PROLOGUE

TWELVE YEARS AGO

PING. PING.

The girl's eyelids trembled and gradually opened. The rancid smell in the air was the first thing she could name when she woke up with the incessant ping.

Something sticky ran down the sides of her scalp. Maybe the cause of the ping echoing in her ears… It couldn't be water; the consistency was too glutinous. She took a deep breath. Her nostrils burned, the acrid taste took over her tongue when she inhaled the air, naming the odor that infested the place.

Carrion.

Her breathing accelerated; the heartbeat reverberated in her eardrums as she noticed it. She couldn't see anything because of the fabric tied to her face, scratching her eyes with roughness every time she blinked. She tried to move but her body was limp, the hands tied to something hard and cold above her head. If the girl weren't sitting with her back resting on the lumpy surface behind her, she would surely fall.

A low moan sounded beside her.

The tangle in the girl's mind kept her from remembering clearly what had happened before she got there. The fear screamed inside her. She was tied up near some dead animal, in an unknown place, with someone breathing next to her.

“W-Who is there?” She asked in a shaky voice.

“M-My head hurts…”

“Hannah?”

Hannah grunted softly, but before she could question whether Hannah could see or move, the metal creaking on stone echoed around them.

The girl moved her face to the right and then to the left, frantically. The room must have been empty, the echo made it difficult for her to find the exact location of the sound, until heavy and dragged steps sounded to her right, in a slow and carefree walk.

A low whistle shivered her spine. The steps stopped at her side. A wheezing sounded to the right. A radio?

“Do you hear me?” Someone asked.

The severe and distorted tone did not allow distinguishing whether it was a man or a woman.

“Y-yes.”

The girl turned her face towards the new voice. It was a voice different from the voice of the person who had just entered the room where she and Hannah were. The hoarse and roughened voice of a former smoker was familiar to her.

Dad? Was he speaking through a radio?

She wasn't sure, she felt too stunned to think clearly—her head was heavy, and her tongue was numb—yet the voice sounded very much like her father.

“Can you see me too?”

“Y-Yes.” The voice of the man who reminded her father sounded fearful.

“Do you know who these girls are?”

“Y-Yes. D-Don't hurt them, please!”

“Now pay attention to what I'm going to tell you…” the distorted voice warned, causing another hiss on the radio. “Oh my Darling, life is all about choices, you have to choose…”

The ominous tone echoed on the walls, making the girl shrink. Was that guy reciting verses from a poem? Why was she tied up and blindfolded with her cousin? Why her father did nothing to help them?!

“If you're going to cry, if you're going to smile, you have to make a choice…”

When the man lowered his tone and recited another verse of the poem, a reminder occurred to her… a reminder of the news surrounding the city.

Her body trembled as she felt the warm breath blow down her neck, cracked lips rubbing against her ear.

“Only one can survive… The daughter or the niece… Who will you choose, Mr. Yan? This”, something icy and circular pressed the girl's forehead, making her groan, petrified. So quickly it touched her, it receded. “Or that?” Hannah whined, which made her conclude that she was the second to feel the cold, circular surface on her skin. “Choose one. The other dies.”

“P-Please, don't do that…”

The ping and the wheezing have been replaced by whining and crying for help. While the man cried desperately on the other side of the radio, the figure standing between his daughter and his niece was laughing.

“Ten seconds… I'll kill them both if you can't decide!”

“M-My daughter… let my daughter live!”

Time seemed to stop.

The only sound the girl could hear, aside from her heavy breathing and Hannah's voice begging for her own life, were the killer's last words, before he pulled the trigger:

“This one lives, that one dies.”