Gallery Shadows

Rusty fire escapes rattled in the moonlight on the corner of Seventh Avenue in Chelsea. When the hobos saw the woman in the scarlet cape walk into the abandoned freezer, they thought it was another performance art by some pioneering artist. Until early the next morning, when they noticed the smell of blood mixed with turpentine wafting from the vents.

Emma-now she should be called Veronica-stepped across the floor of rat corpses in ten-centimeter studded boots. She was followed by three men in gas masks, carts with picture frames wrapped in black cloth, like a body team escorting a shrouded body bag.

"Hang The Twin Flowers directly in front of the ventilation ducts." Her voice was processed through a voice changer with the characteristic hiss of electronic equipment. The workers unwrapped the package with trepidation, only to scream the instant they saw the painting - the vines were actually writhing in the darkness.

Leah will never know the intentions of the mysterious buyer who took all of her paintings at last week's auction. At the moment her prized sable brushes are soaking in formalin as part of an installation of Twin Flowers. Emma brushed over the spikes on the edges of the frame, her fingertips stained with the fluorescent blue-green paint that had been refined from the wilted turtlebacks in the greenery section of Lucas's office.

"Ms. Veronica, there's a problem with the power supply." The electrician pointed to the flickering chandelier. Instead, Emma stared at the third button of his overalls, which hid the miniature camera Leah's father had sent. She purposely lifted a corner of the canvas to show the monitor the digital watermark that loomed among the vines.

Emma was mixing ashes into the palette when the warehouse roll-up door suddenly popped. It was an offering stolen from her own fake tombstone, mixed with Leah's usual Venetian turpentine. The moment the five gun-toting thugs broke down the door, she pressed the EMP hidden in her earring.

"Who sent you?" She stomped on the leader's throat, her studded boot stabbing into Adam's apple. The man's pupils reflected her unmasked face-or rather, the superimposition of twenty different faces. Underneath the holographic projection mask, festering skin was writhing eerily under the effect of fluorescent tattoos.

The thugs suddenly convulsed and foamed at the mouth. They wouldn't have thought that they had inhaled the nanotoxin mixed in the acrylic paint from the moment they entered the door. Emma crouched down and picked the skin on the back of the thug's neck with her painting knife; the biochip hidden under the dermis was smoking. Sure enough, it was a cleaner sent by Leah's father.

"Project their retinas onto the Confessor series canvas." She said to her paralyzed with fear assistant. The eyeballs of these thugs would make the perfect canvas to record their employer's dirtiest secrets. When a New York Times reporter comes to cover it next week, he or she will think it's some kind of postmodern installation.

As the clock strikes midnight, Emma stands alone in front of Twin Flowers. She shines a laser pointer at the vine in the upper left corner of the painting, and the tangled branches disintegrate into binary code in the ultraviolet light-exactly the login code for Leah's private blog. And the wilted petal in the lower right corner was the decoding key for Lucas's encrypted cloud drive.

"Are you sure you want to leave a double authentication trail?" Hacker Arthur's voice came from the invisible headset. The genius who had hacked the Pentagon was currently helping her replicate the entire gallery in the metaverse.

Emma stabbed a paint-stained brush into the canvas, and blue oil paint seeped down the cracks into the basement. There hid the real control center: twenty-seven screens simultaneously playing images of Lucas's smart home, data from Leah's fitness ring, and a 3D structural map of their new villa.

"I want them to walk into the gallery themselves as sacrifices." She said as she opened the safe and removed test tubes soaked in liquid nitrogen. Frozen iris seeds awoke in the blue light, a variant bred from the ashes of that year's fire, with poisonous spines on the backs of their petals that were hard to see with the naked eye.

The alarm suddenly shrills. Surveillance showed a man in a fisherman's hat prowling the back alley, a handheld device scanning the gallery facade. Emma recognized it as Lucas's most trusted cybersecurity officer, with the miniature signal jammer always attached to the second button of his shirt.

She smiled and activated the sonic weapon. As the man crouched to tie his shoes, the resonance device on the gallery's facade emitted an 18-hertz infrasound - the frequency threshold that triggers human fear. The man is horrified to see blue blood oozing from the brickwork, which is actually a hallucinogenic chip implanted in his retina.

"The game is just beginning." Emma raised her glass to the surveillance screen. Fluorescent particles were suspended in the red wine, resonating and glowing with the iris tattoo on her arm. Those magnetic pigments, injected during the tattoo, were currently guiding Arthur's hacking program through Lucas Corporation's firewall.

In the darkest hour before dawn, she turned Twin Flowers 180 degrees. The metal relief on the back of the painting casts a ghostly shadow in the moonlight, and upon closer inspection turns out to be a confidential document signed by Leah's father. The real estate scam that had caused Emma's parents to go bankrupt twenty years ago was hidden in these decorative flourishes.

"Ms. Veronica, the curator is here." The assistant's voice was shaking. They didn't understand why they were inviting the art critic who had smeared Emma back then, much less why they were placing champagne towers in front of the Atonement series-just like the glass that Leah had knocked over that night on Christmas Eve.

When the curator reaches out and touches the frame, the nanowires activate instantly. His smartwatch began to automatically send out explosive emails, with a list of recipients that included nine mainstream media outlets and the FBI's anti-corruption division. And the trigger button was the tail number of the bank account where he had taken the bribe back then.

"Have you ever heard of the three temperatures of revenge?" Emma suddenly appeared behind the curator. Without waiting for him to answer, the gallery air conditioner suddenly spewed out cold air mixed with hallucinogens. The man saw himself on fire in a hallucination, just like Emma struggling in the fire five years ago.

The moment the exhibition is completed, all the paintings suddenly turn around on their own. The original cozy idyllic landscapes turn into eerie anatomical drawings; those pretty flower stems hide human skeletons, and the fluttering butterflies are actually surveillance drone designs. The QR code hidden in Spring Picnic automatically sends a death threat to Lucas' cell phone when scanned.

Emma is making the final perfume when Arthur delivers the shortcut. She removes Chanel N°5, which has been kept for five years, from the safe and mixes it with iris neurotoxin. This modified version of the perfume releases a tracer through sweat when it touches the skin, and even better - it turns into a deadly poison when it meets vodka.

"Any idea why you picked today to set up the exhibit?" She asked her assistant, who was cowering in the corner. The electronic calendar on the wall showed March 14th, Pi Day. When Leah refreshes the gallery's website at 3:14 a.m., all the exhibit images turn into sneak peek videos of her cheating.

Before the storm hits, Emma opens the secret mezzanine. The entire wall slowly flips over, revealing thousands of miniature capsules - each containing a different revenge scenario. She removes the one labeled "Wedding Dress," which contains a custom-made veil sent to Leah by the bridal store, the lace edges drenched in infertility drugs.

"Time to send out invitations to the guests." She sprinkled the gold dust mixed with the ashes into the air. The invitations, which automatically revealed a blood-colored iris pattern as they passed through the gold dust, were addressed to the firefighters who had perjured themselves that year, the medical examiner who had tampered with the autopsy report, and the directors of the twelve shell corporations controlled by Leah's father.

As the first rays of sunlight penetrate the shattered glass roof, Emma stands in front of Twin Flowers to complete the last rites. She slides her left hand into the dark compartment behind the frame, the tattoo a perfect fit for the biometric lock. With the sound of machinery running, the painting cracks in half, revealing a gene-editing lab hidden in the wall.

Floating in the incubation chamber were clones mixed with her and Leah's DNA, the most surprising gift ever given to a newlywed couple. When Leah discovers she's "pregnant" at the climax of the wedding, the monster bred from her eggs will tear down all the lies.

On her way out, Emma sets down a golden iris plant in front of the gallery. Buried in the dirt is the air conditioning control system for the Lucas villa, and the dew on the leaves is actually a liquid tracker. When Leah's father comes to the opening reception next week, every breath he takes will be used against him in court.

Corner surveillance captures the woman in red suddenly tearing her face off for the camera before she disappears - a holographic projection trick, of course. The real killing trick is hidden in the gallery bathroom: every faucet is flowing with ash water from the fire scene of that year, and the mirror is made of memory glass, which will gradually emerge the face of the real arsonist.

And at the moment Leah is lying in her fiancé's arms, smiling daintily as she clicks on the anonymous MMS she just received. The photo was of the burned out drawing room, and she hadn't noticed the melted cell phone in the corner that was uploading the last thirty seconds of surveillance footage to the cloud.