Detective Colhoun exhaled slowly, eyes scanning the tangled mess of case files, autopsy reports, and forensic notes spread across his desk. He ignored the latest death for now, rolling the marble between his fingers, slow and steady.
Patterns. Patterns.
A small smile.
A gentle laugh.
A louder one.
Then he roared, the laughter bubbling up uncontrollably, shaking his shoulders, knocking him back. He slid off his chair, hitting the floor but still laughing, his breath ragged, his face twisted in something between amusement and revelation.
Eric startled, yanking his gun free, eyes wide. "Have you lost your goddamn mind?"
Colhoun just wiped his mouth, breath still uneven, staring at the ceiling as the weight of it all settled. "No, Eric. I've just figured out who rewrote reality."
Eric sighed saying good thing it wasn't one of his "jokes" again.
"Oh, so why do.." "please, i will go get us lunch".
---
It had taken him too long to realize. He had been looking for a murderer. The case had stalled for months—not because the killer was too clever, but because someone had rearranged the truth.
What he should have been looking for was an editor.
The coins. Every victim had one beneath their tongue. A signature too perfect, too deliberate, too staged.
But Eric Nolan's coin had been found deeper than the others, pressing into the soft tissue of his throat. Unlike the others, it had been placed hours after death—not immediately.
Why?
Someone had wanted his death to match the others, but the timing was wrong.
That meant one of two things:
1. Eric had been killed out of sequence.
2. The coin wasn't originally part of his murder—it was added later to force him into the pattern.
If Eric's coin was an afterthought, then his murder had been an afterthought too.
And if one piece of the puzzle had been altered…
How much more had been rewritten?
Colhoun grabbed the forensic reports on Gregory Wallace, the stockbroker found dead with coins spilling from his throat.
His time of death had been placed before Tony Laskaris, the restaurant owner. But something was wrong.
Toxicology had flagged a rare preservative in Wallace's bloodstream—one only found in processed beef from a specific supplier.
Beef that hadn't been delivered until the night of Tony Laskaris' murder.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Wallace had eaten something that didn't exist at the time of his supposed death.
That meant he had been alive after Tony died.
The timeline was wrong.
Someone had doctored the records.
---
Then there was The King Without a Crown.
No body. No confirmed victim. Just an empty chair and a cryptic message:
"What is a king, when the throne is gone?"
In a world of precisely staged murders, why stage a crime scene without a body?
There were only two possibilities:
1. The killer wanted to make it look like someone had been erased.
2. Someone had actually been erased.
And if someone had been erased…
Then every murder that followed had been repositioned around that missing piece.
The investigation had been built on assumed order. The police had trusted forensics, timestamps, and logs.
But what if the paper trail had been tampered with?
Colhoun flipped through the crime scene reports, looking for inconsistencies in timestamps, handwriting, and formatting.
Then he found it.
An evidence transfer form for Gregory Wallace's crime scene report.
Signed and dated two days after his supposed time of death.
It was subtle. A delay small enough to be dismissed as a clerical error.
But it wasn't an error. It was a correction.
Someone had gone into the case files after the fact, reshuffled the order, and rewrote the deaths into a specific sequence.
Not to hide the killer.
But to create a false narrative.
---
Why Change the Order?
Colhoun leaned back, gripping his pen, his mind racing.
The real first victim wasn't Tony Laskaris. It was Gregory Wallace.
Wallace was a stockbroker—someone who understood numbers, records, and how to manipulate systems.
His death had been staged later in the timeline—his role in the sequence rewritten.
But why?
If the deaths hadn't been altered, nothing would have changed.
So why go through the trouble of reordering everything, then leave clues behind?
That was the key.
Whoever did this wasn't covering their tracks.
They were leading someone somewhere.
And the real question wasn't just who killed Wallace?
It was who had access to all the case files? Who could alter records after the fact?
Colhoun tapped his pen against his desk.
A cop? A coroner? A forensic analyst?
Someone on the inside. Someone who didn't just want to kill—they wanted to tell a story.
And for months, the police had been reading it exactly as they wanted.
Until now.
-----
The meeting room buzzed with the low murmur of restless conversation, fingers drumming against keyboards, coffee cups clinking against the table. The tension was palpable.
It seemed the short fuse had already briefed Sarah Patel, their team lead, leaving her to deliver the bad news.
At the front of the room, arms crossed, she exhaled sharply, her usual composure strained.
"Alright, listen up." Her voice cut through the chatter, silencing the room. "HQ needs three of our best on-site at Horizon Black—one of our highest-security facilities. They've had an incident similar to the one we handled here, but it's… worse."
Jason's grip tightened around his pen. Worse?
Arnon leaned back, arms folded. "Define worse."
Sarah hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "They're being vague, but here's what we know: critical systems are compromised. Employee records are—" She exhaled, jaw tightening. "—shifting. IT swears entire profiles are disappearing, but logs don't show deletions. Just… alterations. And containment has already failed. Twice."
A quiet curse from Diego. "So we're dealing with a virus that rewrites itself? Or something rewriting it?again"
Sarah's gaze locked onto Jason. "That's what you're going to find out."
A heavy silence fell. Jason, Arnon, and Diego exchanged wary glances.
"You're sending us?" Jason asked, though he already knew the answer.
"You three have the best track record with this kind of threat. You've fought it before. You understand how it moves."
Arnon rubbed his temples. "And let me guess, this isn't optional?"
Sarah allowed herself a smirk. "There are perks—temporary leadership status, bonus pay, access to high-clearance tech."
"Lovely," Diego muttered. "And who's replacing us while we're gone?"
"Interns."
Arnon groaned audibly. Jason suppressed a laugh.
"Relax," Sarah said. "You'll train them before you leave. Knowledge transfer, basics of containment. Just make sure they don't burn the place down again before you head out."
Jason leaned forward, voice steady. "You said records are shifting. What about people there who all are present?"
Sarah's expression didn't change, but her fingers drummed lightly against the table—a nervous tic.
"That's what Horizon Black won't clarify."
Silence.
Jason exchanged a glance with Arnon.
This wasn't just about fixing a security breach.
It was about figuring out what the hell had already changed.