Chapter 2

By the time I got to the construction site on the south side of campus, dawn was just beginning to break.

Red and blue police lights spun through the morning fog, and the entire site had already been sealed off with police tape.

Chloe was standing outside the perimeter, pale as a sheet. The moment she saw me, she rushed over.

"Ethan..." Her voice was shaking. "Luke..."

I looked past her shoulder toward the heart of the construction site.

A black body bag lay at the edge of a mud pit. Nearby stood three police officers and two fraternity officials in suits.

"Let me through." I pulled the tape aside.

One of the officers stopped me. "This is an active crime scene—"

"I'm a classmate of the victim. I was in the lab with him yesterday."

The officer hesitated, then finally stepped aside.

I walked to the edge of the mud pit.

The body bag wasn't fully zipped. I could see half of Luke's face. He was facedown, his mouth and nostrils packed with mud, one hand stretched stiffly forward, his fingers dug deep into the dirt.

The pose looked like he'd been desperately trying to grab hold of something.

The sight instantly made me think of the rhyme.

"A rag doll in the mire."

One of the suited men beside me said quietly to the police, "There was a fraternity party last night. He had too much to drink. He probably wandered onto the site and accidentally fell into the pit and suffocated."

"But why would he come here?" one of the officers asked.

"Who knows? Drunk people do stupid things."

The man's tone was confident. "We'll cooperate with the investigation, but this was an accident. No need to make it more complicated than it is."

I stared at Luke's body.

I knew it wasn't an accident.

"Ethan!"

Professor Black's voice came from behind me.

I turned and saw him striding toward us, his face hard and ugly with anger.

He stopped in front of the police and pointed at me. "Officer, I want to report this student."

"What?"

"The lab audio file was illegally distributed yesterday. I suspect he used hacking methods to steal experimental data and create some kind of hallucinatory audio, which caused Luke Harrington to suffer a mental break and led to this accident."

Professor Black spoke loudly, making sure everyone around us could hear.

"He's a foreign student. His technical background is unclear. I've suspected him for a long time. He should bear full responsibility for this incident."

Chloe suddenly grabbed my arm.

I looked at Professor Black.

He knew the nursery rhyme was real, but I knew what he was doing. He wanted me as the fall guy. He wanted to bury the whole thing and protect the lab's funding.

"Professor," I said evenly, "are you sure you want to do this?"

"What do you mean?"

"The lab server still has every bit of data from your so-called supernatural research over the last three years."

I pulled out my phone. "And as for what else is in there, I'm sure you know better than I do."

Professor Black's expression changed instantly.

"You wouldn't dare—"

"I don't want to. But if you insist on pinning this on me, I'll do what I have to do."

The officers and fraternity officials around us all turned to look.

Professor Black stared at me, a vein jumping at his temple.

"What do you want?" he asked in a lower voice.

"Tell me what the nursery rhyme really is."

"This isn't the place to talk—"

"Then talk now." I stepped closer. "Luke is dead. Who's next? You know exactly who."

Professor Black clenched his jaw, then finally gave in.

"Come with me."

He turned and headed toward a temporary site office at the edge of the construction zone.

I was just about to follow him when a sudden commotion broke out behind me.

"Oh my God!"

"Call someone!"

"David! David, what are you doing?!"

I spun around.

In the middle of the crowd, the fraternity's vice president, David, suddenly burst forward.

His eyes had rolled back, his pupils completely unfocused, and an eerie smile hung at the corners of his mouth.

"David!" Someone tried to grab him.

He shoved the person aside and ran straight toward the tower crane next to the site.

"Stop him!" a police officer shouted.

But it was too late.

David climbed the steel frame of the crane with the speed and agility of a monkey—far too fast, far too easily.

Ten meters.

Fifteen.

He climbed all the way to the tip of the crane's horizontal jib and sat there with his legs hanging in open air.

Then he started swinging his body back and forth.

Swinging higher, up to the sky.

"Oh my God..." Chloe's voice trembled.

David's legs dangled as his body swung higher and higher like a pendulum, and under his breath he was humming something.

I listened carefully.

It was the nursery rhyme.

"David! Don't move!" The firefighters were already setting up an air cushion below.

But David couldn't hear them.

He swung higher and higher, and then suddenly let go with both hands—

"No—!"

Chloe screamed and threw herself into my arms.

I held her tight and covered her eyes with my hand.

David hit the concrete below.

Silence dropped over the scene.

Chloe was trembling violently in my arms when she suddenly let out a strangled cry of pain.

"What is it?"

She lifted her arm.

I pulled back her sleeve.

On her pale skin, a line of blood-red words was slowly appearing, as if branded there by a hot iron:

The rag doll drifts upon the water. Once it sinks, it won't be seen again

The third line of the rhyme.

Chloe stared at her own arm, and tears flooded her eyes at once.

"Ethan..." Her voice broke completely. "I don't want to die..."