Kavya Mehra sat in her office, long past midnight, the hum of the ceiling fan blending with the white noise of her exhausted thoughts. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead, casting shadows that stretched like ghosts across the cluttered desk. Crime scene photos lay scattered in front of her—five victims now, each one arranged like grotesque art installations. All carved with symbols, all found under the full moon, all so precisely done.
It didn't add up.
She sipped from a chipped coffee mug, half-cold now. Her fingers hovered over the crime lab report. She had received it hours ago, but hadn't opened it yet. Her instincts screamed something was wrong—off.
Earlier that week, she had ordered a secondary DNA analysis from the tissue sample scraped from beneath the third victim's fingernails. The original analysis turned up nothing in the criminal databases. But Kavya was thorough. She had requested a deeper search—an unlinked DNA match with relatives, even if they weren't in any registered offender file.
It was a long shot. But it came back.
She clicked the report.
Result: Partial Match to Subject – Rajat Mehra (Deceased).
Match Strength: 99.91% – Estimated Biological Son.
Kavya froze.
Rajat Mehra.
Her ex-husband. Dead ten years. Pushed down the stairs. Case closed as accidental trauma.
But that wasn't the part that made her vision blur.
It was the next line:
Subject Identified: Aryan Mehra.
She blinked. Once. Twice. The name didn't change. The file didn't vanish.
Status: Minor. Age: 16.
Status: Active student – Rosewood High.
Status: Not on police radar.
She couldn't move for nearly a minute. Her breathing shallowed.
Aryan.
Her son.
The boy she had never raised. The court had split the twins. She got the girl. Rajat got the boy. Kavya had fought—God, she had tried. But Rajat had influence, a better lawyer, and a willingness to lie.
And now the boy she had barely known… was the boy she had been hunting.
A serial killer.
Her serial killer.
Kavya set the laptop aside and stood up slowly. Her knees felt like they belonged to someone older. Her body remembered what her mind had tried to forget—her ex-husband's cruelty, the bruises he left behind, and the night she fled with her daughter in her arms.
She walked to the metal cabinet in the corner of her office. Unlocked the second drawer. Reached inside.
Her service weapon sat there. A standard 9mm pistol. Cleaned. Maintained. Familiar.
She didn't hesitate. She took it out and checked the magazine.
Loaded.
She wasn't crying.
She didn't scream.
But something inside her—something maternal, primal, ancient—began to twist and coil.
She turned back to the crime scene photos. One by one, she studied each face. The precision of the cuts. The symbolism. The message. He was trying to tell her something.
No. Not her.
Himself.
This was a boy screaming silently through blood.
Kavya sat down again, this time not as a cop. Not even as a woman. As a mother.
And she understood: she was going to have to stop him.
Not because she wanted justice.
But because no one else could.
And maybe… just maybe… she had a part in creating him.
She clicked open the file one more time. The school records, the attendance, the address he used for the transfer paperwork.
Two rooms away from Aanya.
Her twins.
Living under one roof.
One unaware.
One a ticking bomb.
Kavya didn't sleep that night.
She cleaned her gun. Twice. Not out of compulsion, but out of ritual.
And as the sun rose outside, warm light spilling across the city, she slid the gun into her holster and whispered to herself:
"I'm sorry."