Rikki Barnes

It's so easy to lose track of time. Of everything. Just the job ahead of her, and the smell. The smell. God, she throws up a couple times, can't help it. Her stomach hurts from the intensity of it, but the sick scent of vomit and bile barely have anything on what's already in the basement.

There's no way out, or maybe she's just too stuck to see it.

The first one is easy. It's barely covered by the dirt floor, that's how she spotted it so fast. She makes a little pile of clothes in a corner like a bed and drags the first one over to it, sets it down. Like it's sleeping.

The second one, the third one. She has to stop to dry-heave again. Anything she had in her stomach is just gone now. She wipes her mouth with the back of her arm and keeps going.

The fourth one is hardest, because it's buried so deep. There's a locket still around its neck. Her neck. After the fifth one, Rikki has to stop again. Rest. Breathe in (god, the smell). Not think. She rests her forehead against her knees and wonders what Bernard told the other girls. If they came down here willingly, or if he had to force them down. If anyone missed them. If their lives were packed away in boxes, too.

It's easy to tell which one's Sophie. It's the oldest, the one that still has some features that look like him. What happened to you, Sophie? What did you say? What did he say?

"Sophie?"

The world expands beyond the basement.

"Sophie, we need to talk now. This is that part. The part where we talk, okay?"

The way he talks, it's like he's acting out a play. She has to break the script. Rikki scrambles to her feet and takes a few steps up the staircase. "Bernard...? Who's Sophie? Is she your daughter?"

He sounds miserable, angry. "Don't... don't do that, Sophie. You know I hate when you do that."

She pitches her voice soothing, like she's talking to a scared, panicking civilian in the middle of a battle. "My name is Rikki, remember? I helped you with your kitchen a little while ago?"

"Stop trying to confuse me, Sophie. Don't you know by now that never works?"

Like ghosts, she can feel all the ways this conversation has gone before. Scared girls who didn't have her training, just realizing that they'd unknowingly been cast in someone else's part. Please let me go. Please, I won't tell anyone. Please, please, please. "Please, just open the door and we'll talk, okay? We'll talk." There's silence. "Bernard..."

"Don't do that!" His voice explodes from the other side of the door, and she almost flinches back. It's like there isn't a man on the other side of the door, but a monster. Not the goons she fights as Nomad, but a real monster. The kind that's an unstoppable force of nature, evil personified. "You always - Would you please, for once, show some respect for your Pop? Your whole life, I've given you everything I had. Everything! I changed your diapers. I fed you. Taught you to be a good person! Protected you from the terrible world out there!" She can hear him breathe out heavily. "Sophie... Sophie, it's time now." The lock clicks open. "This is where I make you understand."

She skitters back away from the door, down the stairs, where she has firm ground under her feet, but he doesn't open it. Five minutes, she waits, but no Bernard. He wants her to come up, to run for the exit, to catch her by surprise. Fine. She'll come up.

But she won't follow the script.

The other girls, Sophie, she would have run straight for the front door. But Rikki won't. She heads for the kitchen instead, where her backpack is, where she knows the room, and speaks. "I'm not leaving like the others. I'm staying. Did you hear me?"

Bernard emerges from a darkened doorway, like something out of a horror film. There's a knife clutched in his hand, and he's so confused, so hopeful. "You try to leave me, Sophie. Eventually, you always try to leave me."

She spread her arms out, slowly, invitingly. A surrender, a wordless invitation. "Not me. I'm staying right here. With you... Pop." The word chokes her as bad as the bile.

His grip on the knife loosens, just enough. "Oh, Sophie."

She nods encouragingly, forces a smile to her face. "I'm staying right here."

He comes forward for her hug, tears in his eyes, just close enough for her to drive the heel of her hand into his face, dodge his knife, and knock him onto his back. His head hits the floor, and he's out cold in a matter of seconds.




The heroine Nomad calls in a tip to the police. She watches from the rooftop of a nearby building while they cuff Bernard and take him to the waiting squad car.

They find nine bodies.