Chapter 4 ⚠️ Smokestacks ⚠️
Sabrina
The scream didn't just pierce the quiet morning air—it tore right through it, jagged and hysterical.
I spun back toward the crowd, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Near the center of the circle, right at the edge of the dark pool of blood surrounding Joshua Millersburg’s broken body, a blonde girl in a Ridgeview cheerleading jacket was clutching her face.
It was his girlfriend. Her eyes were wide with a blind, unadulterated terror as she stared at the glowing, cracked screen still clutched in Josh’s cold hand.
"Josh! No, no, no, wake up!" she shrieked, her voice cracking into a raw, desperate sob.
She took one staggering step forward, her knees buckling beneath her. Before anyone could catch her, her eyes rolled back into her head and she collapsed onto the wet concrete, fainting dead away right beside the gruesome crime scene.
Pandemonium broke out.
Students scrambled backwards, shouting for help, while a couple of varsity guys dropped to their knees to drag her away from the blood.
The air was instantly flooded with shouting, crying, and the distant, wailing approach of emergency sirens.
My head was spinning. My stomach pitched violently, and I tore my eyes away from the scene, instinctively turning back toward the concrete pillar near the courtyard where Luke had been standing just seconds ago.
He was gone.
The space beneath the pillar was completely empty. I scanned the chaotic swarm of students, searching for a flash of dirty-blond hair or a dark leather jacket, but he had managed to slip away into the shadows without making a sound.
My breath came in shallow, ragged hitches. He knew.
Yesterday in the alcove, he had grabbed me and told me to leave. He had warned me about this place, about the danger, before anyone even took the app seriously.
How could he possibly have known unless he was involved? Or worse, unless he was the one behind it?
I looked toward the far eastern edge of the campus. Beyond the modern brick halls and manicured lawns sat the old agricultural wing—a forgotten corner of Ridgeview dominated by an abandoned, Victorian-style greenhouse. The glass panes were rusted and cracked, half-buried under creeping ivy. That was the direction he had been walking.
Ignoring the frantic shouts of teachers trying to herd students inside, I turned my back on the crowd and headed toward the greenhouse.
The noise of the panic melted away the farther I walked. By the time I reached the rusted iron frame of the greenhouse structure, the wailing sirens felt miles away.
I pushed open the heavy, creaking wooden door. The air inside hit me instantly—thick, humid, and heavy with the smell of wet earth, rotting leaves, and old moss.
Sunlight filtered weakly through the filthy, fractured glass ceiling, casting long, jagged shadows across the overgrown flora.
It was silent, save for the slow, rhythmic dripping of water from a broken overhead pipe.
"I know you're in here," I said, my voice echoing slightly against the glass.
I tried to sound brave, but the tremor in my chest betrayed me.
"You're trespassing, scholarship girl," a raspy voice drawled from the back corner.
I rounded a dense wall of wild, untamed ferns.
Standing near a row of empty, cracked terracotta pots was Luke. He was leaning casually against a rusted steel support beam, his long legs crossed at the ankles.
Between his index and middle finger, a thin trail of grey smoke curled upward into the humid air.
He had a lit cigarette pressed to his lips. He took a slow, deliberate drag, the tip glowing a dull, embers-red, before exhaling a thick cloud of smoke toward the broken glass above us.
"Smoking on school grounds," I said, crossing my arms tightly over my chest, my eyes narrowing. "Add it to the list of rules you don't give a damn about."
"Call the principal," Luke replied dryly, not even looking at me. "I'm sure he's not busy at all right now."
The casual, callous dismissiveness in his voice made my blood boil. Outside, a boy was lying broken in a pool of his own blood, and here Luke was, hiding out in a ruined greenhouse, puffing on a cigarette as if it were just another dull Tuesday morning.
I took two sharp steps forward, closing the distance between us.
"How did you know?" I demanded, my tone sharp as a razor. "Yesterday, in the hallway. You grabbed me. You told me to leave Ridgeview for my own sake. And now Joshua Millersburg is dead, exactly like that stupid app said he would be. How did you know what was going to happen?"
Luke finally turned his head to look at me. His stormy grey eyes were completely unreadable, buried beneath the shadow of his messy, dirty-blond hair.
He took another slow drag of his cigarette, letting the silence stretch between us until it felt suffocating.
"I didn't," he exhaled, the cold, flat words riding on a plume of smoke that drifted into my face. "Nobody does."
"Don't lie to me!" I snapped, my defensive walls rising higher. "You looked at your phone in homeroom, you didn't even panic when everyone else did, and then you backed me into a wall to give me some cryptic threat. You're hiding something, Luke."
A faint, bitter smirk tugged at the corner of his sharp jawline, though there was zero warmth in it.
"If I were the one killing people, Markson, do you really think I'd be stupid enough to give you a head-up in a hallway?" He shook his head, looking at me as if I were a child trying to solve a complex equation. "I don't know who built the app. I don't know how Josh died. But I know how this school works. When something rotten enters a place like Ridgeview, the foundations break first."
"That doesn't explain why you told me to leave!"
"I told you to leave because you don't belong here," he said plainly, his voice dropping an octave. "You're an outsider. You don't have a rich daddy with a team of lawyers to protect you when things go sideways. You're fragile prey in a shark tank, and you're too busy staring at your shoes to realize the water is already red."
I glared at him, my fists clenching so hard at my sides that my fingernails bit into my palms. The absolute, arrogant nerve of him was infuriating.
He didn't know a single thing about me, my life, or what I had survived just to earn my seat in this school.
"I am not fragile," I hissed, taking another step toward him until I was standing right in front of his tall frame. "And for the record? I don't like you, Luke Carpenter. I don't like your attitude, I don't like your creepy warnings, and I definitely don't like you."
Luke stared down at me, his grey eyes piercing right through my anger. He didn't flinch, didn't shift his weight, and didn't look the least bit offended.
Slowly, he lifted the cigarette to his mouth one last time, took a long drag, and then dropped the smoldering butt onto the damp concrete floor.
He brought his heavy leather boot down, crushing the ember into dust with a slow, deliberate twist of his heel.
"Good," he rumbled softly, his voice rough as sandpaper. "The feeling is entirely mutual."
He straightened up, casting a long, intimidating shadow over me as he lowered his head slightly, his face mere inches from mine. The scent of tobacco, rain, and cold air washed over me.
"You had a chance to turn around and walk away at those iron gates this morning, Sabrina," he whispered, using my first name for the very first time. It sounded strange on his lips—heavy, dangerous, and far too personal. "You chose to walk in. Now you're in the game."
He held my gaze for a long, agonizing second, making sure every single word sank deep into my mind.
"Watch your back," he added grimly, stepping around me. "Because whatever that app is... it’s going to happen to all of us."
Before I could fire back another insult, Luke strode past the wild ferns, pushed open the heavy wooden door, and stepped out into the misty morning air.
The door creaked shut behind him, leaving me completely alone in the quiet, damp gloom of the greenhouse.
I stood there for a long time, listening to the drip of the water pipe and the distant hum of police sirens, my hands trembling as his final warning echoed relentlessly in my head.
