"We're gonna be okay, we're gonna be okay—"
"No. We're not," McLaurel said coldly. "Watch out!"
The man fired. Bullets shattered the air behind them, but none found flesh. Sasha, Dex, and McLaurel sprinted down the winding hill road, feet slamming against gravel, hearts thundering like war drums.
A pair of headlights cut through the black.A car slowed. Stopped.
"Help us!" Sasha screamed, her voice cracking open like glass. "Please! We're going to die!"
The doors opened. A miracle. Two strangers, hearts open. No hesitation.
"In, now!" the driver said.
They piled in, trembling.
"What are your names?" asked the driver, eyes flicking to the rearview mirror.
"Sasha. Dex. McLaurel."
He smiled. "Nico. This is Liz. We're not dating," he added quickly, a nervous grin twitching on his face.
Liz, arms crossed, looked away. "Not."
McLaurel didn't respond. Her eyes were fixed on the side mirror.
Running.
Behind them.
A silhouette. Long limbs. Something monstrous carrying bodies. Lorie. Grinning, wet with rot and gore.
Mina. Ed.
Lorie hurled the corpses forward like cursed cargo. They crashed into the asphalt, rolling. Missing the car by inches.
The road twisted. They reached Uptown, where the old police station hunched in the fog like a relic, its bricks weathered with decades of fear.
Inside, warm yellow lights flickered overhead. Dust danced in their beams. A thin receptionist called ahead, and soon a team of officers took them in.
Then came the familiar voice.
"Sasha? Dex? McLaurel?"Officer Bell ran to them, eyes wide with both relief and worry. "You made it. God, you made it."
Bell wrapped them in a hug. "Was it… was it back? That thing?"
"Yes," Sasha whispered. "And worse. Their boss is hunting us now."
"Come with me. You can stay at our house tonight. It's safe. We've reinforced the whole perimeter."
They nodded. Safety was rare now. They clung to it like breath.
Bell drove off. The officers escorted them to a series of interrogation rooms, tucked deep in the belly of the station. The layout was narrow, claustrophobic:
A main hall, carved like a spine through the center. Doors to interrogation rooms on either side—each room with two chairs, a desk, and a two-way mirror. To the left, stairs rose to offices and the observation deck. To the right, the archives and weapons lockers. Beneath them all… a hollow, storage crawlspace rarely touched. Liz and Nico waited in the reception lounge, still as statues.
One by one, the survivors were called in. Sasha sat across from a balding officer.
"Are you connected to the cursed shop? The... El Fuego de Store?"
"I—yes," she stammered. "My husband was one of the victims."
"You believe in it? All of it?"
"Yes."
"Did you move anything inside the building?"
The questions came like rain—sharp, relentless, numbing.
McLaurel followed next.
"Do you still want to be sheriff?" they asked.
She blinked. For a moment, her answer was buried under grief.
"I... I think so."
"Do you believe these entities are still following you?"
"Sure," she said. "They're not done."
Dex was last.
He stepped into the cold room and sat. The mirror across from him hummed with silence. No one came in.
Boredom quickly became anxiety. He stood. Jumped in place ten times. Poked at the mirror.
"Why are they taking so long?"
He paced. Then—gunshots. One. Two. Three.
Dex froze. Then more—closer now. Screams echoed through the halls. Dex rushed to the door. Locked. He pounded his fists, then kicked the door again and again. No use.
A sudden pop—glass shattering. The two-way mirror cracked like ice. Not bulletproof after all.
Dex climbed through the broken frame, careful not to slice himself, and dropped into the hallway. Chaos.
The main hall was smeared with blood. People ran in all directions, some dragging the injured. Screams twisted down stairwells like vines.
Officers descended from upstairs. Some went left toward the archives, others right.
Dex followed the right group—but then stopped. Something… wrong.
In the archive corridor, a figure crouched. It was tasting the wounds of fallen people. Running fingers through their blood and licking them clean like tasting a wine.
"Hands up!" an officer shouted. "You're under arrest!"
The figure ignored him. Bang. The officer fired. The entity paused. Licked its lips. Then lifted a hand—but not at them. It pointed behind them.
Lorie. Standing. Grinning. Her skin a tapestry of scars and stitched faces. Her eyes wide, her smile cracked. She didn't run. She strolled forward. The officers turned, too slow. Lorie smiled wider. She had already chosen.
Under the stairs, Dex ducked down and bolted back. Under the main stairwell, nestled in shadow, he saw Liz, Nico, and—thank God—McLaurel, hands trembling.
She saw him and sobbed with relief.
Then came the voice from above. Smooth. Mocking.
"I guess someone wants to play a game."
Footsteps. Sharp. Slow.
Dex whispered: "McLaurel. The cards. Where are they?"
"I dropped them when we ran," she whispered back.
Dex peeked out—there, near the interrogation rooms, was the small black box. Left behind like an omen. As he turned—the Unknown Man stood above him on the second-floor landing. Eyes cold. Gun loaded.
Dex bolted. He slid, snatched the box, and dove into a nearby office room.
Breathing heavy. Heart raw.
He crawled under a desk and cupped a hand over his mouth. Footsteps entered. Closer. A table was hurled aside. Then another—someone else had been hiding. A boy screamed and ran.
The Unknown Man chased him down the hallway. Dex took his chance.
As Dex stepped into the hall, he saw it.The boy was caught.
Lorie's arms wrapped around him like chains. She dragged him toward her chest. The screams that followed sounded like tearing paper.
Lorie laughed—a high, sharp, hysterical sound.
Dex turned and fled, back under the stairs.
"They're killing everyone," McLaurel whispered. "And they only needed one. That's all it takes. Now the boss is gonna let all the entities free. All of them. The whole city—"
"No," Dex said.
He lifted the box. Hands steady now. He opened it.
"We cheat the system."
Liz raised an eyebrow. "How?"
"These cards were always part of the shop's core. We use them against it."
He pulled three from the deck—memorized in his mind.
He whispered: "El Fuego de Store." Then, he turned them over.
Guilt
Burn
Downfall
The cards pulsed faintly in the light. As if breathing.
"This is their weakness," Dex whispered. "We can still stop them. Even if they've already taken the souls."
Liz stared. "This better work."
Then McLaurel looked up, her face pale. Her voice cracked.
"Where the hell is Sasha?"