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77 in cash. The ghost story doesn't end. It just multiplies.

She lunged at me, her face a sickly pale green, her eye sockets empty black pits. I stood my ground. "He's not coming back," I said softly. "You can be at peace now." The ghost froze. Her shoulders trembled, and she let out a faint whimper, as if a great weight had been lifted. The black mist around her dissipated. Her form turned faint, then transparent, until she dissolved into a wisp of light that drifted toward the rose bushes. Lorenzo's eyes lit up. "Damn, where'd you learn that trick?"

I gasped, and dropped my hand back to my side. At the sound of my breath, the wind blew a gust of cold air through the broken widow, making me shiver. I could feel the presence of something or someone around me, but couldn't see anything. My stomach began to rumble loudly in my ears, my right arm felt tingly, the feeling of my fingers exploring the cool glass softly tugging at my skin, and I tried to reach out to the lamp again but couldn't. "This rumbling stomach again..? Gosh! I hate this! It's so discomforting. Fuck!" I released, holding back my breath so I wouldn't throw up.

Ghost grabbed the other hand, and the remaining five fingers also fell to the ground. Marcus and Mark had lost the ability to speak as they looked on in fear. Ghost used a special technique and broke Layla’s limbs. She could not move, and the only thing she could do was scream out in pain. She wanted to faint, but the pain woke her up every time. Ghost looked towards the door and ordered, “Come.” A few men in white lab coats carrying unique briefcases entered. They looked like doctors, but when Marcus had a clear look at the badges on their chests, he was so dumbfounded that he ended up vomiting blood.

** Far below, under tons of concrete and ash, the remnants of the core server sparked to life. Lines of code rippled across the fractured screen of a backup drive, symbols morphing into a singular, pulsing command. RECALIBRATE. REBUILD. RETURN. The ghost was watching. And it had learned.

It was displayed. My chest tightened as I lifted it with a gloved hand. The scent hit immediately, chemical, sharp, layered with something metallic underneath. Chlorine and cold steel. A smell I had not encountered in years but recognized all the same. It was the same ghost note that had clung to the air the night my parents died. This was not chaos. It was not a fight gone wrong or a rogue passing through. This was intent. Someone had gotten close enough to Owen to inject him, or had taken him elsewhere and left this behind as a message. Either option required control, preparation, and knowledge of what we were.

Vengeance has not been paid, on the contrary, it is also unjustly killed. Vera step by step closer to see the shadow, in her mind there is only one thought that there is a real ghost here. There's a broom nearby, but are ghosts afraid of brooms? As far as I know, garlic is the most effective thing to keep the spirit from coming near me, so she needs a piece of garlic in her body, but the garlic is not in her body right now, it's in the fridge, and the ghost is in the kitchen, what do you get?

I swallowed the lump in my throat and pushed the memories away. Focus. I plugged in the old laptop she kept here—ancient but completely disconnected from the outside world. A perfect secure device. When it powered up with a groaning whirr, I opened the email account Ghost had contacted me on and found a new message. No subject line. No signature. Just a zipped file and one sentence: Don’t scream. I muttered, “That’s a stupid opener,” and downloaded the file anyway. My fingers trembled a little as I clicked it open.