Prologue.
POV: The Actor (The Mask)
“They say my performance as the ‘Patient’ was haunting. They don’t understand that I wasn’t acting. I was just emptying the vessel. That girl... she was in the front row every night. She had this way of looking at me like she saw the person behind the makeup. I didn’t kill her; I just finished the scene. Life is messy, but a script? A script is clean. I was in my trailer when it happened, practicing my lines for the sequel. If my hands are shaking, it’s just the adrenaline of the craft. Would an award-winner be so sloppy as to leave a pattern?”
POV: The Detective (The Logic)
“Patterns. That’s all life is. I’ve seen enough blood to know it has a rhythm. This girl, she was part of a sequence I’ve been tracking for months. The ‘Serial Killer’ case? It’s my masterpiece. I found her in the alleyway, staged perfectly—like a still-life painting. I’m the only one who can see the beauty in the data. Suspect 1 is too dramatic; Suspect 3 is too clinical. Me? I’m the only one who truly understood her. I’ve won awards for finding killers, but what happens when the killer is the only one who truly appreciates the victim?”
POV: The Psychiatrist (The Shadow)
“The human mind doesn’t break; it folds. I’ve spent my week in the ward watching men who think they are gods. My two friends here—the Actor and the Lawman—they are my favorite studies. One hides behind a persona; the other hides behind a badge. I spoke to the girl before she died. She was terrified, not of a stranger, but of a ‘pattern.’ I’m the least likely to lie because I have no ego left to protect. I simply observe. And what I observed was a man who needed a climax for his story.”
