The Glove Remembers.

Chapter 6: Hypothermia

The hospital was too warm.

Or I was too cold.

National Hospital at 3:17 AM smelled like antiseptic and bad coffee. Fluorescent lights buzzed. A baby cried somewhere. Normal things. Real things.

Ife had me in a wheelchair before Hayes could argue. “Suspected hypothermia and absence seizure,” she told the triage nurse. “She’s my responsibility.”

She didn’t say _best friend_. She said _responsibility_. Like I was a chart now.

Hayes carried the biohazard bag. It hung from his hand like groceries. Nothing. Just leather. To him.

Tunde wouldn’t meet my eyes. He kept staring at the bag. Like he was waiting for it to knock again.

It didn’t.

The glove was dead. I felt it in my bones. That warm pressure in my chest? Gone. Like someone turned off a radio I didn’t know was playing my whole life.

The silence was worse than the knocking.

“Room four,” the nurse said. “Doctor will be with you soon.”

Room four was small. Curtain. Bed. Monitor. A poster about malaria prevention. Ife dumped me on the bed and started unwrapping a blood pressure cuff.

“36.1,” she muttered, reading the temp gun. “You’re not hypothermic. You’re stressed. Dehydrated. And you have a nosebleed that won’t clot.” She pressed gauze to my face. “When did it start?”

“When I touched the bag,” I said.

Ife’s hand stilled. “The glove did this.”

Not a question.

Hayes closed the curtain behind us. “Nurse Okafor. I need that bag in evidence.”

“No,” Ife said. “You need a warrant. And you need to explain why a detective is transporting evidence in a nurse’s car at 3 AM instead of a cruiser.”

Hayes set the bag on the chair. “Because evidence locker 17-B is compromised. And because whatever is happening to her? It’s not over.”

“It’s over for the glove,” I said. My voice was hoarse. “It’s cold. It’s dead.”

The room went quiet.

Tunde finally spoke. “What do you mean, dead?”

I looked at him. Really looked. Tunde’s build. Tunde’s shoulders. In my vision, the man had Tunde’s shape. Tunde’s cologne.

_Trust no one._

“I mean it’s just leather now,” I said. “Zara’s gone.”

Saying it out loud made it real. My throat closed. Three months I’d had hope. Hope that suicide was wrong. Hope that Zara was still here, fighting. Pointing. Knocking.

Now? Nothing.

Hayes rubbed his face. He looked 60, not 42. “If the residue’s gone, then we’re exposed.”

“We?” Ife snapped. “Who’s _we_, detective?”

He didn’t answer. His phone buzzed again. He checked it. His face went gray.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Like hell,” Tunde said, stepping in front of the curtain.

Hayes looked at me. Not Tunde. Not Ife. Me. “Amara. Whatever you saw in that car? You don’t repeat it. Not to anyone. You understand?”

_Trust no one._

“Why?” I asked. “Because it points to you?”

Something flickered in his eyes. Fear. “Because it points to someone worse.”

He pushed past Tunde and left. Didn’t take the bag.

The three of us stared at it. Double-sealed. Cold. Dead.

Ife broke first. She grabbed my chart. “I’m running bloods. Tox screen. CT if I can swing it.” She wouldn’t look at the bag. “You had a seizure, Amara. That’s medical. Not paranormal.”

“It was the glove,” Tunde said. Quiet. “I saw it. In the apartment. Both of them. They moved. They _knocked_.”

Ife slammed the chart shut. “And I saw my best friend bleed from her nose because she’s sleep-deprived and traumatized. Pick one.” She pointed at him. “You. Out. Family only.”

“I _am_ family,” Tunde said.

“Are you?” I said.

The words were out before I could stop them. Zara’s last words in my head. _Trust no one._

Tunde flinched like I’d hit him. “Amara—”

“Tom Ford,” I said. “Your cologne. The man in Zara’s last moments? He smelled like you.”

Ife’s head whipped to Tunde. Nurse face on. Assessing. Threat analysis.

Tunde went pale. “I don’t—” He stopped. Swallowed. “Zara asked me to wear it. For the meetings. She said if anyone smelled it, they’d think it was me. Not him.”

The room tilted.

“Meetings,” Ife said. Flat. “What meetings?”

Tunde looked at the dead glove. “She was investigating Hayes. He’s been running an extortion ring out of Central Division. She had proof. She was going to publish.” He looked at me. Begging me to believe him. “I was helping her. I wore the cologne so Hayes’ guys would report _me_ to him, not whoever was actually meeting her. It was cover.”

Cover.

_“It’s already in her. You’re too late.”_

Zara wasn’t talking about the glove.

She was talking about the evidence.

I stood up. My legs shook. “Where is it?”

Tunde shook his head. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me. Said it was safer if only one of us knew. In case—” He gestured at the bag. “In case this happened.”

In case she died.

In case she became a ghost in a glove.

I walked to the chair. Picked up the biohazard bag. Cold. Heavy. Dead.

But when I touched it, I felt something else.

Not warmth. Not a voice.

A seam.

Inside the left glove. The one Zara always bit when she was stressed.

Ife saw my face. “What?”

I didn’t answer. I ripped open the first seal. Then the second.

Ife grabbed my wrist. “Amara, that’s evidence—”

“Zara’s evidence,” I said.

I pulled out the left glove. Turned it inside out.

There, sewn into the lining with black thread, was a micro SD card.

Tiny. Black. Labeled in Zara’s handwriting.

_For Amara._

The door to room four opened.

Detective Hayes stood there. Gun drawn.

And he wasn’t alone.

Behind him was the nurse from triage.

The one who said “Room four.”

She was holding a phone. Screen lit up.

Recording.

Hayes smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Phase two, Miss Eze.”