When revising the bail application form for the seventh time, sapphire chips suddenly burst out of the tip of the signing pen. Lila looked up at the police surveillance screen, where the paint print of Scarlett's wedding invitation flashed through the noise of snow. The detective on duty typed "system failure" while his fingernails were covered in the same platinum powder as Ethan's wedding ring.
"Are you sure you want to pull up the footage from the night of the fire?" The archivist rolls in the coffee cup, the bramble in a twisted shape, "Five years ago, digital records are like..." He deliberately let the espresso drip on the application, "moldy canvas, who knows what the hell it might show."
Ultraviolet tubes hum in the basement archives. Lila's hand froze as she counted the numbers of the iron cabinet - a half of the charred canvas, her signature in the bottom right corner of Iris the Thorn, was under the door of cabinet 27 in Section C. When the administrator password disc lit up "0927", her stomach suddenly cramped, and that was the day she was sentenced.
Dust floats in the blue light of the hard drive array, like ash from a burning gallery. The administrator whistled and opened the encrypted folder, and suddenly "Aria on the G String" made the screen flash violently. Fifty-three surveillance video thumbnails are unfurled in front of my eyes, and the flames in each frame are eerie iris flower shapes.
"Damn it!" The administrator bangs on the keyboard and all the files are dated 2077, "This is a fucking..." He suddenly grabbed his throat and twitched the ring finger of his left hand to press the alarm.
Lila rolled into the ventilation ducts before the blast doors closed, and the smell of turpentine guided her toward the glowing engine room. Through the grates, Scarlett's assistant was dropping red wine into the server jack - the 1997 Margaux label was stretching in the drops, staining the data cable.
When the sixth monitor popped up on the login screen, Lila found that the captCHA was a burning "iris." She bites her fingertips to draw blood-colored thorns on the touch screen, and the system pops up a surveillance folder from the night of the fire five years ago. Seventeen camera angles play at the same time, each one wearing a different mask.
"Number 27405. Are you looking for this?" The head of security blocked the exit with a stun baton, and Milo's name was crossed out of the badge and covered in gold with the "Harlowe Security Group "logo. He pressed the remote control, and all the screens began to show the fire in reverse, the burning painting miraculously recovered, and the arsonist became the retreating Lila.
The ventilation pipes suddenly smell like cedar cologne. Lila grabs the server cooling fan and hurls it at the power box, where she catches a glimpse of the actual video amid the burst sparks -- Ethan holding a torch to light a "Twin Iris" while Scarlett smears beeswax on the fire door. This screen lasts 0.7 seconds, all the screens pop up the wedding live screen.
As Milo's stun baton grazed her neck, Lila ripped off his name tag and cut open the power distribution box. The pulsating cable resembled the burning canvas of that night, and the spasticity of the ring finger of the guard's left hand was making Ethan's signature curl as 380 volts of electricity ran through his body.
There was a sudden crack of glass on the top floor, just as there had been on Scarlett's engagement party. Lila stepped on Milo's charred uniform and rushed to the emergency tunnel, the spare hard drive burning like a lover's heart. She saw the burn on the right side of her face oozing blood in the corner mirror, where Scarlett's perfect makeup was reflected.
The induction lights in the underground garage turn on, illuminating the new graffiti on the wall: three wedding rings wrapped around burning thorns. The red Honda suddenly flashed his headlights, and the front passenger threw a gallery-janitor's uniform -- the same iris underlining stitched to the cuffs as Scarlett's tattoo.
The car navigation automatically sets the route to the Chelsea area. Passing the burned gallery site, the dashcam suddenly broadcasts doctored surveillance video: "Look, this is the truth you crave." Ethan's voice mixed with an electric murmur. "Turn around now. There's a wedding present for Scarlett in the trunk."
As I pry open the trunk, the Wolf alarm shatters the window. In her ears, Lila saw her prison files in a custom jewelry box, each page stained with wine. When I flipped through the psych report, platinum pink prints popped up, spelling out "Morgue freezer B-27."
The cold in the space makes teeth chatter like ice crystals popping. The handle of the B-27 cabinet door was wrapped with the same ribbon as a wedding invitation, and the smell of cedar and beeswax came out when it was pulled open. Half a sapphire stud was stuck in the zipper of the black body wrap bag, and the ulcerating wound on the right earlobe of the body in the bag was exactly what she had seen in the reflection of the window the day she was released.
The autopsy lamp suddenly flashed, and the left ring finger of the corpse twitched and pointed to the vent. Lila climbed into the pipe on top of the freezer and picked out the number of the oil paint she had used five years earlier in the mold. When a purple light came from the end of the pipe, she crashed into the underground surveillance room of the Harlowe Gallery.
Sixteen screens are replaying her bail at multiple angles, while details that would never exist in the real scene are revealed - Scarlett's stunt double removes a tattoo in a cafe across the street from the police station, and the inside of Ethan's wedding ring becomes "To SW" in a close-up.
A holographic projection suddenly rises from the console, and the actual footage from the night of the 2017 fire begins to play. Lila sees herself passed out in the corner of the studio, while Ethan is carrying an unconscious Scarlett out of the fire. But when the camera pans to the burning Iris of Thorns, the canvas suddenly cracks open, revealing rough diamonds hidden in the mezzanine.
As the red alarm light engulfed the monitor room, Lila plugged the hard drive into the reader. All the video files are automatically combined into an encrypted email sent to a deactivated prison library account. When she decrypts the code "Iris x thorn =0927", a new perspective of surveillance pops up in the cloud - the fireman's helmet camera shows Scarlett pushing hallucinogens into her veins with a syringe.
There was a crawl from the air ducts, and Milo's blackened right hand suddenly grabbed her ankle. Lila sprayed pepper spray on the server, and when the ethanol vapor caught an electric spark, she rushed to the fire escape with the burning hard drive in her arms. The sound of charred flesh sizzling in the background coincides perfectly with the frequency with which the canvas burned five years ago.
As the morning light punctured the clouds, Lila slumped under a bridge where homeless people gathered. The final smoke rises from the remains of the hard drive, and the melted plastic condenses into the shape of miniature irises. A homeless man in a hoodie hands out deformed aluminum cans, the liquid reeking of 1997 red wine: "They've coated every blind spot with beta-carotene."
Lila suddenly grabbed his festering right hand, the base of his ring finger bearing the imprint of a long ring. When the homeless man pulls off the mask, the exact same jawline as Ethan emerges from the burn scar on the left side of his face. You think the video was deleted?" His voice was like a rusty saw cutting through steel pipe. "They're just painting the truth everywhere you can see it."
The wall of the bridge cave suddenly lights up with fluorescence, the homeless man burns the graffiti with a lighter, and the scorch marks gradually reveal the full surveillance screenshot of Scarlett walking into the gallery basement the night before the fire, and the shadow behind her has the wings of a demon. What's even scarier is that Ethan is kissing another "Scarlett" who has an upside-down iris tattoo on her back.
As the sirens wailed from far to near, the tramp handed her the bloody vault key: "Go open your twenty-third birthday present." The moment he jumped into the East River and emerged, the ring finger of his left hand glinted in the morning sun with the same metallic sheen as a wedding ring.
Trembling, Lila opened the flesh between the teeth of the key and found microfilm embedded in it. The cashier exclaims when the fax machine in the convenience store produces a photocopy of Ethan and Scarlett's marriage registration, marked "Lila Weston" and dated three months before she went to prison.