Kill me with your love

Chapter 0 (prologue)

Fourth never meant to kill.
The word itself had always sounded distant, something belonging to whispered news reports or gritty headlines that blurred past without weight.
He had never wanted to see a person's breath stop, to witness the final flicker of life vanishing into nothing. The thought alone had always disturbed him.

Yet here he stood. The air thick with silence that felt colder than any night air outside, a silence that seemed to grow heavier the longer he listened to it.

"You can leave now,"

came the voice behind him.

"We'll take care of the mess."

The words were calm, indifferent. Not reassurance, not comfort. Just procedure.

A man dressed in black stepped forward. His presence was almost ghostlike in the dim room, moving with the fatigue of someone who had seen this too many times before.
He laid a hand on Fourth's shoulder, gave it a small, approving pat.
The gesture might have once meant pride, encouragement, victory.
To Fourth, it felt like a verdict. A quiet reminder of what he did.

Fourth nodded once. He didn't trust himself to speak. His throat felt raw, as if words had scraped against it on their way down and gotten lost there.

He turned his gaze toward the body on the floor.
It lay twisted in unnatural peace. What had been movement minutes ago was now still form.
Red spread outward, creeping beyond the frame of the body, soaking into tile and cracks.
Smoke from a still burning cigarette curled upward beside it, tracing soft lines into the air. Delicate, almost beautiful in contrast to what it hovered over.

He stared too long. His eyes caught on the detail of the hand. Fingers half curled, nails faintly coated red.
The light flickered once, making the blood glisten like it wanted to come alive again. His stomach twisted.

He forced himself to look away, almost stumbling toward the exit.
His chest tightened with each breath as if the walls themselves were closing in.
Behind him, muffled voices carried instructions.
The sound of shifting plastic. A mop bucket scraping the floor. Procedure. Cleanup. Normal.

He moved down the corridor without looking back, through flickering lights that smeared shadows against the walls. He wanted distance more than air.

Inside the restroom, he locked the door and leaned against it, letting his head fall back with a dull thud.
The silence inside was different. A box of dead air, thick with the metallic scent that clung even here. The fluorescent light above blinked unevenly, buzzing in broken rhythm.

He had done this part before, too many times for comfort.
Undressing, swapping stained clothes, burying what couldn't be spoken.
He unbuttoned his shirt slowly, hands trembling so visibly that the buttons slipped twice before they gave way.
The once white fabric was now blotched with dark stains, dried into patterns that looked like old shadows rather than blood.

The smell of iron filled his nose with every motion. It was sharp, metallic, wrong. Like the taste of failure forced into his lungs.
He stuffed the shirt into his bag, moving on instinct, his body remembering the motions even while his mind reeled somewhere far away.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror.
The man staring back looked pale, unfamiliar.
Eyes rimmed by sleeplessness, jaw locked in something between denial and despair.
His reflection seemed thinner, faded by dusk and guilt, as though part of him had already vanished with the gunshot.

The gun's weight pressed inside his pocket now. Too heavy, too solid. The kind of heaviness that sank down through muscle into marrow.

He turned away from the mirror, pressing his palms to the cold tiles behind him, trying to breathe.
The first inhale caught mid way. The next came out uneven.
He forced another, but it only rattled weakly through his ribs.
His throat stung. He felt something rising. Not memory, but instinct. A rebellion from inside.

He pushed away from the wall, stumbling to the toilet stall on instinct.
The door creaked open and before he could stop himself, his stomach clenched violently.
He dropped to his knees.

The sound that tore free wasn't loud. Just raw, wet, broken.
His body rejected the weight of everything. The sight, the smell, the sin.
His throat burned. Bile rasped bitter against his tongue.
Tears blurred his vision.
His hands braced hard against the bowl, fingers whitening with tension.

When there was nothing left, he stayed there, body trembling, the air thick with the sour stench of guilt itself made real.
Drops of sweat and water clung to his face.
His heart pounded too fast for reason to catch up.
The sound filled the space, replacing silence with something uglier, more human.

For a long minute, he didn't move.
His breath came in shaking fits, echoing faintly against tile.
His mind flickered between thought and blankness, between trying to forget and trying to survive.

At some point he reached up, flushing the toilet as if the act itself might erase proof.
Both of the bile and of his conscience. The noise broke the stillness, metallic and hollow.

He hauled himself up to stand, exhaustion pulling at every limb.
His reflection watched him again from the mirror.
Gray toned, streaked with moisture, face drawn tight.

The sink's faucet groaned when he turned it.
He splashed his face with cold water until the sting of it replaced the burning in his throat.
The water streamed pink at first. Blood, maybe, or dirt. Before running clear.
He leaned there for a while, staring down into the drain, watching it all spiral away.

He didn't know if he was shaking from cold or from what he'd done. Maybe both.

He straightened slowly, rubbing his face dry with the sleeve of his jacket.
His steps carried him out of the bathroom, through a hallway coated in grime and shadow.
The building's cameras had stopped working weeks ago, intentionally, leaving corridors like this one unobserved. Secrets thrived in places like these.

He moved down the narrow staircase. Each step echoed hollowly, reverberating through the empty concrete cage.
The air grew colder as he descended. Clean air mixed with exhaust seeping in from the street below.

Once outside, the night wrapped around him.
The city stretched ahead, painted silver by the moonlight.
Traffic hissed in the distance, the hum of life continuing as if nothing inside that building had just been erased.

He walked with slow, deliberate steps. No one glanced his way. He blended into the dark, another faceless silhouette beneath dim streetlights.

His thoughts didn't quiet. He could still hear the gunshot replaying somewhere in his mind. The short, merciless sound that ended so much in a fraction of a breath.

It wasn't the first time, yet it refused to feel routine.
He knew it wouldn't be the last either, no matter what pity or guilt whispered inside him.
The work always came back. The orders always arrived.
Some nights, it felt like the world would stop demanding blood only when he no longer existed to give it.

He slipped deeper into the city's veins.
Alleys soaked in rain, streets glowing beneath tired advertisements, the rhythm of footsteps carrying him away from what he could never leave behind.

Far above, the night sky hung heavy and clouded. The moon lingered behind it, unseen.

Fourth didn't look up. He didn't look back either.