Prologue

In the labyrinth of the old motel where the corridors narrowed like the tight throat of some forgotten stellar vortex, the air hung like a heavy pall, damp and steeped in days gone by. It felt as if time had simply stopped here.

On one scuffed, sorry-looking door, a brass number “24” trembled. From inside, a mobile kept ringing, again and again with stubborn insistence.

Behind that door, it was cramped, airless, filthy. The burgundy carpet had worn down to bald scars, exposing the slow, merciless rot beneath. Wallpaper in a tiny, pointless pattern had peeled away in places to show mould and decay. An old, bulging CRT set stood by the door; beside it, a cheap electric kettle and a black ashtray spilling over with cigarette butts. On the bedside unit, next to the landline, the handset lay off the cradle while a mobile shivered — a small thing with a grey-blue display, the kind that keeps going after its tenth fall. A dim ceiling lamp flickered on and off. Even the light here seemed ready to surrender.

On the bed, under a threadbare coverlet, sat a white rabbit called Cyrus. A pretentious name for a rabbit, admittedly, but it suited him oddly well. Clean, sturdy, with fur so dazzlingly white it looked like a projection from a parallel dimension, a cruel contrast to the squalor of this refuge. His eyes were large and round, catching the lamplight in a way that gave them an amber glint — warmer than anything else in the room. On his left haunch, where the fur thinned, was a birthmark shaped like a crescent moon.

Opposite the bed, a young woman named Anna sat in an old armchair that remembered other lives and far drearier lodgers. One leg was hooked over the arm, back half-slouched, a pose so loose it verged on defiant.

Her long dark hair, tied back, fell almost to her knees. She wore a black fabric corset cinched tight at the waist, blue jeans, black stilettos, and light-brown suede fingerless gloves. She sat the way blokes do before a match: legs apart, sure of herself, and frankly not giving a toss how it looked. Her black eyes stared somewhere past it all, blurred and unfocused. She was just a shell that remembered only how to breathe.

The mobile fell silent. Silence hit, sudden and hard. The girl gave the smallest flinch, as if slapped, blinked, and for the first time in ages, she moved. The rabbit on the bed turned his head towards his owner. She leaned forward, resting her forearms on her knees. Looked at him. Between them there was an understanding of the sort that forms between two people. To her, Cyrus wasn’t just a pet, but the truest, most faithful friend she’d had in all her life.

The mobile came alive again, ringing with nagging insistence. The ringtone pressed into her temples like a blunt knife. Anna let out a heavy breath, rose from the chair and went to the bedside table. Tiny shards of glass crunched underfoot in the carpet —an overturned table lamp lay by the wall, and nearby a smashed bottle of wine. On the bedside table sat a crumpled pack of cigarettes with a black-and-red logo and a name a moody teenager might have thought up: “D.Evil”. Beside it — the newspaper “The Sleeping City”, a round brown stain on the front page.

The girl drew out a cigarette, flicked a heavy metal lighter with a practised snap, and brought the flame to her lips. The flame briefly lit her face: soft, rounded lines, a snub nose, freckles, a mole under her right eye, plump lips with the corners faintly upturned — a smile that hadn’t truly lit in a long time.

She closed her eyes, savouring that first drag, the smoke trying to fill the emptiness inside. She leaned over the small black-and-yellow cassette player at the edge of the bedside table. Pressed the button. The tape clicked, the cogs began to whirr, and Joy Division seeped through the cramped room like a warming poison. A muffled bass came in, simple drums, and a man’s voice.

Music washed over the room in a wave. The girl lifted her head, half-closed her eyes, and breathed out smoke in a slow stream, allowing herself a brief, elegant gesture. Her body found the rhythm on its own. Her shoulders gave a slight sway. The fingers holding the cigarette traced a crooked arc in the air. With her free hand she began, by feel, to undo the hooks of her corset. She did it carelessly, slowly. The corset gave. Black fabric fell open, revealing a lace bra.

On the mobile’s screen a contact name flashed for a second: “Noah”, then flipped back to some number. Anna went to the bedside table and took the mobile in her hand, squeezing until her knuckles turned white. She turned to the window.

Cold evening air surged into the stuffy room, at once thinning the smell of tobacco and cheap alcohol. Outside, evening was sliding into night; the sky still held the last of its blue, but the first stars were already pricking through the dark grey. Her long hair had slipped loose from its tie, a little mussed. The wind stirred it; a light strand stuck to her lips, damp with cigarette smoke. She paused for a second, giving the moment a chance. Then, almost lazily, she tossed the mobile out of the window.

The phone plunged, its screen glowing all the way down until it hit the ground.

She turned. Walked past her pet without so much as a glance and slipped into the bathroom.

The bathroom was white, cold, and very bright. The tiled walls shone with a sterile light, throwing back the pallor of her skin. Anna was already standing by the sink in just her underwear and stockings. The light fell from above, emphasising her wavy dark-blonde hair and the frailty of her collarbones. And pointed ears peeped from the curling strands — like those of a fairy-tale creature torn out of folklore into reality, where myth mingles with horror — and such details whispered of hidden mutations, of genetic secrets that might, perhaps, destroy the world with a single whisper.

Her gaze fell on a small plastic bottle at the edge of the sink. On the label: “Risperidone”. Her fingers, delicate and tremulous, quivered slightly as she picked it up. She turned it over, listening to the dull rattle of tablets against cheap plastic, and screwed her eyes shut. Something between nausea and fatigue was rising inside, but it had dragged on so long there wasn’t even the strength left for despair.

She tipped the tablets into her palm. A small handful of tiny white discs, meant to mend a mind, now turned into a ticket to the other side. She rested her shoulder blades against the cold wall, stared at the tablets in her palm, thinking of something. Then she tipped back her head, tossed the tablets into her mouth and, wincing at the acrid bitterness, swallowed them, feeling them scrape her throat.

Anna turned the mixer tap on the bath; the pressure roared, the noise grew heavy and oppressive. The hot stream battered the enamel, a thin veil of steam rising. The empty bottle fell to the floor and rolled, knocking against the wall. She didn’t dare take off her underwear. Because she was ashamed for the people who would later haul her swollen, bluish body out of this puddle, waterlogged to a sickening swell, with skin mottled in purple patches of decay, foam dried at her mouth in a yellowish crust, eyes bulged from their sockets and glassy like a fish on a tip, hair matted into clumps with slime and filth, giving off a heavy, cloying stench of rot that would soak into their clothes and haunt their nightmares as they tried to scrub away the vile slime stuck to their fingers.

She lurched into the bath and flopped into the water, letting it close around her like a filthy bog. Scalding hot, but somehow calming.

Anna lay listening to the water still roaring, filling the voids, drowning out any other sound. When she opened her eyes again, she noticed the skin on her wrist prickling, itching. An unfamiliar sensation—not like a cut, not like a burn. As if along the inside of her left arm someone had drawn a fine, ice-cold point. She raised her wrist from the water; it ran down her fingers. Where the skin had been smooth moments before, thin red weals were swelling up.

They were appearing on their own. Some invisible hand, very careful, almost gentle, was carving a pattern. The lines crossed and writhed, forming an ugly motif — something like a stylised, mangled flower. The girl watched as her own skin was etched by that invisible knife, and felt only a mute horror buried under a thick layer of apathy.

Anyone else in her place would have scrambled out of the bath, run for help, shouted, screamed, anything. She just kept sitting there. Her hand trembled, but she didn’t pull it back, letting the pattern finish itself.

The music playing in the cassette player suddenly stuttered. A rustle bled through the speakers. The track rasped, dissolved into a hiss. Over the white noise another sound slowly crystallised: a quiet woman’s voice singing a children’s lullaby.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

How I wonder what you are.

Up above the world so high

Like a diamond in the sky.

When the blazing sun is gone,

When he nothing shines upon,

Then you show your little light,

Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

The words about the little star came through the interference as if from underwater. Something in the room had shifted. The rabbit on the bed lifted itself, ears bolt upright. He stared at the closed bathroom door, his muzzle tense. The soft, unnatural hissing, laced with the lullaby, spread through the room like the smell of burning. The walls began to crack. Quietly, almost imperceptibly—the way the first fractures look in the shell of an egg just before something nightmarish hatches. After a while, the cracks thickened, lengthened, branching out.

Paint bubbled and flaked off in scales; the plaster swelled, broke and crumbled. Furniture blurred into misshapen shadows. The carpet turned sodden, its edges pulling like candle wax; the bed’s legs went down with a wet squelch into the softening floor. The bedside table skewed, the wood bulging under an unseen heat. But there was no flame—only invisible entropy, reducing everything to atoms. In the fissures in the walls, tiny pale points appeared. You might have thought they were just bits of plaster fallen away to reveal the white undercoat. Then it became clear: those points were stars. Very distant, beyond the cracked shell of the motel wall.

In the reflection of the melting television screen, a silhouette flickered at the window for a moment: a figure with an elongated, unnaturally long nose and horns jutting from its head.

Cyrus hopped off the bed and dashed to the bathroom door. He pressed his fluffy chest to it and began to scrabble, furious. Tiny claws bit into the wood. He felt death coming with every fibre of his animal self. From out here, in the room, you could hear only the rush of water and a woman’s voice humming a lullaby.

The bathwater turned pink. A thin thread of blood seeped from the fresh pattern on her wrist and bloomed into soft clouds. Anna watched it and thought how beautiful it was. A careless watercolour wash at her own end.

Her eyelids suddenly grew heavy. Her head went light, like a balloon ready to pull free of her body. She let her lids fall. From her left nostril a fine thread of blood began to run, slipped to her upper lip, and was smeared away by the hot water.

The girl’s body slid under the water, her hair fanning around her head like black seaweed. The water brimmed and spilled over the edges, gushed onto the floor, ran for the threshold. It reached Cyrus’s paws, scorched his pads like acid; he jerked, but didn’t leave the door, only scrabbled harder with his claws, trying to get inside, raking the wood down to bloody splinters. His fur was soaked and clumped into matted lumps, steeped in that vile liquid that carried the reek of death. Objects around them slowly lifted off the floor and floated upwards, as if gravity had gone on temporary strike. From the open window, fog crawled into the molten room. It filled the space, mingling with the steam and the smell of damp fabric.

***

The next morning met the same room with a gentle light. Dawn filtered through the open window, picking out the dust settling on the furniture. The motel room looked as if nothing had happened. Only damp traces on the floor and the smell of hot water hinted that something had.

The door stood open. Inside, people moved about in disposable overshoes and gloves. SOCOs, detectives, the duty pathologist. The scene photographer kept crouching to shoot the yellow evidence markers. Between the room’s door and the bathroom stood a man with caramel-coloured hair and brown eyes. Shoulder to the frame, he looked into the bath. His gaze was heavy, sombre. His name was Tate.

Another man stepped inside. Detective Inspector Vincent Lord. Tall, in a white shirt with a neatly knotted tie. Black hair with a noticeable streak of grey on the right, dark blue eyes, a scar cutting through his right eyelid, and a smaller one on his upper lip. Not a flicker on his face, only contained concentration. He entered the bathroom and saw the dead girl; the pathologist was crouched beside her.

Her skin had taken on a greyish cast, like the sky before a storm. Her eyes were closed. A thin strip of dried blood marked the skin beneath her nose.

‘Body temperature—about thirty-three degrees Celsius; the water’s a touch higher. The air in the room is still warm, roughly thirty-five. Judging by the condition of the skin, she’s been in the water quite a while.’

He gently took her left hand and lifted it clear of the water. On the inside of the wrist a fresh, sharply defined mark stood out—the same flower an invisible hand had carved into her skin only hours ago.

‘The Faceless’s mark. Left wrist.’

Vincent studied the pattern without blinking. Something tightened, painfully, inside him, but his face stayed the same: even, stern. The pathologist eased her hand back into the water.

‘Rigor mortis has reached the upper limbs. Provisional: Anna died six to eight hours ago. But it’s too early to draw conclusions.’

Her name didn’t come from him at once. To the pathologist, she was just a case. To Vincent, his niece. He felt his back go even more rigid. He raised his head to the ceiling, as if there were anything up there besides yellowed stains, and closed his eyes.

The pathologist nodded towards the floor.

There by the wall, beside the spilt water and a yellow evidence marker, lay an empty plastic bottle of Risperidone.

‘The bottle was found there. Antipsychotic used for psychoses and schizophrenia. An overdose can trigger cardiac arrest. Add a hot bath… the heart could have failed.’

‘And what about the mark?’ Vincent forced himself back to the job.

‘There are shards from the broken bottle,’ the man said, scratching the back of his head.

‘In theory, you could have used one of them. But look at this: the lines are very clean. It’s hard to cut this neatly with glass. There’s something… else.’

Vincent stepped back from the bath and went out into the room. Water squelched underfoot. He stopped in the middle of the place, giving his eyes a moment to take in the whole scene. Yellow evidence markers stood by every significant item. The empty bottle, the smashed lamp, the glass shards, the player, the pack of cigarettes, the spilt wine, and the charred filter of a cigarette end in the ashtray. The pool of water had run out into the corridor and reached the next door.

‘Tate. Who turned off the tap? Judging by the amount of water, it was on all night.’

‘No idea. When we arrived, the tap was already off.’

The pathologist leaned out.

‘That’s right. For a flood like this, the tap would have had to be open for hours. With decent pressure. In six to eight hour,s both the water and the body should have cooled to room temperature. If they’re still warm, hot water was running almost until morning.’

Tate folded his arms.

‘So someone came into the room after she died, shut off the water and left everything as is? The call came in from the motel owner complaining that the water had flooded the corridor, and no one was opening the door. Given there’ve been suicides here before, he was afraid to go in himself and waited for the police. All the neighbouring rooms were empty yesterday, so there are no witnesses either.’

‘Did he explain why he rented a room to a minor?’

‘Yeah. Said some bloke actually rented the room a week ago—didn’t bother checking his ID; he looked about thirty. And instead of his own name, he just put “N” in the guest register.’

Vincent went over to the bedside table where she’d been standing not long ago. On top, beside the yellow markers, lay the cassette player and the crumpled pack of D.Evil. In the player’s plastic bay sat a cassette with a hand-scratched label: ‘Joy Division’.

‘Found the mobile?’

Tate gave the slightest shake of his head.

Who was this “N”, and could he have taken her mobile? Vincent wondered.

Together, they looked towards the window. The outlines of the city street seemed distant, cut off from this room.

‘What an idiot. I left her on my own.’

‘Don’t start. You did everything you could. There are things we can’t control. You’ve said that yourself a hundred times.’

Tate searched his face and felt, quite literally, everything Vincent was feeling.

***

Their friendship was never warm in the usual sense. No hugs, no beer-fuelled confessions, no lines like, ‘mate, I’m here’. They’d both sooner choke than say it out loud. And yet it turned out to be the most reliable thing either of them had.

They’d met back in the days when ‘friend’ wasn’t just a word you tossed around. Tate was an anchor for Vincent. The one person who didn’t try to fix him. Didn’t pry and didn’t ask unnecessary questions. He simply took Vincent as he was: sharp, withdrawn, obsessive, at times unbearable, with a lousy sense of humour. And, more importantly, he never expected him to become someone else.

Vincent, for his part, trusted Tate the way you trust very few people. Not with words, but with deeds. He knew that if something went wrong, Tate would have his back. Not out of duty or because ‘that’s what you do’, but because he believed it was right. For Vincent, that was the purest form of loyalty.

Vincent didn’t explain his decisions. Tate didn’t demand explanations. He either walked alongside him or stepped quietly aside, knowing there was no point arguing just then. They’d seen each other at their worst. Seen the job burn away what was left of an ordinary life. Seen how the past wouldn’t let go. How the personal slowly rotted under the weight of the case. And neither of them ever used that knowledge as a weapon.

Tate once told someone that Vincent was the sort of man he wouldn’t want to be friends with under other circumstances. There wasn’t a hint of insult in it. Just the truth.

***

Something gave Vincent’s trousers a gentle tug. He looked down. By his leg, up on his hind legs, stood the rabbit. Wet-pawed, ears pinned. He reached up to him, tiny claws snagging the fabric, and looked up with wide eyes. A memory slid into place: old, warm, painfully alive. A little girl with black eyes and this same rabbit in her arms, laughing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Vincent smiled in spite of himself. An unexpected, almost out-of-place expression for his face. He crouched and held out a hand. The latex gloves bit into his skin as he gently stroked the rabbit’s head.

‘Cyrus… hello, mate. What are you doing here?’

Tate said nothing, watching them. There was more honesty in this strange little scene than at most official funerals. As Vincent stroked Cyrus, his eye caught something under the bed. A dark rectangle. He peered, leaning forward on his palms. It was a book. He dropped to his knees and reached under, pulling out a thick hardback. The book was a little grubby and scuffed, but the cover image still showed: a starry sky, a stylised galaxy, the title — ‘Mechanisms of Quantum Immortality’. The author was one Richard Cord. A crumpled scrap of paper stuck out, with a doodled smiley face and an arrow pointing in.

Cigarettes, booze. But inside, still the same curious child, Vincent thought, opening the book where the marker stuck out. On the scrap it simply said: ‘Feed Cyrus.’ Vincent clenched the paper between his fingers; the feeling he’d been holding off all through the morning shift rose up — something between a laugh and a sob. He drew a deep breath and lowered his eyes to the text.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The quantum world is inextricably woven into the reality we experience every day. But what if I told you that consciousness is not merely a product of the brain’s neural networks, but rather an interacting ensemble of quantum processes? That carries startling implications for our understanding of the very nature of life and death.

Consider, for a moment, quantum entanglement: two particles, separated in space, yet still able to influence one another instantaneously. This ‘spooky action at a distance’, as Einstein once put it, suggests that our own thoughts may, perhaps, exert an immediate effect on the physical world around us.

Next, if we look at the idea of quantum immortality, we meet the notion that consciousness might maintain its coherence after the death of the body. How? Through the endless variations of the many universes, where every decision, every act, creates a new branch of reality. In one of those branches, you may live forever.

We stand on the threshold of discoveries that may upend our sense of being. What if quantum effects allow consciousness to pass between different states of existence? We may come to see death not as an ending, but as a passage into another form of being, one hidden from our limited perception.

Chapter 7: The Possibilities of Quantum Immortality

Immortality, like the Holy Grail of physics, promises infinity in a world constrained by the laws of entropy. Yet quantum theory offers an alternative view of eternity. We already know the observer plays a key role in determining a system’s state; what if consciousness itself is an act of observation, compelling the universe to materialise out of a sea of probabilities?

Consider our own death. In classical terms, it is final. But through the lens of quantum mechanics, death is merely one of the countless possible events in our quantum state. In another universe, parallel to this one, ‘you’ continue: interacting, choosing, observing.

Here we arrive at the idea of quantum immortality: consciousness as an entity not bound to a single reality, continuing its journey through the multiverse. Each time it meets death in one universe, our consciousness may ‘leap’ to another, where we go on living. The process is unbroken and unending — an eternal loop of existence.

Thus, in the quantum world, death is not disappearance but transformation, a transition from one state to another. It is a perspective that lends new meaning to our actions, thoughts, and aims. If quantum immortality is real, then every moment of life becomes a precious contribution to an infinite canvas of existence, where each of us is an artist of eternity.

Chapter 11: The Echo of Eternity

Our journey through the quantum multiverse opens prospects that the ordinary mind may deem fantastical. Through the veil of the everyday, the contours of other worlds begin to show — worlds peopled by versions of ourselves, living other lives shaped by other choices.

Imagine that with each decision, each movement, you not only act in this universe, but also send a ripple through countless realities. In one, you turned left and happiness waited; in another, right, where tragedy lay in store. In every universe where you made a choice, you left an echo of yourself — and it lives, loves, suffers, and reaches for the light of understanding.

What is the price of such immortality? Perhaps it lies in this: that we may never wholly ‘die’, but we may never wholly ‘live’ either — for in each reality our existence is only the after-echo of all possible paths. We are not linear beings, but part of a grand, multidimensional quantum tapestry.

Can our consciousness ever grasp these infinite branches of its own self? Or is our mind meant to perceive only a single thread of this endless weave? Perhaps the truth of quantum immortality lies hidden in the deepest recesses of our being — the very place we fear to look.

And so we stand on the threshold not only of a new physics, but of a new philosophy, a new ethics. How should we live, knowing that each choice gives birth to an infinity? What should we do, conscious that the echoes of our decisions carry across the universes? These questions demand from us no less courage than the idea of immortality itself — the courage to face the unknown, the immeasurable, and ourselves.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Vincent closed the book without a word, though his head was a churn of thoughts. It seemed to him that this room, this day, this case were only one branch — and somewhere else Anna never came to this motel, and he hadn’t been so late to her life.

***

Night had fallen. Outside, the mortuary’s brick building looked like a weary veteran in retirement. Inside, it smelled of disinfectant and steel. The place was quiet: only the faint hum of the refrigerators and distant footsteps somewhere along the corridor. On the stainless post-mortem table lay Anna. A turquoise sheet covered her body to the chest. Her hair was fanned out, her skin paler than it had been in the morning, her lips faintly blue. The body seemed finally, utterly still. And then her eyes opened.

Episode 1

Within the mortuary’s cold walls stood a very tall man in a white rabbit mask. The black hollows reflected nothing; they swallowed the light. The mask seemed rubber one moment, porcelain the next, perhaps even leather — its material and shape kept shifting, but some details never changed: vein-like fissures beneath the hollows, horns, vicious, needle-sharp teeth, black lines on the chin, and an inverted pentagram on the brow. If not for the long ears, you’d say its snout looked more like an angry dog crossed with a devil than any rabbit.

He stared into the void. There was something in his stillness older than a human life.

He wore a perfectly cut black dinner suit and cloth gloves; the collar of his white shirt caught the light. An oval, gold-mounted pendant on a gold chain hung at his throat — a bulbous turquoise piece with a yellow crescent and a red, flower-like symbol.

Before him, on the post-mortem table, lay Anna. The cold bit into her skin like a thousand tiny needles. Her brain still slept somewhere in a murky, black layer of non-being. The air smelt of sharp chemicals and something sweet and heavy. From very far away, out of the depths of the dark, a warm voice was singing:

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”

At first they weren’t even words. Just ripples, a whisper, tender and a little sad. Anna drifted in that voice as if in warm water. There, in the dark, there was no body, no pain, no memories. Only a voice she knew far too well.

Mum’s.

“How I wonder what you are…”

A woman stood in the dark. Beautiful, slender, with very long hair that spilled onto the floor like a waterfall. Her dress was white and almost luminous. There was no face. In place of it, a blurred, soft oval. Anna reached for her, and every time it seemed that one more step would bring her fingers to that hand, the image shivered. The white dress gave way to a black dinner suit. The long hair drowned in shadow. The woman’s outline stretched, grew more angular. Where the blank face had been, a rabbit mask surfaced. The voice’s gentle tone dropped, roughened; a metallic edge crept in. In the background, scraps of the lullaby still flickered, but over them another sound forced its way through, alien:

“When the sun suddenly sets…”

A pause. A second.

“Anna.”

Closer. Harsher.

“ANNA!”

The name split the darkness like a flash. It yanked her upwards, to the surface, where there was air and a body again. Anna sucked in a breath. Her chest clenched painfully at the cold air. She flung her eyes open and jerked upright, braced on her elbows.

She was perched on the edge of a table covered with a coarse turquoise blanket that had slipped from her shoulders. She looked around. The room seemed small. Metal tables, cupboards, fridge drawers, grey tiles on the floor. Anna pulled the blanket to her chest without thinking, only then realising there was nothing on her but bare skin. Something tugged at her toe. Irritated, she yanked the blanket back to free her feet. A tag hung from the big toe of her right foot. Just an ordinary paper tag on a string. Lifting her foot closer to her eyes, she read:

“Name: Anna Lord.

Date of birth: 05/11/1990

Date of death: 06/10/2007

Sex: female,

Age: 16.

Place found: ‘Starlight Motel’.

Description: found with no signs of violence.”

Her mind stumbled over the word ‘death’ like an invisible step. She stared at the numbers, but they wouldn’t come any closer, wouldn’t put down roots into any memory. Just a string of dates and a blunt statement: you are no longer here. Anna tore off the tag, flung it away and dug her fingers into her hair.

She tried to focus. “Right, easy, remember. Remember — remember…”

She tried to pull anything at all from the dark: yesterday, the day before, a week ago. Darkness. Not even a hole, but a dense, impossible blank. She couldn’t even remember what she looked like, and the only thing left in her head was a name — Anna.

A thought came, vilely calm, not her own: “Maybe I really am dead?” Her face twisted.

“Yeah, of course,” she muttered, and pinched her leg harder, to the point of pain. The pain was utterly real. Sharp, wounding. Anna sniffed. “No. I can feel it. So I’m alive. Then how the hell did I end up here?”

The mortuary wasn’t about to answer. The lamp light burned her eyes, indifferent. She sat straighter, shuffled nearer the edge of the table, ready to climb down. There was the sense that somewhere there’d been pain, and… water? A deafening roar of water and someone’s lullaby. She ran a nervous hand over her face — and felt dampness under her nose. A drop of blood slid to her lip. She winced and wiped it away with the back of her hand. Red smeared on her skin.

Anna slid off the table, gripping its edge. She threw the turquoise blanket over her shoulders like a miserable cloak so she wouldn’t feel completely naked. Through a small window in the wall she could see a laboratory. The light was on inside. A draught stirred the papers on the desk. No one was there.

Anna stepped closer and pressed her forehead to the cold glass. In the lab, an MRI scan of someone’s brain was pinned to the wall. Black-and-white bands, slices, meaningless to an ordinary person. She stared at them, chasing a strange feeling, as if somewhere deep in that picture something about her was hidden. Beyond the door, out in the corridor, someone was humming, very softly. At first she decided it was just the familiar noise inside her skull. But the sound returned: a long, childlike hum, no words, “mm-mm-mm-mm,” the way a child fills in a tune for themselves. Gooseflesh darted across Anna’s skin. The voice was oddly familiar. She froze, listening. The humming grew clearer. Outside the door came a faint scuff of steps; someone small went past.

“Miss, which ward is my little brother in?” came a girl’s voice, quite distinctly, almost beside her.

Anna flinched. The words opened a tiny crack in her memory, and through it rushed a feeling: the white walls of a hospital, the sharp reek of antiseptic, a tight blanket up to her chin. Herself, small, but somehow seeing like a grown-up. And beside the bed a nurse, with a kind face and eyes where horror was hiding.

“Joseph will be scared without me.”

The name hit her like a hammer.

Joseph.

Anna moved for the door without thinking. She grasped the cold handle; a foreboding rose from her gut to her throat. She wanted to turn back, climb onto the table again, lie down and pretend none of it had happened. But curiosity, and fear for the voice that sounded so familiar, shoved her forward. The door opened softly. The corridor was empty. No girl, no nurse, no ward. And how could there be? This was a mortuary. And yet she knew: the voice had been here. She took a few steps, her bare feet slipping. A door stood ajar to the left. Another room beyond. Her body knew before her mind did. She touched the door with her fingers and pushed. What she saw was so wrong that her brain refused to admit it was real. On a body trolley, covered with a turquoise sheet, lay a girl. At first Anna saw only a profile: the line of the chin, the curve of the mouth, long lashes. The ribcage slightly raised beneath the sheet.

This girl had a seam. Long, crooked, dark, running down from the neck. The skin around it was dull, greyish. Anna took a step closer, barely breathing. A beautiful mask with gentle features. Before her lay her exact double, only mirrored. The words slipped out of her mouth of their own accord:

“Beautiful…”

At that moment “beautiful” opened her eyes. The lids lifted, and it became clear that the only thing worse than closed eyes are open ones — on a corpse. There were no pupils. The whole span from lid to lid was a deep, lightless black. But not just darkness — within that blackness, tiny, icy sparks were flickering. As if someone had set into her sockets fragments of the night sky, packed with stars and far-off galaxies. She smiled. Unhurried, human, almost shy.

“Oh, thank you,” she said in the very same voice that sounded from Anna’s own throat, only a touch softer. “You too.”

Anna flinched back, but her legs wouldn’t obey. The girl on the trolley sat up slowly; the sheet slid gently from her shoulders. The coarse seam on her body looked like a foreign element on something that was moving, alive. Anna went down hard. Her knees slammed the floor, but she barely noticed. With effort she straightened an arm and pointed at the double, words refusing to come.

“Did I really frighten you? It’s me,” the double smiled.

“Am I supposed to know you?!”

“Preferably.”

Anna let out a hoarse, nervous sound that was almost not a laugh at all. She looked away, at the seam, and felt something inside her begin to tear.

“Look at yourself! The only thing I know is that you’re meant to be dead!”

The double tilted her head slightly.

“Really?” she asked softly. In her eyes the stars seemed to flare brighter.

She leaned forward, slowly, bracing her palms on the trolley. Anna tried to edge back, but her body pinned her to the floor.

On the double’s right wrist Anna noticed an incised symbol — the same one she bore.

She leaned closer, so close Anna could feel the imagined scent of her. Those galaxy-filled eyes were a centimetre from her face. The smile warped. The face cracked — not the skin, but the picture itself. Under the crack showed sharp, uneven teeth, too long for a human mouth. The skin at the edges of the lips was subtly coming apart.

Anna screwed her eyes shut as hard as she could.

“It’s just in my head. Just in my head.”

Blindly, she tried to shove the thing away, whatever it was. Her fingers met something cold and solid; she stumbled and fell onto her back.

She opened her eyes. The trolley was empty. The sheet was pulled smooth; the glittering black eyes were gone. Only in the corner of the room, in the shadow, a silhouette of a tall man in a mask showed itself for an instant. The double had glanced his way and vanished, like a timid creature diving into a burrow. Anna sat up; her head was spinning. She took hold of her forehead, pressing her palm to her skin, wanting to keep her brain in place. “I’m going mad,” a nervous smile cut across her face.

Anna noticed a crumpled sheet of paper on the trolley. It definitely hadn’t been there before. Or she hadn’t seen it. Or it had appeared along with something that doesn’t exist. She reached out and picked it up. The paper was covered in tiny handwriting. Lines were crossed out in several places, so fiercely the ink had run. Dried drops of blood along the edge. In the centre: a sweeping mark.

She smoothed the sheet.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8 November 2003.

I’m so frightened…

When he saw me, his eyes flared with madness, and the next day he drove me and Joseph out to an abandoned cellar somewhere deep in the woods. By his account, this little hideaway was set up by William Alford as a place for his perverse amusements. We crossed the threshold, and a scene opened before me that made my blood run cold. Gary, John and Oliver were standing on chairs, and a noose was cinched around Gary’s neck. In their eyes I read pure terror. They were pleading for rescue, they wanted to live. That monster walked slowly up to Joseph and, with a cold smile, he s—”

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The sentence broke off, trailing into smeared ink.

Below, the same thing repeated:

“I HATE YOU” — again and again to the end of the line, until the letters turned into black pulp.

Lower still, under a different date, in a different hand:

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“30 November 2003.

I am plunged into the abyss, into its deepest heart, where darkness wraps everything around. Even the devil himself, in his burning urge, could not descend here.”

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Her eyes skimmed the lines, but there was less and less sense. The words played like a recording of someone else’s madness.

***

A hand clamped round a pen. A sheet of paper trembling with every breath. Letters dancing, outrunning the thoughts. The words ‘Gary’, ‘John’, ‘Oliver’, ‘Joseph’, ‘noose’, ‘cellar’ — biting into the paper like nails. Her nose awash with blood. Drops falling onto the page, mixing with the ink. Streaks of red laid over black. Her throat tight, ragged breathing. The room spinning. Anna is here, a thirteen-year-old girl, in her bedroom filling her diary.

There was a knock at the door.

“May I come in?” comes from the other side — a voice drawn out, soft, faintly mocking.

The sound passes through the door like a touch. It has the habit of asking permission only for the sake of appearances.

And that voice… once, for her, it was an entire sky with all the answers tucked behind it. He spoke, and the world fell into line like soldiers. He said her name as if the name didn’t belong to her at all, but to him. He could take it in his palm and turn it, like a key that fits any lock.

Back then, he was her demigod and her executioner in one. Warm as a blanket, and heavy as a concrete slab on her chest, pressing till her bones creaked, till all that was left of the body was a wet patch. He could smile in a way that made you want to believe: any moment now it’ll be all right, any moment now he’ll finally let go. But the smile always left a trace, like a fingernail on skin. Barely visible. Enough to remember. It was hard to say which was worse: when he spoke, or when he kept silent.

She hated that her body reacted faster than her head. That her heart gave a small, uneven leap. That inside her rose that filthy mix: fear, anger, disgust — and love… If she had to die for that voice, she would have. Like a loyal dog that its owner beats every day after work, and still it crawls to him, wagging its tail and licking the hand that only a moment ago smelt of the belt. To the point of retching. To humiliation. To the point where even crying feels shameful, because the tears seem to be for him, too.

“No! I want to be on my own! Go away!” Anna shouted at him.

A light chuckle came from behind the door.

“Of all people, you’re the last who should be afraid of me.” The words settled on her like a sticky film.

She closes her eyes. She has no strength left, but anger slices through the weakness.

“What did you slip me?!” Anna looked at the bottle of cola. “What did you do?!”

“Nothing much, don’t worry. Do you think I want to kill you?”

The room heaved. The table under her elbows turned into a ship about to go under. Anna dug her nails into the wood, but her fingers slid. The door opened without a knock.

She tries to rise, but her body won’t obey. Her legs are cotton-wool; her head rattles like an empty tin. Footsteps draw closer. She can’t see his face. Only a dark silhouette and a hand. Fingers touch her cheek. The forefinger taps lightly against her skin.

***

There was that unpleasant throb in her nose again. The diary page trembled in her hands. The room turned back into a mortuary. She looked at the door. A thought flickered in her head: I need to get out of here. The girl clutched the blanket to her, crushed the diary page in her fist and threw it away.

“I don’t trust idiots who can mistake the living for the dead.”

***

The night was viscous. In Hyde Park the lamplight melted in a light mist, turning into soft, murky blurs. The leaves rustled underfoot, damp after recent rain. Normal people at this hour were at home or in bars, not drifting along dark paths. These two girls didn’t fall into the ‘normal’ category. They walked, heels catching in the cracks of the pavement, laughing and chattering. Clothes: short, bright, provocative. Their make-up had run a little, but they didn’t care. One of the girls flopped onto the nearest bench, legs splayed.

The other stayed on her feet a couple of seconds more, looked around.

“I’ll call a taxi,” she began, reaching for her phone.

Her gaze snagged on something in the grass, a little further along the path. Where the circle of the lamp’s light ended, in the dim strip between the path and the bushes, something long lay stretched out.

“Look. Something’s lying there. Shall we check?”

“I’m out. I’ve got a bad feeling. What if it’s a dog? I hate running into dead animals, it upsets me.”

“Fine, sit tight. I’ll go look.”

She set her phone on the bench. She walked towards the dark shape, at first quickly, then more slowly. The grass squelched under her heel. She stopped a couple of metres away. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, sketching the details. Hair. Pale skin. A body. Blood. Her mouth opened by itself.

The scream ripped out of her.

The one on the bench, scrabbling, dropped her phone, for a moment not knowing which way was up or down as she tried to dial emergency services.

In the cold grass, in the shimmer of the lamps, lay a woman’s body. She had died very recently. Her neck and straight white hair were slick with a sticky crimson shine.

Anna walked through London at night. The hem of the sheet snagged on the pavement, sweeping up grime as it went. People turned to look; some slowed, others began to whisper.

‘Where am I even going?’ she asked herself. The longer she walked, the more those eyes on her nerves. She crossed the road and slipped into a narrow alley between two buildings. Here the lamplight barely reached the ground and the city’s noise fell away to a muffled hum behind her. It was filthier, colder but easier to breathe.

Deeper in, a yellow wedge of light leaked from a narrow door beneath a sign: Makkeller. The back entrance to a bar. The smell of beer, tobacco and frying spilled out onto the street. Two lads were propped by the door.

Sam — mid-height, dark-haired stood with his arms folded. Chris — taller, fairer, a crumpled, drink-sodden face had one hand braced on the wall and the other clamped over his mouth, as if to physically hold his stomach down.

Swaying, Chris muttered that he felt rotten and was about to be sick, while boasting he could still put away three more pints and needed to go back in to kick some Noah bloke’s arse. Sam batted him down with lazy patience. Anna walked past them.

‘Sam! Look! A ghost.’

Anna turned her head, looked, and walked on without even slowing. The drunk lurched after her; Sam caught him by the sleeve and tried to haul him home.

“Oi, where the hell d’you think you’re off to?” he growled. “We’re going home. You’re pissed out of your skull, behaving like a complete twat.”

But Chris tore free, caught up to Anna in a few unsteady steps and put a hand on her shoulder. She stopped, jerked his fingers off, spun round, and for the first time in a long while a keen, cutting energy flared in her eyes. Anna stepped closer, seized his face and sank her long nails into his skin. He yelped, half-sober in an instant, and tried to prise her hand away.

“I hate it when pissed-up scum put their hands on me.”

“Let go, you psycho! I’ll smack you one!”

Anna didn’t answer at once. She studied him, weighing what in him grated more: the reek of beer, the smug face, or the fact he existed at all.

“Try it,” she said calmly.

“Wait, wait!” Sam cut in, stepping towards them with his hands raised. “You’ve got the wrong idea. We thought you needed help.” He was about to add something else, but then he actually looked at her face. Looked properly. And something inside him clicked. “You’re…”

Anna twitched an eyebrow but said nothing. Sam pointed a finger at her.

“Anna Lord?”

Anna’s fingers tightened on Chris’s face for a split second, then she snatched her hand away. His cheek was left striped. Chris rubbed at the scratches, hissing with pain.

Sam was looking only at Anna. She backed away. Turned. Then bolted. The two of them watched her go in silence for a while.

“How d’you know her?” Chris asked, his voice thick with drink.

Sam put his hands on his hips, drew a long breath, then covered his face with his hand. He remembered that the name Lord was known to everyone in the city who had even a passing grasp of politics, who watched the news or read true crime. It was like a codeword that made voices drop. Politics, the police, the courts — she lived somewhere in those overlaps. Sometimes she surfaced in the news, sometimes vanished for years, but she never truly went away.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Sleeping City.

London, Saturday, 6 October 2007.

Death of Anna Lord — the final chapter in the downfall of a powerful family.

The city is shaken by news of the mysterious death of Anna Lord, the sixteen-year-old daughter of former high-profile politician, philanthropist and mayoral candidate Gerald Lord. On Saturday morning her body was found in the bathroom of the “Starlight Motel” with no sign of violence, prompting questions about a possible suicide. However, sources report that the girl’s body bore the Faceless’s mark, though the police have yet to confirm this.

The Lord family’s string of tragedies began in 2003: Anna and her younger brother, Joseph, were abducted several months before the London mayoral election concluded. In January 2004, near the Thames, Anna was found emaciated, and the dismembered body of her younger brother, ten-year-old Joseph Lord, was recovered bearing the killer’s mark — leading to the conclusion that the children had fallen victim to the Faceless. These events dealt a blow to Gerald’s campaign and contributed to his defeat at the polls.

Months later, a fire broke out at the Lord family mansion, claiming six lives, including Gerald, his wife Margaret, their daughter Eileen, and three housekeepers. Only Ayden and Anna survived the horrific blaze. Ayden suffered severe third-degree burns. The investigation found the fire to be arson orchestrated by Anna, corroborated by traces of petrol at the scene and by Anna’s confession. The act sparked widespread debate and raised many questions about her mental state.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The ongoing search for Olivia Johnson

While public attention is fixed on the death of Anna Lord, the police continue to search for missing Olivia Johnson. The fifteen-year-old disappeared a month ago. She was last seen in the Hyde Park area. Her father, in despair, is appealing to the public for help. The Metropolitan Police refuse to acknowledge a link between the disappearance of the north-London teenager and ten other girls who have gone missing since 2005, despite speculation that the Faceless is responsible. Families of the missing girls and young women, along with civic groups, are demanding that the police explain why the investigation has stalled.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Name: Olivia Johnson

Age: 15

Hair: Light brown with bleached streaks

Eye colour: Grey

Height: 162 cm

Weight: 52 kg

Missing since 4 September. Wears piercings (medusa, snake bites) and a jade pendant; three moles beneath the right collarbone forming a triangle.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***

Hyde Park was now cordoned off from the rest of the world with yellow tape. By night it was only a patch of green with a couple of benches; now it was a crime scene, and every blade of grass mattered. The dew hadn’t yet burned off. On it lay a dead girl.

Vincent crouched beside the body. He wore gloves; inside them, his fingers moved slowly, precisely. A red-haired CSI, Lesley, stood nearby in a protective suit. Her hair was tied back; green eyes tracked his every move. The pathologist leaned closer to the victim’s throat.

“The cut to the neck is very rough. The implement was blunt, poorly sharpened. See the ragged edges?”

Vincent nodded without a word.

“There’s also a crudely cut mark on the back of the left hand.”

Vincent’s fingers lingered on the girl’s hand. His gaze moved to the ring on her fourth finger: “Was she engaged?”

Behind them, a detective was reporting: no documents on her, identity unconfirmed; a Makkeller bar card found in the jacket pocket.

“There are grounds to suspect a serial killer known as the Faceless.”

“Not his modus operandi,” Vincent said quietly, without looking up. “Even the victim’s age doesn’t fit.”

Lesley stepped closer.

“Wasn’t one of his victims an adult woman?”

Vincent turned his head slightly towards her. The picture in his mind arrived before words. Snow. A red ribbon tied in a bow around a cardboard box, like a present. And the way the blood slowly soaks the cardboard, climbing higher, deepening in colour.

Lesley kept talking, not noticing how his features had sharpened. She didn’t know what the truth really was.

“I couldn’t find the record of that case in the public domain. I wanted to read up properly, but never got access. Probably because I’m new.” She gave a small, self-mocking smile. “I heard it was a box of fake hands with the marks on them, and among them was a severed wrist from an adult woman. Apparently they still haven’t found her body.”

Vincent let his gaze return to the present victim.

“We’ve only one killer in this city who leaves marks like that,” Leslie concluded.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

“What do you think? Does this look like his work?”

He rose, straightening. Hands on hips, he took in the whole scene.

Lesley rolled a shoulder, thoughtful.

“Why would anyone try to pass themselves off as the Faceless?”

“I don’t know. But if he’s attracting followers, we’ve got a problem.”

He looked again at the girl lying in the grass. There was something childlike in her face and, at the same time, already adult — spent.

“Most likely, it’s someone’s first kill.”

“There was a mark on Anna’s body too. But with no signs of violence at all — not really his style either,” Leslie said, uncertain.

Vincent lowered his head and kept silent. Behind them the CSIs were already starting to bag the body. The rustle of bags, the click of a camera, muted exchanges.

“Can you tell me why she didn’t cooperate with the police in catching the Faceless back then… after the abduction? She saw his face.”

Vincent peered into the deeper park, past the yellow tape.

“She lost the memory of it. And when Anna was finally diagnosed, it turned out she couldn’t recognise faces.”

Lesley stared at him, as if she hadn’t heard right.

“Wait… so she really had prosopagnosia?”

“Yes. The doctors said she could recognise those close to her by voice, by gait, by gestures. That’s why no one noticed for so long. But faces… to her, every face was a smudged, indeterminate blot. That’s why we called him the ‘Faceless’. You know, plenty of people believe he truly has no face — believe it so strongly it’s become an urban legend. The faceless spirit of the Thames steals children.”

Lesley frowned, and it wasn’t just the movement of her brows; it was an inward gesture, almost painful. Somewhere inside her, a familiar, unpleasant guilt stirred.

Because she remembered how it had been.

For years, the public moulded Anna into something convenient. Not a victim, but an accomplice. Not a child, but a witness who “knew too much”. They said she sheltered him. That she was in on it. That she obeyed him like a trained animal and kept quiet. That was why she didn’t give him up. That was why she survived.

The monster killed, and they spread the blame over her. Over a girl who had neither voice nor choice, nor any chance to explain. Her name was dragged through headlines, whispered over kitchen tables, argued over in comment threads; to many she wasn’t a person at all, just part of the case. A function. Something to be tidied into boxes and judged without consequence.

Worst of all, Lesley had been part of that chorus too. Quiet, almost invisible  but part of it all the same. Deep down, she had once thought: what if? What if Anna knew more than she said? What if her silence wasn’t fear, but a choice?

Now the thought brought shame. Real shame. A heavy knowledge of an old, inexcusable mistake. Lesley let out a slow breath, trying to push the past out of herself, but it was in no hurry to leave.

Anna had been judged long before any trial.

And Lesley however much she might want to deny it had once passed her own sentence. Just as she had on her father.

***

Streets gave way one after another. Kerbs, rubbish bins, the fronts of 24-hour shops, a basketball court. At the corner, Anna stopped. On the other side of the road a man was walking. His hair was black and just above shoulder-length. A leather jacket, a filthy black T-shirt. He was spattered with blood. He carried a knife. The blood on the blade had already darkened. He walked past without looking at her. Anna watched him go, almost indifferent.

Somewhere behind her, a siren began to wail. A police car burst into the junction, swerved aside, jumped a red light and vanished further down the street. She flinched and instinctively ducked into the nearest alleyway. She pressed herself to the cold brick wall and peered out. The car was already gone.

“Why am I even hiding? I haven’t done anything.”

“Or have you?” said someone behind her.

The voice was old, hoarse, yet firm. Anna whipped round. Deeper in the alleyway sat an old man with a beard like Gandalf’s. Beside him lay a beat-up sleeping bag and a pizza box, from which he lazily pulled a slice and took a bite. He was watching her closely.

“Stop wandering around aimlessly. It’s dangerous. Did you see that bloke with the knife?”

Without quite knowing why, Anna dropped into a crouch, then sat on the dirty tarmac. The sheet bunched around her legs. She gave a grin, but it came out tired.

“Worry about yourself. You’ve got a black eye over half your face.”

He dipped his chin. The shiner was hard to miss: the bruise had spread into a dark, blood-red blotch. In the light you could see it—his left eye a cloudy grey, as if filmed over; the right black, deep as oil. He glanced down at the pizza.

“Want some?” he said, lifting a slice.

Anna looked at it; her stomach grumbled in protest, but she shook her head. Food from strangers wasn’t an option—especially from someone sleeping rough.

The old man shrugged.

“You’d be better off going home. What are you doing here?”

She sighed.

“I don’t know where home is. I actually legged it from the mortuary, if you can believe it. And I can’t ask for help—feels like I’m not allowed. Long story short, you wouldn’t understand, old man. In this filthy, dodgy alley I feel safe. So… can I stay here a bit longer?”

She surprised herself, saying it out loud.

The old man arched a brow.

“Of course.”

“How did you end up on the streets?” Anna changed the subject.

The old man looked at her; something flared in his chest. A sliver of memory cut through. Family. Home. Bankruptcy. The street. A blow to the head. Emptiness. He brushed the images aside and his face settled back into calm.

“I don’t remember,” he said, his voice faintly shaking. “Same as you, Anna.” He paused. “Truth is, I’m here to help you.”

It hit her like a jolt of electricity. The old man rose slowly and came towards her. Sitting on the tarmac, she looked up at him.

***

Vincent parked by the police station and got out. By the entrance, right in front of a sign with a crossed-out cigarette, Chris was calmly smoking. Vincent stopped beside him and, after a look, said, “You can’t smoke here.”

“And where does it say that?!” Chris snapped, surly and disrespectful.

“Turn around.”

Chris turned. The sign was right behind him. He waved it off and headed down the steps, looking round for a bin. Vincent just shook his head and went inside. In the lobby, at the front desk, Sam stood there, wound tight.

“Just listen! I might be wrong, but you have to check what I’m telling you!”

The constable behind the desk regarded him with weary scepticism.

“You been drinking, son?”

“No! And what difference does it make?! I’m an adult!”

“Don’t you watch the news?”

“Even if it’s not her, that girl still needs help!”

Vincent stepped closer and quietly leaned on the edge of the counter, slipping into the conversation. Sam turned his head. In his eyes flickered a mix of hope and panic.

“Will you at least hear me out? My mate and I saw Anna Lord just now. She… she even scratched his face! I swear. It was either her or her double. The face was a dead ringer. Even the ears were the same—kind of elfin.”

Vincent’s eyes darkened for a moment. A picture surfaced. The lifeless body of his niece in a cheap motel.