Chapter Text
After her conversation with Kristi, Sierra left the clinic with a lighter chest and a heavier bag. They had agreed on her helping Kristi out every other day, and she was happy about that since having a purpose made the town feel slightly less suffocating.
Instead of heading straight back to the Lius, she decided to walk around a bit. If she was going to survive here, she needed to know the layout of the land.
Her path took her along the edge of the lightly wooded area bordering the main road. The air was quiet until a sharp, metallic caw echoed from above.
Sierra stopped. Perched on a low, thick branch of an old oak tree was a crow, its feathers glinting like oil in the afternoon light. Dara probably would’ve flinched at the sound considering their weird encounter with them at the tree, but Sierra just watched it. She loved animals, but crows specifically have always fascinated her. They were clever. They remembered faces.
As a child, Sierra once heard a story told by their elderly neighbor Mr. Howard. Apparently his older brother Michael was a “spawn of Satan,” as he put it, and always hurt other kids at the playground.
One day, Michael grabbed a pebble with the intent of throwing it at his younger brother; however, he hit a crow instead. Right on its head. It fell to the ground and Michael cheered loudly. That was until they heard crowing from above.
Mr. Howard had said that this moment was the only time he’d seen his older brother scared. Dozens of angry crows were flying in a circle above him as if an iron sight was carved into the sky while a higher power was pinning Michael to the earth, ready to shoot him.
The crows quietened and Mr. Howard swore that one could’ve heard a pin drop to the ground. A singular caw was all it took for them to dive toward their target. Michael was screaming and running as they picked at him with their little beaks. According to Mr. Howard, his brother had made it home safely, well, with several injuries and chunks of his hair missing.
The next day, Mr. Howard made a little grave for the dead crow, whereas his older brother still had issues going outside since the crows remembered and kept attacking him. Young Sierra was fascinated by this story and had told her neighbor that she would always be kind to animals.
"Hey there," she murmured, her voice soft so she wouldn't startle the bird.
She reached into her bag and opened the bag of almonds. Moving slowly, she stepped toward the edge of the tree line and placed two almonds on the ground before taking three steps back, keeping her eyes on the bird.
The crow tilted its head, its dark, intelligent eyes locked onto her. It didn't fly away. It just watched her, as if it were evaluating whether she belonged here or not.
"Just a peace offering."
For a second, it didn't move. Then, with a sudden hop, it snatched an almond in its beak. But instead of flying away toward the deep forest, it launched itself toward the town.
Sierra’s eyes followed its flight as she rushed behind it. After a minute or two, the bird glided straight toward the open window of one of the wooden buildings, perching right on the ledge. It gave one loud, metallic caw before disappearing into the forest.
Sierra couldn't help but smile slightly. Curiosity got the better of her, and she found her feet moving to check out the facade. It had a giant sign above the porch that said “gasoline.” She could hear murmuring and the clinking of glasses inside.
Once inside, two familiar faces entered her vision; Rosa and Jade. A group of people were playing darts on her left while Jade sat at the bar, seemingly bored by the conversation he had with Rosa and a bearded man.
Rosa noticed Sierra’s presence first, a warm smile spreading across her face.
“Sierra! How are you feeling on this beautiful morning?”
“Not as happy as you, I’m guessing. Good morning, Rosa, Jade, and…” Sierra glanced at the unknown man behind the bar.
“Tom. Nice to meet you and welcome to our lovely distillery.”
Sierra was unsure what it was, maybe his warm green eyes or his kind smile, but there was an instant, familiar warmth to him. He felt like the kind of person you could talk to for hours without even trying.
“You two work here?” Sierra’s gaze flickered between Tom and Rosa.
“Yes, Tom built this wonderful place. A bar where we can all hang out and enjoy a card game or two makes this town feel more like home, don’t you think?”
“I don’t mean to brag, but I also make the best moonshine in town,” Tom said with a wink.
“Not like there’s much competition here,” Jade muttered under his breath, taking another sip of his drink and making a grimace.
“I told you to try a glass of my potato soju, but you didn’t listen,” Rosa chuckled, glancing mockingly at his annoyed expression.
Jade let out a loud, dramatic groan, dropping his curly head into his hands before looking up at the ceiling. “It’s not the alcohol, Rose. It’s the boring stagnation of this place. My brain is rotting — and I don’t mean that metaphorically. There is a logic to everything in the universe, a mathematical code. But this… this is a paradox. That’s the problem.”
Tom wiped down the wooden counter in slow motions, completely unbothered by Jade’s outburst. He looked at Sierra with a knowing glint in his eye. “Don’t mind him. He’s upset because the town won’t give him the answers to his test.”
Sierra sat down next to Jade, fiddling with a radio that was placed on the counter, “Well, a test has a structure. This place is more of an anomaly. Realistically, we shouldn’t even be stuck here.”
“Thank you!” Jade dramatically stood up, gesturing wildly. “At least someone here takes this seriously!”
He kept rambling on, pacing in front of the bar, talking about how they had to understand the paradox to solve it.
“Schrödinger’s cat,” Tom murmured, wiping down the same spot on the counter.
Jade spun around. “What?”
“Schrödinger’s cat,” Tom repeated, leaning his forearms on the bar. “That’s your paradox. You put the cat in the box, and then you close it. As long as you never open it again...”
“...the cat is theoretically alive and dead at the same time,” Jade finished, rolling his eyes. “I know what Schrödinger’s cat is.”
“Then you know the cat isn't actually both. It’s a thought experiment about the limitations of our understanding,” Tom said, pointing a finger at the radio Sierra was touching. “Here, we’re in the box. All those people we left behind at home… well, they’re sitting around and wondering if we’re alive or dead.”
Sierra looked down at the device, her eyes narrowed with focus.
“So maybe the problem isn't that you can’t figure out the box,” Sierra said, turning around on the bar stool to look at Jade. “The problem is trying to force your way out of it with old logic, instead of building a tool that lets us talk to whoever is trying to look inside. Like a walkie-talkie… or a radio.”
Jade’s brown eyes focused on Sierra, then on the device.
Rosa let out a soft sigh and shook her head, though a fond smile remained on her lips. She reached over and lightly tapped Jade’s arm with her fingers to get his attention.
“And right now, you are going to give yourself a headache before you even figure out how to turn this thing on,” Rosa said, her tone light and teasing.
She glanced at his messy curls and the dark circles under his eyes. “I heard you pacing the floor at my place until three in the morning, Jade. You haven't slept, your shirt is a wrinkled mess, and you are getting worked up over a radio. Breathe a little.”
Jade opened his mouth to argue, but Rosa just gave him a look, making him sink back into his stool with a muted groan, running a hand over his face.
Rosa turned her attention back to Sierra, her expression shifting effortlessly into a bright smile as she tucked a strand of her neat, shoulder-length black bob behind her ear.
“I’m sorry, Sierra. Don't let him ruin your morning. He has absolutely no concept of proper company when his brain gets going.”
“It’s fine,” Sierra said, shifting her weight with a relaxed shrug. “I’m used to handling chaotic people. He’s gonna have to do a lot more than that to faze me.”
Jade let out a dry chuckle as he took another sip of his drink.
“I should get going. I wanted to see more of the town before our Choosing Ceremony,” Sierra said, giving Rosa and Tom a polite nod. “Thanks for the conversation.”
Sierra stepped out of the bar, breathing in the fresh air as the sun warmed her face. She decided to walk toward the barn again. Getting close to the animals usually grounded her when her mind started racing.
As she neared the dirt path, she noticed Nathan walking a few paces ahead of her. He looked completely unhinged. His shoulders were tense, and he was muttering to himself, completely oblivious to her presence.
"Nathan?" Sierra called out, quickening her step to catch up with him.
Nathan flinched, spinning around to look at her. His eyes were wide, and his face was unusually pale.
"Sierra. Hey. I... I can't talk right now. I have to find my sister before she does something stu—"
He cut himself off, looking toward the barn with a look of pure dread, clearly seeing or hearing something she couldn’t.
Before Sierra could ask what was wrong, a high-pitched yell echoed from the direction of barn.
They didn't waste a second. Nathan and Sierra bolted toward the sound. Sara and Ethan were standing inside the livestock enclosure while screams came from inside the barn.
“Where is my mom? I want my mom!” Ethan yelled at her.
Nathan crept into the enclosure, moving behind his sister in a desperate attempt to de-escalate the situation. That’s when Sierra noticed the glint of a knife in Sara's right hand. She was holding the little boy's wrist in an iron grip.
“Sara, drop the knife!” Sierra urged, her voice sharp and commanding as she reached the edge of the enclosure.
“They told me this was the last one, then everyone gets to go home,” Sara cried. She gripped the handle tighter as Ethan twisted and pulled, trying to slip out of her hold.
“Ethan! Sara!”
A muffled, frantic yelling came from the back of the barn. Sierra’s head snapped toward the sound. Sara must have trapped Ethan’s mom in one of the backrooms.
In that split second of distraction, Ethan used all his weight to kick Sara hard in the leg.
Sara gasped from the sharp pain, her grip slipping just enough for Ethan to yank his wrist free. The boy took off, sprinting away from her. Seeing the opening, Nathan lunged forward and threw his arms around Sara from behind, pinning her arms down to stop her from chasing the boy.
Sierra hurried toward the struggle, her eyes locked on Sara’s hands to see if she still had the weapon.
“Sara, I need you to calm down. We can fix this,” Sierra pleaded with her hands up as she kept a slight distance from the wrestling siblings.
It all happened in a chaotic blur. Sara, blinded by panic and trying to break free, thrashed violently in her brother's hold, crying that they don’t understand. She managed to twist her body around with a sudden jerk. Her arm whipped backward, and the blade sliced through the air, catching Nathan right across the throat.
“Nathan? Nathan,” Sara hurried toward her brother in shock, trying to stop the bleeding.
As Sara and Nathan slowly fell to the ground, Sierra grabbed the now bloody knife in Sara’s hand and threw it far away as the young woman continued sobbing.
There was no way of her brother surviving this. He had lost too much blood already.
Heavy footsteps approached them from behind. A middle-aged man with a priest outfit jogged into the enclosure area, stopping dead in his tracks as his eyes took in the horrific scene. He dropped to his knees, grabbing a hysterical Sara by the shoulders and pulling her away from Nathan’s body.
"Get up. Sara, look at me, get up!" Khatri whispered urgently, hauling her to her feet and gently pushing her toward the gate.
When he turned back, his dark brown eyes locked onto Sierra. He was breathing heavily, his hands slightly trembling, but his gaze was calculating. They hadn't formally met yet, but he knew exactly who she was.
"You didn't see where she went," Khatri said, his voice a commanding rumble as he took a step closer to Sierra. Not to threaten her, but to make sure she understood. "If the town finds out what she did, they will put her in the Box. It won't bring Nathan back. Do you understand me? You have to trust me."
Sierra eyes moved from the priest to the pool of blood spreading across the dirt. Her mind raced as she thought of the possible outcomes, but she kept her voice steady. "The boy ran. He knows she was holding a knife. Everyone is going to know it was her."
"You need to help Tabitha," Khatri insisted, glancing toward the barn where the muffled banging and shouting had intensified. "But I need you to keep quiet about where she ran off to. For the sake of this town."
Sierra held his gaze for a long second. She didn't like the secrecy, but looking at Nathan's lifeless eyes, she knew causing a manhunt right now would change nothing. She gave the man a single, sharp nod.
"Go," Khatri breathed.
Sierra didn't waste another moment. She checked her hands; there was no blood on them. She turned away from the gruesome scene, ran up to the barn doors, and stepped into the dim interior, following the sound of the desperate yelling.
“Tabitha?”
She ran to the door when she heard, “Over here! Over here! I’m in here!”
Sierra located the barred storage room near the back, lifted the timber bar out of its brackets, and tossed it onto the floor. She pulled the door open, revealing a wide-eyed, panicked Tabitha.
Before Tabitha could even push past her, rapid footsteps thudded against the barn floor. Jim burst through the entrance, his face a mask of pure terror. He locked eyes with his wife, his chest heaving as he sprinted straight toward her.
“You okay? What happened?” Jim tried to calm her down, swiftly glancing at Sierra in confusion.
His wife instantly shoved her hands against his chest, pushing him away with a wild, panicked strength.
"Where is Ethan?" Tabitha yelled, her voice cracking with desperation. "Go and find him!"
They all sprinted outside and saw that a small crowd had formed outside the enclosure, gawking at Nathan’s dead body as if they were bloodthirsty hawks. Tabitha kept repeating her son’s name as they saw a dozen people running to the crime scene, among them Fatima, Ellis, Julie, Dara, and a crying Ethan.
Sierra made her way through the crowd and saw Kristi checking Nathan’s pulse. A shocked Boyd entered the enclosure and locked eyes with Kristi. She shook her head.
He’s dead.
The sun was high in the sky now, hidden behind dark clouds. A fitting weather for the situation they had found themselves in.
Sierra sat on the front porch of the Lius house, her fingers tightly gripped around the cold glass of water Dara had handed her a couple of minutes ago. She hadn't drank a sip. Her mind kept replaying the exact sound of the blade cutting through the air, and the dull thud of Nathan slowly hitting the ground while laying in his killer’s arms.
Dara sat beside her, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked exhausted, her eyes slightly red from a quiet crying spell that had finally stopped. A sobbing Ethan had ran to them, mumbling something about Sara, Sierra, Nathan, and a knife. She thought her older sister had gotten hurt.
Sierra glanced at Dara again.
She shouldn’t be here.
Victor was right. Dara shouldn’t be here, but then again, none of them should be. She definitely needed to talk to Victor again and some point. He said that he told her Sierra would arrive alone. Sara also said that they told her to do it so that everyone could go home.
“What the fuck is going on here,” Sierra mumbled. To herself? To Dara? She didn’t even know. She didn’t know anything.
"They're going to bury him at the church," Dara whispered, her voice barely carrying over the quiet hum of the wind. "Kenny and Boyd are digging the grave now. It feels wrong. Back home, there would be a service. Flowers. A proper wake."
"Nothing here is proper, D," Sierra said quietly, staring down at her clean hands. She still felt like she could feel the cold metal of the knife handle she had ripped out of Sara's grip.
Footsteps crunched on the gravel of the path. Sierra looked up to see Boyd walking toward them. He looked older than he had yesterday morning, his shoulders carrying the weight of a town that was rapidly spinning out of control.
Jim Matthews had screamed at him earlier in front of the porch they’re sitting on, demanding answers Boyd didn't have, and the stress was written in the deep lines around the sheriff's eyes.
“One big family. Is that what you said? Are you fucking kidding me?” Jim had said, anger clearly visible.
Father Khatri had stood beside Boyd, quiet and observing. Sierra felt bad for knowing what she knew.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, Boyd walked toward them, stopping at the base of the porch steps, a hand resting on the wooden railing. He looked at Dara first, a gentle, tired nod of acknowledgment, before his gaze shifted and locked onto Sierra.
"Sierra," Boyd said, his voice rough. "Can I have a word?"
Dara looked between them, sensing the shift in energy. She quietly stood up, squeezing Sierra’s shoulder before retreating inside the house, leaving the two of them alone on the porch.
“Of course, Sheriff.”
Boyd climbed the steps but didn't sit. He leaned against the railing, looking out toward the distant barn. "The boy is back with his parents. He's shaken up, but he's physically fine. He told me what happened before he ran. He said that Sara had a knife and was threatening him, and he said you were there too."
"I was walking to the barn to see the animals," Sierra said, her voice steady and factual. "I saw Nathan looking panicked, so I followed him. By the time we got to the enclosure, Sara had the knife. Nathan tried to get her to calm down until Ethan kicked her and ran. It was chaos."
"And then?" Boyd pressed, his eyes narrowing slightly, searching her face for any tells. "Ethan said that he ran toward the road. He didn't see what happened next. By the time Jim and the rest of us got there, Nathan was on the ground and Sara was gone. Did you see where she went, Sierra? Did she say anything to you?"
Sierra's fingers softly glided over the slightly raised scar on her right palm.
"No," Sierra lied smoothly, looking Boyd dead in the eye. "Nathan tried to grab her from behind to stop her from chasing the kid. They wrestled. The knife caught his throat, and she panicked. She tried to stop the bleeding, but it was no use. She took off toward the woods before I could even process what happened. I ran inside the barn because I heard Tabitha screaming for help. There was no chance of Nathan making it out alive at that point."
Boyd stared at her for a long, agonizing second or two. He let out a heavy sigh, running a hand over his face.
"Right. The woods. That's what Father Khatri said too. Kenny and I were looking earlier, but if she went deep into those trees..." he trailed off, shaking his head.
“I’m sorry, Sheriff. I wish I could’ve helped more.”
Boyd looked at her, his expression softening just a fraction.
"Don't do that to yourself," Boyd said quietly, straightening up from the railing. "This place pushes people until they snap. It's not on you."
He paused, looking back toward the front door of the sheriff station. "Look, you and Dara… I know you both just got here, and we usually do the Choosing Ceremony ritual, but with everything going on, a big crowd is the last thing this town needs today."
Sierra finally looked up, meeting his eyes.
"Nathan and Sara's house is going to be empty now," Boyd continued, rubbing the back of his neck. "It's small, but it's quiet. Once things settle down, I think it’d be best if you and Dara took it. Gives you two some space… if that's alright with you."
"Yeah," Sierra said, her voice barely above a whisper. "That sounds alright. Thank you, Sheriff."
Boyd gave a single, tired nod, turning back down the porch steps to head toward the graveyard. Sierra watched him go, her grip tightening on the glass until her knuckles turned white.