Chapter 1

I'd worked as a dorm supervisor at Jameston University for five years.

In that time, I'd seen thousands of students come and go under my watch.

I'd seen just about every kind of outrageous behavior imaginable.

People always said college students were some of the most innocent people in the world, but I disagreed.

Most young people were genuinely naive, but there were always a few who seemed rotten to the core.

I'd once caught a student replacing her roommate's blood pressure medication with sugar pills, simply because her roommate had received a scholarship before she did. When she was caught, she just smiled and said she'd only been playing a joke.

That's why I never treated room inspections as a formality.

Most people thought a dorm supervisor's job was simply to take attendance, check electricity usage, and cut off the power when necessary.

I saw room inspections as something closer to a doctor's rounds.

One thing overlooked could cost someone their life.

That year, Jameston University gave students a week off for the fall break. Most had already packed their suitcases and headed home.

Those who stayed behind were mostly students from remote rural areas who couldn't afford round-trip tickets, along with those working part-time jobs off campus who wanted to earn a little extra money during the break.

The students got a break. We didn't.

On the second day of the fall break, I was assigned the night shift.

At 10:30 pm, I grabbed my flashlight and inspection sheet and started making my rounds, working my way up from the first floor.

By the time I reached the sixth floor, it was almost eleven.

I stopped in front of Room 617, the last room on my list.

I knocked twice, but there was no answer.

The door was unlocked, so I pushed it open slightly.

The room was dark, with only the small green indicator light on the air conditioner glowing in the darkness.

I swept my flashlight across the room, keeping the beam low.

There were four beds in the room.

Anna Carey was in the bottom bunk, lying with her back to the door and her blanket pulled all the way over her head. The other three were asleep on the top bunks, completely out cold.

"Everyone's here, huh?" I asked quietly.

No one answered.

A couple of days earlier, they'd been chatting in the group chat about staying up all night binge-watching shows. It wasn't surprising that they were sleeping so soundly.

I scanned the room again. The windows were closed, and the balcony door was bolted shut.

There were no unauthorized appliances plugged into the outlets.

I pulled out my phone and checked the room's electricity usage for the night. The readings were steady, with nothing unusual.

Everyone was accounted for, the doors and windows were secure, and the electricity usage was normal.

There wasn't a single thing wrong with the room.

I propped my inspection sheet against the doorframe, uncapped my pen, and prepared to sign off.

Just as the pen touched the paper, my flashlight swept across Anna's bed.

I stopped.

Anna was notorious on this floor for being lazy. She never tucked her bedsheet under the mattress, leaving all four corners loose and sloppy. I'd told her off about it several times, but she'd never listened.

Wrinkles in her bedsheet were nothing unusual, but the creases tonight looked strange.

When someone lay down on a bed, their weight pressed into the mattress, and the wrinkles usually spread outward from either side of their body, like ripples radiating across the surface of a pond.

Anna's bedsheet wasn't creased that way.

The folds on either side of her waist slanted toward the edge of the bed, disappearing underneath it. One after another, they ran in the same direction before disappearing beneath the mattress.

It was as though the wrinkles weren't made by someone lying on the bed at all, but by something underneath it pulling the sheet downward.

I stared at those creases and counted to three.

One. Two. Three.

The section of bedsheet hanging over the edge of the bed moved slightly.

The movement was so subtle that I could have blamed it on the air conditioner or dismissed it as Anna shifting beneath her blanket.

A voice in my head kept trying to reassure me, telling me not to overthink it. I should just sign the sheet, go back to the duty room, and get some sleep.

Nothing would happen.

But no matter how tightly I gripped my pen, I couldn't bring myself to sign.

I swept my flashlight across the upper bunks and muttered, as I always did, "Get some sleep. Stop staying up so late."

Then I stepped outside and gently pulled the door shut behind me. I inserted the key into the lock, turned it twice, and locked the door from the outside.

The bolt slid into place with a soft click, yet I felt as though the entire corridor had heard it.

I leaned against the wall, my palms slick with sweat.

At the far end of the hallway was a red emergency alarm button.

It had been installed two years earlier, after an incident at a neighboring university. Pressing it would alert both the local police station and campus security, while simultaneously locking down every entrance in the entire building.

No one had touched it in two years because once that button was pressed, whatever was happening stopped being an ordinary dormitory violation.

What if I'd misread the situation?

Was I really going to lock down an entire building over a few strange wrinkles and a bedsheet that might have moved in the breeze?

At best, the university would publicly reprimand me. At worst, I'd lose the job I'd held for five years.

I stood in front of the button, raising my hand and then lowering it again.

There wasn't a sound from inside the room. It was too quiet.

I'd been shining my flashlight over four young women, all around the age of 20, for several minutes, yet not one had groaned or turned over.

I clenched my jaw, dialed 911, and slammed my palm against the red button.

With a click, every electronic lock in the building engaged at once.

The emergency lights in the corridor turned red, one after another, until the entire hallway glowed crimson.