Chapter 1
Quinn
The kid coded under my hands at 2:47 a.m.
Sixteen. Gunshot to the chest. Someone’s little brother who thought a Tuesday night in this city was a good time to play hero. I did everything right—compressions, epi, the whole textbook dance—and he still flatlined while his mother screamed in the hallway like the sound could drag him back.
I scrubbed the arterial spray off my arms in the staff bathroom until the water ran clear and my skin burned. The mirror showed the same tired face it always did: dark circles, messy ponytail, the permanent expression of someone who had stopped expecting good news years ago. I looked like I belonged in the morgue more than the living.
My phone buzzed in my scrub pocket on the drive home. I shouldn’t have looked. I always looked.
NoFaceCollective had posted twenty-three minutes ago.
Grainy black-and-white. Warehouse lights cutting hard shadows across three bodies. Same matte-black skull masks. Same inked arms and scarred torsos. One of them—taller, broader, the one who never moved first—stood in the center holding a long blade like it was an extension of his hand. The other two flanked him, heads tilted at identical angles, watching the camera the way predators watch something that still thinks it’s safe.
The caption was short.
We see you.
My thighs clenched around the steering wheel.
I pulled into the cracked parking lot of my apartment building, killed the engine, and sat there with the phone glowing in my lap like a dirty secret. My thumb hovered over the comment section. Hundreds of women begging. Some detailed. Some just desperate. I had never typed anything before. Not once.
Tonight the kid’s blood was still under my nails and the quiet in my chest felt louder than the monitors.
I typed.
Break into my house. All three of you. Don’t ask. Just take.
I hit post before the shame could catch up. Then I deleted the comment twelve seconds later like that would erase the fact that I had said it out loud to the dark.
The account liked it before I could lock my phone.
My stomach dropped.
I climbed the three flights of stairs on autopilot, keys already in my hand, heart slamming hard enough that I felt it in my throat. The hallway smelled like old carpet and someone else’s takeout. My door looked exactly the same. Deadbolt. Peephole. Nothing out of place.
I unlocked it.
The apartment was dark. I always left it that way. Light felt like a lie after shifts like this.
I dropped my bag, toed off my shoes, and walked straight to the bedroom because the alternative was standing in the kitchen pretending I was still a functional person. The streetlight through the blinds striped the bed in gray.
Something black rested on my pillow.
I stopped in the doorway.
A mask.
Matte black. Skull design. Exact match to the ones in the videos. It looked heavier in person. Real. The kind of thing that would leave marks if someone pressed it against your face too hard.
My first coherent thought was that I should call the police.
My second was that my cunt was already wet.
I stepped closer. The window behind the bed was cracked open three inches. I never left it open. The curtain stirred in the cold night air like something had just passed through.
I picked up the mask.
It was still warm.
I sat on the edge of the mattress, mask in both hands, and pressed it to my face. The scent hit me first—smoke, metal, and something darker underneath, like skin and violence. I inhaled until my lungs hurt. Then I lay back, still wearing it, and slid my hand between my legs over the thin fabric of my scrub pants.
I came in under a minute with three imaginary sets of hands holding me down and a blade somewhere close enough to feel the threat of it.
When the shaking stopped I pulled the mask off and set it carefully on the nightstand like it might disappear if I looked away. My phone lit up on the bed beside me.
A new notification from the account I had just begged.
A photo.
My bedroom window from the outside. Timestamped six minutes ago. The curtain was still moving.
No caption.
Just the image and the quiet certainty that they had been here while I was still scrubbing blood off my arms across town.
I stared at the photo until the screen went dark.
Then I locked the door, left the window exactly as they had left it, and crawled under the covers with the mask on the pillow next to my head.
Sleep didn’t come easy.
But when it did, I dreamed of being hunted by men who already knew the sound of my breathing.
