He followed me to London." I can hear the panic in my own voice.

"Okay, take it easy, it'll be okay." She sounds too calm, almost like I interrupted something more important. "Walk me through what happened," she says calmly.

"He sent me a note." My pounding heart makes speaking hard. It feels like it has taken up residence in my throat, like it's blocking my airway.

"What makes you so certain it was from him?" A little more interest has entered her voice, but not much. She thinks I'm made. Or that I'm making it up to get attention. I try to swallow my heart, get it back in its rightful place, but it doesn't budge.

"He sent me Zoe's bracelet and a package." I swallow again, but with no more result. "And, he... he wrote zugzwang."

"Zugzwang?" She thinks I'm mad.

"It's a chess term," I explain desperately. "It's also the title of an episode of Criminal Minds Zoe and I watched together the night before she...." I can't finish the sentence. "He's hunting me now," I say instead, desperate to be taken seriously. I hear a noisy silence on the other end.

"You mentioned a package; what was in it?"

"I don't know, I didn't dare open it."

There's a short silence, and I realize:

"It was outside my apartment too: zugzwang. It means no matter what I do, I'll end up worse than I am now, but I have to make a move. He watched us. He knew what we were watching, what we were doing. He's playing games!"

"I will send the police to you to investigate the package." There is a silent 'but that is all I can do on this basis' hanging in the air I breathe. I hang up and wait.

It doesn't take long till something happens, but it's not the police coming. Special Agent Park calls me back.

"The police will pick you up and keep you safe until we can arrange for transportation back to the states."

"What happened? You changed your mind!" I accuse in terror.

"The important thing right now is to get you back home." Her voice has changed, her tone, and it's more than just her believing my story, it's... it's fear. Barely audible, but still present fear.

"Oh no, no no no no no no no, tell me he didn't! Tell me he did not kill here too!"

"We are just focusing on getting you back to the states for now," she replies politely.

"He did, didn't he. He followed me and started killing here too. How many? I've been here for 10 days, how many has he killed?"

"Two," she answers reluctantly.

"Oh my..." It can't be true, it can't be real. Two more people dead because of me! Because of me. Because I ran. I ran, and I didn't look back. Didn't think I could be followed. I didn't think.

A bomb squad arrives - but of course, they don't find anything. Being blasted apart is too quick an end, becoming stains on falling walls is too merciful. I have to remind myself that the Monster is only human, he has no special powers.

"Is it safe to open?" I ask.

"There is no bomb inside, but it might be better if..."

"Okay," I interrupt him. I don't really want to open it anyway. He opens it for me. Shock flares across his face before he can collect himself.

"What is it?" I ask without wanting to know.

"Maybe it's better if you don't know," he warns me.

"Maybe." But I don't have a choice.

"It's a hand," he tells me.

***

14th of April

They brought me back to the states, more specifically to the FBI office. I'm supposed to stay here for now. I'm not really sure what will happen next.

It turns out that not only England was visited by the killer, he also went to Denmark. 4 people were killed there, at least if you believe the British police officers I overheard while waiting to be escorted onto the plane.

I can hear Agents talking in the next room.

"What do we have so far?" a dark-haired man with his back to me asks. A man with messy raven hair hangs up the phone.

"The ones in Denmark were drowned in red paint."

"There was nothing apart from the ritual necessaries on the ones in England," a redhead with heavily framed glasses says. I recognize her as Special Agent Park.

"We've seen that before," the one with his back to me says.

"On 9 consecutive bodies at the beginning of the year," a woman with her ash-blond hair in a bun and her legs neatly folded informs.

"I want everything on the new victims. Did they have any overlap, did they have associations with the US, did they know any of the other victims? I want to know how these people are targeted!"

"One more thing," the blond one says. "CSU found a bug at her apartment, hidden in a vase." She indicates her head subtly towards me.

"So that's how he knew what they were watching? The whole Zugzwang thing?" Special Agent Park asks.

"Why though?" the messy-haired man asks her. My thoughts exactly.

"I guess that's what we need to find out," she answers him. He nods once. They all break apart and go back to each their desks, each their clues to run down. I wonder if they ever just feel like it doesn't even matter.

The room I'm sitting in has a victim board and a timeline on a whiteboard. There are 44 pictures, 44 victims. He's been killing for a little over 3 months, and he has killed 44 people. One of the pictures is a little off to the side, isolated. It's of a young girl, about mid 20s by the looks of it. Her thick brown hair is cut short in the back, but longer in the front, framing her face perfectly. Her brown eyes are looking out of the picture and the crooked smile is laughing at the holder of the camera.

Someone enters behind me. I turn around and face a brown-haired man with his tie loose. He wasn't out there before. It must have been about 20 years since I saw him last, and he has changed a lot, but I recognize him. It's John Lucas. He looks like his father. He doesn't show any signs of recognizing me.

"So many names, so many lives. So much waste." The pain in his voice, the strain... The past will have to stay in the past for now.

"Do you mind if I ask you some questions? It's just a few, it won't take long." I stare straight ahead. "Why do you think he is after you? Why you personally?"

"I have no idea." I look at the floor to avoid looking at him. "Maybe it's just about creating fear. Maybe it's something else. Maybe he killed Mark, Elle, and Zoe because he was after me, maybe he came after me because I know Mark, Elle, and Zoe. Either it's my fault, or it's me next, or it's both, or... I have no idea." I let my voice falter, I have no reason to believe he will believe me anyway.

"His timing on the London murders does seem suspicious, but I don't actually think you should blame yourself. I have to ask though..."

"You have to ask if I have an alibi," I cut him off. "Or if I know anyone who would do something like this, anyone who has suffered a recent loss, a trauma, anyone who has had some sort of trigger. If I know anyone who has a connection to both Mark, Elle, and Zoe. Mark and Elle were my students, Zoe my neighbor; if there is a connection between them I don't know it. As for the trauma thing, no, no one before the 1st of January. As far as alibis go, you can check with the cafe owner around the corner from the hotel - I was either there or at the hotel."

  The dark-haired one who had his back to me before comes in.

"John, I need you to look into some reports from France."

"I'll get right on that," he says. "I'll be back later," he assures me in what I suppose is meant to be a calming tone, and they both leave me alone.

They won't catch him, not at this rate. It's been three months and 14 days. It's only spreading. Like a virus, and there's no cure. No cure, just decease and decay.

The blond woman looks up as John Lucas walks out and asks him something in a hushed voice. I turn away from them. A few minutes later she comes in with a blanket.

"There's a couch in the coffee room, you should get some rest," she tells me. "You're safe here," she adds as an afterthought.

I accept the blanket and mumble a "thank you". I take one last look at the young girl with the crooked smile and depressingly happy eyes before I follow her out of the room.

I lie down on the couch and hold the blanket close, almost like it can shield me from danger. Maybe it can, there is something comforting and safe about blankets.

I close my eyes for a second. Blood everywhere. Drip. Drip. Drip. People everywhere. Special Agent Park is sitting on the floor next to a ME. The raven-haired one is taking pictures of my home. Zoe is being reduced to facts and clues.

"Hey, wake up." A hand shakes my shoulder till my eyes open. John.

"You were dreaming." He hands me a glass of water.

"Thanks." I guess.

He opens his mouth slightly before deciding against talking. He gives me what looks like it is supposed to a comforting smile and leaves. I throw the blanket aside and cast my legs over the edge of the couch. Burying my head in my hands I try to get rid of the images. It doesn't help. The world is blood red whether my eyes are closed or not. I get up and put the water down on a table before heading back to the conference room. Pictures of my apartment are cowering a whiteboard. Bloodstain after bloodstain offers evidence of just how dangerous "home" has become. I want to go away and hide, I want to never see the color red again. I take a step closer. I run my finger over a picture. I want nothing but to get away, to escape. There is no escape though, only reality party-crashing life, colliding with happiness and destroying hope. This is the world we live in now, broken and torn apart by reality.

The photos show both a life lived and a life lost. The wine glass from the evening before is still standing on the table, the DVDs are still lying on top of the Blu-ray player and the pizza boxes are still stacked on the corner of the table. Everything is exactly as I left it, exactly as I lived it, and exactly as it was when she died. Or almost, something is sort of off about the pictures. I take one down to look closer at the table.

"We figured since he was fixating on you there might be some sort of clue here," Special Agent Park says from behind me. I hadn't even noticed her come in.

"Did you change anything?"

"Do you see something different?"

"I don't know, it's just the table, it looks a bit off." She hands me a different picture of the table.

"Did you wipe it?"

"Wipe it?"

"I use window wipe on the glass surface of the table so there're no stripes."

"Robert!" she yells out the door. The raven-haired man walks in. 

"You found something?" There's more wonder than hope in his voice, and his feet are halfway out the door again, expecting to be told it's nothing.

"Can you drive back to the crime scene to check something out for us?"

"You found something?" he repeats rather amazed.

"Could just be the lighting, but miss Harper thinks someone wiped the table."

"Grasping at straws; I like it." He hits the doorframe and walks out with excitement in his steps.

Twenty minutes later he's on the phone, confirming that there are water lines on the table.

"Why would he take the time to wipe off the table?" he asks. "It's not like he's afraid of leaving behind blood, and all the evidence indicates that he wears gloves - no need to wipe down the place."

"Is there anything else that seems out of place to you? Anything at all?" Special Agent Park asks me.

I cleaned the apartment after school a few days before. Zoe came around. We ordered burgers and fries and watched The Romantics as per her request. We went on to Transcendence after that before she went home again. Next day I went to school, came home, she came over right away. I go through everything that happened from the time I cleaned to the time the Agents arrived. Then I go through it again, studying the pictures, tracing the movement of every single item that might have been moved.

"The salt shaker."

"The salt shaker?" the phone asks.

"They never put enough salt on the fries, but why would we put the shaker as far away from us as we could? You use it, you put it down - but you don't go out of your way to place it across the table."

A moment passes. I turn to a desk nearby and knock over a cup of pencils.

"Knock over the salt, throw some over your shoulder." I throw a pencil behind me. "Clean it up." I place the pencils back in the cup and put it down on the table again. Special Agent Park picks up the pencil on the floor.

"But you can't pick up salt from a carpeted floor without a vacuum," she says.

"And I doubt you could see a few grains of salt on the floor - throw it over your shoulder and it spreads pretty wide."

"I'llcontact CSU." She smiles.