THE VALIANT SENTINEL THREW THEM all into the dark room and slammed the metallic door with resounding finality. The force with which they were thrown in made them all topple to the floor, and with the way their hands were inescapably bound behind them, it was even harder to get up. When they finally managed to transition from a lying position to a seating one, they attempted to wriggle themselves out of the ropes, strip themselves free so that they could get out of this little hellhole, outrun their own deaths.

Death was something Mallory thought little of, for why would you think of something you could not even conceptualise, total oblivion, overwhelming darkness, the loss of consciousness. It had always seemed improbable to her, unlikely, and even if it were possible, it would not be something that would happen to her. She was young, healthy, virtuous, and full of life, everything that death was antipathies with. But now, she sensed death was near, somewhere lurking beneath the darkness, waiting patiently for the time to strike, and she didn't want to be there at that time. A sense of urgency overwhelmed her, an animalistic desperation to get out. She struggled harder with the ropes.

"Yeah, take it from me," a voice startled them from out of nowhere. "You're screwed. We, I mean, are all screwed."

Mallory gasped, and she could hear Cole and Diana make similar sounds through the darkness.

"What—who are you?" Mallory asked, a momentary calm settling upon her. A calm that had no roots in peace, but fear. She couldn't see anything or anyone through the darkness, and that heightened the chances of getting killed. Perhaps Jane had locked them up with an insane serial killer, or a blood-sucking ravenous vampire, or a—

"Fear not, beloved. I'm Ava Harrison," the voice spoke. "Former Journalist, ex-mother, and soon-to-be corpse. Nice to meet you too. We have a lot in common actuality. And just to be clear, I'm talking about the corpse part..."

Mallory was bewildered by how hilarious she could be at such a critical time like this, finding humour in what was not funny, calm in the face of impending death. She couldn't possibly be Jesus, could she...

Ava's voice felt closer. "By my insanely accurate intuition, I speculate the three people in here right now are Mallory Trent/Anderson/Orlando/who knows who? Diana Gilbert, daughter of the ever charismatic Mayor, and Cole Trent, the five years sober, heartbroken, father. Isn't this amazing? I knew we'd meet one time or the other."

If not for the ropes that bounded her, Mallory would have run out of the room screaming. It was eerie, that a stranger in total darkness, knew more about her than most of the people who saw her every day for the past seventeen years of her life.

"Sorry, but, who did you say you were again?" Diana asked. "Mother nature or the all knowing God? How the hell do you know who we are?"

"Four years of being in captivity can make you develop an insane load of intuition..."

Mallory blinked. "Wait, did you say youv'e been here for—"

"Precisely. As I said, my name is Ava Harrison, and I'm one of the many victims of Jane's. Not to be rude or anything, but Mallory, you mother is the most derlious drunk I've come across in my thirty years of living, and I've met a lot of them."

Cole cleared his throat. "Ava, is that really you?"

"You know her?" Mallory asked.

"Yeah," Cole said, in a mix of what appeared to be happiness and disgust. "We went to college together. We hated each other."

"And here we are again, together, sharing something in common in the face of death. You believe me now? I've always told you your girlfriend was insane. It feels good actually, to be proven right after about ten years of struggling to get the truth to the surface. Y'all laughed at me, mocked me, made me doubt my own convictions. How does it feel to be so right now?" Janny paused. "Not so good, actually. I didn't expect it would cost me my freedom."

"In my defence, I told you to stop uploading those sick articles. Jane was dead. You leave it that way."

Ava snorted. "Except she isn't so dead now, is she?"

Cole sighed. "I see that. I see that."

"Um," Mallory cut in. "I'm sorry to break in, but who are you, Ava Harisson? And why are you here?"

Ava made a sound that sounded similar to clapping. "Ooh, I like this. Stories. I haven't been able to tell one to actual human beings in years. Anyways, me and Jane were next-door neighbours in the '90s or thereabouts. I noticed Jane was not your typical neighbour. She was a night person, and again, not your typical night person. She came home really late, usually with men, and more often than not, the men hardly ever came out of her house by the next day. I thought it was weird, because placing that next to the fact that I usually heard odd sounds coming from her house, screams actually—"

"You think she killed them?" Cole asked defensively. "Jane would never—"

"Don't interrupt me when I'm in my flow, Mr.," Ava barked. "And just so you know, you think you know Jane, but you don't. You never did."

"Continue," Mallory urged Ava.

"But the day I got really suspicious of her was when my father didn't come back home that day. Not like my father was one of her one-night stands, though. He just—he just fancied her enough to be interested. But when he didn't come home the next day, pronounced missing, presumably, I knew it was Jane. It had something to do with Jane. It was then I started to research on her. I wanted to expose her, and at first it started out as a revenge plan to vindicate my father, but it gradually began to become a profession. I set up websites demanding her arrest, articles documenting how much of a terrible human being she was, and campaigns that fought against her. The campaign members were usually victims of her too, families and friends of people she'd killed or hurt. And as you can imagine, there were a lot of them..."

"Your're lying!" Cole yelled. "Tell no more. Jane—Jane isn't like this. Jane would never!"

Ava laughed. "Denial is the first stage of grief, Cole. You should know that more than anyone. The Jane you knew never existed. Suck it up."

"Did you expose her?" Diana asked, vengefully.

Ava sighed. "Almost. When I heard she'd committed suicide, I knew it was a lie. At 20, I knew Jane inside out. I knew Jane's status quo was survival. A survivor would never intentionally kill herself. It was only another plot to survive. It always is. She wanted to get out of Los Angeles because things were getting a bit steamed. There were claims that she'd killed Lewis, her husband. There were threats to kill her from all over the place, and what better tactic was there to exterminate all your potential killers than pronounce yourself dead?"

"Sick as hell," Diana commented. "Just terribly sick..."

"But I knew better," Ava continued. "I knew her. I protested against the fake news of her suicide and I started to get a lot of people on my side, before things got ugly."

"Ugly?" Mallory asked. "How?"

"Jane got angry. Sent people to threaten the safety of my family. She kidnapped my son and never gave him back. I don't know where he is till this day." She paused for a long while and made sounds similar to crying. "And my husband, she killed him. She has a propensity for doing that, maybe some murderous fancy for killing men. Anyway, I promised her I would stop the movement against her. Swore myself to secrecy. But apparently, secrecy wasn't enough for her. She kidnapped me to ensure it."

"Even sicker!" Diana clucked her tongue

Cole just made a noise that evinced a refusal to acknowledge Ava's story.

"And ever since then, since the last ten years, I've been in here, a slave, an animal, Jane's victim. The only one she decided to keep alive. I think she wanted it to be worst for me. She knew death would be too easy. How about a life full of torment, full of unmet hope. How about a life in which you yearn to be beside the ones you love, but are instead left with shadows to talk to. How about a life where you have nothing but cigarettes and a notepad to keep you company. I hate her. I hate her so much."

Ava's cries were audible now, and Mallory wanted to reach out in the darkness and envelop her in the comfort of an embrace. But she couldn't find her, touch her. She said something that she hoped would have that similar effect, a metaphorical one though, but an effect all the same.

"I hate her too, Ava. We all do..."

Cole groaned. "Speak for yourself, Mal. You couldn't possibly believe Ava. She's always been a liar..."

At that, the lights flicked on, imbuing the darkness with a blinding whiteness that made Mallory throw her hand over her eyes. William walked into the room at first, and another person followed. A woman, the most beautiful woman Mallory had ever seen in her seventeen years of living. She looked like she came right out of a fashion magazine, with how her black, glistening hair fell from her head in wavy curves down to her back, with the perfection of her face, the hourglass shape of her body. And her smile...it was both dangerous and endearing at the same time.

She was unmistakable.

It was her.

"Jane..."