Elias stood in the vacant apartment above the subway station where Claire Tern had vanished. The floor was coated in dust, but one path was swept clean—footsteps looping to a vent cover. Inside, folded precisely, was a sheet of black cardstock. It bore one word: "Sacrifice." Not a note, not a clue—an instruction. He pocketed it and stared at the vent, wondering how many more traps had been left for him to stumble into.¹
Marla reviewed the footage of Claire's last moments. She circled the man who passed her the letter. "We've got nothing—no clear image, no facial match." Elias watched again, frame by frame. The man adjusted his watch using his middle finger. Most people used the index or thumb. "He's left-handed," Elias muttered. "Same as the fake janitor." That small detail narrowed the suspect pool exponentially. Patterns formed from fragments.²
He ran the subway map through a probability model and found something odd. Every location where someone had vanished formed the base of a knight's tour on a chessboard grid. Starting with Genevieve's clinic. That meant the Oracle wasn't just selecting targets—he was mapping Elias's future movements. If Elias could complete the pattern, he might predict the next victim. But it also meant stepping directly into his opponent's game.³
At the next potential location—an abandoned observatory—Elias arrived early. The scent of copper and ozone greeted him. Inside was a room filled with mirrors, angled to bounce light toward a central spot where a message had been burned into a leather chair: "Do not calculate. Feel." Elias exhaled. This wasn't just about intellect anymore. The Oracle was attacking his core philosophy—that logic always trumped emotion.⁴
He searched the observatory thoroughly. On the upper deck, beneath a loose floorboard, he found a pair of ballet shoes and a clipping from a newspaper—Claire's audition notice from five years ago. "He's collecting their pasts," Elias whispered. "He doesn't just want to take them. He wants to erase the parts that mattered." That kind of manipulation wasn't criminal—it was surgical. Controlled. Personal.⁵
Elias returned home to find his wall clock altered. It ticked backwards. Underneath it, a new envelope had been slid into his bookshelf—this one plain, unmarked. Inside was a polaroid of Genevieve, alive, eyes open, lips sealed with duct tape. Her left hand was pointing. Not random. He mirrored the image in a digital editor—her hand now aligned with a building's rooftop antenna. Coordinates followed. The Oracle was giving him a sliver of hope.⁶
He contacted Marla but kept the photo secret. The fewer people involved, the better. The Oracle thrived on prediction. The more variables introduced, the more chaotic Elias became—and that chaos, he hoped, would be his weapon. He raced to the antenna building. It was rigged with a decoy—a speaker playing looped breathing sounds. Fake hope. But in the basement, a trail of post-it notes led to a locked door. On them: fragmented questions. *"What are you missing?" "Who is watching?" "Would you trade her life for your truth?"*⁷
The door opened easily. No booby trap. Just another room with a projector screen playing a surveillance feed from Elias's own apartment. It wasn't live, but it was recent—hours old. That meant his home was still compromised. The Oracle had planted cameras, and he had only just realized it. He rushed back and began tearing through the walls. In the bedroom, behind a framed photo, he found the first camera. It was embedded behind the glass, nearly invisible to the naked eye.⁸
He sat on his couch, surrounded by the debris of his own life, and asked aloud, "Why me?" That question had haunted him since the first clue. He had no known enemies with this level of sophistication. No one from his past with this type of genius. But what if the Oracle wasn't from his past—but his shadow? Someone who'd studied him from afar? The profiler profiled. Elias's pulse quickened. He felt it in his bones—this wasn't about the victims. This was about him.⁹
The next morning, a chess set arrived by courier. No return address. The pieces were arranged mid-game, already in motion. Elias recognized the position immediately. It was the same game he'd played in his final tournament as a teenager—the one where he'd forfeited after realizing his opponent had memorized his entire strategy. The note inside read: "Finish what you ran from." The Oracle knew everything.¹⁰