CHAPTER TWO — Patterns in the Rain part 1
1341 Words
By the time the city crawled into morning, Quinn had only slept for forty-three minutes. She knew the exact count because she’d stared at her ceiling long enough to resent the texture pattern in the plaster.
Rain still clung to the windows, softer now—less like a fight, more like someone apologizing badly.
Her studio looked different in daylight.
Still cluttered, still hers…
but the cavity in the wall felt like a crater left by something that didn’t actually leave.
She stretched, hair falling in wavy brown-red curls over her face. She shoved them back and immediately spotted the thing that had been bothering her since she opened her eyes.
The smear of green on the floor near her workbench.
Still there.
Still bright.
Still wrong.
She crouched to examine it again—this time with a fresh brain that had only slightly melted from lack of sleep.
Quinn touched it with the edge of a clean mixing stick. It smeared with the consistency of sap but the color of neon moss. Organic but unnatural.
“Not mine,” she murmured.
Her gaze drifted back to the wall…
And she noticed something else.
One of her sculpting tools—her favorite wire cutter—was missing from its spot on the rack.
She frowned.
She never misplaces her tools.
Her studio was chaos in layout, but every tool had a designated location, like they were old friends who needed specific chairs at a dinner table.
She scanned the room.
Not on the workbench.
Not by the cavity.
Not in the clay.
Not in her apron pocket.
Gone.
A chill brushed the back of her neck.
She stood slowly.
Someone had been in her studio after the police left.
Or something had moved.
Her heart didn’t race, because Quinn’s brain didn’t work that way. Instead, it got quiet. Focused.
Patterns.
Always patterns.
She followed the green smear with her eyes. It was angled slightly toward the hallway door—
A knock startled her.
“Quinn? You awake?” Theo’s voice, muffled through wood. “You don’t sound murdered, right?”
“I’m not murdered,” she called back.
“Great! I brought muffins.”
Muffins were Theo’s love language. And his panic language. And his apology language. Pretty much all his languages.
Quinn opened the door.
Theo was standing there with a bag of pastries and the facial expression of someone who’d seen the ending of a horror movie and needed a hug.
“You look…” he said, staring at her. “…like someone told you ghosts are real and they owe you rent.”
Quinn blinked at him. “One of my tools is missing.”
“Oh good,” he said. “A normal Quinn problem. I can work with that.”
“It’s the wire cutter.”
Theo paled. “Oh no.”
He knew what that meant.
Everyone in the building did.
That tool rarely left Quinn’s hand, let alone the studio.
“That,” Theo said grimly, “is officially cursed.”
“It isn’t cursed,” Quinn muttered, pulling him inside. “But someone moved it.”
Theo shut the door, eyes wide. “Or… it moved itself.”
Quinn gave him a long, judgmental stare.
Theo sighed. “Okay fine, but just once I’d like to live in a world where something fun like that is possible.”
Quinn turned back to the smear on the floor.
“Is that the green stuff from yesterday?” Theo whispered.
“Yes.”
“It… looks… brighter.”
Quinn nodded once.
She’d thought the same thing.
Before she could say more, the sound of footsteps echoed in the hallway—crisp, purposeful, familiar.
Theo winced. “Oh no. She’s back.”
Detective Mara Ishikawa didn’t so much enter the studio as impose order on it by existing.
She stepped inside wearing a dark coat, hair in its exacting bob, eyes sharp enough to cut steel. She held a folder in one hand and a coffee in the other.
Her gaze swept the studio.
“You didn’t sleep,” Mara said.
“I tried,” Quinn replied.
“Lies,” Mara said.
Theo raised a muffin like a peace offering. Mara ignored it entirely.
“I have a few follow-up questions,” she said. “And new information.”
Quinn nodded, motioning her toward the small cleared area near the workbench—the closest thing she had to a neutral meeting space.
Mara flipped through her folder. “We identified the geometric symbol on the keyring tag.”
Quinn leaned in.
“It belongs to a defunct company called Veridian Dynamics Lab Services,” Mara continued. “Shut down eight years ago. All their old equipment was either auctioned off or… lost.”
“Lost?” Quinn echoed.
“Lost,” Mara said pointedly. “Meaning: stolen, sold off illegally, or hoarded by experimental artists the city doesn’t want to admit exist.”
Theo raised a hand. “Is this the part where we regret living in this building?”
“We passed that part days ago,” Mara replied without looking at him.
Quinn spoke softly. “Veridian Dynamics… did bio-material research. Plant hybridization. Experimental mediums.”
Mara nodded. “We’re still digging, but yes. We believe the green substance may be related.”
Theo squeaked. “Related HOW?”
“We don’t know yet.”
Quinn did.
Not consciously.
But in the way a sculptor knows the exact weight distribution of a piece before touching it.
There was something plantlike in the pigmentation.
But also something engineered.
Something… cultivated.
Mara closed the folder. “Forensics found no blood, no signs of injection, no fibers, no prints. Whoever did this was meticulous.”
Quinn looked at her. “They were making something.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
Quinn gestured vaguely toward the cavity. “The body was arranged. The dehydration was uniform. It wasn’t neglect or accident. It was… deliberate.”
Theo whispered, “Like… art?”
Quinn nodded.
Mara exhaled through her nose. “Do not turn this into a gallery critique.”
“It’s not a critique,” Quinn said. “It’s a pattern.”
Mara stared at her like she was a locked box she intended to open by force someday.
Before she could ask more—
A voice sounded from the hallway.
“Excuse me?”
Elegant. Controlled. Irritated.
Yara.
Yara stepped in wearing a dark teal coat that cost more than the rent of three studios combined. Her hair was in a severe braid today, long enough to whip someone if they angered her.
“Detective,” she said, “you asked me to bring the building’s security footage?”
“Yes,” Mara replied, holding out her hand.
Yara passed her a thumb drive with two fingers, like it offended her to touch plastic.
“I reviewed it myself,” Yara said. “There is nothing. No intruders. No construction. No tampering.”
Quinn tilted her head.
No tampering?
That seemed… deliberate.
Mara plugged the drive into her tablet.
Theo hovered behind her, raising on tiptoe. “Ooh, real detective stuff.”
“Back up,” Mara said, without turning.
The screen flickered to life.
Hallway footage.
Stairwell footage.
Exterior door.
The usual grainy grayscale nonsense.
Timestamp: two weeks ago.
They watched the main hallway.
Theo frowned. “So we’re looking for… I don’t know… someone suspicious-looking?”
Yara scoffed delicately. “Everyone in this building looks suspicious.”
Valid.
Mara scrubbed through the footage—
Then stopped.
Quinn leaned in.
There, on the screen, at 2:14 a.m., a figure appeared at the end of the hallway.
Just… appeared.
No door opening.
No movement from the stairwell.
One frame: empty hallway.
Next frame: person standing dead center.
Tall.
Covered in a hooded coat.
Face obscured.
Unmoving.
Completely still.
Theo whispered, “Nope. Nope nope nope. Absolutely not.”
Mara rewound. Played it again.
The figure stood there for seven seconds.
Then in the next frame—
gone.
- Writer
