Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Zoe gripped the steering wheel as her ancient, clunky pickup truck turned down Main Street.

Her hands weren’t shaking this time, but every muscle still felt tight. She was telling herself to play it cool, everything is fine, goddammit, but it wasn’t working. Her knuckles were turning white with how hard she clung onto the wheel, like if she relinquished control for even a second, doom was imminent.

It was just hard to come out of survival mode sometimes.

She tried not to look at anyone as she passed, but of course, she knew she was being looked at. It was impossible to ignore the way people froze on the sidewalk as they noticed her car rumble by, obnoxiously loud.

She hoped desperately it was just because of the state of her truck. After all, it was the only vehicle she could find in her (dangerously, stupidly cheap) price range on Facebook Marketplace, and she was sure there were several things wrong with the machinery considering how noisy and slow it was, but fixing it wasn’t exactly one of her priorities right now. If she got a job, maybe. But for now, she’d just have to make do with what she had.

Unfortunately, from the way conversations stopped mid-sentence, eyes narrowing as they tracked her from diner windows or the porches of stores - no, it wasn’t just the state of her truck they were staring at. It was her.

She couldn’t ignore it, no matter how hard she wanted to. In a claustrophobically small town like Dulvey, everyone knew her last name. And now, after everything, they knew what it stood for.

Before she could stop herself, her father’s face flashed in her mind, his once-warm smile twisted into that monstrous, Eveline-induced grin. The way he looked at her with such uncharacteristic… hate.

Like she wasn’t his daughter, but prey - something to devour, guts and blood and all, and then shit out.

Breathe.

A shiver crawled up her spine, but she forced herself to stay focused on the road.

She wasn’t just re-teaching herself how to drive, today. She had things to do today. Groceries to buy, a life to piece together. Now that she’d officially gotten word that the Baker ranch was getting demolished because of the ‘gas leak’, she wasn’t tied to her hometown anymore. 

She was getting out of Dulvey tonight. She only needed the supplies to do it first. 

Parking outside a small corner store, Zoe hesitated. The OPEN sign buzzed in the window, and the hours of operation were just the same as the last time she’d been here, over three years ago. 

She remembered coming here as a kid, Mama’s warm hand wrapped in hers, the thrill of picking out a piece of candy for her and Lucas, how everything had seemed much bigger and exciting than she was younger.

It’s good as gone, she thought bitterly as she killed the engine and stepped out of the truck.

She saw it in the store owner’s eyes as she walked inside. She watched his face fall as if he were bracing himself.

“What do you want, Zoe?” His voice was sharp, guarded. He looked at her as though she were a bomb that might go off at any moment.

“Just… just groceries, Mr. Carter,” she said quietly, her voice raw from disuse. Her throat was sore, like it was lined with sandpaper. She hadn’t spoken to anyone in days.

She reached for a basket and moved carefully down the aisle, her footsteps echoing against the linoleum tile. No matter what she did, she felt as though she was being too loud. It was hard to let go of how she was attuned to every noise - her big dumb boots she’d gotten used to wearing in the muddiness of the bayou, the soft buzzing of the freezers that held milk and juice and energy drinks, and -

The way people shifted away as she moved past them, murmurs reaching her ears.

"She should be locked up," someone whispered harshly. "God knows what she's done out there."

Zoe clenched her jaw, her grip tightening on the basket. She wondered if anyone downtown actually bought the gas leak story.

She wanted to shout, to explain that she hadn’t had control over what went on - that none of them had. But she knew it wouldn’t matter. They’d already made up who she was in their heads.

You know you can’t listen to ‘em, Zoe, Mama’s soothing, calm voice rang in her mind.

Her voice from before. Genuine.

You’re stronger than you know. Don’t let that silliness get you down.

She gulped, pushing the thought of her mother out of her mind. It was always better for her to pretend as though her parents had never existed, whether that was the good bits, the bad bits, or — especially — the ugly bits. She didn’t need those ghosts to follow her when she should’ve been starting her new life.

Limited finances weighing heavily on her mind, Zoe stepped into the toiletries aisle and stared at the options in front of her. Pads, okay, she was definitely going to need that — she chucked the smallest, cheapest package into her basket. Toothpaste, deodorant, and soap followed without a second thought. Anything essential that could be bought with the small wad of cash and antique coins she had kept in her old trailer, she was getting.

But the stares were building, and she suddenly felt the urge she knew like a sixth sense that she had to get the fuck out of here.

She grabbed the rest of what she needed as fast as she could and kept her head down as she walked to the register.

At the register, Mr. Carter eyed her with something between pity and disdain as she handed over her cash.

He didn’t make small talk like he would’ve years earlier, didn’t look her in the eye. No more jokes about the Marlboro Reds he’d used to grab for her instinctively as soon as she’d walked in the door.

As she took the large brown paper bag from him, he spoke in a low voice.

“Should’ve left with the swamp, Zoe. Ain’t no place for you here.”

The words stung, sharper than she’d anticipated. He still wasn’t looking her in the eye, like she was Medusa.

She just nodded mutely, even as the anger flared inside of her. What could she even say, anyway? He didn’t even know the privilege he had - the privilege of being an outsider. To not know the depth of what she had been running from in her own house. To not know the way her life had been a living hell.

She could feel her heart hammering in her chest, and the heat of embarrassment flourishing in her face. She wondered if this was how it would always be: whispers, stares, doors shutting in her face, no matter where she went.

The call of New Orleans just got louder.

Zoe turned on her heel and walked straight out of the door without a second glance (because nonchalance or whatever, right?) and carried the bag to her truck, ignoring the cold floaty feeling rushing through her veins. She was used to it: it happened more often than not nowadays.

That strange feeling of her body not feeling like her own came over her again as she opened the back door and put the bag in the back, along with a trailer’s worth of belongings she’d managed to scavenge. 

As she shut the rusty door, Zoe felt a cold emptiness settle in her chest.

It wasn’t goopy black Mold, she knew that much, even if it felt like it.

This was her home — had always been her home —but it had never felt more foreign.

It had been three weeks since she’d been able to escape the Bakers, and she was still living in a nightmare.

It didn’t take long for Zoe to get out of downtown Dulvey, and as night fell, she thought the winding dirt roads might never end. Even when the only real threat was her truck’s engine suddenly giving out in the middle of nowhere, the outskirts of town had never felt so damn eerie.

Her headlights were infuriatingly dim, there were barely any streetlights along the road, and of course another Louisiana downpour had started, so she was forced to squint at the darkened road ahead as her tires rolled over squelchy ground. The whole thing was painfully slow, especially since she didn’t exactly have a plan other then get out of Dulvey, head to New Orleans, so she had no fucking clue where she was.

This would be incredibly fucking easier if I had the map, she thought bitterly, and cursed her past self for being so stupid.

Years ago, before she’d had to seriously accept the reality that she was probably going to die in that house, one of the tourists that had inevitably ended up as goop in the Dissection Room had had a detailed map of the surrounding area in their hiking bag. It was pure luck that she had been the one to come across it before their belongings had been routinely disposed of, and she’d hidden it in her trailer.

She’d spent hours and several packs of cigarettes going over it, circling areas in red Sharpie, pondering an escape plan. It was a lifeline for someone who had never been outside of their hometown before, and for the first time, there was actually a glimmer of hope.

It was too late for the rest of her family, but in that moment, she thought she actually had a chance.

But this was back when she was predictable and all too susceptible, so Eveline had destroyed it in a flick of her hand and sent a whole horde of her friends to find her after that particular incident, so the only thing she had to rely on now was her memory.

Her muddled, panicked, fucked up memory.

Zoe bit her lip until she tasted blood and gripped the wheel tightly again. She was going maybe, like, two miles an hour in the intense rain.

But the only option was forward.

By the time that Zoe was pulling into a deserted gas station in Chalmette, Louisiana - still kind of eerie and swampy, but a town with more streetlights, at least - she was distracting herself with the shitty apartment that was waiting for her in New Orleans.

An upgrade from the shitty motel the BSAA had been keeping her in, for sure. There, she thought the bloodwork and the quarantine might never end. It was like no matter what she and Joe told the soldiers, and no matter what the tests told them, they thought she’d dissipate into a snarling goopy monster at any moment.

While she was trembling, hyperventilating, freezing, and anemic as hell for weeks on end - yeah, sure. Being crystallized by the Mold sure did a number on a person. Zoe could barely muster the strength to get out of bed at that point, let alone attack someone.

I wonder if that’s why I still feel weird all the time, she wondered as she yanked the pump out of its holster. Ever since she’d been calcified, it was like she was dissociating more than ever.

Well, she could wonder all she wanted, but she knew deep down there wasn’t a definitive answer for that, not yet. The fungus was beyond traditional science, and well beyond the BSAA’s understanding - the way the scientists’ hands shook whenever they had to inject yet another needle into her told her that much. They were scared.

She held down the trigger of the pump and watched grimly as the amount she’d have to spend ramped up ridiculously with each passing second. She shivered: the thin, holey sweater she was wearing didn’t do much to protect her from how rainy Louisiana was. New clothes were another item on a growing laundry list of stuff that she could not afford.

Her mind was wandering.

Not for the first time, she wondered vaguely if the strict medicine regiment the BSAA had left her with would even work. There were way too many questions there, questions the organization had refused to answer - it was all rather suspicious.

Why, just why they’d let her go out on her own shortly after the demolition news?

Were they trying to get rid of her? Shove her away, lock the doors behind them, and leave her to combust?

Zoe let go of the pump as the gas totalled around sixty bucks and sighed. Cash was all she had, as she’d never had the opportunity to open a new bank card, which meant more human interaction inside of the gas station. Which she had quickly grown to loathe.

Thankfully, the bleary-eyed and clearly exhausted cashier didn’t seem to recognize her when she handed over the cash inside. Zoe was quietly grateful for the ungodly hour she’d stopped for gas: she had no idea just how far the Baker story and its conspiracy theories had travelled, and no patience to deal with even more judging stares.

She was climbing into her truck and driving away from Chalmette soon enough. New Orleans couldn’t come sooner.

Hours later

Zoe was exhausted and seeing stars in her eyes by the time she pulled up to the shady parking lot in front of an even shadier, grimy grey building.

The place was just as depressing and unwelcoming as the listing photos had suggested, glaringly cheap because it was cheap, but it didn’t matter. It was hers - no BSAA soldiers breathing down her neck, no otherworldly horrors. She could deal with worldly horrors, for now. 

She didn’t know what time it was anymore, but her internal clock was telling her that the sun was bound to come up soon. She hardly cared about that: her body was begging for sleep after driving all night. All she wanted was to get inside.

She killed the engine and sat there for a moment, gripping the steering wheel like she was still being stared at in her hometown while she willed her body to move. She knew that she was completely drained at that point, the adrenaline and determination that had pushed her through the night now gone, leaving a dull ache in her muscles and a heaviness in her chest.

For the first time since she’d left Dulvey, she turned and glanced at all the stuff she’d inevitably have to bring inside: a duffel bag of clothes, a secondhand toaster she’d picked up at a questionable thrift store on the way, a stained cooler with some basic groceries that definitely didn’t contain human remains at one point, the other unrefrigerated supplies from Carter’s, everything from her old trailer in numerous cardboard boxes, and a folding chair she’d found by the side of the road. Not much to start a new life with, but she didn’t need much.

Fuck, her thoughts said with a reluctant finality at nothing in particular, and it was enough to get her moving.

Finally, she pushed open the door, the cool predawn air washing over her.

She grabbed her duffel bag and slung it over her shoulder, then pulled the folding chair and cooler out from the bed of the truck. The rest could wait until morning — or later. Just because she was exhausted didn’t guarantee that she slept, anyway. Not anymore.

She couldn’t help but wrinkle her nose even before she came inside. Delta Ridge Apartments smelled like mildew and something faintly metallic, and a strange humidity seemed to cling to her skin the longer she stood there, even though the pavement glistened with fresh rain. It all screamed unsanitary. Nothing she hadn’t smelled before, but…

Ugh.

The lobby — or what passed for one — was dimly lit by a single flickering fluorescent bulb. The air was thick with the smell of mildew and cheap cleaning supplies, barely masking something sour that she couldn’t put her finger on. A dusty bulletin board hung crookedly on one wall, plastered with outdated flyers and a notice about the trash chute being out of order. The security guard behind the sticky desk looked half asleep, and he gave her the apartment key without much question.

She shuffled to the row of rusted mailboxes, squinting to find her unit number. She’d never lived on her own before, but this seemed like a logical next step to take.

The paint was peeling and the labels were faded, but there it was: 306. The mailbox was empty, which was fine — she didn’t need any more clutter to deal with.

She looked glumly to the stairwell that was narrow and dimly lit. Time to head up.

Zoe hefted her load awkwardly, the cooler bumping against her leg as she climbed. The handrail felt sticky, so she avoided it, keeping her balance with sheer determination.

By the time she reached the fifth floor, her breath was coming in short gasps, and her arms ached. The beige and vomit green hallway stretched out before her, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly overhead, the pipes groaning loudly. Apartment 306 was at the far end — wait, why was it 306 if she was on the fifth floor? — and the numbers on each of the doors were barely visible beneath layers of grime.

She traipsed to the door and fumbled with the key, her hands trembling from exhaustion.

She got it into the lock and soon enough, the door creaked open, revealing the dark and still unappealing interior of her new home.

The smell hit her first — musty, with a faint undercurrent of that same something metallic. It was weirdly oily, too. The air was stale, as though it hadn’t been disturbed in months.

She flipped the light switch beside the door, and the single bulb in the ceiling sputtered to life, casting a dim, uneven glow straight out of a horror movie.

Worldly horror, she reminded herself tiredly.

Setting the cooler and chair down just inside the door, Zoe took a moment to absorb the space, even though there wasn’t all that much to absorb.

The walls were scuffed and yellowed, and the linoleum floor was worn down to the subfloor in places. A single window let in a faint sliver of moonlight, but it was grimy enough to mute the outside world entirely. And she could see the dead flies on the windowsill from here.

There was the smallest kitchenette that she’d ever seen, looking both dusty and oily at the same time, and a cubicle of a bathroom to her left. She was relieved to see that the mattress she’d bought secondhand was already in the middle of the room, clearly tossed haphazardly, still in its plastic wrapping.

It wasn’t glamorous, but everything she needed was here.

She shut the door behind her and twisted the lock, testing it with a firm tug before sliding the chain across. Safe — relatively speaking, anyway. Luckily for her, she’d had years of experience in repairing locks and reinforcing somewhere to hide. With her paranoia, she’d be able to turn this place into a bunker in no time.

Zoe exhaled heavily and leaned against the door, wondering what Mama and Dad would think — the real version of her parents, not the Eveline shams of them.

Before, it had been their wish for her to live at the house as long as possible, and they’d always given her all the money and food she’d wanted. They’d paid for her tuition all throughout community college, for a good camera when she’d expressed an interest in photography in high school, for posters of screechy metal bands when she was going through her emo phase. Truly, they never wanted her to lift a finger, and they had always wanted the best possible life for her.

She smiled softly as she pictured them roaming around.

Dad would be immediately concerned by the state of the floor, and would be calling a contractor within the first five minutes of stepping into the room. She could see him now, pacing and looking concernedly down at the worn and ugly floor, the repairs already clear in his head.

By the time he’d gotten off the phone, he would’ve already envisioned new wallpaper for the place, better light fixtures — hell, better everything. He’d be halfway to Home Depot in no time, probably dragging Lucas along with him too.

Mama, meanwhile, would be testing to see if the water worked in the kitchen, telling her how to clean an oven like she didn’t already know. Of course, if they were there, then Mama had already brought a pot roast or a casserole or her famous apple crumble to store in the fridge, ensuring that she had more than enough food for the first few weeks. Like always, the two of them would help her make the best out of a bad situation.

As she envisioned it, the place already looked a lot warmer, a lot more lively in her mind’s eye.

Of course, she blinked again, and the apartment was back to being dim and damp and miserable, in need of a lot of renovation she couldn’t afford.

She blinked, and it was just her, duffel bag over her shoulder, with her cooler that smelled like blood and guts and her dumb folding chair that would probably collapse under her weight.

She blinked, and it was just her, painfully alone. Not for the first time, of course, but somehow, as she adjusted to the shock of her cold empty apartment, it was the first time that she realized she was alone forever.

And it felt ridiculous. It would’ve been impossible to cure her parents, she knew that. She had always known that. And her parents as they truly were had been gone for years — even if their bodies were still moving around, they were braindead. Irretrievable. Too far gone. They spoke, and it was their voices, but it wasn’t them.

They had been unrecognizable for years, anyway, so it shouldn’t have been hurting like this by now. She’d had all the time in the world to adjust to it. When her brain was jammed on survival mode the way it was, she relied heavily on rationality.

And that was what was rational, she thought stubbornly. They’d been replaced by Mold. They were braindead. They were gone.

But…under Eveline’s control, they were effectively invincible. No gun stopped them permanently. They always got up, no matter what happened to them. Bugs and goop and Mold and all.

It was a good thing that Eveline had died, obviously, but somehow, Zoe hadn’t actually been expecting her parents to… die.

Now that they were gone for good, it hurt impossibly more. Even Lucas being gone stung, which was completely insane. The loss sucked at her chest, knocked the air out of her lungs like she’d been suckerpunched. She hadn’t expected for it to hit her all at once. It never hit her like this.

She was running from something that terrified her. Now that she was alone, her emotions would inevitably be catching up to her. The grief she’d never had time to feel when she was so focused on her next move would choke and strangle her. She’d have to face that she wasn’t as strong as she thought: she was a coward. She was running, because it was the only thing she knew how to do.

Stop, her thoughts whispered urgently, and Zoe resisted the urge to claw at her head like she could physically rip the thoughts of them out of her brain.

It was always better for her to pretend as though her parents had never existed, whether that was the good bits, the bad bits, or — especially — the ugly bits.

It’s fine, she thought, over and over again, as she slumped against the door, It’s fine, it’s fine. You’ll be okay. You have a place. You have everything you need. It doesn’t need to be glamorous. You’re good. You’re good.

Eventually, she could feel herself starting to calm down, or whatever sort-of calm that counted as calm to her nowadays.

She felt a weak kind of optimism as she glanced at the secondhand mattress again. She didn’t have the energy to wrestle it out of the packaging, so she threw her duffel on top and collapsed beside it.

As her body sank into the uncomfortable surface, Zoe stared at the cracked ceiling. The room was cold, the smell was unpleasant, there were more cons than pros.

But she was free.

That had to count for something.

Chapter Text

The next day

Zoe had just carried three boxes worth of stuff up to her fifth floor apartment when she heard footsteps behind her, and her blood instantly ran cold.

Her grip on the box tightened as her mind raced through a million worst-case scenarios before she could help it: a gun pointed at her face, a hand around her throat, the smell of Mold.

She choked on the instinct to bolt and instead forced herself to turn around at whatever was approaching her, her chest heaving.

Still hard to come out of survival mode, the voice inside her head said slyly. Mocking. She knew she could never go back to how it was.

She couldn’t help but feel like she was still scrutinizing an incoming danger, but as she caught sight of the person in front of her, she faltered.

Brown eyes, and curly auburn hair that sprung wildly around a freckled face. A stranger who was staring at Zoe coolly, her hands in her jean pockets. Not with contempt, not sizing her up, not leering at her before she pounced.. Bizarrely, she was just there, and looking like she owned the miserable-looking parking lot at that. Unafraid to take up space, while all Zoe wanted was to disappear.

The stranger’s face split into a dazzling smile, and Zoe’s stomach squirmed in a way she mistook for panic. Instinctively, she took a step back.

“Hey,” the stranger said, unaware of Zoe briefly glancing down at her body, scanning for weapons. “You’d be my new neighbour, right? You’re up on 306?”

Her heart pounding unreasonably hard for the interaction, her voice came out small. “Y-yeah.” 

No danger, she tried to reassure herself. No guns. No danger.

“Awesome,” she said lightly, pushing back an auburn curl that had fallen into her face before extending her hand. She wasn’t overly friendly; her attitude suggested that the type of people who stayed in this complex were often violent people and addicts, people to keep at arms length. But she was polite enough. “I’m 305. Welcome to the shithole.”

Zoe laughed uneasily – painfully, obviously fake – and shook her hand as fast as she could. Her hand was pleasantly warm, and now that the stranger was closer, Zoe caught the scent of cigarette smoke on her red flannel.

The loneliness felt like an iron fist had wrapped around her heart and squeezed. She hadn’t had someone to smoke with in forever, not since high school. It only reminded her of what she once had.

“I’m Zoe,” she told her, trying to fight the clear hesitation in her voice. She never stuttered this much when she was trapped at the house. What was going on?

“Margot,” the stranger returned curtly, and Zoe felt a wash of heat prickle in her cheeks as she smiled tentatively, nodding awkwardly. It was hard to seem put together when Margot radiated a kind of confidence that made her look clumsy in comparison. “Good to know.”

“Need a hand with those boxes?” she asked immediately, glancing in the direction of her fully loaded truck. “That’s a lot of stuff.”

Zoe hesitated, her thoughts tangling together.

She almost said no, but her body ached, she’d barely slept, and the truck bed was still basically full…

“That would be great,” she answered quietly. She avoided mentioning that it hadn’t felt like a lot of stuff when she’d been stuck in the trailer. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” she said casually, stepping beside her and taking a large cardboard box from the back with ease. Zoe flushed further: from the way the contents rattled and slid, she could immediately tell that it was the guns the BSAA hadn’t confiscated from the Baker property.

It hadn’t felt ridiculous to pack at the time, but in Margot’s hands, it suddenly did.

She tried to justify it. After all, she knew she was moving into a shithole. Better to be prepared, right?

Thankfully, Margot appeared not to notice what was in the box and instead turned her gaze to the miserably grey sky above. 

“Better get this done quick,” she said flatly. “Looks like it’s gonna rain.”

Zoe nodded quickly, still feeling the fight or flight reaction. “Yeah.”

To her relief, as they made the journey up to the fifth floor clutching a cardboard box each, Margot didn’t expect her to make conversation. She just spoke to make up for the silence, like she needed to release the words inside of her — like she needed someone to listen, and she just happened to be there.

If there was anything she was good at, before the nightmare, during it, and especially afterward, it was listening. So Zoe listened as her raspy voice filled the stairwell as they climbed upward.

“Yeah, so don’t talk to that guy, unless you want to be groped,” Margot was saying about some crackhead on the third floor as they reached the fifth. “I don’t even know what his problem is, swear to God. I think he’s on meth. Or crack. Probably some weird shit I don’t even know the name of. It’s a shame we don’t have an elevator.”

Zoe made a mental note to get through that floor as fast as she could while she elbowed her door open and finally set down her cardboard box, and Margot did the same.

At first, they didn’t move: they both needed the moment to breathe. Her apartment was starting to look more like a labyrinth of boxes than an apartment now, and her arms were stinging with overexertion.

“While we’re here, Caleb’s in 308,” Margot said, glancing around her barren apartment. “Good guy. He’s quiet – selective mutism – but he’s not a creep. That’s rare.”

She wasn’t exactly eager to make new friends, but she nodded politely anyway. In Margot’s presence, the apartment was already seeming warmer, more liveable. And she clearly didn’t know anything about Dulvey.

It made the possibility of a new life even more tangible.

She didn’t know how she got here, everything was blurry, but she was here.

Zoe crouched on the stairs leading down to the garage of the Baker household, the air thick with the acrid stench of mold and decay. Must, grime, and rot coated the inside of her nose as she waited. The whole house had been soaking in the rot for years at this point, so she’d gotten used to the feeling of bile rising in her throat.

She felt a chill crawl down her spine, a primal instinct that told her she wasn’t alone. She relied on instinct far too often, now. Eveline always wanted to punish her for one reason or another.

She could fight through it. Her grip was tight on the shotgun. She just had to time her moment right.

“Zoe…” a voice echoed from the shadows, low and taunting. A voice that should’ve been familiar, but wasn’t. It sent shivers coursing through her body.

She kept her lips clamped shut, forcing herself not to respond. A shaking finger hovered over the trigger of the shotgun.

“Where are you, sweetie?” The voice dripped with a sickly-sweet tone that was unmistakably her mother’s, yet laced with something far more sinister. It made her stomach churn. “Mama just wants to see you.”

“Don’t run away, Zoe!” Her father’s voice joined in, a low growl that made her heart leap in her throat. Danger. She wouldn’t have been surprised if Lucas was on the lookout for her, too.

She felt the pressure of the house closing in on her, the walls pulsating as if they had a heartbeat of their own. As panic clawed at her throat, she forced herself to think straight. Based on where she heard the creaking of footsteps and the echo of their voices, they weren’t particularly close — not in the immediate hallway, at least. Which meant she had a fighting chance.

Breathe, breathe, breathe.

There was a method to this madness. It wasn’t wild guesses and terrified sprints anymore, when you were years into it. Not usually, anyway.

Holding her breath, Zoe ducked toward the kitchen as quickly as she could. She was still crouching, trying to make herself as small as possible. The last thing she wanted was to be seen over the counter.

Quiet. Just be quiet. They’ll get bored eventually.

“Come back!” Marguerite’s voice sang out from somewhere, croaking and menacing. “Don’t you want to see what I’ve cooked up for you? I made your favourite!”

She was closer now, closer than she thought. What the fuck. She’d timed it so carefully, and it was all gone to shit.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs, the terror threatened to overwhelm her. I need to move.

Unfortunately, before she could, Zoe caught sight of her mother, and she stopped breathing.

Marguerite stood directly ahead of her in the dining room, a twisted smile stretching across her face, her eyes glinting with an unsettling hunger. In her hands was a butcher’s knife, gleaming in the flickering light.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Come on, Zoe! I made your favourite!” Marguerite cooed, gesturing toward the platter on the table, but at least it didn’t sound like she knew where she was. She couldn’t see it with how she was crouched, but knowing her mother’s habits, it was probably some garbage mixed with someone’s small intestine. The stench was overwhelming, a blend of rot and something sweetly putrid.

Zoe felt bile rise in her throat. The only viable options were hiding in the pantry, which almost certainly meant death, or making a mad dash back into the hallway, towards the laundry room or something, where she knew Jack was patrolling. She was fucked either way. The shotgun in her hands suddenly felt useless.

“I don’t want anything!” she screamed, forcing herself on her feet to run.

As soon as she reached the doorway, she found it blocked by her father, his stained button down reeking of freshly spilled blood. 

“Now, now, don’t be rude,” Jack said, his voice dripping with false cheer. “We’ve been waiting for you. You can’t just leave us!”

With nowhere left to run, she screamed - a raw, primal sound that reverberated through the house.

“Get away from me!”

Her throat was already raw with dehydration, and screaming took up way too much of her energy, but she couldn’t help it. Her body was tired of running, and some part of her knew that this was the end.

CRASH!

Zoe gasped awake abruptly, her heart pounding, sweat clinging to her skin, plastering her hair to her forehead.

She’d rolled straight off the mattress and onto the greasy floor.

Fuck.

Zoe pulled herself onto her knees and stared at the maze of boxes around her, her heart pounding hard. The mattress she’d been sleeping on was shoved against the far wall, the thin sheet crumpled and damp with sweat. Her back stung, but to have a bedframe and a decent mattress would be considered a luxury right now.

She rubbed her arms, trying to shake the chill crawling over her skin.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

The sounds of the house lingered in her ears – her father’s laugh, the wet squelch of Molded flesh, the steady sound of something dripping in the Dissection Room. But here in this tiny apartment, all she could hear was the distant hum of traffic outside and the death rattle of the air conditioning.

Her gaze landed on the gun box Margot had carried up earlier. The sight of it made her stomach twist.

There was a permanent way out of this, she knew that. It wasn’t like she hadn’t considered it before. There was everything from a small compact handgun to the bigger, weighter shotgun to choose from. Aimed right, and she wouldn’t have to worry about anything anymore.

There wasn’t anything holding her back from it. It was the easy option: to be set free was all she wanted.

She sighed, feeling exhausted by herself.

There wasn’t anything holding her back from it, except the notion of how pathetic it would look when she was inevitably discovered. To know that she survived the worst kind of hellhole for three years, fighting for her life with every breath, and she couldn’t even survive for a day and a half when she was out on her own.

It was in her blood, especially growing up alongside Lucas, to not want to feel pathetic.

Fuck.

She turned away, shoving the box into a corner like it might bite her and pulling her knees up to her chest. She was still shivering.

As she looked away, her eyes caught on the spiral notebook she’d brought with her. Her way of keeping her sanity, to prove to herself that what she had been going through day after day was real when she doubted herself so often. It sat on the sticky kitchen counter, and next to it was a pen one of the countless BSAA doctors had used to keep notes on her condition when she was recovering from crystallization.

Zoe swallowed hard.

The possibility of writing to Ethan had been lingering at the back of her mind since she first loaded up the truck. The last time she’d spoken to him in person was when she’d been abandoned on the pier, watching him and Mia sail away into nothingness while she prepared for certain death. And she’d spoken to him briefly over the phone after being crystallized, but that was it.

He’d told her to keep in touch, and she hadn’t forgotten about it. But could she even find the words?

She looked away from the notebook and knew in her heart that she wasn’t ready yet.

Three years earlier

“Zoe!” Jack’s voice carried from the kitchen, muffled by the sound of rain tapping against the window. “You seen my beer? Thought I had one more in the fridge.”

She glanced up from the couch, absently picking at a loose thread on her jeans. The TV buzzed softly in the background, an old movie she wasn’t really watching. One of Mama’s favourites that she’d throw on when she needed something for background noise, just because it was familiar.

“It’s in the fridge,” she called back, her voice steady but distant.

A pause, then the sound of the fridge door opening and closing. She could almost hear him scratching his head, his usual reaction when things weren’t exactly where he expected them to be.

“Found it!” he finally said, his tone lighter now, half-laughing at himself.

A moment later, he appeared in the doorway, a bottle in one hand and the other braced against the frame, almost to steady himself. He wasn’t drunk — well, not yet at least — but the soft flush on his face told her this wasn’t his first of the night.

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, taking a long sip before settling into the leather couch beside her. The springs groaned under his weight, a familiar sound in the Baker household.

Zoe didn’t respond, her eyes flicking back to the TV. Jack didn’t seem to notice, his attention already on the storm outside. It was just the two of them in here. Marguerite was busying herself in the laundry room, and Lucas was probably moping around upstairs, waging pointless arguments online or something.

“Damn rain,” he muttered, more to himself than her. “Never ends, does it? Can’t even get a good day to fix up the boat.”

She made a noncommittal sound, hoping he’d leave it at that, but Jack wasn’t one to sit in silence for long.

“You know, when I was your age, I used to love storms,” he continued, his voice low, tinged with nostalgia. “Me and your uncle Joe’d sit out on the porch, watch the lightning over the bayou. Your grandma hated it – thought we’d get struck or somethin’.”

He chuckled softly, shaking his head.

Zoe couldn’t help but smile a little at the memory, though she kept her gaze fixed on the screen. If he was talking about old memories, they rarely came without the mention of Uncle Joe.

“Course, back then I didn’t have to worry about the roof leakin’ or the damn generator givin’ out,” he added, his tone shifting slightly. He took another swig of beer, his brow furrowing. “Feels like there’s always somethin’ these days, you know? Never enough time, never enough money…”

He trailed off, staring into his bottle as if it held the answers he was looking for. Zoe glanced at him then, just briefly, and saw the weight of it all etched into his face.

“Maybe you oughta take a break,” she said softly, her Southern lilt wrapping around the words.

Jack snorted, but it wasn’t unkind. “A break? From what? Life?”

He gave her a lopsided grin, the kind that almost made him look younger. “Nice thought, but I don’t think that’s how it works, darlin’.”

The rain was coming down harder now, the sound filling the silence between them.

Zoe didn’t say anything else. She just sat there, listening to the storm and the soft clink of Jack’s bottle as he set it down on the coffee table. The beer was like the elephant in the room – she wondered if he would’ve bothered having this kind of conversation with her if he wasn’t drinking.

But she quickly decided she didn’t mind, and she was content to sit here, in content silence. They didn’t get a lot of moments like this, after all.

Comfortable silence was the best.

Naturally, she couldn’t help but think of her dad as she stared down the beer section at the closest liquor store she could find. Rows of cans and bottles stretched out before her, glinting slightly in the fluorescent light.

It felt almost surreal to be here, standing in a place that didn’t stink of mildew or have the sound of swamp insects buzzing just outside the door. She’d gotten here as soon as the place opened in the early morning: she didn’t drink all that much, to the point where she didn’t even know what was good or not, but the urge to take the edge off everything she was feeling was crushing her. Maybe that was still kind of pathetic, but it wasn’t as pathetic as shooting herself in the head, at least.

She reached out for a twelve-pack of cheap lager — Dad’s go-to, for some unknown reason. The brand’s green labelling was the only brand she recognized, partially because he drank it, and partially because it was literally called Dulvey Beer. He drank it so loyally, but she never got the chance to ask him why.

As her fingers brushed the cardboard, she hesitated.

Was this really for her? Or was it for him, the ghost of him that still lingered in her head?

“Now that’s a solid choice.”

The voice snapped her out of her reverie. She turned to see the cashier standing a few feet away: he was older, with a salt-and-pepper beard and a nametag that read Randy.

“Not fancy, but it does the job,” Randy added with a knowing grin, and her stomach immediately sank at the expectation of having to talk to him.

Zoe nodded stiffly, lifting the pack and clutching it closely, like it might slide out of her grip if she held it wrong. She couldn’t help but feel horribly out of place here.

“Yeah,” she murmured, purely because she had to, and her voice was as weak and exhausted as she felt. “Does…the job.”

She carried it to the counter, hoping she could get this over with quickly.

“New in town?” he asked as he scanned the pack.

“Yeah,” she replied, keeping her tone clipped.

“Where you staying?”

Zoe hesitated as she forked out her ID for him to glance at, before he could ask.

“Not far from here,” she said vaguely, hoping he wasn’t a serial killer.

Randy shrugged, unfazed. “Well, welcome to the neighbourhood. Let me guess – you’ll be hitting The Tipsy Gator tonight? Seems like the kind of place you’d fit right in.”

She blinked at him, her brow furrowing. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He raised his hands in mock surrender. “Relax, kid. Just saying it’s a good spot. Right across the street, actually. Cheap drinks, decent people. If you’re looking for a place to unwind, it’s better than most.”

Zoe didn’t respond, just tucked the pack under her arm and muttered a quiet, “Thanks.”

She couldn’t help but feel dirty as she stepped out into the street, the sunlight pouring on the pavement. It felt way too early to head to the liquor store, and subsequently, way too early to get wasted.

She tucked The Tipsy Gator into the back of her mind and resolved to go back to her apartment and unpack.

Admittedly, when Zoe got back to her apartment, things did not go as ideally as she planned.

She set the twelve pack on the oily kitchenette counter and looked around at the seemingly endless sea of boxes forming a moat around her dirty mattress that she’d barely slept on. If the apartment felt cramped before, it was nothing like how it felt when all of her belongings were actually inside the apartment. The cardboard was already collecting dust, and just looking at it, she couldn’t stand it.

Her heart pounded, and even though the motion was completely foreign, she opened the twelve pack and looked down at the deep brown bottles inside.

What came next seemed to happen very fast.

She took a beer, twisted the cap off, and took a tentative swig. It tasted exactly how she would’ve thought — cheap, bitter, and sharp enough to make her wince. It wasn’t good by any stretch, whether it was the quality itself or her not liking the taste of beer in general, but she swallowed it anyway, and after it didn’t immediately come back up, she forced herself to take a few more big mouthfuls, gulping it down. Suddenly, she needed the burning haze more than anything.

It didn’t need to be good. It just had to work.

The bottle made a hollow clink as she set it on the counter, and already feeling a bit different, she scanned the room again. She didn’t have a plan for where to start, but she knew that she would go insane if she didn’t unpack something.

“Alright,” she muttered to herself, turning away, rubbing her temples like just staring at all the boxes would start a headache.

Let’s get this over with, she thought as she grabbed the nearest box.

The tape of the first box gave way with a satisfying rip, and she plunged her hands inside, pulling out clothes that still carried the faint, damp smell of the swamp. Definitely clothes that were in need of a good wash.

She tossed them onto the mattress without bothering to fold them, her focus entirely on emptying the box: the sooner it was done, the sooner she could stop thinking about it, and maybe her mind would be a little clearer.

She paused to take another long swig from the bottle, the alcohol warming her throat and chest, dulling the sharp edges of her thoughts. It still tasted horrible, but she had a weird urge to chug it, for some reason.

The first bottle was gone before she finished the first box, but instead of slowing down, she cracked open a second one and kept going, fully succumbing to the feeling of her body not feeling like her own as she viciously tore through an innumerable amount of boxes.

Chipped plates and bowls clattered onto the counter. Towels were thrown onto the bathroom floor in a heap. She pushed the box filled with guns further away from her still, not allowing herself to look at it. Every opened box felt like an opened wound, but she didn’t let herself stop. She couldn’t.

The third bottle went down faster than the first two. By then, the room started to feel a little softer around the edges, the ache in her chest muted just enough to breathe easier, and she figured it would be completely unsafe to drive like this. At this point, she’d stopped pretending to care about being neat anymore: it was the point where she started chucking things in random directions, not looking where they landed.

By the time she reached the last box, she was sweating, the apartment a mess of flattened cardboard and belongings scattered in haphazard piles. Her chest felt tight, her throat raw, and the tears she’d been holding back all day were threatening to spill over, especially as she stared at the last box.

The last box was labeled photos. Her stomach twisted as she stared at it, not sure what to make of it. She wasn’t even sure why she’d taken the photos with her when she was meant to be starting her new life, but a tiny part of her couldn’t bear to leave them there to get demolished with everything else.

For a long moment, she didn’t move.

No big deal, she thought uneasily. Just a box.

If she didn’t open the box now, it would probably never be opened, so she yanked the flaps open and looked down at the stacked photo albums inside.

She shoved them aside, not ready to face them yet.

Beneath them, loose photos spilled out – a mess of memories she wasn’t ready to deal with, and her breath hitched.

Her hand hovered over a picture of her and her dad on the porch, the sunlight catching the bottle in his hand as he laughed at something out of frame. Immediately, her chest ached, and that suckerpunch feeling came back again. She was back in her body again, not floating somewhere outside of it, and uncomfortably so.

He looked happy, and she looked like the awkward kid that she was, unsure of what to do with herself.

All of a sudden, she couldn’t look at it anymore. She shoved the photos back into the box and slammed it shut, breathing hard.

Nope. Not today.

Her knees gave out, and she sank onto the mattress, the bottle slipping from her fingers and rolling across the floor. She didn’t bother to chase it: she didn’t need another bottle. She was dizzy enough on her own.

At least the apartment was unpacked. Everything was technically where it needed to be, even if it wasn’t neat.

She should’ve felt relieved, but all she felt was hollow. 

The tears she’d been fighting finally came, silent and relentless. Zoe curled into herself, too exhausted to do anything else.

Her head was buzzing, her body was exhausted, but at least she’d gotten through it.

Later that night

The bar Randy mentioned was impossible to miss, its sign — a gator holding a beer — winking at her in a dim shade of green and gold, blinking in and out of fluorescence. She knew it was supposed to be a friendly image, to entice customers inside, but she was immediately intimidated by it.

For a moment, she considered going back to the apartment, staying in the sanctity of her comfort zone for just a little longer. Maybe it was better to just stay in the apartment and ponder her next move — she still needed to find a job, after all. There were plenty of things she still needed to do. It probably wasn’t even worth it to sit by herself in some bar.

But the thought of sitting alone again and drowning in grief made her stomach churn.

The influence of the beer felt heavier now, like it was daring her to do something different, something she might regret but wouldn’t forget. Pulling her forward, like there was some sort of invisible string tugging her to the bar.

Her feet moved before her brain could decide otherwise, leading her across the street and through the bar’s door.

The first thing she noticed was the smell: cigarettes, spilled whiskey, and fried food. The kind of smell that clung to you long after you left, but it wasn’t unpleasant. It was… alive, just like the low hum of voices and the clatter of pool balls in the back corner.

Behind the bar, a woman with bouncing auburn curls and a sharp grin glanced up from where she was pouring a drink. Her eyes caught Zoe’s, and she tilted her head slightly, recognition flashing across her face.

“Well, if it isn’t 306,” Margot said casually, setting the drink in front of a waiting customer before wiping her hands on a rag. She smelled even more strongly of cigarettes than she had the other day. “Didn’t think I’d see you so soon.”

Zoe’s chest tightened, but this time it wasn’t fear. Maybe it was curiosity, or maybe it was the pull of something she couldn’t quite name.

“Yeah,” she said hesitantly, sliding onto a barstool. She’d have to work at not sounding so goddamn small all the time. “I, uh - didn’t think I’d be here, either.”

Margot smirked, leaning on the bar. “First round’s on me, neighbour. Pick your poison.”

Inexplicably, for the first time in what felt like years, Zoe started to unclench.

Chapter Text

Zoe suddenly jolted awake, like her body couldn’t stand the amount of sleep she was getting, and upon opening her eyes, a haze of pain descended around her head.

She was groggy and confused, her lips were so chapped it was like they were clamped together, and she couldn’t remember getting back to her apartment at all.

The word fuck was the only thing she could feel as she fought back the vague urge to vomit. The “head splitting in two” feeling was only getting worse the longer she was conscious, and all she wanted was to melt into the linoleum floor.

What the hell had gone on here?

She twisted over to the other side of the thin mattress and checked the time on her discarded watch. It was eight in the morning, at least, which meant she hadn’t wasted half the day unconscious. Not yet.

After a lot more effort than it should have taken, Zoe pulled herself to her feet and walked to the bathroom, hoping a few cold splashes to her face would be enough to right herself. Last night was coming back in groggy pieces.

The clatter of pool balls…cigarettes and fried food…Margot the bartender…

With her mouth tasting like the swamp back home, she couldn’t help but feel ashamed of herself. She never lost control like this.

Zoe stared grimly at the dusty, cracked reflection in the tiny mirror. If she was being blunt about it, she looked like a wreck: her dark circles were more prominent than ever, her skin looked pallid and desperately clinging to her bones, and her blue-grey eyes were defeated. She definitely looked like she had a nasty hangover.

She frowned and leaned down to splash her face with the metallic-smelling water that ran from the faucet.

Gingerly, she was forcing herself forward: there were still things she had to get under control.

And avoid Margot, she told herself immediately. It wasn’t worth seeing her again after she clearly lost control of herself last night. Wasn’t worth relinquishing control, clearly, when her head felt like someone had forced a machete into the back of it.

A job, that logical voice inside of her whispered almost immediately. She still needed a job, and the fistful of cash from her trailer wouldn’t be enough to last her more than a few weeks. If she wanted a job, that meant that she had to make a resume, which required a computer and a printer…

Which meant heading to whatever library she could find. She needed to go to a library to print a resume.

(Of course, she’d need to come up with a good explanation as to why a twenty-three year old hadn’t bothered getting a job until now…)

She pushed it out of her head. Just because Mama and Dad had never needed her to get a job didn’t mean she wasn’t a hard worker, and any employer would see that.

She’d figure something out.

Of course she would.

The almost-abandoned library smelled faintly of musty books and stale coffee, two things that reminded Zoe of high school a million years ago.

She’d been able to find a cubicle easily, and now she was hunched over the computer screen, her fingers hovering above the keyboard. The blank Word document stared back at her, its blinking cursor mocking her lack of direction. She knew that she wouldn’t have been able to focus on this even without the hangover, but she had to write something.

She’d spent the last ten minutes scrolling through a job board that had everything from babysitting gigs to forklift operator positions – nothing that screamed you belong here.

Putting in her name, phone number, and email into the document had been easy, of course. But when she reached the experience section, her mind went blank.

What did people even put on resumes?

For a moment, she considered typing, Survived a Mold-infested hellscape and escaped with minimal psychological damage. Accurate, sure, but not exactly the kind of thing that would land her a cashier job or whatever kind of gig that would cover rent for the time being.

She regretted her parents not forcing her to get a job in high school or college as she put in the meagre details of her life that would count as experience. She had two years of volunteering at the Dulvey food bank under her belt, mostly as an excuse to get out of the house before everything went to shit, but other than that, the page was barren.

It looked pathetic.

She reread the document, biting her lip. There were no awards, no university degree, no glowing accomplishments. The whole thing barely filled up half a page, the sentences sounded pleading, and she knew it wouldn’t hold up in comparison to literally any other person her age.

She tried not to feel like an idiot and printed a small stack to hand out to all the local businesses she could find. Maybe she was doomed, but she could at least try, right?

The first place she tried was a local coffee shop. It was small and dimly lit, the kind of place that advertised vegan pastries and oat milk lattes. She stepped inside and immediately felt dirty in comparison to the sleekness she was surrounded by.

“Hi, uh – are you hiring?” she asked at the counter. Her voice cracked, and she hated how timid she sounded.

The barista, a guy with a man-bun and tattoos snaking up his arms, gave her a lazy glance. “There’s an application online.”

Like she was an idiot for asking.

“Oh, um, okay.”

She fumbled with her bag, trying to downplay how much her hands were suddenly shaking, and pulled out one of her freshly printed resumes. “Can - can I just leave this here?”

“Sure.” He took it without looking and slid it under the counter like it was a flyer for a lost cat.

Her stomach sank as she walked back outside. Welp, that’s a lost cause.

The next stop was a retail store just down the street, the kind that sold cheap clothes and smelled like plastic.

The manager, a frazzled woman in her forties, glanced at Zoe’s resume and sighed. She couldn’t blame her: she was probably the millionth job-seeking person she’d encountered.

“We’ll call you if we’re interested,” she said, her tone indicating otherwise.

Zoe nodded, muttering the quietest thank you known to man before slipping out the door.

This was getting nowhere.

By the time she stumbled upon the auto shop, her legs were aching, and her patience was wearing thin. The sign above the building read Pete’s Garage, the paint peeling but the tools displayed in the window spotless.

She hesitated, looking down at her clunky boots. They were scuffed and stained but sturdy. Maybe that would send the message she needed.

Inside, the air smelled like motor oil and rubber, and the hum of machinery reverberated from whatever was going on in the back. A grubby man in his fifties, with a gut straining against his coveralls, looked up from a clipboard. He had to be Pete, right?

“Can I help you?” he asked, squinting at her like she might be lost.

“Uh, yeah,” Zoe said, pulling a folded resume from her bag. When she had said the same line half a dozen times before this, she wasn’t afraid about saying it anymore. “I was wondering if you’re hiring?”

He wiped his hands on a greasy rag and took the paper, scanning it briefly. His gaze changed like everyone else’s: they all knew it wasn’t much.

“You ever worked in a shop before?”

“No,” she admitted, shifting on her feet. “But I used to help my dad fix up cars and stuff. I know my way around an engine.”

It had been forever since she’d actually taken a look at a car with her dad – considering their car had been swallowed in Eveline-induced goop early on – but it wasn’t a lie.

Pete grunted, glancing at her boots, then her hands. “You don’t mind getting dirty?”

She tried not to laugh: he had no idea. “Not at all.”

“Hmm.” He scratched his chin, then looked at whatever was in the back.

“I could use someone to clean up, organize tools, maybe learn the ropes. It’s minimum wage to start, and I’m not your babysitter. You show up on time, do the work, we’ll get along fine.”

Relief flooded her chest, though she tried not to let it show too much. “Yeah, I can do that.”

He nodded. “Be here tomorrow at seven sharp. We’ll see what you’re made of.”

Zoe gave him a small smile, the first real one all day. “I’ll be here.”

The sun was sinking low by the time Zoe found herself, regrettably, outside the Tipsy Gator again. She hadn’t meant to end up here, not really. Her plan had been to head straight back to her apartment, maybe celebrate with one of the beers still in her fridge that seemed to permanently smell like rotted fish. But once again, her feet had a mind of their own, and now she stood at the threshold of the bar, despite promising herself not to return this soon. She was here for reasons she didn't even know.

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to see Margot or not. There was something about her that kind of scared her.

Fuck it.

The familiar scent of spilled beer and fried food washed over her again as she stepped inside.

Margot was exactly where Zoe knew she’d be, laughing at something a customer had said while wiping down a glass. She’d traded in the red flannel for a faded White Stripes t-shirt, and her smile – easy, warm – hit Zoe like a punch to the gut.

She felt so sickeningly embarrassed for how much she’d drank last night, how much she’d let herself go. Too much, too soon.

She’d been sitting at the bar, her glass half-empty, the burn of that whiskey settling uncomfortably with all the beer already in her stomach. The Tipsy Gator was louder than when she’d first stepped in, alive with the clatter of pool balls and raucous laughter. Who knew why on a Wednesday night, but by then, she’d decided it wasn’t the shittiest dive bar. Maybe she could get used to a place like this.

“You look like you’ve got a lot on your mind,” Margot had said casually as she jiggled whatever liquid was in the shaker.

Yeah, right, the sardonic part of her responded nastily, before she could help it. That was fucking obvious. And the last thing she wanted was to talk about it. She hadn’t spoken much to anyone in quarantine, and speaking as a whole was still weird.

“Just tired,” she’d muttered, gazing into the amber liquid like it held all the answers she didn’t want to look for. It was making her feel better, at least, so that was a start.

“Mm,” Margot had replied, like she didn’t believe her but wasn’t going to bother her about it, and she went to help another customer.

Zoe knew it was just a passing comment, having a lot on her mind, but it was sticking to her. Everything was slower now, and she seemed more aware of her emotions than ever. That feeling of being able to jump outside of her body seemed to dissipate in the Tipsy Gator.

And that was what terrified her most: staying inside of herself for too long. What if everything she’d been holding together came spilling out?

Later, Margot had passed her another drink without a word, like she could tell she wanted another one, and she gulped it greedily.

The feeling only got worse.

Yeah, she hadn’t actually said anything incriminating about Dulvey then, or really opened up to anyone at all, but just sitting in her hurt had felt much too dangerous. Like she’d do something she’d regret.

Swallowing the urge to bolt for the sake of it, Zoe slid onto a stool at the far end of the bar, keeping her head low as she fumbled with her bag. She wasn’t planning to stay long – just grab a drink, maybe. Or a quick hello. She didn’t even know why she was here, really. Her mind had sworn against drinking, and yet her body had pulled her here, like a magnet. Her body craved it.

Margot spotted her immediately – judging by the lack of people here, it was slow for a Thursday night.

“Well, look who’s back,” she called out, sauntering over. “Didn’t think I’d see you again so soon, sugar.”

Zoe winced. The nickname twisted something in her chest. “Yeah, well…figured I owed you a better impression after last night.”

Margot tilted her head, her smirk softening into something kinder. “You don’t owe me anything. Everybody’s gotta let loose sometimes.”

Zoe wasn’t sure why, but the words made her want to cry.

Instead, she pulled her pack of Marlboros from her jean pocket, and stuck one between her thin, chapped lips – she hadn’t had a cigarette since this morning anyway, so screw it. Something about Margot’s presence had everything spilling out. Pulling her in like a magnet, and pulling her apart.

“Got a job today,” she said quietly, the words tumbling out before she could stop them. Her cigarette wobbled between her lips with each word.

Margot raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Where at?”

“Mechanic’s shop,” Zoe replied, pressing her lighter to life and holding it to the end of the cigarette, something she’d done a thousand times by now. She wouldn’t normally smoke inside, but the people of the Tipsy Gator didn’t seem to care if it was allowed or not. “Nothing fancy. Just cleaning up and organizing tools for now.”

“Sounds like a good fit,” Margot said, leaning her elbows on the bar. “Bet you’d be the type to do that kinda stuff.”

She shrugged lazily. “Something like that. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow?”

The first hit of nicotine hit like a soothing wave crashing over her, and Zoe closed her eyes as she exhaled a thick mouthful of smoke. One of the only things that hadn’t changed over the years was the feeling of getting lost in tobacco.

Margot’s smile widened. “You seem like a smart girl. I knew you’d land on your feet.”

Zoe scoffed — it wasn’t like she knew her at all. “Did you, though?”

“Sure did. Got a knack for reading people.” She shrugged. “I can tell you’re tough as hell. I mean, you moved in with all the crackheads and the rats, right?”

Zoe’s face warmed, and she quickly looked away. “Thanks, I - I guess.”

Margot laughed, straightening up. “First round’s on me, then. Y’know - to celebrate.”

Zoe hesitated, remembering last night: the repetition felt like a trap. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t,” Margot said, already reaching for a bottle. “But I want to. You just got a new job, and I know you’re probably not rich if you’re at Delta Ridge. All the more reason to save money, right?”

She knew what she was trying to say – don’t worry about it – but still, her heart pounded.

Zoe watched as Margot poured her a whiskey neat, sliding the glass across the bar with practiced ease. She found she’d liked the burn of whiskey last night, and she’d remembered. Margot seemed really intent on being nice to her.

“Here’s to new beginnings,” Margot said, lifting the empty glass she’d been cleaning with a rag when she’d walked in.

Zoe raised her drink, her throat tight.

You’ll regret this you’ll regret this you’ll regret this –

“New beginnings,” she whispered back, obviously not confident at all, and she took a sip.

The whiskey burned going down, but it wasn’t unpleasant. Not when it was a powerful step towards some kind of dizzy burning haze that made her forget the ugly things. The higher the alcohol content, the better.

“Have you ever worked on cars?” Margot asked conversationally, and Zoe’s heart ached.

The late afternoon sun shone brightly on the yard, glinting off the rusting front of the old pickup parked in front of the house. Jack whistled a jaunty tune as he leaned under the hood, his arms greasy up to the elbows. He was always weirdly cheerful when he was fixing up cars, to the point where he went out of his way to buy the janky cars he found downtown. It was one of his favourite hobbies, clearly.

Zoe stood nearby, more willing to get dirty than Lucas was, handing him tools as he barked out requests.

“Pass me the wrench, girl. The big one,” Jack called, his voice muffled as he peered into the engine.

Zoe grabbed the tool from the open toolbox and slapped it into his outstretched hand. They’d been like this all afternoon, growing awfully sweaty as the sweltering sun bored down on them.

“Think this hunk of junk’s even worth savin’, Dad?”

Jack straightened, wiping his brow with the back of his hand, leaving a streak of grease across his forehead. “Course it is. Just needs a little love and elbow grease. Like all good things.”

Zoe rolled her eyes, though she couldn’t help the faint smile tugging at her lips.

The sound of the screen door slamming broke the moment, and both of them turned to see Lucas shuffling out of the house, his hands stuffed in his pockets. He was wearing his usual hoodie despite it being heatstroke hot out, and he was vampire white, like he wasn’t meant to be outside.

“Oh, look who decided to grace us with his presence,” Zoe quipped.

Lucas ignored her, his eyes scanning the courtyard like he was looking for an escape route. He was usually like that for some reason, all shifty, like he had something to hide. “Ma said to tell you dinner’s in an hour.”

Jack grunted. “You tell her I’m busy out here? Won’t be done in an hour if I don’t get this engine runnin’.”

“Not my problem,” Lucas muttered, pivoting to head back inside.

“Don’t just stand there,” Zoe said. “Make yourself useful.”

Lucas shot her a glare. “What, you think I’m gonna crawl under there and pretend to care about this crap?”

“It’s not pretendin’ if you actually try,” Jack chimed in without looking up.

Lucas let out a derisive snort but stayed where he was. Zoe shook her head and turned her attention back to her dad.

“You sure you don’t need to scrap it?” she asked, grabbing a rag and wiping her hands.

Jack chuckled. “Where’s the fun in that? Nah, this ol’ girl’s got plenty of life left. Just needs someone to care enough to bring her back.”

Lucas shifted awkwardly on his feet, clearly itching to go back inside but unwilling to deal with whatever lecture might await him from Marguerite.

“Lucas,” Jack said suddenly, straightening up and pinning him with a pointed look. “Go grab me a bottle of water from the fridge, would ya?”

Lucas hesitated, his mouth opening to protest, but he seemed to think better of it. He turned and shuffled back toward the house, his tail between his legs.

As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, Zoe let out a low sigh. “He’s impossible.”

Jack shrugged, his face softening. “He has his own way of going about things, Zoe. You know that.”

Zoe crossed her arms, her gaze lingering on the house. “You mean he’s a jerk.”

She still hadn’t forgiven him for the yoga incident, and lately, he’d been more reclusive than ever.

“Maybe,” Jack said, leaning back over the engine. “But family’s family. Can’t write him off just ‘cause he ain’t easy.”

Zoe stayed quiet, her eyes drifting to the sun heading to sink on the horizon.

Some time later

Zoe’s boots clunked heavily against the scuffed linoleum as she trudged down the dim hallway of Delta Ridge. It was God-only-knows o’clock, and those flickering fluorescent lights from a low-budget horror movie above her buzzed faintly, casting an anemic glow through the fifth floor.

Her keys jingled in her pocket as she broke out into a fast walk, intent to get to 306 as fast as possible since the whole hallway gave her the creeps, but she stopped short when she nearly ran straight into someone.

A tall, gangly guy in a jean jacket stood there, as if he’d materialized out of nowhere. His hair hung over his face in messy dark waves, and his shoulders hunched slightly forward like he was trying to make himself smaller, even though he was already towering over her — and Zoe considered herself a tall woman.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, instinctively taking a step back.

The guy didn’t respond. He just stared at her with dark, unblinking eyes, and somehow Zoe instantly knew who he was.

Caleb. The one Margot had mentioned on 308, right? Selective mutism?

Instead of moving aside, he just stood there, staring at her like she was some kind of curiosity, and Zoe’s stomach twisted into an uncomfortable knot. That kind of stare only reminded her of ugly things.

She felt obligated to say something, to break the weird silence that had settled between them.

“You’re…Caleb, right?”

He nodded once. Just once. Slow and deliberate.

Stupidly, Zoe waited for him to say something, or at least move out of the way, but the seconds dragged on and he didn’t make a sound.

His gaze, sharp and unreadable, stayed fixed on her, like he was trying to solve a riddle only he could see.

He’s not a creep, Margot had said. Did they have different definitions of creeps?

She tried not to let it get to her, but the longer it went on, the more she felt like she was being dissected.

“You live down the hall?” she tried again, her voice coming out a little more strained than she wanted. She may as well be nice, if the guy turned out to be a serial killer.

Another nod.

Right. Great. A man of many words.

“I’m Zoe,” she offered, even though she wasn’t sure why she felt the need to introduce herself. “Margot told me about you.”

Caleb’s expression didn’t change. He just stood there, watching her like she was something strange he’d stumbled across in the middle of the woods. Zoe wondered if he was the type to not get social cues, and the mutism was making it worse.

She cleared her throat, her fingers tightening around the strap of her bag.

Her lips were pressed into a thin line — she was tragically awkward, and she felt like she couldn’t just step past him.

She nodded hurriedly, feeling pained. “Okay, uh…good talk.”

She brushed past him quickly, her skin crawling with the weight of his stare, and as soon as she’d moved, all she wanted was to get out of there. 

Her apartment door was only a few steps away, but it felt like miles as she jammed her key into the lock, her hands suddenly unsteady.

She knew why she felt so freaked out. The way he’d looked at her kind of reminded her of Eveline, somehow. He had that same pinning stare.

She shook her head to clear the memory and peeled off her jacket, tossing it onto the couch. It didn’t matter. He was just another strange neighbor in a building full of strange neighbors.

Once again, she was reading too much into things.

It took Zoe a week of living at Delta Ridge before she did what she felt was inevitable.

Keep in touch, Ethan had said over the phone, hours after she’d been rescued by Joe. His voice was soft, but it wasn’t patronizing, like the rest of the damn BSAA. There was Joe, with his rugged ferocity and unconditional protection, and there was the nervous doctors that promised to cure her – but none of them were Ethan.

I think we both know that if there’s anyone who actually gets what went on here, it’s me. And Mia, too. You’re not alone.

“Where are you right now?” she’d asked as she shivered, meeting Joe’s gaze with wide eyes. Back then, it took a tremendous effort to speak – the only explanation the doctors could give was that her vocal cords had literally been frozen in ice, along with the rest of her crystallized body.

They won’t say. Chris says we’ll have to go into witness protection, so we likely won’t be in America for a while. He wants us as far away as possible. Last I heard, the BSAA was trying to pick between Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania, so…

Panic had clawed at her throat. She’d never left Dulvey; she couldn’t imagine being forced to uproot her life so quickly and drastically.

Ethan seemed to realize without her saying anything.

The investigation’s far from over, though. They’re definitely not going to let us go until they’re satisfied. When they do, I’ll make sure we can have some kind of communication.

She sensed the unspoken: because I’m going to suffer as much as you will.

Weeks after their conversation, and days before she was due to set off for New Orleans, a BSAA soldier had whispered Ethan and Mia’s new address into her ear like there were cameras watching them, and hurried out of her motel room before she could ask further questions.

Sure enough, the BSAA had picked Romania, but it wasn’t any major city she recognized. From the way it was described, she wouldn’t have been surprised if it was literally a cabin in the middle of nowhere.

Make sure to keep it vague, the soldier said. They’ll know it’s you, but we can’t trust that their mail won’t get intercepted.

Sick of the BSAA, Zoe then resolved to send her first letter to the Winters family when she was far away from them. And that was now, right?

Zoe sank down onto the dirty mattress on the floor and opened her journal. The lined paper felt incredibly intimidating – as well as the whole process of sending a letter halfway across the world, which she hadn’t done much even before everything had went to shit.

She had so much to say, but nowhere to start.

Zoe closed her eyes and took a deep breath, listening to the steady thud of her heart in her chest. Her internal monologue was always either strategic thinking or panicked screaming, and right now, it was neither.

She opened her eyes and uncapped her pen. Without much of a plan, she started writing: she could censor and conceal herself later.

Hey Ethan, and Mia too,

Quarantine makes it feel like an age since I’ve seen you both, and a lot has gone on since then. The BSAA has finally let me go on my own, after days and days of interrogating and monitoring me. Thank God. They’ve always looked at me like I’m some sort of animal, and it gets old fast. As far as they can really tell, the Mold is gone, and I’m alright as I can really be right now. They gave me a whole host of medications to take (I’m sure you’ve been prescribed the same) for everything. I’m also anemic as hell, but I guess that’s a me-specific thing after the whole crystallization disaster. It sucks being cold all the time.

If you haven’t heard already, they announced that my family’s property is getting demolished. BSAA ordered, but the local government made it look like it was them, of course. They’ve spread the gas leak story as far as it will go, but I’m not sure how many people believe it. Folks here believe conspiracy theories all the time, and I got a whole load of dirty looks when I went downtown. I don’t think they know the full story, but they know something’s fishy. 

I guess I should feel relieved that the hellhole is finally getting demolished, but instead I don’t know how to feel. It’s another reminder that everything has changed, for sure. I hated being trapped there, I can’t tell you the number of times I saw people die in there,

Zoe paused suddenly, fighting the tears that were welling up in her eyes – 

but I don’t know, it was where I grew up. And a part of me is still attached to it, I guess. I’m really not sure why and I feel like I shouldn’t be. Everything is complicated when I wish it could be simple. My family were monsters and I need to move on with my life, I understand that, but part of me just can’t accept that. I don’t know if I ever told you, but I’ve never been anywhere but Dulvey. That town was my world. Sometimes I wonder if any of this was even real.

But I know it’s real, since I’m having nightmares all the time. Are you guys also having nightmares? I seriously don’t know how to deal with them. I always wake up screaming. I think I’ve gotten, like, three hours of sleep ever since I arrived in New Orleans.

That’s the other thing - I’m in New Orleans now. As soon as the BSAA cleared me and the demolition was announced, I knew I had to get out. I bought the shittiest truck ever and the cheapest apartment I could find and I live here now. It’s not glamorous. I don’t have a bedframe and the whole place smells like dead rats and there’s a few crackheads around on the lower floors. But I’m at the point where anything would be better than quarantine and the BSAA. Life isn’t perfect, or even good at all, but I’m independent now. I’ll never forget how much of a privilege it is.

That’s my life update. I wish I could talk to you face to face but the BSAA would never allow that. I hope you guys are doing at least marginally better than I am. Hope to hear back from you soon.

Z

Zoe laid back on the mattress and stared at the ceiling. Her hand was already cramping, the paper was splattered with tears, and the letter itself would need a whole lot of editing, but all she felt was a raw sort of release. Putting it plainly and being that honest with herself – with Ethan – hadn’t solved anything, but she felt inexplicably lighter. Not permanently lighter, but lighter nonetheless.

Chapter Text

The boat house was filled with rotting wood and the whole shack smelled like murky swamp water. It wasn’t often that the other Bakers came out here, considering it was so far away from the rest of the property, and it certainly wasn’t often that she was bound by her wrists to a post alongside the woman who had started this whole clusterfuck on a humid July night.

Ethan Winters was on the property somewhere, but whether he was alive or dead was anyone’s guess. It had been a while since she’d last talked to him, and Lucas had been cackling with glee as he tied her up, like he was anticipating some ruthless victory, so she didn’t have much hope. She’d been stuck in this position for hours, poised as bait – wrists cramping within the itchy rope, her knees numb.

Mia moaned weakly beside her, and Zoe said nothing, steadily inhaling the scent of the swamp.

It had to be over. Her most tangible chance at escape in years — which was apparently Mia’s husband, she’d learned that embarrassingly late — was dead. She should’ve been used to the small pang of defeat in her stomach by now, but this time, knowing that he’d gone through Dad and Mama and survived, the pain of it ripped through her whole body.

She was so close.

Zoe ignored Mia crying softly and mourned the serum.

But of course, just as she was starting to accept that there was no way out of this hellhole —

CREAK!

The wooden door swung open, and an exhausted-looking man in a bloody, formerly-white button down was on the other side, clutching a shotgun.

Ethan.

“Mia?” he breathed, his eyes immediately flickering over to his wife beside Zoe, and Zoe’s breath hitched at the sight of him.

This crazy fool. He’s alive.

She swallowed her disbelief as she watched Ethan cut Mia free from her binds, and immediately jumped back into practicality.

If Ethan was alive, then Dad or Mama or Lucas was still hunting him, which meant they had to get out of there as fast as possible.

“Zoe, I -” Ethan started, but swept away on another wave of panic, Zoe cut him off.

“Not now - we don’t have the time. Do you have both ingredients?” she asked him urgently. All she wanted right now was to move quickly.

Thankfully, Ethan was just as ready to get down to business.

“Right here. This should be enough, right?” he asked as he grabbed her skinny, pallid wrists and cut them free.

“If we make ‘em fast enough. My father and Lucas aren’t far away,” she replied as blood rushed back into her hands, and she pulled herself up to a standing position despite her knees screaming in pain.

“He’s coming - Daddy’s coming,” Mia mumbled deliriously on the other side of the room, and Zoe swallowed her annoyance. Even in insanity, even when Eveline hated her, Jack was her dad, not Mia’s.

There’s no time, the rational voice said. Go go go.

“Good, there’s enough for two,” Zoe said instantly as Ethan produced the ingredients, and she took the head and the arm from him. She’d been waiting for this moment for years, and paranoia had her carrying syringes in her back pocket everywhere she went. They had no time to waste.

“So after we make the serum, what’s next?” Ethan asked, pausing to run a hand through his ashy blonde hair as she loaded the serum into her syringes. Neither of them seemed to know what to do about a slumped-over Mia mumbling deranged things, but they had bigger fish to fry.

“There’s a boat outside,” she responded curtly: she knew exactly what to do, considering she’d fantasized about it for years. “We’ll take it through the swamp.”

Her heart was still pounding hard: go go go they’re coming they’re coming – 

She straightened up, holding two needles each containing a full dose of the dumpster juice that were somehow the cure to this mess. “But neither of us’ll get very far without the serum.”

Ethan nodded, understanding the gravity of the situation, and took the two doses from her outstretched hands.

Unfortunately, she only saw what was going to happen after it was too late.

"ZOE!"

A monstrous bellow shook the air, rattling her bones and making the entire shack quiver. Just beyond the wall, a towering creature loomed before her, its grotesque form writhing with Mold, a thousand burning orange eyes staring straight through her. She’d never seen this putrid thing before, but somehow she knew instantly that it was her father.

And they were so, so incredibly fucked.

Before she could move, before she could scream, rotten wood cracked and exploded around her as the shack was ripped apart. A tendril shot out of the darkness, lashing forward –

Ethan.

It wrapped around him before she could react, yanking him and the serums into the abyss of the boat house as fire erupted all around them –

“NO!”

Zoe lurched upright with a sharp gasp, swiping at something that wasn’t there, her skin slick with sweat. Her chest heaved, blood thundering to her brain.

Fuck.

It took a second for her to realize that she was the one who had screamed just now, and embarrassment flooded her cheeks.

She forced herself to breathe and looked around. She was still in Delta Ridge.

No monsters. No Mold.

She exhaled hard and slumped forward, not unlike how Mia had just barely two months before.

Just one night, she thought bitterly. One night without this.

Ever since she’d gone to the post office and sent off that letter, Ethan had been appearing more and more in her dreams, and once again, she was vividly back to where she never wanted to go.

This was exhausting.

The sun was only just rising the morning Zoe arrived at Pete’s Garage for her very first shift. Even though it was so early, and the OPEN sign wasn’t illuminated, the place was already clanging with noise.

The door was unlocked, so she stepped inside.

Pete was at the front counter, hunched over a clipboard, grease already smeared across his knuckles. He looked up as she walked in and gave a curt nod.

“You’re on time. That’s a good start.”

Zoe shoved her hands into her pockets, resisting the urge to fidget. “Told you I would be.”

She was aiming for conversational, not cocky, but she felt embarrassed anyway.

He grunted in response, setting the clipboard down. “Alright. You’ll start by organizing tools, cleaning up the place. Customers don’t trust a shop that looks like shit, and right now, this one’s barely passable. Got it?”

She nodded – Mama always wanted her to clean the kitchen after dinner, so this was hardly anything new.

“Good.” Pete jerked his thumb toward the back. “Ricky’ll show you where everything goes. He’s been here the longest.”

Ricky, as it turned out, was a wiry guy in his thirties with dark, curly hair pulled into a ponytail. He was elbow-deep in an engine when Pete called for him, but he wiped his hands off on a rag before sizing Zoe up. His eyes were enlarged by his circular glasses, and he blinked fast.

“You the new kid?”

Zoe bristled at being called kid, but let it slide. “Yeah. Zoe.”

“Cool. I’m Ricky.” He gestured around the cluttered workspace. “Come on, I’ll show you where shit goes.”

The morning blurred into a monotonous cycle of sorting wrenches by size, stacking oil cans, and sweeping up years’ worth of grime. Ricky was mostly quiet, only breaking the silence to correct her when she put something in the wrong spot.

By noon, her shoulders ached, and her hands were already streaked up to her elbows with grease. It wasn’t glamorous, but she liked the smell of oil, and the hum of engines in the background.

At some point, Pete walked by and gave her a look. “You ever change oil before?”

Zoe nodded. “Helped my dad with it a few times.”

Pete grunted, clearly skeptical and indicating her to follow. “Then show me.”

She set down the broom and followed him towards the car hoisted up on a lift.

At the sight of it, anxiety immediately had her heart beating faster, but like always, rationality took over.

Alright. I know this. I can do this.

She took a steadying breath and grabbed the oil pan, sliding under the car with the practiced motion of someone who had done this several times before. It didn’t feel like it, but she had.

The undercarriage was hot from being driven recently, and the smell of burnt oil clung to the air. It had been a while since she’d done this, but muscle memory kicked in as she reached for the drain plug.

The bolt was stiff. She gritted her teeth and twisted harder, her fingers slipping against the metal. It wasn’t going.

For a wild second, she thought about backing off, letting Pete do it instead. But then she imagined Jack watching her, shaking his head in disappointment.

She set her jaw and adjusted her grip.

The plug gave way with a sharp jolt, and a stream of black oil gushed into the pan.

She slid back out, wiping her hands on her already-ruined jeans, and looked up at Pete.

He gave a short nod. “Not bad.”

By the time her shitty truck was rolling back into the Delta Ridge parking lot, Zoe had smoked most of her cigarette and her entire body ached with exhaustion. Only this time, it was an accomplished sort of exhaustion. For the first time in a while, she felt like she’d actually done something meaningful.

As she parked in what she had quickly become her regular spot just outside the complex, she sat back and let the feeling wash over her as her cigarette dwindled into ash, loosely hung outside of the window.

She felt like her father.

The knock at Zoe’s door came later than expected.

She had just gotten out of the shower, scrubbing away the grime of her first shift at Pete’s. It was the very first thing she’d done once she’d entered her apartment, and she’d been in there a while: the smell of motor oil still clung stubbornly to her hands, no matter how hard she scrubbed.

Dressed in an old t-shirt and shorts, considering how New Orleans was bouncing back and forth between humidity and rain, her damp hair still slightly dripping water down her neck, she debated ignoring whoever was on the other side.

Then the knock came again, firmer this time.

With a sigh, Zoe stepped across the worn linoleum and pulled the door open.

Margot stood there, leaning casually against the doorframe, a brown paper bag under one arm and a small, dark stone resting in her palm.

“Figured you could use a housewarming gift,” she said, lifting the bottle out of the paper bag just enough for Zoe to catch sight of the label. Kraken, with a design of an octopus sprawling across the label — a big bottle of dark rum. She caught sight of the 47% alcohol content on the label and immediately felt both excitement and disbelief.

Margot smirked as she put the bottle back in the bag and held up the rock. “And something else, for, y’know, good energy or whatever. Figured you might need it.”

Zoe blinked at her. “You bring all your neighbours booze and rocks?”

Margot shrugged casually. “Only the interesting ones.”

Zoe couldn’t think of what to say, so she just went with whatever tumbled out of her mouth. “Wow.”

No one had ever done anything like this for her before.

“It’s obsidian,” Margot said, watching her reaction. “Good for protection. It’s great for removing negative energy, as long as you cleanse it often. Thought you might like to keep it around. God knows I have too much crystals in my apartment anyway.”

Zoe didn’t have a goddamn clue what any of that meant, nor did she ever peg Margot for the crystal type, but she took the glittery black rock from her anyway. It was surprisingly heavy in her hands.

She swallowed.

“Wow,” she muttered again, rubbing her thumb over the stone’s surface. Cold and smooth. She already liked holding it.

Margot grinned and pushed the paper bag into her other hand. “And this is for when you need something a little stronger than good vibes.”

Zoe huffed a quiet laugh, still feeling unsteady under Margot’s easy confidence. She opened her mouth, and closed it, and realized she couldn’t figure out what to say.

She said as much. “I - I don’t even know what to say. Thank you.”

Margot shrugged, stepping back. “You don’t have to thank me. I’ve got enough liquor to kill a small elephant. Comes with the job.”

Zoe glanced down at the bottle, then back at Margot. She didn’t know what to say, but Margot didn’t seem to be waiting for anything.

“Well,” the bartender said, shoving her hands in her pockets, “I’ll let you get back to whatever brooding you were doing before I showed up. But if you ever feel like drinking with company instead of alone, you know where to find me.”

With that, she turned and walked down the hall, leaving Zoe standing in the doorway, in complete disbelief.

An unknown amount of time later

Not for the first time, Ethan was helping Mia take the clothes off the line behind their cottage. The late afternoon sun filtered through the trees, and their quaint garden was soaking up that soft golden light.

The house – tucked into the hills of the Romanian countryside, far out from the closest village – was quiet except for the occasional rustle of leaves, chirping of birds, and the sound of clothespins being tugged off the line. This was the mildest September either of them could remember in comparison to the sweltering heat of Texas, and in any other scenario, it would’ve been idyllic. It was peaceful here.

Too peaceful, sometimes.

The weight of what they’d been through and what they’d done hung in the spaces between them. Even though it was suffocating, they didn’t actually talk about it much — Mia’s stretching gaps in memory made it difficult to tell him about the incapacitated years before he’d gone and saved her, but it didn’t matter. He was glad to have her back, and they had the rest of their lives to work it out.

Instead, they filled the days with routines: tending to the flourishing garden where they grew garlic and carrots, repairing the house’s worn edges, taking walks to the village market. Mia had even taken up making sourdough, even though the whole concept of a sourdough starter thoroughly confused Ethan. It was all little things to hold onto the fragile normalcy they’d been given, even if the BSAA was breathing down their necks.

Ethan folded a shirt and placed it in the basket, glancing toward Mia. She worked quietly, smoothing wrinkles out of the sheets before folding them, her movements methodical and careful. She’d been quieter than usual today, but then again, so had he.

"You okay?" he asked, breaking the silence.

She looked up, a small smile pulling at her lips. "Yeah. Just tired."

He nodded, not pushing it further.

The phone inside his back pocket rang shrilly, cutting through the serenity of the moment. Ethan couldn’t help but feel a tired resignation: what now?

He set the basket on the ground and pulled out his phone. His heart skipped a beat: the caller ID said Chris Redfield.

“It’s Chris,” Ethan said, and Mia froze as he immediately lifted the phone to his ear.

"Hey, Winters," Chris said on the other end, his tone short and clinical like always. "I’ve got something here for you. It’s…unexpected."

Ethan frowned, shifting the phone to his other ear. Calls like this immediately had his heart pounding faster, and he averted Mia’s gaze, knowing that she was just as put on edge. He half-expected another round of random tests the BSAA never explained to either of them.

"Yeah? What is it?"

"A letter," Chris said simply.

"A letter?" Ethan echoed, incredulous. "Since when do you deliver my mail?"

Chris sighed. "It’s not your typical mail. It’s from Zoe Baker. Remember her?"

Ethan froze. Zoe. Her name brought back a flood of memories he’d been struggling with. Damp, darkened, moldy hallways. Her voice over the phone, guiding him through the nightmare of the Baker estate. The look in her eyes when he’d injected Mia with the serum on impulse.

Mia glanced at him, worry creasing her brow.

What is it? she mouthed, but Ethan didn’t respond. His mind was going a mile a minute.

"When can I get it?" he asked, his voice quieter now. He wondered vaguely if he was going to puke, even though this wasn’t necessarily bad news.

Chris didn’t miss the shift in his tone. "I’m in the village. I’ll swing by."

Later, after night had fallen, Ethan sat at the kitchen table. The envelope was sitting in front of him like it might detonate – Zoe’s brother might have been long dead by now, but he hadn’t forgotten how some of his yellow-taped crates would explode in his face randomly.

Except it didn’t look like a trap: his name was scrawled on the front in neat handwriting, and there was nothing to suggest that it had been rigged with explosives, especially if Chris himself had delivered it.

Mia hovered nearby, arms crossed. She had a glass of Romanian wine in her hand – she’d poured Ethan a glass too, but he hadn’t touched it.

"Are you going to open it?" she asked, pulling her cardigan closer to her body. If she was secretly judging him, she didn’t show it.

"Yeah," Ethan muttered, but he didn’t move.

The staples in his left arm had been removed by the BSAA ages ago, his wrist was just faintly pink scar tissue now, but the spot where his hand had been chainsawed off felt like it was tingling, somehow. Like it could sense it was a relic of Louisiana.

Fuck it.

Finally, he reached for it and tore it open, and pulled out the folded piece of paper. As his eyes scanned the first few lines, his face went pale.

Mia leaned in. "What does it say?"

Ethan didn’t answer. He slowly lowered the letter, staring into the distance, his expression unreadable.

"She’s…out of quarantine," he said at last, barely above a whisper. Then, louder, with a tinge of disbelief, "She’s in New Orleans."

The room seemed to hold its breath. Mia stepped closer, her hand brushing his arm. "Ethan…"

Before she could say anything more, Ethan pushed back his chair and stood, that cloudy look on his face like he was plagued by memory. "I need some air."

Without looking back, he sped-walked to the porch and closed the front door behind him, trying not to come off as frantic as he felt. The cool Romanian wind kissed his skin, which was a surprisingly good reminder of the present. Everything from the demolition to New Orleans to the mention of nightmares was tangling into one big jumbled thought.

Inside, Mia set down her wine glass and picked up the crumpled paper, scanning it quickly. Zoe’s handwriting was thin and sloping, and it got more rushed towards the bottom, but it was readable enough. She didn’t blame Ethan for his reaction: she didn’t like being reminded of the whole ordeal either.

It was selfish, and she immediately felt guilty for it when her husband was struggling outside, but when Chris had called after a drought of communication, she almost thought –

She almost thought –

Mia paused, staring straight at the door as she struggled to admit it, even in her thoughts.

The thing was, the BSAA had to know. If she knew, then they definitely had to know. How could they not know? It made sense not to tell him on a random Tuesday afternoon, but they had to tell him at some point, right? She wasn’t sure why they’d held off for this long, but the longer the secret went, the more she felt like she’d lose him for good if the news broke.

She hadn’t fully worked out how she felt about it yet, but for now, she was selfishly glad that her secret was safe.

Chapter Text

The range was quieter than Zoe expected.

Beyond her lane, the distant pops of gunfire echoed rhythmically, muffled by the ear protection pressed tightly against her head. The place had a distinct smell — gunpowder, metal, and something vaguely antiseptic. She was mainly just glad she was here on her first day off from Pete’s, the M37 shotgun in her hands, feeling better than she had in days. Who knew the answer to her problems would’ve been spraying a few shotgun shells into a target?

It was reassuring, being reminded that she could still operate a shotgun. The only damn thing that ever made her feel safe anyway.

Zoe loaded a shell into the chamber, the click-clack of the pump action satisfying in a way that made her shoulders relax just a little. Lining up the shot, she braced herself and pulled the trigger.

The blast was deafening even through the ear protection, the kick slamming back against her shoulder. The smell of gunpowder filled her nose, thick and familiar, and relief flooded through her like it always did. She wasn’t running for her life this time, but she was proud to have hit the target dead-on.

She hadn’t missed yet, and she wasn’t going to. The target was littered with bullet holes.

Another shell. Another blast. Despite the throbbing pain in her shoulder, she was already reloading. She hadn’t felt this good in ages. She couldn’t stop.

She was lining up another shot when a shadow loomed at the edge of her vision.

“Well, hell.”

Zoe’s stomach twisted at the sound of the voice even through the ear protection.

She faltered, breaking the rhythm, and turned her head just enough to confirm what she already knew.

Uncle Joe stood there, arms crossed over his broad chest, a crooked grin on his face.

“Didn’t think I’d see ya in a place like this, kid,” he drawled, the unmistakable bayou rasp rolling off his tongue. Truth be told, she wasn’t expecting to see him here.

Zoe blinked, lowering the gun. “Hey, Uncle Joe.”

“Haven’t seen you in a little while.” He looked down at the shotgun in her hands. “That ol’ girl looks familiar.”

Zoe ran a hand over the worn grip. “Dad’s.”

“He teach you how to use it?”

“When he had time,” she lied weakly. She avoided mentioning that she’d taught herself when she was running for her life from Evie’s friends.

Joe nodded, gruff as always. “You always were tougher than folks gave you credit for.”

Zoe didn’t know what to say to that, because she certainly didn’t feel tough, so she turned back to the lane and loaded another shell. The pump action was the only sound between them for a few long seconds.

Joe watched her fire, the blast shaking the air between them.

When she lowered the shotgun, he let out a low whistle. “Damn good shot.”

She shrugged. “Got a lot of practice.”

It wasn’t a lie.

Joe nodded slowly. He still hadn’t explained what he was doing in New Orleans — even if his cabin had burnt down, she couldn’t picture him anywhere but the bayou. She’d figured he’d be in the bayou until the day he died, Mold crawling around or not.

“Miss him every damn day,” he murmured, eyes drifting to her paper target riddled with holes. “Ain’t fair what happened.”

Zoe’s jaw tightened. “No, it’s not.”

An awkward silence stretched, filled only by the muffled gunshots from the other lanes. This was especially awkward when she was sure the BSAA hadn’t told him the full story, and she wasn’t about to get into it.

“Well, I got my lane a couple over,” he said, gesturing vaguely. “Reckon I’ll let you get back to it. Maybe we’ll do a little friendly competition next time.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, gripping the handle of her gun tighter than necessary. “Maybe.”

Joe turned, pausing just before he left. “If you need anything, you let me know, girl. Soldier boys got me staying in a motel down the street ever since my shack burnt down. You just ask for me and them boys’ll know. Could use some company.”

“I will,” she responded, and as he walked away, that weird feeling of her body not feeling like her own came over her again. It always happened whenever she was reminded of how everything had changed. Her parents were dead, Ethan was in Romania, Joe was living in the city. Who would’ve thought?

She took a half-hearted shot at the target, fully aware of her focus being gone, and missed terribly.

The next time she was at the Tipsy Gator — by then, she’d accepted it was inevitable that she would wind up back there — Zoe finally worked up the courage to ask about Caleb. She was already a few dizzying drinks in, the warmth spreading through her limbs, loosening her tongue. If she was here, she was drinking. Maybe the reason she was suddenly drinking so much was because of that fuck it feeling, and being able to let go.

She’d been meaning to put it out of her mind, but the memory of his stare had burned into her retinas. The way he’d looked at her, like he knew her, all of the things she was trying to run away from. The unease gnawed at her insides, and before she could stop herself, the words tumbled out.

"Hey… so, uh, that guy. Caleb."

Margot barely glanced up from where she was rinsing a glass. "What about him?"

Zoe hesitated, running her finger along the rim of her glass. "I don’t know. Just… he looked at me weird. Like, really weird. Like he’s…”

A serial killer, her thoughts finished much too easily, but she didn’t say that.

“I don’t know,” she finished lamely.

Margot let out a short laugh, shaking the water from the glass before setting it down. "Yeah, he’s like that. Should’ve warned you, sorry. He doesn’t mean anything by it. I just don’t think he realizes how intense he is, that’s all.”

Zoe frowned, not entirely reassured. "How do you know him?"

Margot leaned against the counter, considering her answer.

"He comes in sometimes. Barely talks, but when he does, it’s like he’s been sitting on it for hours, y’know? No idea what causes him not to talk and vice versa, but I’ll listen to him when he does. He’s just - well, I don’t know what to call it. Observant, I guess? Always watching. Kinda weird, but harmless."

In the end, she shrugged, and it was clear that she wasn’t bothered nearly as much as she was.

Zoe let it go, forcing a nod, but the unease didn’t fade.

Margot jabbed a thumb at her empty glass. “Want another one of those?”

“Sure,” she said, without thinking.

That night, just as she was closing the creaky front door of her apartment, there was an infinitesimal moment where the hairs on the back of her neck raised — and it had to be just slightly, but she’d gone off barely tangible feelings for so long that she was immediately put on edge.

She wasn’t sure what made her freeze in the doorway, her fingers still curled around the mysteriously oily doorknob. Maybe it was instinct, that part of her that had been honed by fear and survival. The room smelled the same, and everything was exactly as she had left it, but something felt different.

What the fuck?

Her gaze swept over the cramped room, searching for the source of her unease, until it landed on her crumpled sheets, half-covering a bare mattress.

A stain.

Small, but unmistakable. Dark against the pale sheets, and more eye-catching than the other, fainter stains, with an irregular shape that made her stomach twist.

She stepped closer, her breath coming faster now. 

The colour was off — it wasn’t quite blood, wasn’t quite dirt. It looked… organic.

It looked like the Mold.

You’re imagining things, Z, the rational part of her said immediately. There was no way it was what it was — not when the BSAA had had her in quarantine for so long, and she’d gone through so much bloodwork, and they’d told her over and over again that the Mold was gone.

Right?

Swallowing hard, she ripped the sheets off the bed and hauled them to the sink, turning the faucet on full blast. The stain — whatever it was — swirled in the water, breaking apart, dissolving down the drain, and then it was gone.

You’re being paranoid, she told herself, again and again as she needlessly scrubbed at the sheets, freezing cold water running over her knuckles. You’re being paranoid.

There was a lump that had settled into the back of her throat. Doctors had purged all the Mold in her lungs, she knew that much, but it suddenly felt hard to breathe.

She didn’t sleep much that night.

The next day at work, the garage smelled of grease and gasoline, and she breathed it in, trying desperately to ground herself. Ricky and Pete quietly respected her by now, and they let her be as she organized tools — this job was perfect for her. She liked the predictability of it, and knowing she had nothing to prove because it was more or less her comfort zone.

But then Pete flipped on the old boxy TV hanging in the corner, like he always did for background noise. A local broadcast immediately popped up, probably talking about politics and names she didn’t recognize in the three years she’d been cut off from the world. 

She wasn’t paying attention until a few words cut through the haze of her concentration.

"—missing demolition worker, last seen two nights ago at the demolition site of the Baker plantation in Dulvey, Louisiana—"

Zoe’s stomach dropped. Before she knew it, she was immediately tuned in.

“The site, which was cleared under the supervision of federal authorities, was being demolished in an effort to remove hazardous materials and restore the surrounding area,” the anchor continued. “There had been a hydrogen sulfide leak in the area this past July which claimed the lives of the Baker family and several others. Thirty-six-year-old Daniel Cook, an employee of Gulf South Demolition, was last seen leaving his shift around 10 PM. According to his coworkers, he clocked out as usual and was expected home that night, but never arrived.”

A photo of the missing man appeared on the screen — some frowning, bearded guy in his mid-thirties, wearing an orange safety vest in what looked like a company ID picture. Beneath it, his name flashed: Daniel Cook, 36.

Zoe’s grip tightened around the wrench in her hand. She forced herself to breathe evenly, but her pulse had started to pound in her ears.

No. No. No.

Pete, completely unaware of her inner turmoil, shook his head as he wiped grease off his hands. “Shame. I ain’t ever heard of no hydrogen sulfide leak before.”

Zoe knew better.

“As of this morning, investigators have found no signs of forced entry at his home, nor any unusual activity on his bank statements or phone records,” the anchor continued. “Friends and family say Cook had no known enemies and described him as a hard-working man with no history of erratic behavior. However, one witness, who wished to remain anonymous, claims to have heard strange noises near the site that night.”

The screen cut to shaky, low-quality footage — a dark construction zone, the remains of her childhood home now reduced to piles of splintered wood and debris. A voiceover played:

“I was finishin’ up fishing down by the bayou when I heard it. A weird…I don’t know, sloshin’ sound? Like something heavy draggin’ through mud. Then this… crack. Like bones breaking. I figured it was some of those guys messing around, but when I looked over, I ain’t see anyone. I thought it was a mighty big fish or somethin’, but I dunno…”

Zoe’s skin prickled.

Sloshing.

Mud.

Bones breaking.

“Hey, you good?” Ricky asked, glancing at her from across the shop. She must’ve looked as panic-stricken as she felt.

She forced a nod, gripping the wrench in her hand too tightly. “Yeah. Just listening.”

Pete scratched his chin as he watched the screen intently, looking pensive, and it was only then that Zoe noticed that everyone in the shop had stopped what they were doing to stare at the TV.

The footage cut back to the anchor, looking grim.

“Dulvey Police are urging anyone with information to come forward. The disappearance marks the third unexplained case in the area in the past two months.”

Third? Wait, what?

Zoe swallowed hard. How much had she missed in quarantine?

The Mold was supposed to be gone. The BSAA burned everything to the ground. They salted the earth, didn’t they?

She debated locking herself into the supply closet and calling them — she was that scared — but she stopped herself. She was at work, for fuck’s sake.

What if she was wrong? What if she was overreacting?

But what if she wasn’t?

The news rolled on to another segment, something about the amount of potholes in New Orleans, but Zoe barely heard it. The sound of gunfire and the sharp crackle of broken bones was still in her ears, deep in the back of her head, where the nightmares lived. And Mold squelched right along with it.

“Pete, turn that shit off,” Ricky said immediately, and she looked up. He was staring at her, his eyes enlarged from his glasses, and he looked more concerned than she’d ever seen him. “Y’all know the news only wants to get folks worked up nowadays. Poor Zoe looks like she seen a ghost.”

“Sorry,” Pete said immediately, gruff like always, and mercifully, he moved to turn off the TV. “Best to stay away from it for now. Sorry, Zoe.”

“Thanks,” Zoe said in a voice so small it felt like a whisper, and she looked down at the tools scattered in front of her again.

She forced herself to move, to focus on the work in front of her, but her hands were clammy, her grip unsteady. She felt incredibly weak.

For the rest of the day, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong.

Of course, as soon as she’d clocked out of her shift, she went to the Gator.

That night, the bar was packed. It was a Friday night after all, and classic rock rumbled through the speakers, a steady thrum beneath the chatter of regulars and drunks alike. She recognized some faces, but on nights like these, there were mostly strangers.

Zoe sat at the corner of the bar, her fingers curled around the glass, bringing it to her lips before she could think too hard about it. The burn hardly fazed her anymore – she really did love whiskey. For whatever reason, this brand tasted vaguely like green apples.

Like almost always, Margot was bartending, moving effortlessly between customers, pouring drinks with the ease of someone who had done it a thousand times over. They hadn’t had the time to small talk like usual with how busy it was, but Zoe didn’t mind: all she wanted was to get drunk and step out of her body. 

At some point during a lull of orders, she stopped in front of Zoe, watching as she tipped back another large swallow.

She quirked a brow. "You’re really putting that away, huh?"

It wasn’t judgmental. It wasn’t even concerned, thank God.

Zoe forced a laugh, shaking her head. "Long day."

Margot didn’t push, just smirked, wiping down the bar. "Aren’t they all?"

Zoe nodded, but the comment lingered. She was drinking a lot, wasn’t she?

The easy thing to do was to keep drinking. Kept telling herself it was fine.

But later, when she was back in her apartment, the world tilting slightly under her feet and thrumming with an euphoria she definitely did not deserve, she looked down at her hands and felt it again.

That dampness.

Not sweat. Not condensation from her drink. Something else.

Something thick, something clinging.

Something that felt like Mold.

She stared down at her palms, her breath coming short, her heart hammering in her chest. It wasn’t there – she knew it wasn’t there – but she felt it. Felt it sinking in, felt it in her skin, felt it in her veins.

She couldn’t help but remember watching the victims getting turned in their gigantic, formerly-pristine bathtub, the damp Mold covering and submerging them whole, until they either died or emerged as some kind of fanged, Moldy creature. If you screamed, it was just letting the substance in even more. And there was no way out. You’d suffocate whether you tried to fight it or not.

She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing the memory away. Breathed in, and breathed out.

Zoe scrubbed her hands against her mud-stained jeans until the phantom sensation faded.

It wasn’t real.

It wasn’t real.

But it still left her shaking.

What the hell was going on?

Chapter Text

Ever since the broadcast at Pete’s, things had not stopped feeling…off.

The insomnia was nothing new, obviously, but somehow it was getting even worse. Three nights in a row, Zoe barely slept at all, lying awake until it was time to get up for Pete’s, her thoughts going in circles about the possibility of Mold. So intense and prevalent she started to wonder if she was hallucinating.

The thing was, it wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility. She wasn’t sure if the stain on her bedsheet had ever really been there, after all. She’d spent several sleepless hours pondering it. Was it just a trick of the light? A symptom of her paranoia? A hallucination leftover from when Eveline had groped her way into her family’s minds?

Ever since she’d washed it off in a frenzy, she’d see weird black stains on the floor, on the walls, only to blink and have them disappear.

But things weren’t so bad to the point of having to call the BSAA, so Zoe brushed it off the best she could, in the only way she knew how.

After checking the time once more – it was crossing over into four in the morning – she stood from the thin, dirty mattress, feeling wide awake, and grabbed Margot’s rum on her countertop.

This probably wasn’t the best way to drink rum, she knew that much, but she wasn’t feeling like she had to enjoy and savour it tonight.

She took out a grubby shot glass and poured the black liquid until the brim. A little bit more than a typical shot, but she didn’t care. She tried not to smell it: it smelled like spice and regret, and she knew it would burn awfully on the way down.

But, well, it was forty seven percent alcohol content, so she’d already weighed the pros and cons.

She tipped it back as fast as she could, wincing as the burn seared the tender skin of her throat, and slammed the shot glass back on the counter. She’d poured the shot in such a hurry that she hadn’t even thought about a chaser, so she just let it burn, clutching the countertop, her eyes clenched closed. The spice was alive on her tongue and she felt like she was breathing out fire.

It would only last for a few moments, but the only thing she felt was fuck.

Then the fire faded, and the warmth settled in, thick and numbing – the reason she’d suffered through the burn. Satisfied, Zoe flopped backwards onto the dirty mattress, hoping she could catch at least a few minutes of sleep.

Thankfully, the thoughts of the Mold didn’t follow.

The next night

Zoe nearly walked past Margot on her way up the stairs. It was late – somewhere past three in the morning, she’d been driving around in her shitty truck to avoid coming home at this point – and the hallway lights flickered like they always did, like something out of a cheap horror movie.

To Zoe’s surprise, Margot was leaning against the wall just outside her door, arms crossed, looking like she was deep in thought about something.

Zoe stopped in her tracks. She was so used to this hallway being abandoned, it was weird to see her there.

“You lose your keys or something?”

Margot glanced up, lips quirking in that lazy smirk of hers. “Nah. Just got home. You?”

“Same.” Zoe adjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder, shifting from one foot to the other.

Margot flicked a lighter open, then shut it again with a metallic CLICK! “You tired?”

Zoe considered the question. She’d drove around downtown until her body was exhausted, her mind even more so, but she already knew what would happen if she laid down. She’d start to think about the possibility of Mold again, and she couldn’t afford that right now.

“No,” she admitted.

Margot jerked her head in the direction of the sixth floor stairwell, which she had never had an excuse to go up.

“Come with me. I wanna show you somethin’.”

Before Zoe could argue, Margot was already walking down the hall. With a sigh, she followed.

This stairwell smelled like dust and old cigarettes, and Margot moved through it easily, leading her up narrow concrete steps until they hit a rusted-out maintenance door.

Margot wrenched it open with both hands, grinning over her shoulder at Zoe. “Welcome to my very exclusive, very secret rooftop lounge.”

Zoe scoffed at the thought. “Okay.”

Margot stepped through first, then held the door open. “C’mon.”

Without hesitating, Zoe ducked through, stepping onto the rooftop.

Out here, the city stretched out beneath them, restless and bright. Neon signs flickered in the distance, flashing over the uneven skyline of New Orleans. She was half-expecting it to be noisy, but up here, everything was muffled – just the autumn wind billowing, tossing Margot’s auburn curls around, and the low hum of cars from the freeway.

Zoe craned her neck, staring straight up at the black sky, and several stars glistened back at her.

All in all, it wasn’t bad.

Margot made her way to the ledge, hopping up onto the edge of an old HVAC unit and settling in like she’d come here a thousand times. She took out a pack of cigarettes and popped one in her mouth, then handed off the pack to Zoe.

Tentatively, Zoe sat down next to her, willing herself not to look down at the great distance below. She was already shivering, and her fingers were turning red.

Determined to do this, she fished her disposable lighter out of her pocket – judging by the amount of lighter fluid sloshing around, it was on its last legs – and clicked it to life.

They lit up in silence.

The first drag flooded Zoe’s mouth with nicotine, and she exhaled, watching the smoke curl into the night air, then dissipate.

Margot flicked her lighter shut and studied her. “You look like shit, by the way.”

Zoe scoffed, even though she knew it was true. “Yeah, well. When do I not?”

Margot grinned. She leaned back on one arm, exhaling a slow stream of smoke toward the sky. She seemed to recognize that she was having a hard time with something, but she didn’t ask about it.

“This was my first spot when I moved here,” she said instead. “Used to climb up here with a forty and a pack of smokes and just—” she made a vague gesture with her cigarette, “—sit. Sometimes for hours. Figured if I stayed up here long enough, I wouldn’t have to deal with any of the shit waiting for me down there.”

Zoe nodded like she understood. Because she did.

Margot glanced over at her. “What about you? You ever have a spot like this?”

For a second, Zoe almost said no. But the question lingered, pulling at something she had previously forced herself not to think about.

“My folks had a boat house,” she said, finally. “Back in my hometown, I mean. We lived in the middle of nowhere in the bayou. The property used to be a plantation, I think, so we had all sorts of little buildings sorta just…scattered around.”

She paused to take a drag from her cigarette. When she dared to glance over in Margot’s direction, she was listening intently.

“The boat house was the building farthest away from our house, so sometimes I’d just…sit there,” she murmured, her voice thick with grief. She almost didn’t want to talk about it, but here she was. “Since my folks wouldn’t come lookin’ for me or anything. I’d listen to the old radio I had, look out at the swamp. Just wantin’ to get out of there, y’know. All I wanted was to get outta there.”

She flicked ash, watching as it dared the drop below into nothingness.

“Wasn’t much, but it was quiet. I needed that.”

There was silence, and she let it be. She didn’t want to say any more, anyway. She still didn’t know if the BSAA would come after her if she did.

“Could definitely be worse than that,” Margot murmured after a moment, looking like she was thinking entirely about something else, and without context, she was right.

Margot didn’t say anything else, and Zoe found she didn’t mind the quiet. It wasn’t the kind that pressed down on her, that made her restless. It was just there, like the windy city below them – constant, steady, humming just slightly. She liked being alone with Margot, she realized. She had no idea why she’d found her outside of her apartment, almost like she was waiting for her, but she appreciated it.

After a while, Margot sighed and stubbed her cigarette out on the rooftop ledge.

“Don’t tell anyone I brought you up here,” she said, almost like a joke – but not quite.

Zoe glanced at her, her own cigarette still burning between her fingers. “Why?”

Margot gave a small shrug. “Just don’t.”

That told Zoe more than anything else could. This wasn’t a shared space, it was hers. And now, for whatever reason, she’d decided to share it with Zoe, even though she didn’t totally understand why.

Like Margot would’ve done, Zoe didn’t press. She just nodded. “Alright.”

She couldn’t help but think that she was seeing a part of Margot that most people didn’t see.

Margot flicked her lighter open again, staring at the flame before shutting it with a metallic snap. “Good.”

Silence again. Zoe didn’t know what to say, and now that Margot had stopped smoking, she had a feeling like they’d be heading out pretty soon.

“You ever go out?” Margot asked suddenly.

Zoe glanced at her. “What, like to clubs or something?”

She smirked. “Clubs, shows, anywhere that isn’t work, the Gator, or your truck.”

Zoe exhaled smoke, watching it curl into the night. It felt pathetic to admit, “Not really.”

Margot tilted her head, considering that.

Then she said, “Come with me to a show tomorrow. Zeppelin tribute band, but they’re actually good. Seen ‘em a few times. Just gonna be me and a few other friends.”

Zoe hesitated. The idea of being in a crowded venue, packed shoulder-to-shoulder with strangers, made her stomach twist. “I dunno.”

Margot nudged her boot against Zoe’s. “C’mon. You need to get out. New Orleans is huge, and you’ve only been to, like, three places.”

She did have a point, but all she could think about was Mold snaking through the crowd, contaminating everything.

Zoe hesitated again, then sighed. “Alright. One show.”

Why is she doing this for me? She found herself pondering yet again. Still, she couldn’t find an answer.

“No arguing,” Margot said, like she’d already decided.

And that was that.

Some time later

Zoe’s boots sank into the damp earth with every step. The air was thick, and suffocatingly damp, carrying the smell of rot and rain. Moss draped from the towering trees, swaying gently in a wind she couldn’t feel.

Dulvey.

More specifically, she was home.

The realization sent something sharp through her chest, but her feet kept moving, like she wasn’t the one controlling them. She knew this place like the back of her hand – the narrow dirt path winding toward the house, the warped wooden dock leading to the boat house. The swampland stretching endlessly in all directions, dark water swallowing anything that drifted too far.

But something was wrong.

The house was different, now. Taller. It felt as though everything had shifted three inches to the side – almost imperceptible, but enough to always be bumping into something.

The longer she went on, the more the hazy confusion was settling in, draping itself around her vision until everything was muddy and confusing.

And suddenly, Margot was sitting on the front steps, cigarette glowing between her fingers.

What are you doing here? Zoe asked, but her voice came out thick, sluggish, like she was speaking through a mouthful of swamp water.

Margot exhaled a mouthful and smoke and smirked at her. “Could ask you the same thing.”

Zoe opened her mouth to respond, but a noise made her freeze – a wet, dragging sound, just behind her.

She turned her head slowly, even though every muscle in her body was screaming not to. The path behind her to the courtyard stretched into endless darkness, but something was moving at the edges. Then came the smell of decay and death wafting towards her, and she immediately knew what she was looking at.

“You ever wonder if it’s still out there?” Margot asked conversationally, but Zoe was too busy staring.

Black slime dripped from its elongated limbs, pooling onto the ground, and sharp teeth stretched from its jagged hole of a mouth.

One of their countless victims. A Molded.

Instinct took over and she stumbled back, boots slipping in the muck. Move move move.

But when she turned to Margot for help, she wasn’t there anymore. The front porch was empty, the cigarette still smoldering on the step.

The Molded gurgled, staggering closer.

Her stomach twisted. She should run. She needed to run. But her body suddenly, felt heavy, stuck in place. The air thickened, suffocating. The sky above darkened, the trees stretching impossibly high. Everything blurred, distorting, closing in.

She didn’t have a gun. She needed to run.

The Molded took another step, and she was paralyzed, her heart racing –

“Fuck!”

Just like that, Zoe woke up, heart hammering, the taste of swamp water thick in her throat. Her breath came in sharp, uneven gasps, the weight of the dream still pressing against her chest.

Once again: it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real.

She dragged a hand down her face, wiping away the cold sweat clinging to her skin.

Looking around, her room was dark and dusty like it always was: she’d gotten a good handle on how it looked bathed in darkness in the middle of the night, considering she found herself here so often.

She swallowed hard and forced herself to sit up, her pulse still pounding in her ears.

Almost automatically, her fingers curled around something cool and solid beneath the sheets. The obsidian crystal.

For protection, Margot had said. A good luck charm. Zoe had laughed at the time, not believing in that kind of thing, but right now, she held onto it like a lifeline. For whatever reason, it felt good to hold onto. It was smooth, cold, and sharp in places, edges imperfect. She didn’t know if she would admit it to Margot, but it had been helpful whenever she had nightmares. Maybe she was right?

She pressed her thumb into one of the jagged edges, grounding herself in the sensation. It was solid. Real . Not like the sludge and rot still clinging to the edges of her mind.

She clenched it in her fist, waiting for her heartbeat to slow.

Her dreams were taunting her – of course the Mold wasn’t here. It was gone. It had to be gone. For the millionth time, she reassured herself that it made absolutely no sense for the Mold to be back again.

Didn’t it?

The next night, after she’d pushed away her delusions once more, Zoe met Margot’s friends at a bar near the venue, a small, dimly lit place with a jukebox in the corner and stickers plastered all over the walls – even smaller, shadier, and shittier than the Gator. Margot introduced her like it was nothing, rattling off names too fast for Zoe to catch all of them.

One of them, a guy with shaggy hair and a denim vest, grinned at her with a plastic cup of beer in his hand. “Margot’s been talking about you.”

Zoe blinked, not sure what to say to that. “Yeah?”

Margot elbowed him in the ribs. “Ignore him. He likes to stir shit.”

Another friend, a woman with a shaved head, bright purple lipstick and an appropriate Zeppelin tee, nudged her. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

Zoe shifted in her seat, already wishing she could go to the show and get it over with. “Something like that.”

Margot smirked, but she didn’t push. Instead, she lifted her beer. “Well, let’s fix that.”

Zoe hesitated, then picked up her drink that she’d barely touched, clinking it against Margot’s. 

The venue was small yet totally packed, a sea of bodies moving under flashing lights, beer sloshing over the rims of plastic cups. The band was halfway through their set by the time they got there, and with everyone packed in like a can of sardines and the music loud enough to reverberate through her veins, Zoe already felt her heart racing.

She hovered near the back of the group, hands shoved in her pockets, watching as Margot greeted even more of her friends with easy familiarity. She seemed to know everyone, and she looked so at home here, laughing, throwing her arm around some guy’s shoulders while they shouted over the music. They shouted, laughed, danced, sang along, while Zoe hadn’t even bothered to Google lyrics, so it was impossible to pretend she knew what she was doing here.

Not for the first time, she wished that she could be a little less like herself and more like Margot.

She wasn’t used to crowds anymore, and she wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to this. The moment she stepped inside, it was like all her instincts were telling her to turn around and leave, to go back to the quiet of her apartment where she would worry herself to the point of puking about the Mold. Somehow that was better than this. The rational voice in her head screamed that this wasn’t practical.

Margot must have noticed, because at some point she reappeared at Zoe’s side, nudging her shoulder. “You alright?”

Zoe pressed her lips together. “Yeah. Just – haven’t done this in a while, that’s all.”

Margot tilted her head, considering her. Then she grabbed Zoe’s wrist and pulled her forward, deeper into the crowd. “C’mon. You’re overthinking.”

Zoe resisted at first, but Margot wasn’t letting go, weaving them through the bodies until they were near the stage, right in the thick of it. The music was even louder here, vibrating through the floor and straight into Zoe’s ribs. It pounded in her ears, loud enough that it invaded her thoughts until it was the only thing possible to think about.

Margot grinned at her. “Better?”

Zoe almost scoffed, but then—

The first few notes of the next song rang out, a deep cut she didn’t really recognize, and the crowd absolutely erupted, voices rising all around her. And suddenly, it hit her all at once – the energy, the movement, the way the bass reverberated through the room, filling every inch of space like a pulse. And it wasn’t just that.

Something about it was achingly familiar. The wailing guitars, the way the drumbeats rattled in her chest – for a second, she was back home, years ago, passing by Lucas’s bedroom door.

Several years earlier

Once again, surprising no one, there was music blasting from behind Lucas’s door so loud that the whole house seemed to vibrate with it. By now, with Lucas deep into his teenage years, it was constant, whether someone screamed at him to turn it down or not. If he was in his room, there was music playing, usually at a volume that made it impossible for anyone to hear themselves think. It had only gotten worse ever since Mama and Dad had given him those gigantic speakers for Christmas. He’d graduated from Skrillex to the heaviest of heavy metal, and at this point, Zoe couldn’t tell what was worse.

After the first few thousand times of this, she had never been more fucking annoyed.

Zoe stomped down the hall, feeling her ears ringing the closer she got to Lucas’s room. She stopped outside his door, taking a deep breath, already bracing herself for a fight.

Prepared, she banged her fist against the wood. “Lucas!”

No response – just the same deafening guitar riffs, the same relentless pounding of drums. How could anyone enjoy this?

She rolled her eyes and pounded again.

“Lucas! Turn that shit down!”

A beat. Then, suddenly, the music cut off with a sharp CLICK!

Merciful, merciful silence. She’d almost forgotten what it had sounded like.

Then –

“WHAT?”

Zoe huffed and pushed the door open without waiting for permission.

The room was a disaster, like it always was. Clothes and snack wrappers littered the floor, and there were at least three half-empty cans of soda on his desk. Amid everything, including the questionable smell, teenage Lucas was sprawled out on his bed, one hand on the gigantic speaker beside it to turn down the music.

“You goin’ deaf in here or what?” she asked, crossing her arms. She felt awfully like Marguerite.

Lucas groaned, pushing himself up onto his elbows. “It’s not that loud.”

“It’s shaking the damn walls!”

Lucas smirked, the same irritating, lazy grin that always made her want to smack him. “Means it’s good, that’s all.”

Zoe scoffed. “It’s noise. All it’s doin’ is giving you tinnitus. It ain’t worth it. Turn it down.”

Lucas snorted, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “You just got no taste.”

She rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Just turn it down.”

She’d hated it back then. But now, standing here, feeling the same vibrations deep in her chest, she almost wanted to laugh.

She closed her eyes for just a second, letting the music take over. And when she opened them again, Margot was watching her – not pushing, not saying anything, just there, waiting.

The music was more melodic than the stuff Lucas had been into — none of that ear-piercing, cat-getting-tortured screeching — but it still carried that raw energy, that relentless pulse that throbbed in her bones. And this time, there was a crowd, loud as hell, voices rising in unison, echoing through the packed tight venue.

The sound filled every inch of space, rattling through her ribs, making it impossible to think about anything else. She hadn’t even drank that much, and yet she didn’t feel trapped in her own head. It was the same release she got from drinking.

Maybe she was starting to understand Lucas after all.

Zoe exhaled, rolling her shoulders. The music surged around her, and the weight of everything – the past, the fear, the restless feeling in her chest — eased just a little.

And then, finally, she let herself move.

Not much at first, just the faintest nod in time with the beat. But Margot saw, and her grin widened. She reached out, caught Zoe’s hand, and spun her effortlessly into the throng of bodies.

Zoe let out a surprised laugh, startled at herself, at this, at all of it. It felt good.

Margot leaned in, her voice just barely cutting through the noise. “See? Not so bad, right?”

Zoe shook her head, breathless, grinning despite herself. “You’re an asshole.”

Margot just laughed and pulled her closer, moving fluidly with the rhythm like it was second nature. Confident. Free. And after a beat, Zoe followed.

The song surged into its chorus, and the crowd moved with it, a chaotic, uncoordinated wave of energy. Someone bumped hard into Zoe’s shoulder, but she barely noticed. The noise, the heat, the sweat of too many bodies pressed into one space – it should have overwhelmed her. A month ago, when she was colder and clammier and weaker than she was now from crystallization, it would have.

But now, it only pushed her further into the moment.

She wasn’t in a swamp. Wasn’t running. Wasn’t looking over her shoulder, waiting for something to come out of the dark. And she wasn’t even stuck in that trailer.

She was here.

Margot’s hands ghosted over her wrists, light and fleeting, guiding without forcing. Her brown eyes glinted under the flashing stage lights, dazzling and sharp and knowing, like she’d seen this coming long before Zoe had.

Zoe let out a breathy laugh and shook her head. The singing was still loud, but it faded away as she danced with Margot.

“You planned this, didn’t you?” she shouted over the noise.

Margot just smirked. “I had a feeling.”

The next song kicked in without warning, drums slamming through the speakers like a heartbeat, and Margot grabbed Zoe’s arm, spinning her again just because she could. Zoe let it happen.

She let herself exist in the noise, in the motion, in this reckless moment where nothing else mattered. She wouldn’t admit it, because she didn’t have to: this felt so good.

Hours later

The drive-thru speaker crackled as Margot leaned out of the window, speaking loudly and clearly.

"Yeah, can I get a number four? And – Zoe, you want anything?"

Zoe glanced up from where she’d been staring at the neon glow of the menu. It was hurting her eyes, but she found it difficult to look away.

She shook her head quickly. "Uh. Yeah. Number two. No onions. Please.”

Margot nodded and turned back to the speaker. "And a number two, no onions. Large fries."

"Okay..."

The probably stoned employee mumbled the total, and Margot pulled forward.

For almost two in the morning, there were cars ahead of them that were taking its time, so they sat there in the stillness for a moment, the only sounds the distant hum of the classic rock radio and the occasional rev of an engine from the parking lot.

It was just them now, headed to Delta Ridge – everyone else had been dropped off, taking their merry conversation and loud, raucous laughter with them. The quiet felt peaceful in their absence. 

Zoe leaned her head against the window, watching the way the condensation blurred the lights outside. She was exhausted, but in a way that didn’t feel entirely unpleasant.

It wasn’t that accomplished feeling she’d get outside of Pete’s, but something different this time. Her ears were still ringing faintly from the concert, her pulse still carrying the ghost of the music’s rhythm, and her heart was pounding heavy. She’d already pledged to properly listen to Led Zeppelin’s discography when she got home, and it was awfully exciting to have something to, well, actually be excited for.

She had lived, she realized. She was settling into her life after Dulvey after all.

When it was just them around, Zoe felt comfortable enough to let the smile spread across her face.

She had lived.

There was silence as they waited for the car ahead of them to pull ahead. It was taking a while.

Margot, always observant, glanced at her. “You looked like you were somewhere else back there.”

Zoe blinked, immediately put on edge. “What?”

Margot made a face, looking like she was trying to find a way to word it delicately.

“At the show. Every time I looked over, it was like you were remembering something.”

Zoe exhaled, shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She should’ve known Margot would notice. She hesitated, glancing at the glowing red brake lights ahead of them. 

“It’s nothing.”

That was the easy answer. After she’d had one of the best nights of her life, she didn’t want to get into it.

Predictably, Margot didn’t push. She just hummed, tapping the steering wheel. 

Then — 

“You talk to your family much?” she asked, casually.

Zoe’s stomach twisted. She swallowed, keeping her expression neutral.

“They’re dead.”

Margot didn’t react how she expected. No awkward apologies or immediate backpedaling. She just nodded, like she had figured. Like she understood something unspoken. 

“I get it. Been on my own since I was eighteen,” she said, voice casual. “Guess that’s, what – seven years now?”

Zoe looked at her, surprised. She hadn’t expected Margot to offer something of herself so easily. “You left?”

Margot snorted. “Didn’t have much of a choice. Left my folks back in Arkansas. Sometimes, you just gotta go.”

Zoe considered that. Then, after a beat, she forced herself to lie — or, well, tell a half truth.

“I wasn’t really talkin’ to them before they died,” she said weakly.

Margot glanced at her, but if she saw through it, she didn’t say. Just nodded again, like she was filing the information away for later.

There came that feeling again – why is she doing this for me?

The car ahead of them finally pulled up, and Margot eased forward, rolling down her window to grab the bags. The smell of hot grease filled the car, and Zoe reached for a fry before Margot even handed her the bag.

She laughed, amused, and there it was again – that dazzling, white smile, the one that made Zoe’s stomach do a backflip while her cheeks burned fiercely.

Then it was gone as she twisted her head back to the window, but the words she was saying faded in her ears.

She didn’t know why, exactly, but she really enjoyed seeing Margot smile.

It seemed like a pleasantry when she’d been drinking in the Gator — a good bartender and their drunk customer. Everything seemed a little sweeter when she was drunk. But here, being sober with the smell of grease all around them and Margot transferring their drinks into her truck’s over-large cupholders, it felt… different, somehow.

She could get used to this.

A week later

For the first time since Zoe moved to Delta Ridge, there was an envelope slotted into her rusty mailbox, and seeing it immediately intrigued her. She only ever really opened it out of habit when she was returning home, even if she knew nothing interesting was awaiting her: just bills and half-hearted flyers for deals at fast food restaurants.

But when she picked up and glanced at the handwriting, she immediately knew who it was from. It was that sixth sense.

Feeling like she’d received a bomb, Zoe quickly stuffed it in her messenger bag and darted up the stairs. The usual thoughts of how badly she wanted an elevator were pushed out of her mind: all she wanted was to get into her apartment, as quickly as possible.

The envelope was plain. No return address – the BSAA wouldn’t have wanted that – just her name scrawled in unfamiliar handwriting. She stared at it for a long time before opening it.

By now, several weeks on, Zoe had almost convinced herself that Ethan wouldn’t write back. That maybe the letter had been a mistake – something she’d done in a particularly weak moment, late at night, before she could think about it properly. She’d sent it off before she could change her mind, before she could decide she didn’t deserve to reach out to someone like Ethan for whatever fucked up reason.

But now, here it was.

She sat on the edge of her dirty mattress, fingers hesitant as she unfolded the paper. Margot had once again invited her to go out tonight – something about a party, or a show, or something else loud and distracting – but as soon as this letter had arrived, Zoe had called off from that. This took precedence over everything else.

Deciding to get it over with, she took a breath and started to read.

Hey Zoe,

It’s good to hear from you. I was worried you wouldn’t write. Hell, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t. But I’m glad you did.

It’s strange — I could feel every word you wrote, like I was right there with you. Maybe it’s because I’ve been having the same thoughts. The same questions. What’s real, what’s not, why does it all feel like it happened to someone else some days, and then hit like a truck the next. You’re not alone in that.

First off, I’m sorry the BSAA treated you the way they did. They’re supposed to be the good guys, right? But they’re scared. Scared of things they don’t understand, and I guess of what the survivors remind them of. I know it’s not fair. I wish I could say it gets better, but all I’ve learned is that sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and keep going. If it makes you feel better, they’re going just as hard on Mia and I here, and it’s driving Mia insane. (She asks about you all the time, by the way.)

New Orleans, huh? I’ve never been, but Mia says it’s a beautiful city. She’s been all over the south. I’m sure it’s a far cry from Dulvey – crackheads and all. But I think it’s good for you. You needed to get away, to have something new, even if it’s not perfect yet. Independence is a hell of a thing after everything we’ve been through. Hold onto that, Zoe. It’s worth fighting for.

The nightmares...yeah, they’re there. Almost every night. Sometimes it’s the house, sometimes it’s worse – things that never even happened but feel like they did. I wake up sweating, and Mia...she tries to help. She’s been amazing, but I know it gets to her too. We don’t talk about it much, because honestly, I think we’re both afraid of what’ll come out if we do.

You’re stronger than you know, Zoe. Don’t beat yourself up about the house, or your family, or what you feel about them. People love their homes even when they’ve been nothing but prisons. And family...even when they’ve hurt you, even when they’re gone, there’s a part of you that will always want to hang on. That doesn’t make you weak. It makes you human.

I wish I could be there to tell you all this in person. You’re right – it’s not the same with anyone else. Chris tries, but he’s more of a blunt hammer than anything. You need a scalpel for this kind of stuff, and I think you and Mia and I are the only ones who really understand what it’s like to live through it. If you’re okay with it, keep writing. I’ll write back every time. It helps me as much as it might help you. I don’t know when, or if, we’ll ever be able to see each other again, but for now, this will do.

Take care of yourself, Zoe. You deserve better than what you’ve had so far. I hope New Orleans treats you kindly, even if it takes a while to feel like home.

Ethan

Zoe set down the letter and cried.

Chapter Text

When she had first arrived in New Orleans, Zoe had never considered herself the kind of person to chase ghosts. In fact, she’d repeatedly told herself the opposite: What’s done is done. You can only move on.

But after weeks of pulsating, paralyzing worry about the Mold’s reappearance, she had to admit: reassuring herself without proof just wasn’t working. She needed to know. She’d survived because she was rational, because she figured things out instead of hoping for the best. This was no different, right?

So, she started her own investigation. Nothing major, just enough to put her mind at ease.

To start the first phase of her investigation, Zoe had decided to met Joe at the shooting range. Friendly competition, she’d told him when she’d come to see him at the janky motel across the street. Joe, despite his numerous conspiracy theories and his deep distrust of the government, was by far the first reasonable person to ask about her Mold crisis. A letter to Ethan would take several weeks in transit, and she didn’t know how plainly she could express it to him anyway. 

This, despite the fact that no one from the BSAA had really filled Joe in properly with what had gone on over the last three years, was much more effective. She had to start on the ground.

When she got there, Joe had already set up their targets, and he stood beside her, arms crossed, watching as she pulled the ear protection down over her head and loaded the magazine with an ease that didn’t need second-guessing.

"You your daddy’s girl, alright," he muttered, but she didn’t respond: half because of the heavy earmuffs, half because she wasn’t in the mood for the comment.

Zoe didn’t look at him, just took a deep breath and lined up her shot.

Reason number two why she was here: she fucking loved shooting.

BANG!

The crack of the pistol cut through the air, and the bullet struck just left of center. Not exactly what she had wanted, but she just adjusted her grip, huffed out a breath, and fired again.

BANG!

Bullseye.

She stepped back, while Joe let out a low whistle.

"Damn, girl. You sure you need practice?"

"Just keeping sharp," she shot back, much more bitterly than she'd intended. "Never know what’s still out there."

Joe snorted. "Yeah, well. Ain’t nothin’ out there but gators and those soldier boys pokin’ their noses where they don’t belong."

Zoe hesitated for half a second before aiming again. There it is.

"Yeah?" she said, like it was just casual talk. “They still around?"

"Hell if I know what they’re doin’," Joe said with a scoff. "Folks I know from the bayou say they come creepin’ through the swamps every couple weeks, actin’ like they’re huntin’ somethin’." He scratched at his chin. "Never say what, though. And I got a feelin’ they ain’t exactly lookin’ for a gator."

Huh.

Zoe’s finger hovered over the trigger as her heart suddenly started to pound a lot harder.

She fired, the bullet landing near the last, but she wasn’t paying attention to it.

If Joe was right, then she wasn’t just being paranoid. They were still looking for something.

It must’ve showed an awfully lot on her face, because Joe glanced at her, concerned. "Somethin’ on your mind?"

"Just don’t like not knowing what’s in the dark," she said, truthfully.

Joe huffed. "Ain’t that the truth."

Zoe took the ear protection off, rubbing at her temple, but the unease didn’t leave her. She was already anticipating the headache forming. She'd gotten used to that feeling of tension bouncing around her skull.

"Alright," Joe said, stretching. "How ‘bout a little wager? Loser buys dinner."

She snorted. "Wouldn’t be fair to you."

Joe laughed, loud and unbothered, and clapped her on the shoulder. "We’ll see ‘bout that, girl.”

Zoe forced a smirk, but her thoughts were elsewhere.

If the BSAA was still looking for something, it meant she wasn’t crazy, right? It meant there really was something left out there?

She suddenly had to write to Ethan.

That night, Zoe found herself pacing her apartment, Joe’s words replaying on a relentless loop in her mind.

Ain’t exactly looking for a gator.

Feeling plagued, she sighed and dropped into her chair by the spindly kitchen table, her eyes immediately going to Ethan’s letter. She had already read it a dozen times, it had been left opened on this table as a sort of decoration ever since she’d read it for the first time, but she picked it up again anyway, scanning it over again. His handwriting, his words.

She was still coming up with nothing.

Hours later

Zoe still sat at the kitchen table, tapping the end of her pen against the paper. It was remarkably quiet in here: a small stack of dishes sat in the sink, the hum of the fridge that smelled overpoweringly like rotten fish filled the silence. No crackheads banging on the walls several floors down, at least not tonight. And yet, not much progress had been made.

The letter from Ethan lay nearby, the edges slightly worn from how many times she had picked it up and put it back down, rereading his words again and again until she’d memorized them.

It had been hours of this. So why was it still so damn hard to figure out what to say next?

Feeling a bit frustrated with herself, Zoe finally put pen to paper. Because something had to come out.

Ethan,

I don’t know when this will reach you, but I figured I’d write anyway. Thanks for your last letter, I really appreciated everything you said — it helped a lot. Hope you and Mia are doing alright.

Things are…fine here. Work keeps me busy. I work in an auto shop, minimum wage, nothing fancy. It’s different, but I like it well enough. I’ve met some good people. A few strange ones too, like my neighbour with selective mutism whose preferred method of communication is staring creepily at me, but that’s just how it goes sometimes, I guess.

I saw my uncle Joe the other day. You remember him, right? He’s still himself – full of shit half the time, but sharp when it matters is probably the best way to put it. We went shooting (been doing that a lot recently) and he mentioned something interesting. Apparently, those BSAA guys haven’t packed up and left my hometown like I thought. They’re still poking around, out in the swamps. Looking for something. He doesn’t know what. Neither do I. I’m not even sure I should believe him.

I’m not saying it means anything. Maybe they’re just being careful. Maybe they don’t even know what they’re looking for. But I guess it got me thinking.

I keep telling myself there’s nothing left to find. That everything’s done, and the past is the past. And maybe that’s true. Maybe I’m just looking for something that isn’t there. My paranoia talking.

But if you hear anything – if you ever get the sense that something’s not right where you are – would you let me know?

Take care of yourself, Ethan. I’ll be thinking of ya.

Z

Zoe stared at the words, then leaned back in her creaky wooden chair, staring up at the waterlogged ceiling. Unlike last time, she felt heavier after writing. Foreboding, like she was about to make an enormous mistake if she sent this letter.

Like it was going to attract something much bigger than herself.

She skimmed the letter a second time, chewing the inside of her cheek. She thought about rewording a few things, but ultimately left it alone.

Instead, she stood and wandered to the grimy window, her hands buried in her hoodie, watching as a few cars rattled by in the distance. It had been a quiet night outside – no shouting, no sirens, no music blaring from the Gator down the block. Everyone seemed to have settled for a bleak Tuesday night, somehow.

But in her head, it wasn’t quiet at all.

Zoe glanced back at the table, at the letter waiting to be folded. Then she turned and reached for an envelope.

Tomorrow, she’d send it. And then she’d wait. She was getting good at that part.

That next morning, Zoe had a day off from Pete’s, and without the work to distract her, she found herself unable to not think about the letter she’d written last night. The thought of it pounded against her skull with such force that she’d barely been awake for fifteen minutes, and yet the headache was already blooming. She hadn’t even sent the letter, and it was already torturing her.

She sighed that frustrated, defeated sigh she’d come to know the sound of so well over the past few weeks, rubbing her temple.

Maybe a walk would help. Just a few blocks around Delta Ridge — get some air, let the buzz of the city pull her out of her own head for a while. She had to make at least some effort to not to let the letter consume her.

So she forced herself to stand, grabbed her messenger bag, and dejectedly left the apartment.

She stepped outside, and stopped in her tracks.

Caleb was standing in his doorway, watching her.

She immediately felt annoyed. Here we go again.

Over the past few weeks, she had only seen him wandering about in vanishingly small doses, and naturally, he had never spoken to her each time she passed. She couldn’t help it, but she had started to become apprehensive whenever she was near him, despite what Margot said.

So when he was staring at her blankly from the doorway, she didn’t have high hopes for this interaction to go brilliantly.

But after a beat, he stepped back, leaving the door open just enough for her to follow.

She hesitated.

This was odd. Caleb had never given her the time of day before. But something about the way he looked at her now – expectant but not demanding – made her step forward before she could second-guess herself, and she was stepping into the living space of a person she vaguely thought was a serial killer.

His apartment was dimly lit, and the air was thick with the smell of acrylic paint. It wasn’t cluttered, but there was an odd kind of organization – canvases stacked against the wall, jars of brushes sitting in what looked like an old coffee can, and a single mattress on the floor, not unlike hers, unmade but clean.

Awkwardly, Zoe lingered near the doorway.

Caleb moved toward the stack of canvases, pulling one free and setting it against the wall where the light hit it best. Then another. And another, never sparing her a glance as he did it.

It took a moment for her to realize that he was showing these paintings to her.

They were landscapes, mostly. Skies painted in deep, rolling blues and smudges of soft gold. Empty highways stretching into nowhere. A cityscape at dusk, streetlights flickering on like fireflies. A bayou made purple by a brilliant sunset overhead.

Something in Zoe’s chest tightened. It felt as if someone had plunged their hand into her chest, grabbed her heart, and started squeezing – not so much that it hurt, just…uncomfortable, and she suddenly couldn’t breathe right.

“They’re beautiful,” she told him, her voice almost a whisper, and it was entirely the truth.

Caleb didn’t react at first, just flipped to another painting. This one was different – the canvas was a merry golden, the colours stretching in a way that made it look purposefully hazy, and in the corner, blurrily, there was a red-haired woman with her back to the viewer, talking to someone else over a bar. A bar that she’d recognize anywhere.

The man she was talking to didn’t have a face, but he didn’t need to. She was too focused on what was clearly the centrepiece of this painting — Margot.

The scene was breathtaking, and Zoe’s breath caught. Did she know about this?

Her fingers twitched at her sides, phantom muscle memory from years ago – when she used to carry her camera everywhere, when she saw everything in terms of light and shadow, angles and depth. Back when she could look at something and feel the need to capture it, before all of that had been beaten out of her by fear and time.

That was high school, now. Centuries ago.

She swallowed, and it was only then did she realize that it was after this painting that he’d looked back at her. Expectantly, almost.

“You ever sell these?” she asked.

Caleb shook his head.

“Shame,” she muttered. “You should.”

Still no response, just the slow, methodical way he restacked the canvases, making sure they sat right. Zoe glanced at his hands, at the faint smudges of paint she was just now noticing.

She wondered if her own hands would ever feel steady enough to hold a camera again.

The thought lingered, settling in the back of her mind as Caleb stood, watching her the same way he always did – silent, unreadable, like he knew something she didn’t.

For once, Zoe didn’t look away.

Hours later, she was still thinking about those paintings.

That night at the Gator, she found herself studying the way light hit the glasses, the way people moved through the haze of cigarette smoke. Noticing things she hadn’t let herself notice before, when she’d been in a hurry to dive straight into that drunken haze for one reason or another. There was an inherent beauty to it, and unsurprisingly, Caleb had been strikingly accurate in his depiction of the bar.

And then the guy slammed his glass down.

Zoe jolted, unceremoniously torn out of her thoughts, and spotting him, she immediately knew the type of guy before he even opened his mouth.

Trouble.

Loud, drunk, and convinced the world owed him something. He had been throwing back beer for the past hour, getting louder each time Margot poured him another. Somewhat subconsciously, Zoe had noticed the change – the way his voice got sharp, the way his words slurred just enough to tip from fun into something uglier.

Then he tried to grab Margot’s wrist.

From the opposite side of the bar, Zoe wasn’t sure what the guy had said, but it was enough for Margot to yank her hand back with a sharp, “Nah, we’re not doing that.”

The guy laughed, but there was no humour in it. “Oh, come on. Just tryna be friendly.”

Margot’s face didn’t change. Somehow, she sounded even more Southern when there was a bit of a threat to it.

“And I’m tryna be real clear. Hands to yourself.”

Zoe tried not to stare. She could already see where this was going.

The guy muttered something under his breath – Zoe only caught bitch – and when Margot turned away, he slammed his glass down hard enough that it should’ve shattered.

Zoe flinched. Margot didn’t.

Instead, she exhaled deeply through her nose, then leaned forward onto the bar, arms crossed, looking the guy dead in the eye. Like a parent when a toddler was throwing a temper tantrum.

“You done?”

The guy smirked like this was a challenge. “Not until you gimme another drink.”

Margot smiled, except it wasn’t that dazzling flash of small, even teeth this time – a reminder of who was in control. “You’ve had enough, sweetheart.”

Zoe braced herself. She’d been at the Gator long enough to know that this was when guys like him got worse – when they realized they weren’t in control.

It was like the air in the bar changed instantaneously. A few regulars glanced over, waiting to see how this played out. Zoe bit her lip, feeling her heart pound harder in her chest. She couldn’t help it: when she felt a foreboding feeling like this, she always associated it with something else.

The guy sat there a second longer, like he was debating his chance of winning this.

Finally, he stood, the scrape of his chair grating over the floor.

Zoe’s breath hitched. He was taller than Margot, broader, and there was something in his movements that set off every instinct in her body.

It reminded her of Jack staggering towards her with a bloody axe. Marguerite's lantern swinging from her outstretched hand when she was hunting. The steady beep of a tripwire. Danger.

Somehow, Margot still didn’t flinch.

She jerked her chin toward the door, that look in her eyes like she could fearlessly talk down a tiger. “Time to go, big guy.”

The guy hesitated, then scoffed. “Whatever. This place sucks anyway.”

He shoved past a few stools, muttering to himself as he stormed toward the exit. Margot didn’t move until the door slammed shut behind him.

When it did, the tension in Zoe’s chest finally loosened, and the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding escaped her.

She glanced at Margot, who was already reaching for a rag, unfazed.

“You always handle shit like that?” she asked, already feeling impressed.

Margot shot her a lopsided grin. “Pretty much. Plenty of men in this world who feel like they can boss everyone around.”

Zoe thought about the way Margot had handled him — steady, unshaken. The kind of confidence that came from knowing you weren’t about to lose a fight.

And just for a second, Margot reminded her of someone.

Jack, maybe, in the way she didn’t back down. Lucas, in the way she could make someone feel small with a look. Or Joe, in the way she knew how to put fear in a man without ever raising a fist. She could never have confidence like that. Margot could make someone twice her size back down with just a searing look, and here Zoe was, struggling with the idea of sending a fucking letter.

She blinked it away and glanced down at her half empty drink. “You’re insane.”

Something about Margot's confidence pushed her. She was sending that letter tonight.

Margot just winked. “You’re welcome.”

Halfway across the world

Ethan suddenly awoke with a sharp gasp, feeling like he’d emerged from freezing cold water. His heart pounded a frenzied pace against his ribs, and for a startling, sickening moment, he didn’t know where he was, and he felt the urge to thrash out of the sheets’ choking grip, to reach for the gun in the nightstand, to shoot at whatever was inevitably heading for him. He could load a magazine within a second now: it was just a matter of snatching it.

But he didn’t, and he took a moment for air to fill his lungs again.

The sheets rustled beside him, and his head snapped to the side. Mia. The woman he knew as his wife, not the snarling, deranged monster that had chainsawed his hand off. She was still asleep despite his startled awakening, her breathing soft, her dark hair spilling over the pillow. She didn’t smell like the swamp anymore, and as they’d gotten used to their life in Romania, her face had become fuller, warmer, less pallid. Her hair was longer now, cascading over her shoulders, and it was smooth, like silk.

She was safe.

Ethan let out a slow breath and rubbed his hands over his face. Just a dream. He couldn’t remember many details this time – only flashes and bangs, the sensation of running through damp ground and mud, snarling sounds, an elongated, slimy limb reached for him – but the fear lingered, like it always did.

He might’ve been on a strict regiment of meds ever since the incident, but they didn’t exactly help with nightmares. If anything, they just made them more vivid.

Determined to move on from it, he carefully eased out of bed. He always preferred to wake before Mia - it was pretty much an unspoken rule, but Ethan was always the one who made breakfast.

The smooth wooden floor was cool under his feet as he made his way to the bathroom, flipping on the light.

When light flooded the room, he barely recognized himself in the mirror – dark circles under his eyes, stubble rough along his jaw, his ashy blond hair looking almost colourless in the harsh, sterile light. If Mia was looking better ever since the incident, as she could enjoy cleansing showers and maggot-free food, he was looking more emaciated. If it was the price he had to pay for getting Mia back, though, he could deal with it.

We'll get through it, Mia had whispered to him after they'd been told by the BSAA they'd have to move to Romania, clasping her hands around his own. We always do. 

Turning on the tap, Ethan splashed cold water on his face, letting the countless water droplets run down his skin. It shocked him awake, just a little bit. The cold always seemed to do that, rather than humidity and dampness – after all, it only reminded him of things he’d rather forget.

You’re here, he reminded himself for what had to be the millionth time.

By the time he stepped into the kitchen, the sun had risen higher, spilling golden light through the plant-framed window. The house was quiet at this time of the morning, the only sound the distant hum of the wind outside. It could be lonely sometimes, considering their cottage was the only house for miles, but right now, it felt peaceful.

For a moment, he just breathed in the still air, taking in his kitchen. It smelled like… green. Ever since they’d moved here, Mia had insisted on filling their house with as much plants as possible – for the past several weeks, she’d always come back from the local’s farmers market with a plant he’d never seen before.

Floor plants, table plants. Wide pots, small pots. You couldn’t go far in the Winters house without encountering some sort of vegetation taking up space.

Of course, there was something to be said about how all of the plants were pointedly the opposite of the rotted, sickening Mold that had slithered up the walls of the Baker estate, but predictably, neither of them ever brought it up. Ethan was content to let Mia continue to obsessively collect plants.

Ethan moved on autopilot, filling the worn kettle, setting it on the stove. Mia had grown to like the local tea while they’d settled in here, but he still preferred coffee: it was one of the only things from his previous routine that hadn’t changed.

As he waited for the water to boil, he leaned against the counter and stared out at the countryside.

Rolling fields stretched out in every direction, the trees swaying in the breeze. A peaceful October, nothing like before.

And yet, the unease still clung to him.

Beyond the fence, a gust of wind rippled through the tall grass, dancing in gentle waves, almost like the slow, creeping movement of swamp water.

Instantly, the lump developed in his throat. For a brief second, he could almost hear the distant hum of supersized Mold insects, and he almost felt the damp heat clinging to his skin, following him as he trudged through the Baker property.

But it was just the wind and the grass. Just the wind and the grass.

The memory was faint, almost distant, but it pressed in on him before he could stop it.

And all of a sudden, materializing in the cool Romanian breeze, Zoe was there. Choppy haircut, those sunken, worried eyes, thin tank top clinging to her sweaty skin. The last time he saw her, she was standing on the dock, watching him go.

The only choice that had made sense in that moment was Mia, he knew that. Even if she had forced a screwdriver through the palm of his hand and chainsawed the whole thing off shortly after that, it didn’t change that she was the one he’d come for. The one he’d spent three fucking years thinking was dead, only to find her trapped in a waking nightmare. The woman he had loved long before he ever set foot in Louisiana.

But still – watching Zoe stand alone on that dock as the boat drifted farther and farther away, the guilt that had swelled in his chest had felt insurmountable. He had been saving his wife, but in the process, he’d left someone else behind. Someone who had helped him when no one else would, who had risked everything to guide him through hell.

You’re too kind, Ethan, Mia had told him once, shortly after they’d first met: it wasn't unkind, but almost a joke.

It’ll be the end of you.

Sure, everything had worked out in the end, more or less, but whenever he thought of Zoe, he couldn’t help but think there was something more that he should be doing. This inexplicable feeling like it wasn’t the last he’d see of her, even though they were on opposite ends of the world.

But that was just his paranoia talking. The thing about Dulvey – the thing about the Mold – was that it never really felt over. Even here, half a world away, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was still out there , waiting in the dark, biding its time. Waiting to creep back into his life, to pull him back under.

Maybe that was why he kept thinking about Zoe. Because if he still felt it, if it still haunted his dreams, if he still saw black veins slithering up the walls when he closed his eyes too long – then what was she seeing? He had the comfort of being halfway across the world from it, he’d put as much distance as he could between him and Dulvey, but she was still in Louisiana. Still in close proximity.

The kettle whistled, breaking the silence. Ethan breathed out sharply through his nose – inadvertently releasing the tension coiling in his body – and straightened, moving to pour himself a cup. He took the mug in his hands, the warmth of it pooling into his palms, burning sensation into him.

Today was remarkably low-stakes. A trip to the farmer’s market, taking the laundry off the clothesline once more, feeding the sourdough starter, watering the countless plants.

He could do it.

Still, as he stared out at the countryside, the thought lingered, curling like steam above his mug.

If the Mold was still out there…did Zoe feel it too?

Chapter Text

Monroe hated this place.

The longer he trudged on through the bayou, the more the hairs on the back of his neck prickled. 

Something about this job unsettled him more than the others: the swamp felt like it had eyes.

But he hadn’t managed to become a sergeant just to get scared of dirty water and humid air, so he continued on, the rifle heavy in his hands, drawing closer and closer to the ruined remains of the Baker estate.

His squad moved in formation, their boots sinking into the mud as they cut through the dense foliage. The orders were clear — another sweep, another report to file. An incredibly boring task for an incredibly creepy place.

Every local they’d talked to downtown had the same… haunted look in their eyes, like they were afraid to say too much. That was only if they weren’t downright disapproving about his very presence: folks down here didn’t trust the local government, let alone the National Guard, he knew that much. Whenever he was in uniform, he got the message very clearly that he wasn’t welcome in downtown Dulvey.

It was a town where conspiracy theories spread wickedly fast, at that. 

“Y’all ever see that video?” one guy at a gas station had asked, lowering his voice like something bigger than him was listening. “The one with the three ghost hunters that went missing?”

Monroe had seen it. So had half his squad. Sewer Gatorz — some internet ghost-hunting, low IQ, college dropout bullshit, he thought. They’d filmed themselves sneaking into the Baker property — undoubtedly the centre of this weird clusterfuck — months before shit hit the fan, and somehow the footage had resurfaced.

The last episode ended with their cameraman ominously descending down a ladder to the basement, and then — black screen. No one had seen them since.

The squad’s medic, Ross, had dismissed it.

"It’s probably just a hoax,” he said one night, rolling his eyes. “Young people, y’know - they do anything to get YouTube views nowadays. Shit is edited exactly like The Blair Witch Project. That’s your giveaway.”

“Then how come their van was still parked outside the house when the feds showed up?” one of the younger guys had asked immediately.

And, well, no one had an answer for that.

That was just one of the stories.

People in the bayou talked about things still moving around on the Bakers' land. About strange figures lurking in the trees. Some said the family never really died. Others swore they saw Jack Baker’s shadow standing in the windows at night, watching.

Utterly, utterly ridiculous, Monroe thought whenever he heard another wild take on the summer's events. He was much too grown to believe in ghost stories.

But as his boots squelched through the mud, he still found himself glancing over his shoulder.

Just in case.

On the contrary, Benny had been there the night the sky lit up.

When the helicopters came, when the whole Baker place was surrounded — National Guard, CDC, a whole mess of people in hazmat suits. He’d watched it from the water, too far for them to notice him, but close enough to hear the sirens.

Everyone in the bayou had questions after that, including him.

A gas leak, they said at first. Then, something about a family massacre – but that was completely unofficial, of course. Just disgruntled folks on Twitter who had undoubtedly heard the helicopters overhead and hated the Dulvey mayor, regardless of whether he was covering up some sort of massacre scandal or not. The type of folks who liked to stir shit.

And then there were the other stories.

“Jack Baker was runnin’ some kinda cult.”
“They were experimentin’ on people in their basement.”
“There were monsters in the house.”

Benny had laughed it off at first. Just swamp people talkin’ crazy, like always.

Until he saw the body.

It had washed up near his fishing spot two weeks ago, shortly after it had been reported that that demolition worker guy — what was his name? — had gone missing, bloated and wrong. Its skin was dark and cracked like tree bark, its mouth stretched too wide, like something inside it had tried to force its way out. His entire body was tinged a sickly green.

And the men in black hazmat suits had taken it away.

Not the BSAA. Not the National Guard.

The other ones. The ones he couldn’t even put a name to.

Now, as he crouched in his canoe, watching that Sergeant Monroe and his men creep through the swamp, he knew the National Guard had no idea what they were walking into. Once again, he felt like he had stumbled upon something that was much bigger than him.

Because Benny knew he wasn’t the only one watching them.

Through the thick trees, barely visible in the fog, another figure lingered.

Still. Silent.

Waiting.

Benny swallowed hard, gripping the sides of his canoe.

People liked to say the Bakers were dead.

But Benny wasn’t so sure the things they’d left behind had ever really gone away.

Four hours away in New Orleans, Zoe had barely sat down when the door to her apartment suddenly burst open with a loud BANG!

“Z!”

She sighed, already bracing herself. Here we go.

Margot strode in, holding a steaming hot pan with a dish towel, eyes wide with urgency.

“I need you to taste something. Did I put too much garlic in this penne?”

Zoe blinked rapidly at the sight of her. The smell of garlic, tomatoes, and something vaguely burnt flooded the room, and she wasn’t sure what to look at first: Margot’s slightly panicked eyes, her heaving chest that signalled she was completely out of breath, the tousled clothes, or whatever steaming mess that was contained in the pan. (It was a wonder the smoke alarm hadn’t gone off yet.)

Deciding, Zoe squinted at the pan. “Did you knock?”

“Yeah, with my foot – anyway, taste this.” Margot grabbed a fork out of her drawer, scooped up a piece of pasta, and thrust it toward Zoe’s face with the insistence of someone who had already decided she’d cooperate.

Zoe leaned back. “Jesus, give me a second!”

Margot stopped. “C’mon, before it gets cold!”

With a long-suffering groan, Zoe took the fork and chewed slowly.

It was… not the worst thing she’d ever had. But it wasn’t exactly great either. The garlic was strong enough to ward off an entire coven of vampires, and the noodles were probably meant to be al dente rather than this chewy, but the sauce was alright. And there was an unmistakable bitterness, like burnt onions.

Whether she liked it or not, she knew that taste immediately.

Her mind flickered back — years ago, now, standing in a warm open kitchen that was achingly familiar, watching Marguerite cook as she talked. She remembered it with a bitter sharpness: her voice was warm and steady over the sound of a sizzling pan.

"You don’t ever wanna cook onions on too high a heat, baby," she had said, stirring the pan with an easy confidence. "They turn bitter real quick. Low and slow, that’s the key."

Zoe hadn’t inherited her mother’s knack for cooking — she’d always been more comfortable fixing engines with Dad than making dinner — but she had absorbed little things like that. How to tell when something’s over-seasoned. How to tell when onions have burned. How to recognize love in a meal.

She swallowed, pushing the memory away before it could dig too deep.

“Well?” Margot was still staring at her expectantly.

Zoe smirked, tilting her head as she contemplated a response.

“It’s edible,” she said finally.

Margot groaned dramatically, dragging her hands down her face. “That wasn’t a real answer!”

“You want honesty or encouragement?”

Margot made a face. “That’s exactly what my mom used to say.”

Zoe snorted. “Guess we’re both screwed, then.”

Margot sighed. “Okay, Miss Food Critic, what’s wrong with it?”

Zoe leaned back in her chair. “Garlic’s strong enough to kill a man. Noodles are tough. And you burned the onions.”

Margot let out a loud ugh and collapsed onto the counter. “Fuck, I knew it. I was eyeballing it, and I got cocky. Sorry. That one’s on me.”

Zoe tried not to laugh as Margot straightened. “Wanna finish it?”

She raised an eyebrow. “After all that?”

Margot shrugged. “It’s still food. And you need it.”

She slid the pan toward her and, almost instinctively, nudged a pack of cigarettes onto the counter beside it.

Zoe huffed a quiet laugh. At least she knows how to barter.

This wasn’t the first time Margot had barged in like this, and it was far from the last. Zoe was pretty sure she had lost the ability to be surprised by it.

It was just a thing now. Like the time Margot showed up at 11 PM with a plate of deviled eggs, demanding a second opinion because Caleb had — apparently — called them “too spicy.” (Who knew how true that was, because Caleb still hadn’t bothered to verbally express himself to her.)

Or the time she had dropped off three unlabeled Tupperwares at Zoe’s door like some kind of chaotic meal service — one with soup, one with mashed potatoes that couldn't decide whether to be blobby or chunky, and one that, after poking it with a fork, Zoe realized was just an entire block of cheese. Margot had realized Zoe was anemic at this point — the time she had stood up from her stool at the Gator and immediately passed out was indicative of that —  and this was her confusing way of trying to help.

At this point, it was easier to just roll with it.

Zoe took another bite of pasta, chewing more thoughtfully this time.

“Y’know,” she said, and she meant it honestly, “if you cooked the onions right, this wouldn’t be half-bad.”

Margot perked up. “Yeah?”

Zoe gave a lazy shrug. “I’ve had worse. Trust me.”

Margot grinned, all of her dazzling teeth showing, nudging the cigarettes closer. “For your troubles.”

“Guess I’ll suffer through it, then.”

She laughed. “See? That’s the spirit.”

Zoe rolled her eyes, but smiled. It was hard not to when Margot was around.

And suddenly, even though it had nothing to do with the present moment, there was an insatiable itch in the back of her mind that she had to look at the window behind her, and her anxiety perked up at the thought of it.

She glanced over at it, and stood up.

She turned away from the table, heading toward the grimy window that she still hadn’t managed to yank open, feeling pulled to it like she and the window were tied together with invisible thread.

She couldn’t place what was bothering her at first — just a strange sensation, the feeling of something just off enough to put her on edge.

Then she saw it.

An unfamiliar car was parked across the street.

It wasn’t anything special: an old sedan, dull silver, nothing flashy, made minuscule when they were this high up on the fifth floor. It could’ve belonged to anyone, really.

But it hadn’t been there when Zoe got home. And now that she was looking at it, something about it felt wrong. She just couldn’t place it. She didn't know why her instincts were pointing out this car.

Without knowing why, the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

It could be nothing. Just some neighbour’s guest. Someone running late-night errands. It was a goddamn car, after all. Her fears about the Mold were extending to stuff she saw regularly, apparently.

But she’d learned a long time ago to listen to her instincts.

Zoe stood there for a moment, staring at the car, waiting for something to happen.

A door opening. Someone getting out. 

Anything.

Nothing happened, and after a tense moment, she suddenly realized she wasn’t breathing.

“Zoe?”

She jumped more violently than she probably should have.

Margot was suddenly at her side, peering out the window too. “What are we looking at?”

Zoe forced herself to relax, shaking her head. “Nothing. Thought I saw something.”

Margot shrugged, uninterested, and wandered back to the table. “Well, if it’s a ghost, tell it to fuck off.”

Normally she would’ve laughed, but she didn’t respond.

She lingered by the window a second longer, watching the car, waiting.

It didn’t move.

She turned away, but the unease stayed with her.

A voice that sounded remarkably like Margot’s sounded in her mind. Come on, dude. You’re being paranoid.

Yeah, she agreed reluctantly, much too easily, turning away. She’d been much too jumpy lately, and she still had an entire bowl of shitty pasta to eat.

And so Zoe filed it into her increasingly bigger (and increasingly concerning) think about later cabinet.

The next morning, yet another Tupperware container sat in front of Zoe’s door. A sticky note was slapped on the top, and she quickly recognized the scrawled, rushed handwriting as she bent down to pick it up.

Eat this or else. xoxo, M

Zoe sighed but carried it into the apartment anyway. Inside was another kind of soup, chopped vegetables tossed in there with no rhyme or reason, still warm. She muttered something about Margot being a menace, but she grabbed a spoon.

To her reluctant surprise, it was actually pretty damn good.

Later that night, Zoe swung by the Gator, figuring she might as well have a drink and shake off her unease. The bar wasn’t too busy, and Margot, for once, actually had a moment to sit.

She plopped down across from Zoe, sighing dramatically as she slid a beer her way. “You would not believe the dumbass I had to deal with earlier.”

Zoe smirked. “Do tell.”

Margot launched into an animated story about a drunk customer who tried to climb onto the bar to declare his love for his ex-girlfriend, only to faceplant mid-sentence.

“And I swear to God, he tried to blame me for it," she finished some time later, looking more exasperated than she'd ever seen her. 

Zoe snorted. “Sounds about right.”

They drank, the conversation easy, until Margot tilted her head slightly. “You ever think about visiting home?"

Zoe stiffened just a little, swirling the beer in her glass. It felt incredibly random, and she knew her folks were dead anyway, so why...?

“No home left to visit," she replied, finally.

She wanted to ask the same of her - she only really knew that she was from Arkansas, after all - but she didn't.

Margot didn’t push, but she didn’t let it go either. She just studied Zoe for a long moment, then said, “You don’t have to talk about it. But you don’t have to carry it alone either.”

Zoe didn’t answer. Just took another sip and let the words settle.

Somewhere down the block, the man watched from the driver’s seat of his car. He didn’t need to get any closer — he had everything he needed for now.

He made a quick call, voice low. “She’s still here. Still hasn’t made a move.”

A pause. Then a curt response.

“Understood.”

He glanced back toward the bar. His orders were clear: Watch, but don’t interfere. Not yet.

He hung up and lit a cigarette, exhaling slowly. The smell of the smoke hung heavily around the interior of the car.

Zoe Baker had no idea she was being watched.

Chapter Text

The French Market was a mess of colours and clatter and tourists who didn’t know how to walk. Zoe kept close to the edge of the crowd, drifting in Margot’s powerwalking wake as they passed booths filled with cheap voodoo dolls, beignets, neon plastic sunglasses, and the lingering smell of hot sauce and powdered sugar — dear God, why had she agreed to do this?

Right. Margot and her charming smile and her fast talking in the hallway and Zoe nodding before she could stop herself, and she couldn’t even blame it on being exhausted and just wanting to move past her so she could finally wash all the Pete’s grease off of her this time. Of course. 

Margot moved through the crowd like a regular, waving at the jam lady, teasing the guy selling crawfish pies, pausing to flirt with a girl in a linen dress who offered her a slice of blood orange. Zoe stayed quiet the whole time, hands shoved in her pockets as the music playing from a speaker on someone’s stall threatened to pound a dent in her skull, and she was occasionally forced to dodge kids darting between legs with lemonade cups.

Noises, bodies, textures, smells — a post-traumatic nightmare, but miraculously, she was holding it together.

At least Zoe wasn’t the only quiet one here.

Shocking her more than she would admit, Caleb had come with them, at Margot’s request. Not in Margot’s truck — his preferred method of travel was mysteriously materializing into existence, so he’d met them at a nearby street corner, his paint-stained hands in his hoodie pockets, backpack slung low across his shoulder. He nodded when Margot greeted him, gave Zoe the same unreadable glance he always did, and then fell into step behind them without a word.

As they walked through the most lively farmers’ market Zoe had ever seen, he still didn’t talk much. Or at all, really, but he felt less ominous now.

He stood nearby while Margot sampled watermelon radishes, and when she handed him a coffee from a vendor she knew, he apparently murmured a thanks that was barely audible — his lips moved at least, and Margot must’ve heard it because her face split into her gleaming smile, but with the noise of the market, Zoe didn’t.

So he’d only talk to Margot. Huh.

Nevertheless, being beside Caleb made her feel less alone, and Margot narrating the whole thing enthusiastically as they went made her laugh.

“This lady makes soaps that smell like your ex’s sweater. In a good way.”

“These eggs will change your fucking life, I swear.”

“Buy the basil, Zoe. You can’t live off ramen forever.”

When Margot wasn’t narrating, it meant Zoe was just trying to keep up with her powerwalking —

— Until for seemingly no reason, Margot stopped suddenly at a table near the far end, half-shaded by a tarp, and Zoe squinted.

“Oh, shit,” she exclaimed, already reaching for something. “These are ancient.”

Zoe followed her line of sight. On the table was a clutter of old camera gear: Canon AEs, a dusty Minolta, cracked leather cases, tiny rangefinders with faded logos, all laid out like forgotten toys at a garage sale. A few lenses sat in mismatched caps, scratched and sun-warmed.

Zoe stepped in closer without realizing it.

One of them looked familiar. Too familiar.

She picked up a Pentax with chipped paint around the shutter and held it gently, like it might fall apart in her hands. The weight of it pulled at something in her chest she didn’t know she’d been carrying.

It took a moment for her to realize that it was that same dull ache she’d carried ever since she’d left Caleb’s apartment, when he’d first shown her his paintings.

She used to love photography, to the point where she pursued it in community college. It felt like an integral part of her, and yet it had been lost to trauma and time.

“You recognize it?” Margot asked.

Zoe nodded, not looking at her or Caleb’s unblinking gaze — if she looked at him, she was scared that he’d recognize this ache in her somehow, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. This felt… really personal.

So, she tried to sound casual.

“Had one like it in high school. Not this beat up, though.”

Her fingers traced the curve of the viewfinder, thumb brushing a shallow dent in the body. She put it down a little too fast, like it had shocked her.

Margot didn’t push. She just shrugged and wandered a few tables down, giving Zoe space. She followed, Caleb automatically taking up the rear, and she didn’t look back at him.

No one talked much on the walk back.

That night, while Zoe was folding laundry on the couch, Margot came in with a bottle of cheap red wine and a small brown paper bag. This wasn’t out of the ordinary: a brown paper bag likely meant crystals, which Margot had independently decided she needed more of, even before the integration of her Tupperware meal service. Nothing she’d given her had been as large as the obsidian of that first week, but there were a small assortment of pebble-like crystals scattered by her bathroom sink — jagged little pieces of moonstone, rose quartz, and aquamarine. Zoe wasn’t totally sure where else to put them.

“Hey,” she said as a greeting, letting the door swing closed behind her.

“Hey.”

As Margot kicked her shoes off, she didn’t say anything about the bag — which was unusual, Zoe thought, as one of her favourite things to do was give her a crash course in what the crystal of the week was meant to do to her. Instead, she just tossed it onto the ratty cushions and flopped down beside her.

Used to it, Zoe took it without looking and glanced inside.

Inside the bag was a roll of Ilford HP5 black-and-white film.

Zoe looked down at it, astonished, then at Margot, and said the first thing that came to mind.

“What?”

“No pressure,” Margot replied, reaching for the wine opener. “Saw you eyeing up the camera earlier. I know you need your money for rent and stuff, so I get it. Just in case you ever do go back for it, y’know. Know a friend of a friend who used to be a photographer, he’s got all sorts of shit he isn’t using anymore. He was happy to hand it off to me.”

As she was talking, the cork of the bottle came free with a crisp POP!

“—But just so you know, if it sits here too long, I’m putting it in my toaster and seeing what happens.”

Zoe snorted as she automatically stood up to grab the wine glasses from the cabinet, and that strange feeling of her stomach squirming came back.

It was a particularly slow day at Pete’s: Zoe was manning the desk when the phone rang again. It took her less than a second to answer when it was a day so slow that no one was talking to each other, Pete was staring dumbly at the boxy hanging TV in the corner, and Ricky seemed committed to needlessly rearranging things over and over again.

She pressed the receiver to her shoulder, half-listening as an older woman rattled off complaints about her battery.

“Yeah, ma’am,” she told her politely, flipping a pen between her fingers, “we can take a look next Thursday. Mhm. No, sorry, we don’t do loaners…”

More squawking on the other end.

“…Right, next Thursday.”

She hung up before the caller could tack on anything else.

Behind her, Pete’s ancient radio sputtered through another round of old country recorded well before she was born, the stuff that her dad probably would’ve listened to, all twangy guitar and whining fiddle. It was nice to focus on that during a day this slow.

Suddenly, the bell over the door jangled for the first time since she’d clocked in, and a man stepped inside — mid-fifties, broad-shouldered, ruddy from too many days in the sun. He had a goatee and a LSU hat that looked older than Zoe.

“Got a Ford out front,” he said as a greeting, striding up to the desk. “AC’s blowin’ hot. I think somethin’ crawled up in there. Smelled like hell all week.”

Used to the routine, Zoe handed him a clipboard without looking up. “Write it up, leave the keys. Ricky’ll pull it in.”

Twenty minutes later

Ricky had the Ford up on the ramps, hood propped, sweat pouring down his face. He whistled sharply as Zoe walked over.

“You’re up,” he said, waving the rag in her direction. “I ain’t digging around in no possum grave.”

Zoe rolled her eyes, snapped on a pair of gloves, and leaned over the engine. The air filter was already loose — whoever serviced it last hadn’t bothered to screw it down.

She pulled it free, and immediately froze.

Inside the housing was a slick, dark smear of something that didn’t belong. It was wet, stringy, fibrous — clinging to the edge of the filter like black algae. At the sight of it, her breath hitched.

It wasn’t Mold. Not exactly. But it was close enough that something primal in her chest seized up.

She stared, unmoving. Her fingers hovered just above the filter, suddenly unsure.

Her heart started up, quick and sharp.

No spores. No smell. No movement.

It’s not Mold. You’d know if it was.

Ricky leaned over her shoulder, squinting.

“What the hell’s that?” he asked. “Looks like wet dryer lint.”

Before Zoe could respond, the customer appeared behind them, Sprite in hand.

“You find my rat?” he asked, peering in. “Damn things are always crawlin’ in there. Last year one got into my boat wiring and chewed through the whole console.”

Zoe’s laugh came out higher than she meant it to.

“Yeah, probably that,” she said. “Rats.”

She grabbed a rag from Ricky’s belt and wiped the gunk away. To her relief, it slid off easy, leaving only a faint smear, but nothing else. No heat. No resistance. Just a faint, greasy residue that made her stomach turn.

Ricky raised a brow but didn’t say anything.

They finished the inspection in silence. Nothing else looked strange. Just a regular job.

Later

Pete was leaned back in his chair, flipping through a Bass Pro catalog when Zoe came in to log the service.

“Anything good in that Ford?” he asked without looking up.

“Dead rat,” she said. “Or something like it.”

Pete snorted. “Welcome to Louisiana.”

Zoe went to the sink and scrubbed her hands again, even though the gloves had been on the whole time. The water was scalding, but she didn’t stop until the skin of her palms were raw and red.

Behind her, the radio kept playing — now a gravel-voiced man drawling about God, trucks, and ex-wives. Same as always.

Zoe dried her hands, then grabbed a sticky note and wrote something down in small, neat print.

“AC issue. Not Mold. But close.”

She stared at it for a long moment before crumpling it and tossing it in the trash.

She told herself it was probably nothing.

She didn’t believe it.

The next day

Truth be told, even when Margot had gone as far as getting film for her, Zoe hadn’t planned on coming back to the market. Not so soon, anyway. There were much more important things she could spend her money on when payday had just past, and with the countless hours she had logged at Pete’s, she was spoiled for choice.

She told herself she was just taking the long way home from Pete’s. Just walking. Just killing time. The market wasn’t even that far out of the way, really — what was it to anyone if she just wanted to enjoy the cool autumn air before it inevitably succumbed to winter?

But when she turned the corner and saw the edge of the tarp shading that same table, her stomach twisted like it had been waiting for this moment all along.

It wasn’t as crowded today — no shouting tourists, no kids weaving through legs, no Margot powerwalking ahead, forcing her to follow. The market felt slower now, hazy in the late-afternoon heat, with vendors lazily fanning themselves or scrolling through their phones. Someone played soft jazz on a nearby trumpet, notes wandering without urgency.

Zoe drifted back toward the table without letting herself think too hard about it.

The same gear was still there, dustier now. A few pieces had shuffled places — maybe someone else had come by and touched them, maybe not. But the Pentax was still there, sitting heavy and quiet, like it had been waiting for her.

She stared at it for a long moment, then reached out and picked it up again.

Same weight. Same dent.

It wasn’t hers. That was stupid — hers had been gone a long time ago, long before Eveline’s feet had touched Louisiana soil. Left behind or broken or sold by someone else, she couldn’t even remember anymore. But something about this one still made her chest hurt.

“Twenty bucks.”

Zoe blinked. The vendor — a man who looked like he hadn’t changed shirts since 1997 — was leaning back in a folding chair, chewing on a toothpick, watching her like he already knew she was going to say yes.

When she spoke, her voice felt raw from disuse.

“That’s all?”

“Shutter’s sticky,” he said. “Might need a little love. But she’ll shoot.”

Zoe turned the camera over in her hands, thumb flicking the film advance lever. It caught. He was right — sticky. But not dead.

She hesitated. Her wallet was in her jacket, and she hadn’t meant to spend anything today, not when she had groceries to think about. And rent. Whatever outing Margot was planning next. And yet—

Twenty bucks. For something that felt like a part of herself she hadn’t touched in years.

She reached into her pocket, pulled out a crumpled twenty, then handed it over without another word. The man nodded once, slid it into a metal cash box, and went back to pretending she wasn’t there.

Zoe wrapped the camera strap around her hand and walked away before she could second-guess it.

On the way home, Zoe was halfway past Caleb’s door when she heard it — Margot’s laugh. Bright, sudden, unmistakable. It spilled through the thin walls of the fifth floor like spilled wine, thick with warmth and goodness.

Zoe stopped.

She hadn’t meant to linger and stare unblinkingly at this door like a creep. That was Caleb’s thing, after all. But it had been such a long shift at the garage, and the mysterious black gunk still lived under her fingernails, and her head was too loud with things she didn’t want to name. 

She leaned a shoulder against the wall, just beside Caleb’s door, half-shadowed. Inside, something clinked — glasses, maybe. Wine? They hadn’t drank all of the red Margot had brought to her own apartment the other night, and she’d taken the half-empty bottle with her, so it was plausible.

Another one of Margot’s laughs rang out from inside the apartment. Caleb had never spoken in front of her, but they were having a grand old conversation in there, clearly. How peculiar.

Then Margot again: “You cannot be serious right now—”

Zoe didn't mean to lift the camera.

It was heavy around her neck, and she was acutely aware of it being there the whole trek up to the fifth floor, swinging limply.

She hadn't taken a picture with it yet. The shutter definitely looked sticky, and she went back on forth on whether that first picture she decided to take was meant to be symbolic or not.

But now, standing there in that creepy, flickering hallway, something about the sound behind the door and the amber warmth of light leaking out from under it made her hands move.

She raised the camera. Framed the closed door, and the old doormat with its cracked “Welcome.”

She didn’t think: she just clicked the shutter.

A low chk-kt echoed through the hall. Maybe the shutter wasn’t as sticky as she thought?

Zoe stared at the door for another breath or two. She wasn’t sure why she took it. It wasn’t a good photo, it didn’t even have a real subject, and it didn’t automatically mean something to her. But something in her chest had eased the moment her finger hit the shutter, like a muscle remembering how to unclench.

She slid the camera strap off her neck and held it in both hands as she walked the rest of the way to her apartment.

Inside, the air smelled like her brand of laundry detergent and the stale memory of cigarettes. She didn’t turn on the lights.

She just stood there, holding the camera, thinking about warmth leaking through someone else's doorway. Thinking about the way Margot laughed, and how Caleb still mysteriously hadn’t said a word.

The frogs had gone quiet.

Benny didn’t notice at first. He just kept paddling. Left, right, left, right, his arms burning, his oar slashing through the otherwise still swamp water.

Water sloshed, he grunted with exertion, and to an outsider, the evening would have been nothing strange.

But then it hit him, the thing that had been silently bugging him ever since the sun went down — there were no frogs.

And no bugs buzzing around him, either. No wind billowing around his canoe. Just his breath, too loud in his ears.

What the fuck?

He paused, oar halfway in the water. The canoe drifted a little, but not enough to completely veer off course. The instinctive feeling that something was wrong made his heart pound a little harder in his chest.

Instinctively, he turned and looked behind him. Just trees and dark. He wasn’t even particularly close to the ruined remains of the Baker estate.

“Don’t start,” he muttered to himself: he was determined to not end up like those swamp people talking crazy. “Ain’t nothin’ out here.”

THUMP!

Losing his cool a bit faster now that he was already unnerved, Benny whipped around in the canoe.

Nothing.

“Gators,” he mumbled to himself, like that meant anything. Like that made it fine. “Just gators.”

He leaned down and opened the tackle box. His fingers fumbled for the flashlight. It was heavy in his hands, and it had gotten him through a lot of nights much worse than this.

THUMP!

There was another hit, but harder this time, enough to make the canoe rock in place.

Trembling, Benny grabbed the edge. “Hey!”

The water broke, and his next moments came too fast for him to process.

Hands. White gloves. Gas masks covering their faces.

They yanked him in before he could fight.

Benny screamed — a raspy, panicked noise — and the canoe tipped. The flashlight fell in at the same time he did.

Splash. Gone.

His fishing line hit the water, as well as his can of bait and his radio, just before the canoe itself disappeared into the swamp water’s murky depths.

In a blink, the surface stilled like nothing had ever happened.

Chapter Text

Zoe sat cross-legged on the living room floor, the disassembled camera in her lap as her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. The floor in front of her was covered in scattered camera guts: screws, wires, and one suspicious spring that might not have belonged to the camera at all. The ash of her cigarette dangling in her mouth had smoldered to a dull grey, and it was long overdue to be tapped over the plastic ashtray beside her, but she was more preoccupied with this camera: tearing it apart had been one thing, but putting it back together was another.

There was a knock, and before she could answer, Margot let herself in.

"Still trying to perform surgery on that thing?" she asked as a greeting, raising an eyebrow as she stepped over Zoe’s scattered tools. 

Internally sighing, Zoe finally plucked the cigarette from her mouth and flicked the buildup of ash.

“I think I fixed the shutter,” she responded, squinting at the camera. “Well, maybe. I’m not sure.”

Margot tilted her head, watching like someone half-interested in a game they didn’t understand. “You already load it?”

“Yeah,” said Zoe, giving up on the rest of the cigarette and stubbing it. “Just need to burn through a test roll and see what works.”

Margot grinned, flopping down beside her. “Guess you need a test subject, huh?”

Zoe looked up. “You volunteering?”

She shrugged. “Only if you promise not to make me look like shit.”

Zoe laughed, surprised — she couldn’t remember the last time Margot had ever looked like shit. “I’ll do what I can.”

She looked down at the mostly-put-back-together camera, then up at Margot.

“I’m serious,” Margot said when she didn’t say anything: the apprehensive look on her face seemed to be enough. “You’re rusty, and it’s best to start with something easy, right?”

There was a beat. Zoe wasn’t expecting to feel so much tension just holding the camera.

“Alright,” she said, finally. “Strike a pose.”

Without hesitating, Margot slid back against the couch, throwing an arm over the armrest and casting her gaze dramatically out the window, like some sort of tragic French poet. The type of scene perfect for black and white.

She snorted and lifted the camera, squinting through the viewfinder.

The shutter clicked, and it made her heart ache.

It was late afternoon, the kind of muggy golden hour that made the mosquitoes bold and the porch boards groan louder than usual. The heat clung like spider silk as Zoe sat on the back steps of the house, gazing out at the courtyard, her bare feet on warm wood. A cheap camera rested in her lap: the strap was fraying, the body was scuffed and sun-bleached, but it still worked if you slapped it just right. A birthday gift from her folks when she turned seventeen.

The screen door slammed behind her — twice, because it never latched right the first time — and Jack shuffled out, fresh bottle of beer tucked under his arm, a flyswatter in hand like he meant business.

He dropped into the patio swing with a sigh like he’d been through a war.

“You still messin’ with that thing?” he asked, glancing at the camera.

Zoe smirked as she looked back at him. “Gotta keep the talent sharp.”

Jack just laughed, and the swing groaned under his weight as he rocked lazily, swatting half-heartedly at the air.

There was something about the composition of it — his lazy smirk, the half-hearted swipe of the fly swatter as the swing drifted back and forth, his sleeves rolled up and his boots muddy after a long summer day — that made her raise the camera.

Squinting in the sunlight, Zoe snapped a photo of him. Used to it by now, Jack didn’t flinch.

It was then that Lucas rounded the corner of the house, sweaty and smug, dragging a bucket full of rusted engine parts: undoubtedly caught up in whatever science project he’d cooked up in that old barn no one else used anymore.

“Zoe!” he shouted, as soon as he noticed the camera in her hands. “You better not be takin’ pictures of me again.”

She tensed slightly, even though her fingers never left the camera. 

“I’m not,” she called back, flat and even.

“Boy, stop antagonizing your sister,” Jack called from the swing.

Unaffected, Lucas just snorted and kept walking, muttering something under his breath about “wasting time.”

Zoe didn’t raise the camera. Asshole.

“I’m goin’ inside,” she told her dad instead, and with that, she got up and left.

Inside, the house was cool and dim, their air conditioning on full blast. It made the hairs on Zoe’s arms stand on end as she crossed their main hall.

Surprising no one, Marguerite was in the kitchen, rolling dough across the counter with her sleeves pushed up and her radio turned to some old station playing blues.

She glanced up when Zoe entered, brushing a strand of hair from her forehead.

“Don’t take my picture, baby. I look a mess.”

“You look like yourself,” she replied with a small smile, raising the camera. “That’s the whole point, right?”

Marguerite tried to wave her off, but she was smiling, and Zoe took the photo, grinning.

“Thanks, mama.”

With the scent of dough still clinging to her, Zoe wandered back into the hallway, past the wide metal double doors Jack insisted made the house look “fancy as hell,” and ventured up the stairs of their main hall. She didn’t really have a destination, just an urge to shoot.

Somehow, she ended up in the rec room — the one Jack insisted on calling “the lounge,” like they were some kind of high-class estate family.

She looked around. Pool balls were scattered over the worn green felt of the pool table, never put away after Jack and Lucas’ last game. The old boxy TV in the corner was off, its screen gray with dust, though Lucas had probably been messing with that old VCR again. And the door to the veranda had drifted open, filling the room with that same muggy heat from the yard.

She paused. Something about it felt still, like it was holding its breath. There was a kind of beauty to it, and that I can take a picture of this feeling came back.

Zoe raised the camera to her eye.

Click — the edge of the pool table, worn green felt with a rip Lucas had duct-taped years ago.

Click — the glass ashtray, half full even though she hadn’t smoked in here in forever.

Click — the shimmer of sunlight glistening on the bar.

She turned, scanned the shelves where Marguerite kept stacks of old VHS tapes labeled in her neat handwriting — Christmas ‘94, Zoe’s First Steps, Lucas Science Fair.

Click.

Then silence again. Just the cicadas and the muffled buzz of the kitchen radio somewhere in the depths of her enormous house. The house settling into the heat.

It felt good.

Present

The sound of the shutter had brought her back. Present day. Present dust. Present ache.

Zoe blinked hard and lowered the camera from her face.

Margot was still sprawled dramatically across the couch, smirking, but her expression softened when she saw Zoe’s face.

“You good?” she asked.

She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat. Thinking about the house would only think about the demolition, or the last time she’d been in the house before she’d moved.

“Yeah,” she said, blinking hard, mentally pushing the thought away. “Thanks.”

July 2017, post-Ethan

She was in Lucas’ old room with a handful of BSAA soldiers, clearing out what was left while she still had the energy. It was a rare break from quarantine, and she was the only one who could tell them what went where, after all. Most of the stuff inside reeked — like something died in there a long time ago, and it had been left to rot ever since. Knowing Eveline’s nature, that was probably exactly what happened.

When Zoe had dug through the desk — since everyone was preoccupied with moving the larger things out of the room — she found Lucas’ old laptop. The screen was cracked, keyboard sticky with god-knows-what.

She wouldn’t have known when the last time he’d used it was. Lucas seemed to have abandoned physical technology altogether after the infection, so it was probably dead anyway.

Staring at it, she almost didn’t turn it on, but curiosity got the best of her.

Miraculously, it still had two percent of battery, and the email draft was still open.

To: [email protected]

Subject: (blank)

dunno why im even doin this.

you ain’t gonna read this. but on the off chance you do

whatever. just forget it.

That was it. That was all it said.

She stared at it. For a long time.

Then she slammed the laptop shut and left it behind, to be inevitably demolished with everything else.

That night, Zoe huffed out a breath as she stared up at the ceiling, trying desperately to forget about ever seeing that laptop.

It was the kind of unsolvable thing that once she let the thoughts in, it would torture her endlessly, when the smart thing was to remember that her brother was dead, what was done was done, and she had to let it go.

Still, she could hear his gruff voice, picture his grubby fingers on the keys. The image of it haunted her.

But on the off chance you do…

Zoe rolled onto the other side of the dirty mattress, contemplating.

What the actual fuck was he going to say?

Out of the three Bakers properly under Eveline’s control, Lucas was probably the one who had the least moments of lucidity. The rational side of her couldn’t help but repeat to herself to the millionth time that whatever he was going to say, it was probably insincere — a trap.

She huffed again, dragging a hand over her face as she stared straight up at the ceiling, trying to right herself. There were a million reasons to believe that that email hadn’t meant anything, to believe that Lucas was nothing but a monster.

It wasn’t like she’d forgotten about those traumatizing tapes he’d put in her trailer, after all.

The ones where Lucas forced two men to play blackjack with their lives on the line. Real fingers, real pain, real death. Where he cackled behind the camera, running the show like some sick game show host with a god complex — bile rose in her throat just thinking about it.

She’d found them tucked between old papers and spare parts in her trailer after the initial BSAA sweep in early August: two battered VHS tapes in unmarked cases. No idea when they’d gotten there, but she remembered the chill in her spine when she saw the label he scratched into one of them with a knife tip.

“21.”

At first, she'd thought they were more of his usual garbage she used to find in her trailer when she’d fucked off to the ancient boathouse long enough — snuff film theatrics, scare tactics, shit-quality recordings of him setting the Molded on each other in that old barn, stuff like that. Some sort of twisted calling card, another reminder to stay the fuck away, like she wasn’t already doing that in the first place.

It normally wasn’t worth watching his VHS tapes, but in light of the BSAA descending onto the property, she’d told herself she'd just scrub through, fast-forward, check for usable data to send off and be done with it. It was better her than some unsuspecting BSAA scientist. This sort of thing didn’t mean anything to her anymore.

Well, it didn’t mean anything until she hit play.

Over the course of three years, Zoe had seen her share of horror. Real horror. But something about those tapes got under her skin in a different way. Maybe it was how she got the feeling like he’d been planning to do this sort of thing for a long time. Almost like he didn’t need Eveline in order to do this.

She could still hear the cards being dealt, the whine of the shock collars, the sobs of that poor bastard Hoffman as Lucas whispered, “Don’t worry, buddy. We’re just getting started.”

She flung herself upright in the dark, her breath hitching. Her stomach clenched like it always did when she remembered that voice — her brother’s voice — too familiar and too far gone. Fucking nauseating.

What kind of monster turned a game of blackjack into a death sentence?

Lucas Baker. Her own damn blood. She had every reason not to trust a stupid email.

She had to go to sleep.

The next day

The apartment was cloaked in darkness, except for the dull, red bulb she’d rigged up in the bathroom. It cast everything in blood-warm shadows — the peeling linoleum, the scratched-up mirror, the white edge of the tub stained faintly pink from iron in the water. The air was damp and chemical-slick, tinged with vinegar and something metallic she still hadn’t figured out in the two and a half months she’d lived here.

The whole thing was admittedly janky, but it was working, so Zoe had quickly decided she didn’t care. 

She sat on the closed toilet lid and gently opened her camera, careful not to let even a sliver of light touch the roll of film inside. This part had to be done in total darkness — any light at all would wipe the images away.

She fumbled quietly, feeding the film onto a plastic reel, feeling it click into place. Then she slid the reel into a black canister and sealed the lid.

Now it was safe.

She stood, stretched her legs, and poured in the first chemical: the developer. It smelled sharp, almost acidic, and she rocked the canister back and forth, letting the liquid coat the film. This was the part where the images started to appear — slow and invisible, like ghosts rising to the surface, but the whole process was going to take a while.

The film was blank now, invisible, but somewhere on it were shadows of real things: her dusty Facebook Marketplace couch with fluff spilling out the side, the distant sunlight pouring in from the grubby window, and of course, the muse herself, splayed across the floor overdramatically.

After a few minutes, she poured the developer out and added the second chemical — the stop bath — to freeze everything in place, her hands shaking less and less as she remembered the steps. She hadn’t done this since high school, since the darkroom behind Mr. Grafton’s lab where the ceiling always leaked when it rained.

Another rinse. Then the fixer, the thing that made the images permanent. It suddenly hit her that over the course of the past several minutes, Zoe had barely been breathing.

Finally, she opened the canister.

The film was wet and slick between her trembling fingers, still dripping as she held it up to the red light.

There — frame by frame — was Margot.

Even though the colours were inverted at this stage of the process, she could tell that the sunlight had been behind her when she’d taken the photo, haloing her in copper and gold, lighting up the smattering of freckles on her exposed shoulder. There was a smirk on her face, sharp as a knife, and that look on her face like she was trying not to laugh. Not exactly tragic French poet shit, but it didn’t matter.

The frame wasn’t perfect: Margot was a little off-center, the background was cluttered, there was a smear of lens flare in the top right. But it didn’t matter.

Zoe held the negative up to the red light, fingers trembling slightly, and felt something low in her chest pull taut — not pain, not exactly. A kind of ache. Like something she’d forgotten was still inside her.

She’s so beautiful.

The thought came quiet and uninvited, soft as breath. It startled her. Not because it wasn’t true — but because it felt so obvious. Like it had been sitting there the whole time, waiting for her to catch up.

Zoe clipped the strip to the drying line above the bathtub, her eyes lingering on the frame. A single bead of water traced the curve of Margot’s shoulder and fell.

She stepped back, wiping her hands on the towel hanging from the sink. Her arms itched faintly from the chemicals. Her heart felt like it was trying to be quiet, but couldn’t quite manage it.

The air shifted behind her. The hum of the fan kicked on, fluttering the edge of the shower curtain.

Zoe didn’t say anything.

She just stood there, watching the image dry — and tried not to wonder what it meant that everything Margot was the first thing she’d wanted to photograph in years.

The lab was deep underground, somewhere GPS didn’t reach. Naturally. They couldn’t afford to screw up again after the avalanche of expenses and paperwork that was the Abercrombie salt mine, and the consequences of Chris Redfield sticking his nose in their business had hurt them significantly. It had taken forever to rebuild, but now fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, and a nearby monitor beeped at intervals, tracking vitals. 

In front of them, Benny the fisherman floated in a suspension tank. Still alive, but barely. He hadn’t been lucid for several hours now.

Agent Clarke stood with her arms crossed, staring through the glass at his limp form.

“Swamp rat got too close,” she muttered.

“Drifted within ten meters of Site L-3,” said Owens, the analyst beside her. “Right over the containment shell. Same as the other one from the demolition crew. Got pulled last month when he wandered off from the site perimeter.”

Clarke grimaced. “You’re telling me we’ve got two?”

Owens nodded, glancing down at the clipboard. “Cook’s body destabilized before we could extract a clean reading. Still ran a postmortem panel, though — high levels of E-Type residue, localized neurodegeneration, rapid clotting. Textbook Mold exposure. But this new guy?” He gestured toward Benny’s tank. “Still viable.”

“Did he see it?”

“No chance. We pulled him fast.”

Clarke tapped the glass. “He’s still breathing, right? It doesn’t look like it.”

“Barely. Exposure was minimal, but…look at this.” Owens swiped to another monitor. A still image blinked onscreen: an aerial thermal scan of the swamp lining the Baker property. One patch pulsed faint red in the middle of cool blues.

“He activated something?”

Owens nodded. “Residual Mold activity spiked. Not natural. This is engineered.”

“Lucas,” she muttered.

“Yeah. We found another one of his rigs. Same wiring patterns, same custom encryption. Buried in a sealed pipe near the lakebed.”

She cursed under her breath.

“Whatever he left behind, it’s still running. It’s self-sustaining. The only question is why.”

Owens gestured to the crate against the far wall. It was bolted to the floor, reinforced with plated steel, bearing Lucas’s initials and a serial code burned into the metal: LB-2075A.

“We haven’t been able to open it without triggering a full lockdown. There’s something, uh, alive inside, for lack of a better word.”

Clarke’s stare hardened. “Alive?”

“Organic. But not…not human.”

Taking it all in, she looked back at Benny, who twitched faintly in the tank.

“We’re not the only ones picking up noise,” Owens added. “There’s been low-grade movement in Sector 9. One of our long-range mics caught something weird over there.”

“Sector 9?” Clarke frowned. “That’s nowhere near the swamp. That’s…”

Owens glanced at another monitor, further from Benny. There, a camera feed played, grainy but clear: a woman with dark, shaggy hair, standing in the drab parking lot of her apartment complex, cigarette lit, unaware of the world beyond her.

“Zoe Baker,” Owens said, like Clarke didn’t already know. Like that face wasn’t plastered on every conceivable document about the Baker incident the Connections had.

“She’s four hours out.”

“We know. But the telemetry spikes match her movements. We cross-referenced her location data with Mold signal pulses — there’s a pattern. When she’s active, so is the system. It’s not just the swamp reacting. It’s reacting to her.”

“She's not infected anymore.”

“Maybe not,” Owens said. “But she was changed. She lived in close proximity to E-001 for years, after all. Had to be some sort of mark, ‘specially when she’s the only one of the Bakers left. Psychochemical, neurological, whatever you want to call it. She’s still tethered to her, whether she knows it or not.”

Clarke stared at the monitor. Zoe exhaled smoke, tossed her cigarette, and disappeared from frame.

“If whatever’s in that crate wakes up,” she said, “we may not be able to contain it. But she might be the only thing it still recognizes.”

She turned away.

“Keep eyes on her.”

Chapter Text

It was yet another morning that Zoe woke with a start, her heart hammering like she’d just been yanked out of deep water.

This dream had slipped through her fingers before she could hold onto it, and just scraps were left behind: footsteps, a door slamming shut, someone calling her name in a voice she didn’t immediately recognize. Male. Almost familiar. It felt like waking from a warning she couldn’t understand.

That happened sometimes: her dreams were either muddled and confusing, or strikingly clear that they stayed in the back of her mind for weeks on end.

Breathing hard, she he laid there for a moment, staring at the ceiling, the sweat at her collarbone cooling fast. Something felt… off. But then again, everything had felt off lately, so it was almost normal. Her heartbeat, her appetite, her grip on what was real and what wasn’t. Nothing new.

Still, when she finally got out of bed, the air had that strange, static quality she hated — like something was waiting to go wrong. That same feeling in the air when she had first discovered a semblance of maybe-Mold.

It was like a fist was rapping at the glass, growing stronger by the second, waiting for the moment where it cracked.

Determined to ignore it, she pulled herself to her feet and moved through her morning by muscle memory.

Get up.

Wash face with strange metallic water that she had somehow gotten used to.

Get dressed.

Ignore the mirror.

Pour coffee she wouldn’t drink.

Each step was mechanical, detached.

Out of habit, she glanced at the grimy window just moments before she was about to head out of the door, and immediately stopped in her tracks.

There it was again: that car.

The same one that had bugged her when Margot had been over with the half-burnt, garlicky pasta. Parked just across the street, half-shadowed under the lone tree planted by the sidewalk, like it had been before — too many times now to be a coincidence, honestly.

It wasn’t doing anything. Just sitting there. But it was the kind of thing she instinctively felt watching her.

Naturally, Zoe stared at it too long. She looked down and her hands were shaking.

She checked the lock three times before leaving.

The fifth floor hallway was dim and humid and strange-smelling. A bulb had gone out again, the second time that week. Her keys jingled in her pocket as she went down the stairwell, a reminder that they were safe and secure and not about to randomly fall out in the middle of New Orleans like she so often thought.

At the bottom of the stairs in the lobby, she turned to the bank of mailboxes out of habit. Immediately, the one with her name stuck out — overstuffed with fliers and a single envelope wedged behind them.

Wait, an envelope?

Zoe frowned and stepped forward, yanking it free from the garbage.

No return address, but she knew that handwriting, and her breath caught.

Ethan.

Zoe barely made it through the day.

She checked her bag three times during her shift at Pete’s, just to make sure the letter was still in there. Sure enough, it hadn’t gone anywhere — still the same warm and creased envelope she’d folded into thirds like she could make it disappear entirely, her name written along the front of it in pen she now recognized — careful, a little crooked.

She hadn’t let herself read it. Not in the garage, not with grease on her hands and Jack’s ghost breathing down her neck a little more than usual every time she heard Pete speak. Ricky had been getting a bit too good at noticing when she had something troubling on her mind anyway.

But by the time she clocked out, her skin positively itched with the need to know. It was almost unbearable, the letter had been burning a hole in her bag all day, and yet now that she finally had a chance to read it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to open it.

She didn’t bother going home, and she’d been thinking about a coffee earlier anyway, so she ducked into the first café that she felt was crowded enough not to draw eyes, clutching her messenger bag tightly.

This is fine. This can work.

There was one barista working too fast, aggressively pumping caramel into a frappucino that was probably already way too sugary, a couple of students huddled over laptops, and a baby crying near the door — the kind of everyday noise that should’ve made her feel normal.

This is fine.

Nauseous with anticipation, Zoe slid into the first chair that she saw — mercifully in the corner — with the envelope in hand, and pulled the letter out with hands that shook too much.

The first thing she noticed was that the paper Ethan had used had been folded and unfolded more than once — the creases were softened from repetition, like maybe he'd read it over a few times before sealing it. There was a smudge near the top corner. A fingerprint, maybe?

And his handwriting was the same blocky scrawl she remembered, but it looked tighter now, almost, like he’d been gripping the pen too hard. One sentence in the middle had a word so aggressively crossed out the paper was nearly torn through. She paused on it, trying to guess what it might’ve said, what he couldn’t let himself say.

Taking a deep breath, deciding to just get it over with before she puked over some unfortunate rickety table, she started to read.

Zoe,

I wasn’t sure how to start this. I’m still not. I read your letter more times than I’ll admit, and I still don’t know if I’m relieved or terrified you feel the same way I do.

Sometimes I wake up expecting the floor to move. I still flinch when I hear mosquitos buzzing too close outside, I can’t help it. And I don’t want to talk about it, not even to Mia, because part of me thinks if I say the things I’ve been thinking about, they become real again. I can’t put her through that again anyway. She doesn’t deserve that.

But you were there, and clearly more lucid than Mia was most of the time, so you know. And you’re still in it, more than I am, maybe. That scares me, Zoe. For you.

I don’t want to scare you by saying this, but I honestly don’t think it’s just in your head. There’s a reason we’re still looking over our shoulders, even when everything seems normal. You learn to listen to that feeling, or you don’t make it out. We learned that too well.

It seems that the BSAA hasn’t really been in your life as of late, but there’s a reason that Chris Redfield is talking about putting me through military training. He didn’t say anything about whatever your uncle thinks is going on in your hometown, though.

I don’t think it’s over either. And I don’t know what to do about that, other than this: if you know something’s wrong — really wrong — don’t wait too long to act. You’ve been right before. 

Don’t let anyone talk you out of trusting your gut. Not even yourself.

Take care of yourself.

I mean that.

More than I ever could have said when it mattered.

Ethan

Instead of feeling any sort of relief from his words like the last time, Zoe felt like she’d been suckerpunched. She tried to breathe, but her blackened lungs had suddenly decided to shut out all air.

This doesn’t make any sense.

Blinking hard, trying to make sense of it, she did the only thing she could think of: she read the letter again.

And again.

And again.

By the fifth time, she wasn’t seeing the words anymore, just the shape of them.

The lines that proved Ethan still flinched at mosquitoes. That he was still just as scared. That he’d felt it too — that “pull” she was too afraid to name.

And that last line. Take care of yourself. I mean that. More than I ever could have said when it mattered.

She thought that reading it over and over would soften the blow of it, but it only made it worse.

No. No. No.

Despite the tornado that was rapidly unfurling in her mind, Zoe folded the letter neatly, and slipped it back into her bag. She didn’t touch her coffee.

The world suddenly didn’t feel right. Her heart was racing, too fast and too loud. Her fingers curled around the rim of the table, but she couldn’t feel it.

No. No. No.

Her ears were ringing. She blinked, and the floor beneath her seemed to stretch too far away.

This wasn’t like her usual spirals. Fuck, this was worse, but she couldn’t think straight enough now, not when the panic was crashing over her like a frenzied ocean.

Too many people. The hiss of the espresso machine, the hum of conversation, the baby that still hadn’t stopped crying by the door — all of it sounded wrong, warped like it was underwater.

Her breath caught. Then caught again.

Fuckfuckfuck—

And then she felt it.

She looked up, blinking fast, hoping wildly that the way her chest was heaving wasn’t as obvious as she thought it was, and across the room, she spotted a man, sitting motionless. Early thirties, maybe, and totally nondescript. Gray hoodie, headphones around his neck, half a muffin untouched on his plate.

He wasn’t doing anything. Not writing, not scrolling, not even pretending to look at his phone.

Just watching.

His eyes.

On her.

Her breath hitched, and she blinked, once. Twice.

She looked away, waited a few seconds, then looked back.

He was still staring.

No change in expression. No flicker of recognition. Just blank, unblinking attention, aimed directly at her.

Her breath wouldn't even come properly anymore, and that cracking feeling she’d feared before she could even understand why flooded her, swallowing her whole.

THEY FOUND ME.

Not safe not safe not safe not safe —

No no no no —

Fuckfuckfuck —

Her legs moved before she told them to, and she bolted.

Out the café. Down the street. She didn’t remember crossing intersections, just the sound of her boots hitting pavement and the cold slap of air against her skin.

She didn’t stop until she reached the hallway at Delta Ridge, keys shaking in her hands as she tried to force her door open. Her breath was coming in short bursts, matching her thoughts.

No no NO —

Notsafenotsafenotsafe —

Shotgun — gun box —

The key turned in the lock, but the door stuck as it always did, fixable with a few firm jiggles if she’d been thinking straight, but she wasn’t. Of course she wasn’t, not when tears were threatening to overwhelm her vision and she was sucking in breath as hard as she could, yet no air found its way to her lungs.

So she threw her full weight against it: blinding, desperately, with so much force that pain instantly shot through her shoulder, but she wanted nothing more than to get the fuck inside.

Miraculously, it flew open, and her next few moments were getting sloppier and sloppier.

Inside. Lights off. Still air. Breathebreathebreathe.

Wildly, she grabbed the obsidian stone from her windowsill and clutched it tight, like a meaningless fucking rock could ground her or calm her down or do fucking anything .

It didn’t. The room swam, and the nausea hit her with full force.

She tried to breathe. Couldn’t.

She staggered to the sink, thinking she’d be sick — and she gagged, but nothing came.

She’d fully stopped breathing by now: her hands were tingling, her head was getting lighter and lighter, and her lungs felt like they were going to burst with overexertion. The impending doom wasn’t stopping.

Maybe this is it. Maybe I’m going to die here.

The floor tilted and she dropped to her knees, elbows on the counter, her head spinning.

Not here. Not like this.

She needed help. Shit.

She shoved the door open again and stumbled into the hallway, barefoot, pale — all bets were off, she didn’t care who saw her at this point. Just get out. Get somewhere safe.

Her head shot up, still in tunnel vision, and somehow Margot was there.

She was just stepping out of Caleb’s apartment, laughing at something Zoe didn’t hear. Her vision was so blurry that at first she could only see a blob of red hair.

She looked clean, bright, so normal that it made Zoe dizzy. Caleb was standing a few feet behind her, surely, but it suddenly hit her that she wasn’t about to be conscious for much longer.

Zoe tried to say her name.

“Ma—”

Her knees buckled, and the hallway spun sideways. The last thing she felt was Margot’s hands catching her under the arms, Caleb’s shape moving toward her in her peripheral, and then everything went black.

Fluorescent light pressed hard against her eyelids. A steady beep echoed somewhere to her left. She tried to move — her fingers twitched, her shoulder ached. Something tugged at her arm.

Voices, low and tense, filtered in and out.

“She’s severely dehydrated,” a woman was saying. “We’re running a second panel to check for—”

“I told you, she’s been off for weeks,” another voice interrupted: sharper, hoarse. Margot. “This isn’t just panic, is it? Something else is wrong.”

Zoe opened her eyes a sliver. The ceiling swam.

She could just barely make out Margot standing near the foot of the bed, arms crossed tight, her expression stormy under the hospital lights. A nurse answered her in a careful tone Zoe couldn’t fully catch.

Behind them, in the corner, stood Caleb. His dark hair pushed out of his eyes for once.

He didn’t say a word. Just stood there, arms folded, his eyes on Zoe — not cold, not cruel, just… watching, like always. Like he didn’t know what to do with what he was seeing. Like he wasn’t sure if he belonged here, but hadn’t left. For a guy that was so hard to read, she would almost say that he looked concerned.

He doesn't have a serial killer vibe anymore, she thought deliriously.

Zoe blinked again. Her vision blurred. The edges of the room bled together.

A moment later, she went under again.

The second time, Zoe came back slow.

First, the beeping. Steady, sharp. Clearly a machine of some sort. Then the fluorescent hum of the lights overheard. The sterile, too-clean smell of alcohol wipes and floor cleaner.

Her fingers twitched before her eyes opened, blearily.

She was in a hospital bed.

Her chest felt too tight and her skin was cold, like the panic hadn’t fully drained out of her. She tried to sit up and instantly regretted it — her head swam, and something tugged on her arm. The IV line. Oh, God. She hadn't been sure if she'd dreamed it.

“Hey, hey - Zoe, you with me?”

Margot’s voice. Close. Warm. The kind of calm you use when you’re trying not to show how scared you are.

Zoe blinked blearily up at her.

“You’re alright,” Margot said, softer now. “You passed out. Scared the hell out of me.”

She swallowed. Her mouth was dry. “Where—?”

“St. Cecilia’s. Not far.” Margot brushed Zoe’s hair back from her forehead. “You don’t remember?”

Bits came back in flashes. The café. Her chest closing in. The door to 306 refusing to open. The weight of her own body slamming it through. Margot’s voice. Caleb’s silhouette. A man staring at her from across the café—

“Shit,” she muttered, her throat raw.

“You had a panic attack. The doctor said you were dehydrated too. And—” Margot hesitated. “They said your blood work flagged something. Low iron. Real low.”

Zoe didn’t answer. She stared at the ceiling tiles. Counted them. One, two, three—

“They think you might be anemic,” Margot continued. “I think we both know that's not really a surprise. So I told them you’d been...tired. Skipping meals.”

Zoe closed her eyes. “It’s not—”

She stopped. The lie tasted awful.

Margot didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then:

“Caleb’s outside. In the hallway. They wouldn’t let him in, but he didn’t want to leave.”

That made Zoe’s eyes open again.

“What?”

“You collapsed in front of both of us, y’know. He didn’t even hesitate. Helped me carry you down to the car.” She gave a short, quiet laugh. “We probably looked like a crime scene.”

Zoe’s chest hurt, but not from the panic. More like a bruise beneath the ribs.

“I’m sorry,” she said, automatically. She tried not to think of how embarrassed she was that she’d flown this out of control, or how much the ER costs would likely be.

“Don’t be. Jesus, Zoe.” Margot sat back in the plastic chair, and her voice softened. “You should’ve told me you weren’t okay. I mean, this - this was a buildup of something, wasn’t it?”

Zoe looked away. “Didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

She still didn’t know the half of it.

And she didn’t want to think of what the BSAA would do if she ever found out.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Margot leaned forward again, elbows on her knees. “You fainted. That’s a deal. Big or otherwise.”

Zoe didn’t respond. Her fingers curled over the edge of the blanket.

There was silence for a long minute.

After what felt like an eternity, Margot said, “You wanna talk about it? What set it off?”

Zoe thought about the letter in her bag. The words she couldn’t unread. I don’t think it’s just in your head.

“Later,” she said.

Margot nodded. “Okay. But I’m holding you to that.”

A nurse came in with a clipboard and an IV bag. Zoe didn’t ask what it was for. She already knew: the exhaustion, the dizziness, the cold hands, everything that had been caused by Eveline and the crystallization that couldn’t be documented in any medical journal. She couldn’t explain it without mentioning the BSAA.

She closed her eyes again. Just for a second.

When she opened them, Margot was still there, scrolling on her phone with one leg bouncing restlessly. Like she was trying not to look too worried.

Zoe let herself relax, just barely.

She wasn’t okay. But she wasn’t alone either.

Not tonight.

The ride home was quiet.

Margot’s truck felt strange from the backseat, the low rumble of it familiar but distant, like she wasn’t really in her own skin. Caleb drove with the windows cracked, one hand on the wheel, the other resting motionless on his thigh.

He didn’t speak. Zoe wasn’t sure he even looked in the rearview.

Meanwhile, Margot sat beside her in the back, close enough to steady her if she swayed. Zoe didn’t mean to reach for her, but somewhere along the first few turns, their fingers found each other, and automatically, Margot’s hand clasped around her own.

Her hand was warm. Callused in places Zoe hadn’t expected.

“I’m fine,” she murmured, almost defensively.

“You’re not,” Margot said, gently. “But okay.”

They fell into silence again.

The streetlights carved sharp shadows across Margot’s face as they passed beneath them. Zoe didn’t bother to look out the windows, she just trusted that Caleb would take them home.

After a while, Margot spoke again, voice softer this time.

“You know,” she said, basically a whisper, “you’re not the only one running from something. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Zoe didn’t answer.

Margot looked at her sidelong. “And you’ve been drinking more than you think you have. I don’t mean that like I’m judging. I just - noticed.”

Still, Zoe didn’t speak. Her jaw twitched, but that was it.

Margot nodded to herself. Let it go.

They didn’t say another word until Caleb pulled up outside Zoe’s building.

Zoe made a move to get out, shaky but stubborn, and Margot reached for the door handle at the same time.

“I’m staying,” she said, before Zoe could argue. “Don’t care if you want me to or not. Someone should be there. Tonight, at least.”

Zoe didn’t fight it. Not really. Just looked at her for a moment like she was trying to summon the energy to protest, then gave up.

“Fine,” she mumbled. “Don’t touch my pillows.”

Margot cracked a smile. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They got out together, Zoe’s weight subtly leaning into her.

Caleb stayed in the truck.

Several hours later, the room was too quiet, the kind that made her ears ring.

Zoe lay on her side, curled in the miserable excuse for a bed that Margot had all but forced her into, and stared at the ceiling until it blurred. The shadows on the walls moved with the headlights outside, soft and ghostly. 

Across the room, Margot was asleep on the couch — her hoodie pulled up, legs tucked under her like a kid. Her mouth hung slightly open. She looked young. Tired.

Zoe hated that it made her feel worse.

She knew she should be grateful. She was, sort of. But the gratitude sat under her skin like a rash. Everything did. Panic still clung to her ribs, sticky and breathless, even now that she was safe — if this even counted as safe.

The hospital, the bloodwork, the letter. Caleb’s eyes in the corner of the room.

She hadn’t stopped shaking, she just learned how to do it internally.

She turned over. Tried closing her eyes again. Failed, inevitably.

Eventually, when she couldn’t stand the weight of stillness anymore, Zoe pushed the blanket off and slipped out of bed, praying that Margot wouldn’t get up and scold her like she was her mom.

The floor was cold, and she shivered. She crept to the kitchen and flipped open her laptop, wincing at the brightness. She carried it over to the bed — well, really the shitty second-hand mattress on the floor, and the much-too-thin sheet on top of it, but her bed nonetheless.

She opened a new document, and stared at the blinking cursor for a long time.

Her fingers hovered over the keys.

Lucas, she almost typed. What the fuck did you do to me.

She couldn’t help but accept not knowing what Lucas had written in his email was one of the reasons she’d been pushed off the edge, after all. Another piece of paranoia clutter on top of everything else. Another piece of something that she was going to wonder if it contributed to her current situation about the Mold being back at all.

She didn’t want to think about what Ethan had said, but she could at least think about this.

She sat there, silent. Thinking about how easy it had been for him, even in the end, to leave without explaining a damn thing. To let the rot crawl toward her in the dark while he laughed about it. And then — somehow — to still haunt her through words that had never even been sent.

It made her want to scream. Or drink. Or both.

She didn’t do either. She just closed her eyes and breathed.

Click.

She froze.

Not inside. Outside.

The hallway.

It was sharp, mechanical — unmistakable.

A camera shutter.

Her eyes opened, heart stalling in her chest.

Chapter Text

The next week

Zoe wasn’t sure how many drinks she’d had — enough to make the stairwell spin a little, not enough to forget how cold the handrail felt against her palm.

“Jesus,” Margot muttered, steadying her with a hand at her elbow as they finally reached the fifth floor. “You weren’t even drunk when we left.”

“I’m not drunk,” Zoe said automatically, even though her words dragged a little more than she meant them to.

“Okay,” Margot responded, obviously not buying it. She hadn’t explicitly brought up how much Zoe had been drinking ever since the chaos of last week, but she had insisted on accompanying her to the Gator even though it was her off shift. “I guess I’m just walking you home for the vibes, then.”

They reached the landing, the familiar buzzing of the dim hallway light filling the silence between them. Zoe fumbled for her keys, patting down the inside of her jacket — and missing. Twice.

Margot watched her for a second. “Hey. You wanna just crash at mine?”

Zoe paused, mid-search, and looked at her. “You sure?”

“Yeah.” Margot already had her keys out. “You live like ten feet from me, and you still don’t have a bedframe. C’mon. It’s not a big deal.”

She hesitated, but something about the offer, the casual kindness of it, settled something in her chest. She nodded. Ever since Margot had sort of barged into her apartment after the ER situation, she’d felt embarrassed about her living situation anyway.

“Alright,” she said quietly.

Margot didn’t say anything else. Just turned and unlocked her door, stepping inside like she wasn’t opening a portal to an entirely different world.

Zoe hesitated at the threshold. She wasn’t sure what she was expecting — maybe a glimpse of chaos, or cigarette butts crushed into the carpet — but whatever it was, it wasn’t the low hum of incense smoke and candlelight that greeted her.

She stepped inside slowly, and let the door shut behind her.

It should’ve reminded her of mutated mosquitos and mustiness, the way the apartment was solely candlelit and nearly bathing in darkness, but it didn’t. This was — entirely something else.

There was so much personality packed into such a small space. And just by glancing around at this twinkling orange room, she felt like there was so much about Margot that she didn’t know.

An acoustic guitar plastered with tiny stickers leaned against one wall, closest to the rickety table which bore a record player. It wasn’t playing anything right now, but a shiny Jeff Buckley vinyl sat next to it, and judging by the packed shelf, she had plenty of music to choose from, and she vaguely wondered how much time and money had been spent on her collection. Her head was on a swivel now, trying to take everything in.

Unsurprisingly, crystals adorned almost every surface, catching the candlelight and casting colourful reflections across the room. There were so many of them that Zoe couldn’t possibly start naming them all, but she wouldn’t be surprised if there was a specific reason why Margot kept each of them around.

And in the centre of the room, her bed was piled high with a million blankets, one thrown over the window for added coziness and darkness, probably intentionally blocking out the shittiness of the parking lot below. Fluffy rugs softened the linoleum floor, which was as equally worn as it was in 306 if she looked hard enough. She’d made the best out of a shitty living situation, undoubtedly.

After she finished staring at the room, Zoe suddenly realized that it had been a while since she’d said anything.

“You have an eye for decorating,” she said, truthfully. She would never be able to guess that she was still in Delta Ridge.

“Thanks,” Margot said casually, toeing off her boots. “I’ve lived here forever, y’know. Was a lot of money to make this place bearable.”

She gestured to the record player as she passed it. “Sometimes you can blast music loud enough that it drowns out the crackheads on the third floor. Sorry if you’ve heard it. Wasn’t tryna annoy anybody, I swear.”

She crossed the length of her bedroom in two giant steps and flopped backwards onto her blanketed cloud of a bed.

“I — haven’t, actually,” Zoe replied, still hovering awkwardly near the threshold, wracking her brains. She’d never heard music coming from this hallway before: she’d been spending so much time at work, at the Gator, having nightmares, or overthinking, that she suddenly realized she’d actually managed to drown out the environment of Delta Ridge entirely.

When Margot gestured for her to join her on the bed, Zoe uneasily kicked off her shoes and sank onto the bed. Due to the million blankets, it was indeed ridiculously soft.

“This is nice,” she mumbled, still looking around.

Perhaps most eye-catchingly of all, there was a giant lesbian flag draped over the bathroom door. She forced herself not to look at it.

Margot followed her gaze and smirked. “Real subtle, huh?”

Zoe gave a small huff of breath that might’ve been a laugh. “You don’t do subtle.”

“Guilty,” she replied, and leaned back against the pillows, arms folding behind her head. It was one of their moments where Zoe could almost mistake it as flirtatious — but she was too drunk to say it with certainty.

The bed was already swallowing her up, in the best possible way. The warmth of the room, the low flicker of candles, the hazy scent of old incense — it was all hitting her at once. She hadn’t meant to get this comfortable. And she definitely hadn’t meant to lie back next to Margot like it was normal.

But it felt right.

They didn’t speak for a while. Margot shifted only to peel off her socks, then settled again. On the contrary,  Zoe was unsure what to do with her limbs in a space so clearly lived-in, so clearly not hers, so she kept her hands clasped tightly across her chest as her heart hammered wildly. She was so still she could’ve been mistook for a corpse.

“You can stretch out, you know,” Margot murmured, her eyes already closing. “You look like you’re waiting to be asked to leave.”

Zoe hesitated. Then slowly, carefully, she let her body relax. Her shoulders dropped, and her legs stretched out. She laid back, inch by inch, until her head fully sank into one of the million pillows, and —

Maybe her senses were more hazy than she’d admit, but all she could think was oh my fucking god.

“You sleep with all these blankets every night?” she asked softly.

“Yup.”

“You’re insane.”

Margot snorted. “That’s fair.”

Silence returned — but a quieter kind now, a less charged one. The kind that hummed low between two people trying not to say too much.

And Zoe, before she even realized what was happening, closed her eyes.

She didn’t mean to fall asleep so fast. But she was too warm, too safe, too drunk, too surrounded by things that smelled like vanilla and sage and something that was just Margot. 

Four hours away

Benny didn’t know how long he’d been underground.

Time was a shapeless thing now — fluid, meaningless, floating endlessly like the time he’d spent in the suspension tank. The fluorescent lights overhead never turned off. By now, any time he spent outside of that god-awful suspension tank was time well spent, even if the air was always cold, always dry. And the only noise was the drip-drip-drip of some unseen pipe and the scratch of pen against paper. 

Benny was still writing.

He wasn’t supposed to be, probably. They’d stopped asking him questions weeks ago. Or maybe it was days: it all blurred now. The last time someone came into the room, they took his blood and left him with a tray of food. It had been long enough that his stomach was shrivelled with hunger, and in his starvation, he could barely see straight.

They didn’t speak. They never did anymore. What felt like a blink and the cell door was locked again.

But the spiral-bound notebook he’d woken up with hadn’t been taken. A spiral-bound notebook that he wasn’t totally sure why he even had, considering he was barely treated with humanity by anyone anywhere else. Probably another tool of observation, but for now, he was grateful for it.

With nothing else to do, and feeling like he was losing his grip on his sanity more and more each day, he kept writing.

At first, it had been journal entries — thoughts, lists, dates he tried to reconstruct. Then it became shapes. Repeating symbols. Diagrams that made sense only in flashes. Lately, it had become words again. Names he didn’t recognize. Places he’d never been. 

A girl’s name — one he didn’t know, not really. He didn’t know anyone with the name, but he felt compelled to write it down.

Zoe.

He blinked down at the page. 

There it was again. He didn’t remember writing it, didn’t remember thinking it.

But his hand knew the shape of it. Like something was slipping through the cracks in his brain — like someone else was using him.

He stared at the name until it stopped looking like one.

The lights buzzed overhead — sharp, electric, irritating. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his palm into his forehead. Pain had already started to wreak havoc on his head: another migraine.

His veins had been itching lately. There was a pressure behind his eyes that hadn’t been there before. Sometimes when he closed them, he saw trees. Cypress and muck and low, pale sky. Sometimes he smelled ash and blood.

He dreamed of stairs — rusted, narrow stairs leading to a blackened nowhere that almost felt like a memory that wasn’t his. The smell of ocean and a vague sense of dizziness that accompanied the sensation made him feel like this memory was on some kind of ship. And it almost made sense, considering he’d been fishing ever since he was a kid.

All of it made him more curious about the crate in the far corner of the room, beyond his cell. He hadn’t been able to get close to it. The last time he tried, one of the first times he’d been free from the suspension tank and before he’d been put into this cramped cell, the pain came back — that searing, brain-burning pulse just behind his eyes. Whatever was in it, they didn’t want him near it.

He picked up the pencil again. His hand moved without him.

Zoe.

He underlined it. Twice.

Then, without meaning to, he whispered it out loud.

“Zoe.”

“Zoe!”

Erupting awake, Zoe flinched so hard she nearly knocked into Margot, who was now kneeling beside her on the bed.

Her voice was low, steady.

“It’s okay. You’re alright. You’re here.”

Zoe sat up with a ragged gasp, heart hammering against her ribs, palms damp with sweat.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand: she didn’t totally know what was going on, but she could infer enough that she’d inevitably had another nightmare, the contents of which she didn’t remember at all. “Shit.”

“You were twitching like crazy,” Margot told her.  She was still close, her hands hovering but not quite touching her, giving Zoe the space to come back into her body. “I didn’t know if I should wake you or not. You were mumbling something—”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, a little too sharp. Her voice was hoarse. “It was just a dream.”

Margot didn’t push. She just nodded and leaned back a little, legs folded beneath her. “You want water?”

Zoe didn’t answer. Just ran both hands through her hair, then nodded once.

Margot moved without another word — rising to her feet, stepping into the small kitchen, the sound of the tap running briefly. When she came back, she handed Zoe a glass and sat beside her without making a big deal of it.

Zoe drank. Slowly.

“Sorry,” she mumbled, after a minute.

“For what?”

For everything, the guilty part of her answered. She didn’t even know where to start on that front: being a drunken mess half the goddamn time, forcing her to deal with her entirely avoidable panic attacks, freaking her out enough to drive her limp body to the goddamn ER, and forcing her to deal with her in general. She would’ve left herself if she could ages ago. Why hadn’t Margot?

She opened her mouth, hesitated, then ultimately said nothing.

As much as Zoe would’ve wanted her to, for her own good, Margot didn’t stand up and leave. She just quietly sat beside her while the last edge of the nightmare slipped away, and the cool water disappeared greedily into her mouth. (Again, she couldn’t tell if she was grateful or strangely irritated.)

“You want me to stay up with you?” she asked after a few quiet minutes, her voice low.

Zoe gave a small shake of her head, then hesitated. “No. I just…”

She trailed off, and the truth hit her.

She couldn’t help the urge to speak now: if she held it back any longer, she might just explode. And the words were there, because they had been there for a long fucking time at this point, pulsing under her skin.

Because no matter how drunk, closed-off, or paranoid she got, Margot had stayed, even if Zoe didn’t always understand why. She kept showing up with Tupperware, or dumb crystals, or cigarettes, or just that look like she wasn’t scared of whatever she had going on. It made her want to crawl out of her skin. Or tell the truth. Or both.

Zoe sighed deeply, really and truly considering it for the first time since she’d met Margot. So much of it would be an otherworldly horror she wouldn’t understand, because Zoe didn’t even understand the nature of it herself most days, and it would definitely change what they had, but she couldn’t go on for much longer like this. Hiding everything. Ever since the ER, she had felt like she was at some sort of breaking point.

Fuck the BSAA, she thought, finally. What they didn’t know couldn’t hurt them.

“I - I hate how it always catches me off guard. Just when I think I’m past it,” she mumbled.

“Nightmares do that,” Margot responded lightly, and Zoe tried to ignore her heart’s terrified beat. This better not be a mistake.

Silence again.

And then, almost out of nowhere, she said, quietly—

“Remember when I told you there was no home left for me to visit? That night in the drive thru?”

Margot nodded slightly, still looking like she wanted to give Zoe space. Like she knew Zoe might bolt if she asked too many questions.

She sighed again. Fuck it. Really and truly, fuck it.

“Well, I - I used to have one. It was just me, my parents, and my older brother, Lucas.”

There was an electrified beat: Zoe felt vaguely like she might puke.

“You were right,” she said finally. “We’re all running from something. My - my folks are dead. They all died this summer.”

A pause: Margot took this in.

“What were they like?” she asked, finally, with that hesitant tone like she wasn’t really sure if it was the right thing to say.

She was trying to hide it, but there was that look that she knew so well again: it was the one she’d seen at least half a dozen times when she’d been trapped in quarantine, forced to repeatedly explain the last three years to BSAA agents who all looked the same. That look when someone had a million questions, but was holding them back.

Zoe let out a breath that almost sounded like a laugh. Not because it was funny: because it hurt.

“My brother was…an inventor,” she said, which was probably the best way to put it. Best to start with the actual versions of them first. “He was a total fucking weirdo, mind you, but he was brilliant. I’d rather die than tell him that, though. He won all sorts of engineering competitions when he was young before—”

Her voice cracked. Before the Mold.

“Before,” she continued, which was suddenly all she wanted to say, “he’d terrorize the rest of us with his experiments. It was kinda funny, looking back on it.”

She looked up at Margot on the opposite side of the bed, and despite the situation, she was smirking slightly. Clearly wanting to put her at ease. “How so?”

She looked down at Margot’s bedspread and felt lost in a memory.

Five years ago

Zoe heard the explosion before she saw the fire.

Bolting out the back door, she skidded to a stop in the courtyard, where a billowing cloud of smoke was rising from the nearby shed.

Immediately, almost like a sixth sense, she somehow knew this was Lucas-related.

And she was flabbergasted. “Lucas, what the hell?!”

Sure enough, Lucas staggered out of the shed, coughing violently, his face smeared with soot.

“Okay, okay, before you yell—”

Zoe’s eyebrows had flown into her hair. “Oh, I’m gonna yell—”

Right on cue, Jack came storming out right behind her. “Lucas Baker, what did I tell you about messin’ with them chemicals in my goddamn shed?!”

Lucas held up his hands. “Alright, first of all, you weren’t usin’ ‘em. Second of all, technically, that was a controlled reaction.”

“That was an explosion, dumbass,” Zoe snapped.

“Science,” Lucas corrected with a wheeze, still hacking up a lung.

Jack was already stomping toward him, but Lucas quickly turned and took off running.

“Oh, hell no, boy, you get back here!”

Zoe sighed, watching Jack chase Lucas around the yard like a dog after a squirrel.

Evidently hearing all of the commotion, Marguerite came outside with her hands on her hips. “What in god’s name—”

Zoe just shook her head, already over it. “I’m not gettin’ involved.”

Five minutes later, Margot was laughing that deep, genuine laugh, and Zoe was smiling in spite of herself, delighted.

“He blew up that shed six months later,” she told her. “He was such a moron.”

“He sounds like a character,” Margot responded, her dazzling smile spreading across her face.

She didn’t tell Margot about the ways he’d brutally tortured Eveline’s victims with his inventions later on, and eventually, the laughing faded.

“What about your parents?” she asked softly. “You - you don’t have to tell me, obviously. If - if it’s too uncomfortable, or anything—”

“It’s fine,” Zoe said, and it wasn’t a lie: for whatever reason, remembering them from before felt good now, instead of just the stabbing pain of grief. An extremely rare occasion, to say the least. “My mama — she was the best cook in the bayou. God forbid anyone came ‘round, because they were gettin’ a three course meal while they were over. She tried teaching me how to cook okra once, since I’m not the kid who was gonna blow up the kitchen, but I don’t have those same genes.”

“So your mom did all the cooking?”

She shrugged. “Yeah. My dad tried to help once, but…”

Some point much earlier

Everyone that visited the Baker household agreed that Marguerite was a damn good cook. It was one of the few things she took serious pride in, and if Zoe couldn’t find her on the expansive property, there was a high chance that she was in the kitchen, slaving over some new Pinterest recipe. The kitchen was her domain, and everyone respected that: Jack took care of the property, Marguerite cooked and cleaned, Lucas annoyed everyone, and Zoe kept to herself. It was an ecosystem that worked well.

So when Jack offered to help in the kitchen one night, Marguerite was skeptical.

“You sure about that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. She’d been cutting up vegetables for a stew.

Jack scoffed. “Marguerite, I built this house with my own two hands. I think I can handle cuttin’ up some onions.”

Zoe and Lucas, watching from the table, exchanged a glance.

Marguerite just shrugged and handed him a knife. “Alright then. Knock yourself out.”

Five minutes later, Jack was hunched over the counter, tears utterly streaming down his face, eyes red and burning.

Marguerite stirred the pot, looking completely unimpressed. “What’s the matter, tough guy?”

Jack coughed. “That – that ain’t natural.”

Lucas, watching in absolute glee, snorted. “You cryin’, Daddy?”

“Shut the hell up, boy,” Jack muttered, rubbing his sleeve over his face.

Marguerite sighed, walked over, and took the knife from his hands. “Go set the table, Jack. Before you cut off a finger.”

Jack mumbled something under his breath, but he did as he was told.

Zoe shook her head, fighting back a smirk as she glanced at Lucas. “You owe me five bucks.”

Jack shot her a glare. “You hush.”

“So yeah, cooking was pretty much my mom’s thing after that,” she finished.

“Your dad was some lumberjack guy, then?” Margot asked. “One of the only things you said about him was you worked on cars with him.”

“Yeah,” Zoe agreed tentatively, even though it felt wrong to paint him as just a lumberjack guy. “He helped my mom out as much as he could, before.”

“You keep saying before,” Margot said, but seeing the look on her face, she immediately stopped. “I’m sorry - I don’t wanna—”

“No, it’s okay,” Zoe said, much too quickly. She didn’t want to stop talking to Margot: once the words started tumbling out of her, it was like they couldn’t stop. “Just — before, uh, all the bad stuff happened, they were the complete opposite of what they were. I'll explain, I - I promise. Like, my mom couldn’t stand bugs before, and—”

A memory came rushing in.

One summer, during the peak of Louisiana’s never-ending heat, a massive cicada somehow found its way into the house, through the elaborate, ornate door with the three dog heads that had somehow been left ajar.

Predictably, Marguerite lost her entire mind.

“One of y’all better get that thing out of my house right now!” she screeched as it emerged, ducking and swiping at the air like the damn thing was personally out to get her.

The cicada, big as a child’s fist and buzzing like it had a personal vendetta, careened wildly through the living room.

Naturally, because Marguerite was shrieking her head off and the cicada was just as frightened of her as she was of it, Jack rolled up the day’s newspaper and took a swing at it, so ferociously that Zoe almost forgot he was notoriously terrible at baseball.

He missed. Spectacularly. The cicada zig-zagged frantically out of range, and yet it couldn’t seem to figure out how to fly out of the room.

Zoe grabbed the nearest cup, ready to trap it against the wall. “Hold on, I almost got it—”

Meanwhile, Lucas stood back, not doing anything with his arms crossed, watching with a delighted grin like this was the best entertainment he’d seen all summer.

Jack tried again, the newspaper whooshing through the air uselessly. Marguerite was still screeching and flailing. Zoe was so close, doing her best not to slam into either of her parents—

Then Lucas brought his fingers to his mouth and let out a sharp whistle, and like he could command control over it, the cicada veered off course.

And flew directly at Marguerite.

The whole house shook with the force of her scream.

Jack cursed, Zoe flinched, and predictably, Lucas died laughing.

He doubled over, practically wheezing, while Marguerite stumbled back so fast she nearly tripped over a chair. Her arms flailed, a dishrag in her hand whipping through the air as if that was going to save her from the demon bug now clinging to the curtain.

“Oh, that’s it!” she shouted, grabbing the closest weapon — a fly swatter hanging by the door that no one had remembered in the commotion.

Lucas was still laughing when she turned on him, brandishing the swatter like a sword.

“Get your narrow behind over here, boy!”

Lucas didn’t even hesitate. It didn’t matter that he was well into his twenties by now: he bolted out the door, still cackling, with Marguerite hot on his heels.

Jack just sighed, rubbing a hand down his face. “Damn kid’s gonna get himself killed one of these days.”

Zoe, meanwhile, calmly approached the curtain, carefully cupped the cicada in her hands, and walked it outside.

It seemed traumatized. (She was too.)

By the time she came back in, Lucas was nowhere to be seen.

Marguerite, swatter still clenched in her fist, huffed and shook her head. “One of these days, that boy is gonna push me too far.”

Jack just chuckled. “Reckon that was today.”

“She - she couldn’t stand bugs before,” Zoe repeated weakly, trying to find the best way to put it. “She’d destroy the whole house trying to get a cicada out. And after, I dunno if it was intentional or not, but Eveline—”

Eveline had changed everything.

She stopped, and abandoned that sentence.

"Eveline?" Margot asked quietly, raising an eyebrow ever so slightly.

"Yeah," she said, dragging a hand over her face. "I - I've already spoiled some of it, but well, my dad brought something home one day.”

Zoe took a breath, steeling herself. Summoning her strength to just force the words out.

“There was this little girl from the bayou — Eveline. My daddy found her after a tanker crashed during one of those real bad Louisiana hurricanes, almost three years ago now. The kind where half the town floods, trees go through rooftops, that sort of thing. And Eveline had a guardian with her, Mia, who we found a little earlier. Two of ‘em looked barely alive, and we lived out in the middle of nowhere, so Dad took them both in, thought he was doing the right thing.” She smiled, humourlessly. “He always wanted to run a bed and breakfast, after all. Tells you a lot about the kind of person he was.”

She looked away for a moment, her voice quiet and grim.

“Thing was, Eveline wasn’t just some poor kid. She was infected with something she called, um — something she called the Mold.”

She hesitated again, chewing on the inside of her cheek, looking everywhere except Margot’s face. She really needed a cigarette for this kind of conversation. The BSAA agents had always bribed her with cigarettes — it made the whole thing easier.

“Uh, best way I can explain it is she was born with it, like how some babies are born with HIV or addiction or whatever. Except instead of a virus, it was this…parasitic fungus. A really aggressive fungus. And it doesn’t just make you sick — it rewrites you. Like it learns how to be you while taking you apart.”

Another breath.

“The Mold was incredibly contagious. Like, the brain-eating worm type of contagious. Spread through touch, wounds, even through water sometimes. And once it’s in you, it - it doesn’t let go. You start seeing things, hearing voices. Uh, you hear Eveline’s voice, mostly. Craziest thing was she could get inside your head. She didn’t just infect people — she controlled them. It’s like she was the Mold.”

Her eyes were flat now. Distant.

“Because we took her in, everyone in my family…they all went under. And they changed."

She paused for almost a minute. How do you even explain this to a civilian?

"Not like zombies, but - but worse. They still talked like themselves sometimes. Still knew things. But they weren’t them anymore. Y’know how your brain can die but your body’s still going? It was that kind of thing. They tried to fight it, but Eveline was… too strong.”

Her eyes flicked back to Margot.

“To make a long fucking story short, I was the only one left without a brain infection like them. So you don’t have to worry about me, well - infecting you, or anything. Trust me.”

She looked down at her clenched fists and noticed how pale her knuckles were.

“I spent a month in quarantine with doctors,” she said quietly. “In the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, too. Blood tests, psych evals, more blood tests — all to ensure that I was good and I could start living a normal life for the first time in years.”

She shook her head, her voice growing more raw, faster now. “And the Mold — it’s not in any medical journal, okay? You won’t find it in textbooks or CDC websites. It doesn’t officially exist. But it’s real. It’s in me. Not like it took me over, but… it changed me. I don’t know how to explain it. Sometimes I still feel it, like it’s quiet, but there. Like an echo. So, uh, yeah. I know you asked about a buildup of something in the ER. This is it.”

There was a beat. Margot still didn’t say anything, and Zoe felt desperate, and then she was rambling, trying to fill the suffocating silence.

“And I’ve tried to live normal, you know? I’ve tried. But - look, okay, I’m not trying to scare you. But there’s this car that keeps parking across the street. You saw it too, the night when you came over with the pasta. Same one every time. It just sits there. For hours. And - and last week, after we were back from the ER, I swear I heard a camera shutter out in the hallway when you were asleep. Just for a second. No one was there when I looked — but it sounded like a camera. Or maybe I’m just going crazy. I dunno. But I don’t know what the fuck’s happening, and, and —”

She finally looked at Margot again, her eyes bright, wide, scared, and she gave up on trying to explain.

“I shouldn’t be telling you any of this,” she told her, and her voice cracked on the last word. “I mean it. Please don’t repeat this, to anyone. The BSAA — they’re the ones who cleaned up Dulvey, my hometown. They’ve been completely silent ever since. No news. No updates. Just… nothing. I don’t know if they’re covering something up, or - or if they’re just waiting for me to slip or something. But if they find out I told someone — if they think I’m a liability—”

She stopped herself, trembling slightly now. Then forced a dry laugh.

“Maybe it’s a mistake that you’re even friends with me. Look, I - I know I’ve been so weird with you from the start and I’m sorry. I promise I wasn’t always like this. I - I just think being around me might be dangerous, Mar. I’m sorry. But - I don’t know, if I didn’t say this to someone, I felt like I would explode.”

It got to the point where she was talking without breathing until she was finally forced to take a sharp inhale for breath, and realizing how long she'd been talking, she gasped for air. Her heart pounded a frenzied pace against her ribs, and torturously, Margot didn’t say anything.

Wildly, she wanted her to say the obvious thing that was always somehow out of her reach like she always did, something to magically make it all better.

Be real, her thoughts scoffed. What do you even say after all of that?

What followed was the longest silence from Margot that she’d ever heard.

Zoe felt it stretch out like a wire pulled too tight, humming with tension.

She didn’t dare look up. Her mouth was dry, her hands freezing in her lap despite the heat of the room. She half expected Margot to get up and leave — to call her crazy, to laugh, to do anything but sit there quietly.

The longer it went on, the more certain Zoe became that she’d just made a massive mistake.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

“Zoe, I’m… I’m so sorry,” Margot said finally, after what felt like an hour.

“It’s okay,” she said, much too quickly again, and she finally looked up at her.

When she did, Margot was blinking slowly, like she was still trying to process it all. Her brows were drawn tight. Finally, she let out a breath — quiet, shaky, but steadying.

“I don’t even know what to say,” she admitted. “That’s… a lot. Jesus, Zoe. When I said that everyone’s running from something, I meant - y’know what, nevermind.”

Zoe stayed quiet. Her fingernails dug into her palm.

“But I’m not leaving,” she continued firmly. “So let’s get that out of the way right now. I don’t care if some black-ops nightmare government agency might be monitoring you or if your family turned into a horror movie — I’m here.”

Zoe scoffed, but it was faint and brittle. “You say that now.”

“Yeah,” she shot back, in that tone that meant not to argue. “And I’ll say it tomorrow too.”

She reached across the bed, resting her hand over Zoe’s, gentle but unflinching.

Why? Zoe's thoughts screamed: she didn't understand any of this. Why aren't you running?

“Whatever this thing is — the Mold, Eveline, the weird camera clicking shit — I’m not gonna pretend it’s not terrifying, but I’m not scared of you. Why should I be? ‘Cause all I’m hearing is that you didn’t deserve any of this.”

That was somehow worse than if she’d been. Zoe didn’t say anything, and the room fell into silence again.

The longer it went on, the more she could tell that Margot had a million questions, but was trying not to ask for her sake.

For a civilian with no scientific background, she was taking this incredibly well, she thought dumbly.

When at least ten minutes had passed in the most awkward silence Zoe had ever lived through, Margot seemed to organize her thoughts well enough to ask one question.

“So how - how did you survive?” she asked awkwardly, so softly Zoe barely heard her. “'Cause I don't get it. The rest of your family went down, except you?”

“Pure fuckin’ luck,” she replied drily — half scoffing, half sarcastic. “Jealousy, really. Like I said, Eveline arrived with her handler, Mia. She was gonna transport Eveline to Central America for whatever reason, and I don’t really know much beyond that since Mia never told me this herself, but shit went south somehow and Eveline caused their tanker to crash in the bayou near our place. I think Eveline was intended as a terrorism weapon for something or someone and, uh, she didn’t really like that.”

Her face was grim recalling it. “Eveline had this weird imprinting protocol — her whole thing was that she wanted a family after spending her whole life in a lab and stuff. Well, she saw Mia as her mommy. But my mother was also sometimes her mommy—”

At Margot’s confused look, Zoe shook her head and said, “Don’t ask. All I know was I was the one left over, and I suppose she just wanted all the attention to herself, so I got forced to the side and the whole family mostly pretended like I didn’t exist. I wasn’t forced to do her bidding like everyone else, but I was stuck on the property. So I fended for myself. I - I had no choice. Eveline was intended for terrorism, so all she knew was violence. She controlled my family, so they devolved with her. I spent three years with all of them trying to kill me."

She gestured in the vague direction of her apartment. “It’s why my door has a million locks. Force of habit.”

Digesting this, Margot glanced at the dripping candle on her nightstand. For a moment, she just watched the wax melt.

“Damn,” she said, finally. “And here I was thinking I was tough because I squatted in a few places here and there.”

“Just because you didn’t go through what I went through doesn’t mean you ain’t tough,” Zoe muttered. “Trust me, you’re a lot stronger than I am.”

“I don’t think so,” she said back. “My folks don’t talk to me. By the sound of it, yours were torturing you.”

They weren’t always like that, she wanted to say, that defensive part of her rising again.

Sometimes, just for a few seconds, Jack would snap out of it. He’d be mid-sentence, mid-rant, mid-swing of his axe, and his face would flicker — confusion, fear. He’d clutch his head, groaning like he was trying to fight something off.

And then it would be gone. The rage would flood back in, and he’d be a monster again, someone unrecognizable.

She saw it once, before she stopped trying to reason with him. He had her cornered in the main hall, fists clenched, breathing hard like he was about to snap her in half. And then, suddenly—

"Baby girl? Why’re you lookin’ at me like that?"

It was Jack’s voice. His real voice. And for a second, Zoe thought she had him back.

Then his expression twisted into something wrong again, and he roared, slamming his fists against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. She ran before she could see what came next.

Other times, Jack would wander the halls of the house muttering under his breath. Sometimes it was just nonsense — strings of curses, unfinished thoughts, complaints about those damn cops. Other times, it was eerie.

"Ain’t right, none of this is right."

"Where’s my girl? Where’s my girl?"

"Gotta get out, gotta get out, gotta get—"

And then he’d stop, his whole body going stiff like a puppet on strings. And whatever sliver of Jack Baker that had been speaking would be gone.

On the other side of the house, Marguerite still cooked, still cleaned, still acted like the woman she used to be. But her food went from hearty bayou meals to disgusting piles of slop: intestines and fingernails and random bits of newspaper and other garbage. Her cleaning became frantic, scrubbing the same spot on the counter over and over until her hands bled.

Instead of telling Zoe to set the table, it was Eveline now.

And she clung to Eveline like she was her real daughter. Smoothed her hair, called her "sugar," hummed lullabies to her at night. Eveline loved it — Zoe suspected she was one of the easiest people to control, after all. She never fought it like Jack did: she was just a ghost of herself, mindlessly following Eveline, no matter what happened.

Marguerite still welcomed people in. If some poor soul stumbled onto their land, she’d smile wide and say:

"Oh, come in, come in! You must be hungry!"

She’d set the table, try to make polite conversation, even serve up some food—

Then, the second they refused a bite, her face would change, and the smile would drop. The warmth would drain from her eyes.

"Ain’t you ungrateful."

She’d seethe as they tried to leave. The moment they disrespected her hospitality was the moment they ended up as goop in the Dissection Room.

A few hours later, Zoe lay there, exhausted, her mind still tangled with everything. It was so late it had become early, dawn peeking through the edges of Margot’s blanket-covered window, and yet, she hadn’t been able to fully sleep. Her thoughts were too chaotic.

She couldn’t believe she’d finally had the opportunity to recount everything — and she’d really done her best to answer all of Margot’s questions. She sure had a lot of them.

How did your parish let this happen? Why did no one come looking for you? Did you know Ethan was coming? Are you absolutely sure you're being watched?

Her head buzzed with memories, her body tense from reliving it.

Really and truly, she couldn't believe she’d finally said it out loud. All of it. And to someone like Margot, no less — someone who actually listened.

She heard the sound of Margot moving around in the cubicle of a bathroom protected by the lesbian flag, and then felt the bed shift as Margot’s voice broke the silence again.

“Hey, you up?”

Zoe groaned, too tired to even open her eyes. “Barely.”

What time was it?

“Well, it’s about five in the morning, and this diner opens in ten minutes,” Margot said matter-of-factly from above her, answering her thoughts. Zoe could hear the smirk in her voice. “They do these pancakes the size of your face. I’m going, take it or leave it.”

She blinked in confusion, still half-dazed. She could barely process what Margot had said, so she said the first thing that came to mind.

“What?”

She heard the flick of a lighter, the soft inhale of a cigarette. She opened her eyes, and Margot was already standing near the door, a hoodie thrown on over her tank top she’d worn to sleep, looking back at her like the whole thing was obvious.

“I’m not leaving you to marinate in all that,” she said simply. “You talked about it. That counts for a lot. But now you need carbs.”

Zoe stared at her, disoriented. “You’re…dragging me out for pancakes because I survived my family’s Mold apocalypse?”

“I’m dragging you out for pancakes,” Margot repeated, blowing out smoke, “because I like you, and I know what it’s like to lie awake feeling like your brain’s eating you alive. Also, because I know you, and you probably haven’t had anything but whiskey and anxiety in the last twenty-four hours. Dumbass.”

There was a beat of silence — then Zoe let out a breath that was almost a laugh. It caught halfway.

“You’re fucking weird,” she muttered, but she was smiling faintly as she said it.

Margot grinned in return. “Don’t worry, we’ll go somewhere public. I’m sure if any creepy surveillance guys show up, I can just throw hot coffee at ’em. C’mon. Before I change my mind.”

And just like that, Margot's usual blend of no-nonsense and care was back, offering Zoe an escape from her own mind. With a groan, she shoved the covers off and reached for her jacket that she’d slipped off at some point in the sleepless night, something like relief blooming in her chest. 

“Alright, alright, you win.”

Four hours away

The surveillance room — which was what it was called now, ever since Benny had been moved from the suspension tank to the cell — was quiet except for the low hum of fans and the soft crackle of audio feeds from four hours away. A bank of monitors lined the back wall, stacked two high and three across, each cycling through street cams, hallway lenses, and hidden cameras disguised as smoke detectors. Recon. The same as every other night.

Clarke and Owens sat at the centre console, eyes fixed on the largest monitor as they sipped cold coffee. It had been a long eight hours, watching Zoe and her friend move from that rundown apartment to the bar the redhead worked at — a place where nothing ever seemed to happen. Were they seriously being paid to watch some supposedly important twenty-something get drunk every other night and take notes? This was what the higher-ups deemed as excruciatingly important?

Whatever. Now, they were finally back at Delta Ridge. And things were finally starting to get interesting.

Owens leaned forward, fiddling with the dials beside the monitor.

“Not the tail,” he said, though it was mostly to himself. “He clocked out hours ago.”

Clarke nodded. “Try the drone.”

They switched feeds to the idle drone parked in a busted window across the street. Its camera was angled toward the redhead’s apartment — mostly blocked by a fluffy blanket someone had thrown up over the window, but there was a narrow gap. The world’s tiniest sliver.

Ten minutes of careful adjustments — the drone’s camera wasn’t small enough to get a visual, unfortunately — and then the audio kicked in.

Static, then a voice. A clear one. Inside the apartment.

Clarke clamped her lips together and listened, leaning back in her chair.

When she realized what they were talking about, her stomach dropped.

“…the Mold… through water…”

“She’s telling her,” Owens said quietly. “She’s actually telling her.”

“Great,” Clarke muttered. “Now we’ve got a bartender with top-level intel. Think Zoe knows she’s being watched?”

“I think she suspects. Look at her body language.”

He toggled to earlier footage — a clip from the Tipsy Gator, a name that Clarke hadn’t stopped scoffing at ever since she’d learned it. They’d caught Zoe mid-laugh, sitting at the bar, then suddenly tense, head snapping toward the window. Outside, barely visible, a dull silver sedan idled. Her posture shifted.

“She felt the tail,” Owens said.

Clarke frowned. David was a fucking idiot. “And the friend?”

“Not the issue — yet.” He rolled his eyes. “You were right. The girlfriend’s a soft entry point.”

“She’s not her girlfriend,” Clarke corrected, though there was a trace of a smirk on her face. Working long hours where barely anything happened to report on, it was hard not to watch the two of them like they were in a particularly slow and torturous opera.

Leaning forward and taking the mouse, Clarke opened the adjacent file: Benny’s newest drawings, scanned when he was sleeping.

The first was a tangle of charcoal spirals — not quite trees, not quite smoke — choking the edges of a swamp. In the centre, something small and squared sat half-submerged. A black smear ran through it, as though the paper had tried to bleed. The lake where he was taken, probably.

The second sketch was less coherent: a stick figure in a storm, featureless. Around its feet, there were scribbled shapes that might’ve been roots. Or veins. Or cracks in concrete.

The third was the most unsettling. What looked like a child’s attempt at a floor plan — tight hallways, dark corners. A single red X near the bottom edge. None of the agents who had reviewed it knew exactly what the map meant, but they all took note of the name scribbled repeatedly in the margins.

ZOE
ZOE
zoe
Z O E

Benny had never met Zoe, and the BSAA, for the most part, had done a marvellous job of scrubbing Zoe from existence in the onslaught of media regarding the Baker estate — he wouldn’t have known she even existed. It only confirmed that Zoe was connected to this in a way neither of them understood.

Owens didn’t seem concerned about this in the present moment, however: his eyes never left the screen, where the audio feed was.

“What happens if Zoe tells anyone else? Or if anyone else finds out?”

A beat. Clarke considered it. Then:

“Then we stop pretending we’re not here.”

Chapter Text

5:24 AM

From the moment Zoe and Margot stepped inside, a tiny bell tinkling over their heads as they pushed the door open, it was immediately apparent that the diner was one of those places that probably hadn’t been redecorated since the ‘80s. Glumness ran rampant here: Zoe looked around, and all she saw was worn leather booths, brown-tinted windows, checkered tile, and fluorescent lights that buzzed faintly, like they resented being awake too. For some strange reason, it all felt jarring.

In the far corner, a drunk homeless man slept half-curled in a booth, an untouched ham sandwich in front of him. A scruffy trucker nursed a coffee at the bar, his eyes darting around like he couldn’t wait to get out of here, and a tired-looking teenager swept near the soda machine.

No one looked up as the door swung closed. This was definitely the kind of place that only existed at 5 AM.

Zoe’s lips were clamped together as Margot led her to a booth away from the other tired patrons. Soon, they were given menus, and the food came remarkably fast – probably due to the lack of customers.

Now, some fifteen minutes later, she sat slouched in the booth, fighting to keep herself awake. Her eyes felt puffy with exhaustion, but she’d managed to eat half the scrambled eggs on her plate before her appetite gave up.

Across from her, Margot poured a frankly disturbing amount of syrup onto three of the biggest, fluffiest pancakes she’d ever seen in her life, her face unchanging as she watched the syrup soak the stack.

“This isn’t real maple syrup,” she muttered to herself, glancing at the Aunt Jemima bottle as she set it down. “My mom would judge the hell out of me.”

“Mmh,” Zoe said in response, too tired to think straight.

She watched as Margot forked an enormous chunk of pancake fluff into her mouth without hesitation.

With Margot chewing and her not saying anything, the silence fell once again. It felt thick with an emotion she couldn’t name; it had the hairs on her arms raising on end. Breathing slightly faster, too. It must’ve been how disturbingly quiet it was in here.

She had so much to ask, but no clue how to go about it.

“You ever bring Caleb here too?” Zoe asked eventually.

Margot didn’t look up. “What, you think this is our spot or something?”

She shrugged. She had been wanting to ask questions about whatever it was they had going on for a while, anyway.

“I just….wasn’t sure what the deal was. Between you two. And I - I mean, I feel like I’ve seen you guys a lot together, recently, so…”

She was so tired her brain felt like it was melting within her skull, it took a lot more effort than it usually did to put the words together, and now she was rambling awkwardly. Fuck.

She looked down, feeling her cheeks heat up, and twirled her fork in the remains of her eggs.

“You two seem pretty close,” she finished lamely.

It wasn’t like she’d forgotten about the lesbian flag draped over the bathroom door, after all. Or the rush of a warm feeling that made her want to squirm when she’d seen it. She didn’t exactly have a name for it, not yet, but it made her throat feel tight and her skin feel too warm, like she’d been holding her breath without realizing it and had only just now let it go.

But she was much too tired to think about that right now.

On the opposite end of the booth, Margot had tilted her head, contemplating.

“Yeah, well,” she said finally, dropping her fork, letting it clatter on the plate. “Best word for it is trauma buddies, I think. He helped me out when I first moved to Delta and I didn’t have much, and I don’t forget stuff like that. I started working at the Gator, and - and over time, we took care of each other. Even more so now, with everything, but that’s not my story to tell, so…you get the idea.”

Zoe just nodded, feeling awfully like she had trampled on something.

Margot picked at the edges of her napkin, then added, more softly, “He’s family. In a weird way.”

She nodded again, letting it sit between them for a second.

“So… I wasn’t totally off wondering,” she said finally.

Margot gave her a look. “You’re not the first person to ask. But nah. Not like that. You know I don’t swing that way.”

Zoe looked down, and Margot cocked her head. There was a teasing lilt in her voice, and she didn’t have to look at her to see the smirk.

“Why? Would it have bugged you if I did?”

Zoe blinked, and her stomach squirmed. “What? No. Just — curious.”

She tried to brush it off, her face splitting into a tired, reluctant smile, and she rolled her eyes. “There’s still a lot about you that I don’t know, y’know, and I just spilled my guts to you last night. So forgive me for asking.”

“Mhm.” Margot went back to her pancakes, but she was still smirking, and Zoe resisted the urge to roll her eyes again.

The silence stretched a little longer, except it wasn’t uncomfortable exactly. Just… full.

Two pancakes disappeared before Margot set her fork down and leaned back, eyeing her. Her voice was quiet, but in a diner this abandoned, it probably wouldn’t have mattered.

“So. For real. Are you absolutely sure someone’s watching you?”

Zoe didn’t answer right away. Both of her hands curled protectively around her coffee mug, the heat blossoming in her palms.

“Not like I’ve seen a guy in a black suit hiding behind a tree or anything,” she muttered, doing a perfunctory glance around just in case. “But I know the feeling. It’s like… you start seeing patterns. I dunno. I’ve been in survival mode for so long, I dunno how else to be.”

“Look,” Margot said, lowering her voice even more, “I believe you, dude. But I also think you’re sleep-deprived, possibly dehydrated, and probably still coming down from something adrenaline-adjacent. You don’t have to solve everything right now.”

Zoe exhaled sharply through her nose, a noise not quite a laugh. She wished she could believe her.

Then – Margot reached across the table.

Her breath hitched: she hadn’t forgotten about the night in the back of her truck, and how steadying her hand had felt on top of hers in a frenzied ocean of thoughts.

Just when she thought her hand would drift over hers, it suddenly veered off course, shamelessly yanking a leftover piece of toast from the edge of the plate.

It was stuffed in Margot’s mouth before she could blink, and caught off guard, she laughed.

By the time they made it back to Delta Ridge, the sun was beginning to rise in earnest, pale orange light seeping into the sky. Zoe’s entire body still ached with exhaustion, and her mind might still have a storm of memories trying to yank themselves back into something coherent, but at least they were back home.

She felt like she was going to collapse in the parking lot if she wasn’t careful, but somehow, they braved the trek up to the fifth floor, and she didn’t even say anything when they bypassed her apartment entirely. Margot unlocked her door, stepped aside to let her in first, and that was that.

Inside, Margot’s place was just as they’d left it: the candle stubs on the bookshelves, the incense ash in a ceramic tray by the bed, the lesbian flag still hanging limply from the bathroom door. Soft and bleary all around.

The door clicked shut behind them as Margot stepped inside, automatically muffling the rest of the world, and the room was peacefully quiet. Zoe once again felt like she’d stepped into somewhere far away from the misery of Delta Ridge.

From there, neither of them said much. Zoe kicked off her boots and dropped her jacket on the floor instead of the chair. She was too tired to think about anything except the soft nest of blankets on Margot’s bed — and the way Margot didn’t ask if she wanted to sleep there again. She just nodded toward it and disappeared into the bathroom.

Feeling more comfortable now, Zoe laid down, still in her jeans from the day before, the ceiling already blurring above her. Her body was still heavy, but the weight didn’t press so sharply now. She felt vaguely as though she’d finally managed to drain all of the pus out of a wound. And there sure had been bucketfuls.

When Margot returned, the bed dipped with her weight, and Zoe felt her shoulder press lightly against hers. In an instant, her warmth bled into her skin, steady and quiet.

For a moment, they didn’t say anything. They didn’t have to.

Zoe stared at the ceiling, her lids growing heavier by the second, and that was when she noticed something strange.

Her heart wasn’t racing. Her fingers weren’t twitching. Her thoughts, though still fogged with exhaustion, weren’t barreling into the walls of her skull like they usually did.

She felt still. Not calm, not safe, not healed — but still. Like the water had stopped churning.

Maybe if she’d been more awake, she could’ve appreciated it.

Instead, she closed her eyes. Just for a second.

And in the next second, she was dreaming.

Somewhere over the rainbow

It was raining hard — that slow, endless Louisiana kind of rain. The steady patter on the roof was almost drowned out by the low hum of that old, glowing TV on the other side of the living room, which she watched through bleary, half-lidded eyes, splayed sideways across the couch. Something old was playing, one of the films she’d seen a million times because her parents would put it on for background noise, the kind she didn’t totally need to pay attention to since she already knew it so well.

The room felt soft like this, filled with the muted greys of the black and white film. The lights had long been shut off. There was a quiet warmth to it all, and she felt younger than she had in ages. Not unpleasantly, she was fighting to stay awake and hold onto this.

Zoe wondered vaguely if this was a memory.

Delirious, it took her a while to realize her head was cradled in Jack’s lap, but as soon as she did, it all made sense.

Too tired to do anything else, she just let it be.

The denim of his jeans pressed warm and familiar against her cheek, and his fingers moved gently through her mop of dark hair, smoothing it back. She felt the warmth of his palm on her skin with each stroke. Marguerite and Lucas were nowhere to be seen, but she wasn’t worried about them now.

There was just silence. She didn’t dare to move.

“You don’t gotta be scared now,” Jack said quietly, his voice nearly swallowed by the rain’s steady rhythm, hammering on the panes outside. “Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you here.”

His hand kept moving through her hair, each stroke a tether to a time when things felt whole. She didn’t know what he meant. She didn’t need to.

Everything felt blurry. She forced herself to stay awake.

“You wanna try again?” His voice was thick, but steady — like he was reaching across some invisible distance, trying to bridge a gap she couldn’t yet cross. “We can try again. I love you, baby girl.”

The rain kept falling outside, relentless but comforting. She was so warm. This love was all she’d ever known.

Zoe didn’t answer. Words weren’t needed here. She simply stayed still, letting herself be held in the fragile bubble of safety that surrounded her — the couch, the rain, the steady presence of her father’s voice.

She didn’t want to wake up.

When Zoe finally stirred, it was slow.

Where am I?

The rain was still falling, a gentle rhythm against the windowpane. For a moment, all she could remember was that her cheek was warm, she was laying on a ton of furry blankets, and inexplicably, she felt safe.

She kept her eyes closed a little longer, burrowing further into the blankets. Her body was heavy, cocooned in the blankets and the leftover haze of the dream. It didn’t seem like a dream she’d be automatically forgetting any time soon. There was something about being back in that old living room, knowing it was now shreds of wood and wallpaper lying in the dirt four hours away, and feeling safe at the same time.

His jeans. Her cheek. That stupid black and white movie.

His hand in her hair.

She swallowed, feeling vaguely like she was going to be sick.

The feeling clung to her — not in the way nightmares did, but like something bittersweet. It was weird suddenly feeling like the person you used to be, so her breath came out quiet for her next few moments.

Eventually, Zoe opened her eyes.

She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, but the room was exactly as they’d left it. The sun had risen a little higher now that they weren’t wandering the city before dawn. Somewhere down the hall, a neighbour’s shower started, the pipes groaning faintly in the walls.

Beside her, Margot was asleep — one arm slung lazily over the pillow, her usual telephone cord curls a tangled red mess partially obscuring her freckled face. She looked slightly chaotic, but peaceful. Zoe felt the corners of her chapped lips going up at the sight of her, just slightly. Reflexively.

Margot’s smirk from hours earlier came back, and the teasing lilt in her voice.

Why? Would it have bothered you if I did?

She didn’t understand why she was feeling this way.

Filing it firmly in the think about later cabinet, Zoe stared at the ceiling a long moment. The ache of exhaustion was still there, but it didn’t claw at her now. Her body felt heavy in a way that wasn’t about dread.

She shifted quietly, curling onto her side. Margot didn’t stir.

She stayed like that for a little while — still, quiet, watching the rise and fall of Margot’s chest and the slant of pale light on the ceiling.

The dream was already starting to fade, but the feeling lingered. That impossible safety, and the subsequent stinging ache that came with it, knowing it was a thing of the past.

She missed him. She missed all of them. And she had no idea what to do with that.

Zoe stayed still a moment longer, then carefully peeled back the blankets and sat up.

She stood slowly, careful not to wake Margot, and padded barefoot across the floor to where her jacket was discarded on the floor. The box of cigarettes was still in her pocket. Three cigarettes left when she cracked it open. Enough. She grabbed it and stepped to the door, holding her breath as she twisted the doorknob as carefully and noiselessly as she could.

Mercifully, the door opened with only a quiet creak, and Zoe was stepping out into the brown hallway, clutching her cigarettes. She glanced up at the dusty sixth floor stairwell and knew immediately where to go.

Without much thought, she headed up to the roof, shoving the rusty maintenance door open with an embarrassing amount of effort that made her joints ache and her head spin  — yep, definitely still anemic — and stepped out, squinting in the sunlight.

The morning was barely born. The air was damp from rain, the sky a pale slate, and the rooftops of Delta Ridge shimmered faintly in the mist. 

It smelled like wet pavement and rust and the faint sweetness of blooming crepe myrtles somewhere out of sight.

Zoe lit the cigarette with a practiced FLICK! , shielding the flame with her hand.

The smoke curled up around her face, thin and ghostly. She leaned against the railing, breathing it in, then out. Again. And again.

That dream — if that was what it had even been, and not some strange memory resurfacing — was still pressing against her ribs.

She remembered Jack’s hand in her hair. His gruff, Southern voice. You wanna try again?

Try what?

She didn’t know. She didn’t want to think about it too hard.

She stared down at the street, and nothing moved. No one was watching. Not even that creepy van she swore was tailing her was here this early. It was just the hum of early morning, soft and damp and grey, and her, feeling the same way as the weather did.

She hadn’t cried, not last night, not even during everything she’d told Margot. But standing here now, just her and the wind and the ghosts of what used to be — she felt something hot pressing at the corners of her eyes.

She blinked it away.