Hello. That's my new story. I plan to release chapters everyday so if you like it, please consider Power Stones! I am several chapters ahead and you can find those and my other stories on my website! https://certherverse.com/
I reach pushup eighty and drop flat. Sweat splashes on rough cement. Cedric walks by my bars, the light above him buzzing.
"Hey, Charles. Still want a book? Something to pass the time?" He waves an old paperback.
I sit on my knees. "Pass the time? That is my whole life now. Slide it in, Cedric."
The hatch clanks. The book is Biological Psychology. The pages are yellow and smell like dust, but to me it is fresh air. I breathe in the smell and let the words slow my heart: stress, fear, habits. What once was homework is now survival.
After a few pages my pulse is calm. I hide the book under my bunk and listen. One drip near the showers. The elevator motor above. A soft prayer in B Block. Sound tells me more than sight here.
Feet apart, I start squats. My legs burn and my mind drifts back to Harvard and later to the CIA office in Sacramento. Back then books like this were required. If I could not explain stress by Friday, my badge froze on Monday. I never thought those lessons would keep me sane behind bars.
Five years locked up. I have seen loud men break, quiet men fade, and tough men scream. To stay whole, I keep my mind busy. I replay old cases, rebuild talks, ask new questions. If my brain keeps working, the darkness stays out.
At ten in the morning the doors click open. Yard time. Summer twenty thirty, central California. The sun feels like fire. We march outside, orange uniforms bright on the blacktop. I tilt my head back and drink the light.
Near the fence I sit cross legged. A faint smell of eucalyptus drifts over the walls. Footsteps stop beside me. Damian lowers a flat box, draws a chessboard with pencil, and sets bottle caps and soap chips as pieces.
"Ready to lose your lunch break?"
I laugh. "You have not taken a pawn since spring. Your move." I push a cap forward. Chess is travel for men without tickets.
Damian moves a soap bishop. "Radio says the Valley Siren mailed another card. Four girls gone."
I slide a pawn. "He is getting bolder. Cards mean he feels power. The time between grabs is shorter. He will keep going until someone stops him."
Damian squints at the sky, thinking hard. "You build his profile from a yard bench?"
A smile spreads across my face as I move another pawn. "Help me out. Which night does he strike?"
"Tuesday. Every Tuesday night."
"Good. And what sign does he leave?"
"Cops swear they can't find a single trace, not even a fingerprint."
I push a knight across the carton. "They're hunting the wrong thing. A real sign isn't a fingerprint or a shoe mark. It's a message the killer wants the world to read."
Damian's eyes narrow. "You mean the postcards?"
"Exactly. He needs people to notice. It's the crack in the armor. Serial hunters crave recognition, but there's more to it than that." I move a pawn to support the knight. "The sign is also control. It's ritual. Some of them have OCD traits, compulsive loops they wrap around each kill. The sign is how they claim ownership of the event and replay it in their mind. That repetition keeps the thrill alive. If police want to catch him, they have to treat the sign like a window into his pattern. Not just what he does, but why he has to do it."
Damian studies the board, lips pressed tight, then nudges his rook forward.
I don't rush. I slide my queen and lock the outcome. Checkmate in two.
He leans back with a quiet grunt and nods, as if he expects it.
We clean the board, bottle caps clinking as they drop into the carton. When the buzzer shrieks, we both rise without a word.
We join the line heading to dinner. The hallway smells like bleach and old sweat. Through a tiny window the sky is bright blue. I wish I could feel that air on my face.
I'm thirty‑four and serving life. The math says I'll die in here, but that doesn't scare me. My only regret is simple: I left some of them breathing. If these walls ever fall, I'll spend every day hunting the people who killed my family until the last name is crossed off.
The server slops gray stew onto my tray, adds a lump of rice and a bread square hard as drywall. Calories, nothing more. I turn, scanning for empty space near the back wall.
Reggie steps into my path. Sweat darkens his collar, tattoos curling up his throat like wire. His shoulder hits mine. The tray launches, clanging on tile. Gray stew explodes across the floor and soaks my boots.
"The fuck, man?" I snap, wiping broth off my pants.
Reggie grins, eyes bright with spite. "Thought your family taught you better manners, Harvard. Oh, wait. Forgot they're dead."
The word dead punches open an old door: copper fills my nostrils, that thick, hot-metal stench coating the hallway where I found them.
My vision narrows until there's only his face. The lights, the noise, the cafeteria stink, all of it falls away. Three seconds to dismantle him. Left elbow to the nose. That breaks sight and shatters orientation. Most men don't fight well when they can't see. Open palm to the throat. Not a showy hit, but a mean one. It stuns the vagus nerve, collapses the larynx, sends the brain into panic mode. The body thinks it's dying. Third move, right fist into the orbital bone. Hard enough to crack the socket and shut one eye for good. Knee to the inner thigh, just above the knee joint. Deep tissue damage, dead leg, his stance drops. Final strike, hammer fist to the temple. Disrupts balance, concussive if clean. That's the structure. Now I move.
Elbow first. I feel the bridge fold like wet cardboard. Blood jets. His hands go up too slow. My palm hits his throat and he gags. Not just from shock, but because his windpipe spasms shut. He chokes. Instinct makes him stumble, right where I want him. I twist and put my whole shoulder behind the punch. His cheek caves. The eye swells instantly. He starts to fall. I grab his collar and ride him down, pin his chest with my knee. Then I start hammering. Knuckles to bone, again and again, until his face changes shape.
Blood runs down my arm. My wrist throbs. I don't stop.
He makes a noise. Wet. Half a gurgle. It doesn't matter. I keep hitting until nothing moves beneath me.
The first baton hits my ribs. It feels like someone swung a steel bat into my side and lit a fire under the bone. The second lands across my spine. My knees buckle. Everything inside me folds up. They drag me across the tiles, arms half-dead, boots grinding into the floor. In a brief twist of my neck I catch the body: blood spreads in a glossy fan, jaw cracked wide, one eye already gone, no twitch left in him. I smile.
"My family is dead, you say? Well, so are you, you stupid fuck."
They throw me in hard. My shoulder hits first, then the door slams behind me. Keys rattle. Cedric's voice follows, somewhere behind the bars. "You know that's it for the books, right? You're off the warden's list." I hear him, but I don't care.
I lie on my back and stare at the wall, breathing slow. My ribs hurt, but nothing feels broken. Just bruises. I stand, pull the blanket off my bunk, and reach under for the book Cedric gave me. I try to read, but the words won't stay. My head keeps drifting back to what happened.
I used to think I had it handled, that I was past it. I'm not. They're still there, under everything. My trigger. Always will be.
A scream tears through the block. I sit up, but before I can move, the wall explodes. Concrete splits open like paper. The ceiling cracks. Dust fills my throat. The floor buckles under me. Everything around me is falling apart at once. I hear metal twist. Pipes burst. Another scream. I get to my feet, but it is already too late. The side of the building gives out. Cold wind hits my face, and through the broken wall, I see the world ripping open.
"What the fuck is this?" I say out loud, stepping toward the opening.
The ground outside is moving like water. Big chunks of land crack off and drop straight down. Whole buildings disappear as if they've never been there. On the far side, forest starts growing where nothing existed moments ago. Trees rise out of dirt that didn't exist five seconds ago. It looks like the world is being torn up and put back together at the same time. I want to focus on the ground, on the chaos, but a screen pops up right in front of my eyes. Bright white, clear letters:
Welcome, candidate. Planet 399D has been selected for System Trial. Sync initializing.
I read only the first line before something slams into the side of my head.
Everything goes black.