The Last Murder at the End of the World

“Is there no other way?” asks a horrified Niema Mandripilias, speaking out loud in an empty room.

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She has olive skin and a smudge of ink on her small nose. Her gray hair is shoulder length, and her eyes are strikingly blue with flecks of green. She looks to be around fifty and has for the last forty years. She’s hunched over her desk, lit by a solitary candle. There’s a pen in her trembling hand and a confession beneath it that she’s been trying to finish for the last hour.

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“None that I can see,” I reply in her thoughts. “Somebody has to die for this plan to work.”

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Suddenly short of air, Niema scrapes her chair back and darts across the room, swiping aside the tattered sheet that serves as a makeshift door before stepping into the muggy night air.

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It’s pitch-black outside, the moon mobbed by storm clouds. Rain is pummeling the shrouded village, filling her nostrils with the scent of wet earth and cypress trees. She can just about see the tops of the encircling walls, etched in silver moonlight. Somewhere in the darkness, she can hear the distant squeal of machinery and the synchronized drumbeat of footsteps.

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She stands there, letting the warm rain soak her hair and dress. “I knew there’d be a cost,” she says, her voice numb. “I didn’t realize it would be so high.”

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“There’s still time to put this plan aside,”I say. “Leave your secrets buried…”