Chapter 3B — The Truth
Dark station • Blood under the lights • A name on the wall
The lights return one by one, steady and white. The train car is gone. Dio stands alone on the platform, boots slick with something darker than rain.
The posters around him show faces — all smiling, all familiar. The bartender from downstairs. The librarian. The girl in white. Each tagged with black ink: FOUND.
His hands tremble. The Polaroids spill from his jacket pocket — too many, all the same composition: his subjects caught mid-laugh, mid-fear, mid-final-breath.
“I just wanted to make something beautiful,” he whispers. A sound like a camera shutter echoes down the tunnel. The girl’s voice answers, soft and close: “You did.”
He looks up. Across the tiles, his reflection stands behind the glass divider, red to the elbow, holding a knife-shaped shadow. Its mouth moves before his does. The words form on both sides at once: “Welcome back, Shane.”