The report took longer than it should’ve. Not because the details were hard — she knew the sequence, the timestamps, the justifications. It was the parts in between that didn’t fit neatly into the system. The things she couldn’t prove, the moments her memory refused to polish up for official language. By 1400, she was still behind her desk, shoulders hunched, second coffee going cold. Her shift was technically over, but she wasn’t going anywhere. Not until she found something that made this whole thing feel less like a breakdown.

  The station buzzed in that low, constant hum — keyboards, old HVAC, conversations from down the corridor. The forensic lab had sent over partial updates. Nothing new. The suspect still didn’t exist — not according to the federal system, not in VicPol databases, not even in open social networks.

  No driver’s licence. No tax file number. No MyGov. No phone plan. No Medicare.

  Just a face. A dead one.

  Riya leaned back, cracked her neck, and opened a different tab. Something outside protocol. Something personal. A contact she hadn’t used in a while — Arun Patel, former Cybercrime, now some cushy consultancy job chasing fraudsters through dark web basements.

  She typed:

  Need a quiet facial trace. No flags. Academic-looking woman, mid-to-late 30s. Sending image. Can you run it deep, back-channel only? She attached the image — a still from the body cam footage, frozen just as Camilla turned toward them with the knife raised. Her face was eerily calm in the frame. Not twisted with rage or fear. Just… focused.

  The reply came three minutes later:

  Bloody hell, Lennox. You working a ghost story?

  Yeah, she replied. One that bleeds.

  *****

  By four, he sent a hit.

  Camilla Stern.

  Academic. Former anthropology lecturer at the University of Melbourne. Specialty in ancient symbology, cross-cultural ritualism, and spiritual cognition. Fired in 2016 under quiet disciplinary measures. No formal charges. Just gone. Vanished from academic publishing after that. No online trail since. Someone did a semi-decent job cleaning her back-trail.

  Her last known paper, co-authored but never published, had a title that made Riya’s skin crawl:

  “Resonance, Sacrifice, and Ritual Convergence: Patterns Across Non-Linear Traditions.”

  “Jesus,” she muttered.

  She kept digging. One archived lecture upload — an old symposium — showed Camilla years younger, talking animatedly to a room of bored post grads.

  “The oldest magic,” she was saying, “was not about bending the world, but binding the self to it. Will over circumstance. Naming before knowing. We forget this. Modernity forgets everything that doesn't fit the current narrative.”

  The recording cut out shortly after that, as if someone had paused it mid-thought and never hit resume. Riya stared at the frozen image. There was something about her — the tone, the posture, the absolute conviction. It wasn’t the usual academic ego. It was belief. Someone who didn’t just study ritual. Someone who practised.

  She sat back, jaw tight. Her uniform collar tugged faintly at her throat again. She adjusted it. The itch hadn’t gone away since that morning. Like sunburn that hadn’t broken the skin. She reached up, fingertips grazing the area beneath her collarbone.

  Nothing. But something was definitely there.

  Merton walked by her desk, double-taking when he saw her still sitting there. “Thought you clocked out.”

  “Still following threads.”

  “You’re not letting go of this one, are you?”

  She looked at him. “Will you?”

  He hesitated. “No. Probably not.”

  She pushed the tablet toward him. “Found her.”

  He scrolled. Brow furrowed.

  “Academic?”

  “Ex-academic. Fired for going weird.”

  “That’s not a crime.”

  “No, but it makes some sense of the warehouse. If you’re gonna go full occultist, having a PhD in ritual structures helps.”

  Merton frowned. “You really think that’s what this was? A cult thing?”

  Riya hesitated. “I think it was more than that.”

  He nodded slowly, not pressing, just watching her. “You know you’re not required to stay on this, right? Petros said—”

  “I know what Petros said.”

  A pause.

  “You think I’m not okay.”

  “I think you’re not ready to admit you’re not okay.”

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  She gave a small, tired smile. “I’ve still got a report to finish.”

  He didn’t argue. Just tapped the desk twice, lightly, and walked off.

  Alone again, she clicked back to the image of Camilla Stern. Zoomed in, pixel by pixel.

  Something caught her eye. A glint — tiny — at Camilla’s collar.

  Riya magnified it. The image was grainy, but it was unmistakable. A brass oval. A chain. The same shape, same style, same locket she’d seen for the briefest second during the incident.

  The one no one found at the scene. The one that hadn’t been logged. Because it wasn’t found on the body or around it.

  And yet—

  She touched her chest again.

  Nothing.

  And still—something.

  *****

  They didn’t make a spectacle of it. No official debrief, no long chat with the superintendent — just Petros standing at her desk with a folder under one arm and a quiet look on his face.

  “Prelim ballistics came back,” he said, low.

  Riya didn’t look up from her monitor. “Let me guess.”

  “Looks like your round.”

  Her fingers froze over the keyboard.

  Petros continued. “Trajectory and depth of penetration match your firing angle. Merton’s shots hit the shoulder, maybe clipped bone, but the kill was clean. Straight through the chest. You.”

  Riya blinked once. The words hit, but didn’t land.

  “You did it by the book,” he added. “Two officers, clear threat, immediate danger. Anyone reviewing this will say the same. Doesn’t make it easier, I know.”

  She nodded — or thought she did. It felt automatic. She kept her eyes on the screen.

  “There are no PSC red flags,” he said. “Though Professional Standards will be involved, and you’ll still be placed on leave until the formal ruling comes down. It’s procedural.”

  “How long?”

  “Two weeks minimum. You’ll have a therapist assigned. Standard evals.”

  “Right.”

  Petros waited a beat.

  “This doesn’t reflect badly on you, Riya.”

  “Thanks,” she murmured, and finally turned her chair away from the monitor. “Anything else?”

  He studied her for a moment, then just said, “Take the time. Use it. Don’t try to solve the world in one afternoon.”

  Then he left her there, surrounded by forms, open case tabs, and a screen that refused to explain anything.

  Merton offered to drive her home.

  “You’re not in a state to ride the train,” he said, trying for a casual tone, already jingling his keys.

  Riya didn’t argue.

  Silence reigned as they quietly drove through the afternoon traffic. Cherry Lake shimmered off to the left — silver-grey and motionless, like it hadn’t exhaled all day. They didn’t speak until the Westgate dominated the skyline, the freeway giving way to cracked asphalt and school crossings. Melbourne, unfiltered. The sky was smeared purple, headlights bouncing off drizzle on the windscreen.

  “I’ve been where you are,” Merton said eventually, eyes fixed ahead. “First time’s the one that sticks.”

  Riya didn’t respond.

  He went on. “Mine was in Sunshine. Armed robbery, service station. Bloke had a machete. I got lucky.” His voice harsh with sarcasm. “My partner didn’t.”

  She glanced at him. “You took the shot?”

  “Yeah. Centre mass. Like we’re taught.”

  “What happened after?”

  “Therapy, leave, three media cycles, and five years of pretending it didn’t rattle me.”

  They lapsed into silence again, as the car approached Seddon. When he pulled up outside her place, the street was already dark. One porch light flickered down the block. The front of her townhouse looked like it had always been waiting for her to return — quiet, narrow, blank. Merton parked and cut the engine.

  “You want me to walk you in?”

  “No,” she said softly. “Thanks.”

  He hesitated, then said, “Look Lennox. Doesn’t matter how clean the paperwork is, or how justified the shot. You’re going to feel it anyway. Doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you.”

  She reached for the door handle.

  “You did what you were supposed to,” he said. “And you did it right.”

  She nodded. The words were meant to comfort. They didn’t quite succeed.

  As she stepped out, he leaned across the seats.

  “Take care, partner.”

  “You too.”

  Then the car door clicked shut, leaving her alone on the cracked concrete path that ran past six narrow units in a row, some clad in faded cream brick veneer, others in weathered red, the mismatched facades marked by years of neglect. The faint smell of rain-soaked concrete mingled with the ghost of someone’s burnt dinner drifting from two doors down.

  The taillights vanished around the corner, and Riya drew in a slow breath.

  Tomorrow, she’d be off rotation. On leave until this mess got sorted.

  But tonight... she was just alone.

  *****

  The house welcomed her with silence. Not comfort — just stillness. Walls, closed blinds, faint hum of the fridge. All the signs of a lived-in space holding its breath.

  Riya dropped her gear in the usual spot. Keys in the dish. She peeled off her uniform slowly, every motion aching more than she expected. Her limbs felt distant, like they belonged to someone else. The kind of tired that didn’t come from chasing suspects — the kind that bled in from the soul out.

  She poured herself a glass of water, drank half, then set it down next to the sink.

  The hallway light flickered once. She tapped the switch. Nothing.

  “Of course,” she muttered.

  In the mirror, she caught her reflection — messy hair, dark circles under her eyes, a tension in her jaw she hadn’t realised she was carrying.

  She rubbed at her collarbone. Still tender. The skin there felt… overused. Like sunburn that hadn’t surfaced yet. She reached down and pulled off her undershirt.

  Then froze.

  There, resting neatly at the base of her neck, was a brass locket. Oval. Worn. Hanging from a fine chain that trailed like it had always been there. Her breath caught. She reached up. Touched it.

  Real. Solid. Cold.

  The metal felt too smooth. Like it had been handled by a thousand hands through time. It made no sense. She didn’t remember picking it up. It wasn’t logged, wasn’t photographed, and wasn’t anywhere in the evidence records.

  But now it was here. Sitting on her like it had been waiting.

  She yanked it off. The clasp came loose easily. She held it in her palm. Weighty. Old. Quiet. She flipped it open. Nothing inside. Just a hollow interior that felt darker than the room around her. She snapped it shut again and walked quickly to the kitchen, heart thudding harder than she liked.

  She dropped the locket into a drawer. Closed it. Walked away.

  Back in the hallway, she caught her reflection again.

  The locket was back around her neck. She stared. Tried to breathe. Lifted her fingers again.

  Chain. Brass. Cold.

  Still there. Still perfect. She checked the drawer.

  Empty.

  Her hand began to shake. “No,” she whispered. She went to the bedroom. Took it off again — slower this time. Set it on the dresser. Backed away.

  Stood in the doorway. Watched it. Waited. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.

  Nothing.

  She exhaled. Turned around. Walked to the bathroom. Flipped the light. Looked in the mirror.

  It was back.

  Her fingers trembled as she touched it. This time, it was warm. Like it had never been gone. Like it had always belonged. She didn’t scream. Didn’t break down.

  Instead, she turned off the light. Walked into the living room. Sat down, elbows on knees. She held her face in her hands. There were logical explanations. Memory lapse. Sleep deprivation. Some fucked-up joke. Maybe she picked it up and forgot. Maybe SOCO missed it. Maybe—

  Maybe she was losing it.

  But even as she told herself that, a different thought slid into her mind, slow and silent: What if it didn’t want to be removed? What if it wasn’t something she’d found? What if it had found her?

  The locket pressed gently against her skin — not heavy, not hot. Just irrevocably there. She looked down at it, half expecting it to vanish again. But it stayed put.

  Like it was waiting for her to catch up.