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First the staff room melted away, where the teachers were huddled around the anaphylactic Olivier, and next the walls of Barden City Primary School twisted into liquid to hit the ground with a splash, and finally the skyline of Barden City swirled into nothingness. Haralda was left in a void next to the doors of the lift.

She produced her clipboard and read every single note, every instruction she'd left to herself in the past nine years as a deputy head. Then, calmly, she tore the sheets into thin strips, tore the thin strips into shreds, tore the shreds into confetti, and tore the confetti into dust. By the time she was finished her hands stung with red-hot cuts and bled with penance.

As a final note, she snapped her pencil in half, dropping it below her feet where it sunk into the abyss. In this way, she freed herself from the system that had led to the death of the Frenchman, and her mind was assaulted by a thousand postponed anxieties; crushed under the weight of nine years' success.

Haralda didn't know what to do. Her legs gave out, and she fell to her knees. There was no way to sort the good options from the bad. There was no compass for her behaviour. It was as if the skeleton inside her had turned to mist. She couldn't hold her head high anymore.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

The Frenchman studied her down his nose, his bare-chested torso blocking out the tiniest glint of light from the elevator shaft. Within a second of appearing, he had ripped the Clipboard Shield free from her back and let it fall into nothingless, making Haralda cry out before she even knew why.

Her phone rang. She fumbled for it in the dark, and the Frenchman waited with his arms folded while she willed herself to pick it up. But she couldn't summon the conviction, and the effort was too much, leaving her to roll over helplessly while the Frenchman answered it, put it on speaker phone, and toss it to her so that he could talk.

"My name is Louis Chiron," his voice boomed, distorted through her low-quality sound chip. "On the 17th of April 2006, my son died before my eyes in an ambulance as it thundered through the streets, and when I pleaded with him to tell me who was responsible, he gave me your name. Madame Gunmetal. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"

Haralda shook her head. There was no foundation for anything, anymore. No good. No evil. No justification for any behaviour. So it was that she did nothing.

"I was getting worried," said the Frenchman, as he lifted her up by the neck in a fist the size of a boulder. "Dabbling in the occult has its risks, but my audience voted for you eventually, and so every drop of blood I shed was worth it to avenge my son."

"Killing me won't get him back," said Haralda. "Nothing will get him back."

The memories streamed out of her into him.

DIE — CHECK