Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace

The floor was littered with three bodies, one of whom I recognized from the orphanage. The other two were strangers to me, not from the orphanage, but their presence here was a mystery.

Relief washed over both Bran and me upon not finding Colin among the deceased.

"These two were traffickers," Bran announced, eyeing the unidentified bodies.

Surprised, I asked, "How can you tell?"

"There's a tattoo here," Bran pointed to a tattoo behind one of the trafficker's ears, a cross emblem.

"The victims of the dismemberment cases had similar mutilated emblems behind their ears," Bran frowned, scanning our surroundings. "He's got to be okay. We need to get out of here."

I glanced around frantically.

Colin, please be safe.

"Is this the only way to get to the 17th floor?" I asked Bran anxiously.

"As far as I've found, yes. But I can't be sure it's the only one," Bran shook his head.

Colin might have found another way up to the 17th floor.

All I could do was pray for his safety.

On the 17th floor.

Dexter and Melody had been waiting in the open space at the center for a while.

Dexter had reverted to his usual aloof self, standing by Melody as if he hadn't been the one to save me last night...

Honestly, I was starting to wonder if it had all been a hallucination.

"Have any of you seen Colin?" I asked, panic rising when I couldn't spot Colin on the 17th floor. Everyone shook their heads, denying any sightings of him.

"He's probably behind all this,

laughing at us from the shadows!" James began to stir the pot. "Remember the voice that said the killer is among us? I bet it's Colin. He's a lunatic, even confessed to

being a serial killer before!

"Yeah...I know him. The mad genius from the foster home..." someone chimed in.

Annora's husband, Jaxon, also

shouted, "I swear, that maniac is theUpstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

killer, no doubt about it! It's all

e

because we accidentally started that fire years ago and didn't save them, letting that Carter guy burn alive. He's been holding a grudge plotting against us!"

My palms were sweating. Where was Colin? If this continued, they might really start believing Colin was the murderer and harm him. "No way, he saved us," someone defended Colin.

"What do you know? Everyone's dying, and his little game wouldn't be fun anymore. That maniac wants to play us till we drop," James spat venomously.

Archer joined in, yelling, "He's a

madman, a so-called genius. Killing us would be a piece of cake for him. We can't just sit around waiting to die. If we find him, it'll be self-defense to take him out!"

The scene was descending into chaos.

Melody and Dexter remained on the sidelines, coldly observing the turmoil.

Annora tried to defend Colin through her tears, but her voice was drowned out by the others.

"Carter...hehe, Colin, we're going to be reunited," Zoe giggled, her speech slurred from her limited intellect, seemingly triggered by the situation and not entirely lucid.

"Colin, have you seen him? Did he come to you?" I rushed to Zoe, crouching in front of her, gripping her shoulders in desperation.

Colin couldn't be the mastermind. With his intellect, if he were behind this, he would've blended in with the crowd instead of being singled out so early.

Either Colin was in trouble, or... whoever was orchestrating this feared Colin's involvement and intentionally separated him from us.

Leaving us, the not-so-clever ones, to struggle through these layered predicaments.

"Colin..." Zoe smiled vacantly at me. "Went down."

My breath hitched. "What do you mean, went down?"