Day 283. Five days had passed. Five bloody days.

The killer didn't slow down—if anything, he'd gotten more efficient. One body per day, like clockwork. But whatever pattern Victoria thought she'd seen, it was changing. The victims still bore the killer's signature: they were weak. Amputees, chronically ill, dependent. But now he was branching out. Diversifying his portfolio.

The last two victims were young—one barely twenty, the other a girl who used a crutch. One male, one female. The killer, Victoria noted, was inclusive. Equal-opportunity executioner. She'd even caught herself muttering it to Alice:

"Feminist killer. Doesn't discriminate. Very progressive."

Alice didn't laugh.

But Lili? Lili was no longer part of the equation.

Victoria hadn't seen a single misstep from her in the last five days. No shady alibis. No strange disappearances. Just quiet, consistent normalcy. She ate, she worked, she slept. She mourned Bertolt, but didn't let the grief rot her. Somehow, she'd started to recover. She was moving on.

And yesterday—day 282—she'd done something that Victoria had never expected: she asked to join her distribution team.

"She's a natural." Victoria had told Alice last night. Not because the work was hard—hauling crates of dried food wasn't exactly delicate—but because Lili didn't shy away from the worst parts. She took the heavy loads without complaint. She didn't argue when sent into the wind.

Victoria had watched her closely that whole first day. Watched for the subtle tremble, or the too-straight walk of someone performing innocence. But Lili just... worked. And for the first time in weeks, Victoria found herself relaxing. She wasn't even sure when it had happened, but at some point between the last house drop and the freezer run, she'd stopped treating Lili like a suspect and started treating her like a partner.

Whatever she'd been before—guilty, innocent, broken—it didn't matter now.

This felt like a fresh start.

By now, Lili moved like she'd been on the team for weeks. She knew where things were stored, what the labels meant, even which boxes had the busted corners and should be avoided. So when Victoria assigned her the solo task of fetching frozen fish and meat from the freezer, it felt like the next logical step. Trusting her felt... right.

It was a tough task. Freezer duty always was. Hauling slippery crates from near-zero temperatures. On her first solo run weeks ago, Victoria had taken twenty extra minutes. Her lungs couldn't keep up with the cold air, and she'd needed to rest halfway through just to keep from collapsing.

So when Lili took a bit longer, Victoria didn't think much of it.

Until it became a full hour.

When Lili finally returned, cheeks flushed and fingers red, Victoria asked if she had any problems.

Lili wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Yeah, kinda. I wasn't sure which kind of fish the list meant. Some of the names didn't match the labels in there, so I had to check the booklet and figure it out. Took me a while."

That was fair. The inventory booklet was a mess. Pages half-torn, names written in three different handwritings, half the pictures faded. Still, something about the delay tugged at her. An hour was a long time.

But she didn't press. Two days ago, she would've. Would've narrowed her eyes and asked what else Lili saw. Would've timed her heartbeat, her eye twitches, anything for a crack in the story.

Now? She just praised her first successful freezer run.

Trust, it turned out, was easier than suspicion. And quieter.

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