Chapter 1

"Chloe!"

A deafening roar ripped me violently from my sleep.

"Tell me what the hell you did!"

A pair of massive hands clamped onto my shoulders, shaking me so fiercely my stomach churned.

My eyes snapped open. After a brief moment of blurriness, my vision finally came into focus.

Looming over my bed was a burly, middle-aged man with a heavy stubble. He wore a rain-soaked trench coat, a police badge hanging from his neck.

Detective Briggs.

Before I could even process why he was standing in my dorm room, a thick, nauseating stench assaulted my senses.

"W-what happened to me?" I stammered.

"You seriously have the nerve to ask?"

Briggs hauled me up by my shirt.

"Turn around and look for yourself!"

I swallowed hard and stiffly turned my head.

In that instant, it felt as if all the blood had drained from my entire body.

My three roommates—Sloane, Lexi, and Blair—lay in pooling blood, their bodies contorted at grotesque, unnatural angles.

The dorm's cream-colored walls now looked like they had been splashed with buckets of red paint. It was a horrifying sight.

Sloane was lying flat on her back next to her desk, her lifeless eyes staring blankly at the ceiling, bulging so far out they almost popped from their sockets.

A massive chunk of her throat was simply missing, the edges of the wound jagged and violently torn.

Lexi and Blair were slumped over each other on the rug by the door. Their pajamas had been shredded into bloody rags, and their exposed skin was covered in massive, bone-deep claw marks.

"No... this isn't real..." I scrambled back into the corner of my bed on instinct, clamping both hands over my mouth.

I tried to scream, but only broken, choked sobs escaped my throat.

What the hell was happening?

"The door was deadbolted from the inside, and the windows are bolted shut."

Briggs glared at me.

"This fourth-floor dorm room is a perfect locked room."

"And you, Chloe, are the only one in this room still breathing."

"Without a single drop of blood on you."

"It wasn't me!"

"I didn't kill them!" I shook my head frantically.

How could I possibly murder someone?

Sure, Sloane and the others were always targeting me, but I wouldn't even dare step on a bug. How could I have shredded them like this?

"Not you?"

"Then who?"

"A ghost?" Briggs took a threatening step closer.

I forced myself to calm down, my eyes frantically scanning the trashed room.

Suddenly, my gaze landed on the metal wardrobe next to Sloane’s bed.

There were three deep gouges carved into the metal—like they had been scraped out by some massive, razor-sharp claws.

Human fingernails could never do that. Even with a knife, no one could leave behind scratch marks that animalistic.

Right then, the screen of my phone next to my pillow lit up. It was a push notification for the local news.

Before bed last night, I’d been tossing and turning, suffocated by the oppressive atmosphere in the dorm, mindlessly scrolling on my phone. I had seen a news alert:

URGENT: Transport truck flips en route to city zoo. Highly aggressive, unidentified predator (The Beast) escapes. Currently heading toward St. Judy University. Residents are advised to securely lock all doors and windows!

I snatched up the phone and shoved the screen right into Detective Briggs's face.

"It's the Beast!"

"It's the wild animal that escaped!" My voice went shrill with panic.

"Look at those marks!"

"Those are from claws!"

"That beast must have crawled in through a vent or something last night. It's the one that attacked Sloane and the girls!"

Detective Briggs glanced at the screen, his eyebrows knitted tightly.

"A beast?"

"A beast that knows how to deadbolt the door from the inside after slaughtering three people, then vanishes without a trace, leaving you alone to sleep like a baby in your bed?"

"Chloe, do you take me for a fool?"

"I don't know!"

"I really don't know!" I grabbed chunks of my own hair in a total breakdown.

There were massive blank spots in my memory.

All I could remember from last night was Sloane, backed by Lexi and Blair, cornering me again. They had forced those bitter pills down my throat, and then I passed out.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was to this hellscape.

"Put on your coat. You're coming with me to the station." Briggs coldly pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

"In this locked room, you are the one and only suspect."

The moment the cold steel clicked around my wrists, I looked down at the three bodies on the floor. Amidst the sheer, numbing terror, a twisted, absurd sense of relief actually flickered in my chest.

If I had been awake last night, there would probably just be one more corpse lying right beside them.