Immortal Pulse

The panic room smelled like birthday cake and battery acid. Ayla kicked open the steel door to reveal seven children chained to a banquet table, their mouths stitched with silver thread. The youngest—a girl with Lila's exact freckle pattern—stared up at her with Lucas' wolf-gold eyes.

"Party's over," Ayla said, snapping the chains with Selena's own diamond-encrusted bolt cutters. The children didn't move. Their chests rose and fell in perfect unison.

(Three floors above, Lila clutched her sternum as Selena's office grandfather clock chimed. Each tick squeezed her aorta. The pendulum swung in time with her jugular.)

The girl with stolen freckles pressed her ear to Ayla's boot. "You taste like him," she lisped through unhealed stitch holes. "The bad dog."

Ayla froze. "What did she make you do?"

The children answered in a hive-mind drone:

"Be Melissa when she's angry." "Be Lucas when she's lonely." "Be you when she plots."

Their hands lifted in unison, pointing to a mural of Selena holding a scalpel to the sun. The solar flares were serial numbers.

Lila's scream rattled the air ducts.

Selena's office was a museum of stolen heartbeats. Lila staggered past:

Framed EKGs labeled "First Betrayal (Age 4)"A music box playing arrhythmic lullabiesThe grandfather clock's pendulum—a surgical needle dripping viscous fluid

She pressed her palm to the clock face. The glass froze her fingerprints.

Tick Her left pupil dilated.

Tock Her right thumb spasmed.

"Syncing nicely," Selena purred through hidden speakers. "Shall we test defibrillation?"

The clock struck thirteen. Lila collapsed as her heartbeat reversed.

Molten gold swallowed the engagement ring whole. Ayla watched it sink into the mansion's geothermal veins, the same ones Selena had tapped for her "eternal nursery".

"Enjoy hell," she muttered.

The children screamed in unison. The ground heaved, splitting the panic room floor. From the magma bloomed a shadow—Lucas' silhouette rendered in superheated ash, his hand outstretched.

"Bullshit!" Ayla lunged, boots smoking. "You don't get to—"

His shadow disintegrated, leaving a single molten dog tag chain dangling over the abyss. The children's chanting rose to a crescendo:

"Bad dog digs deeper!"

Lila came to surrounded by dismantled medical gear. The grandfather clock lay gutted, its pendulum impaling a portrait of infant Selena. The children huddled nearby, breathing ragged but individual.

Ayla tossed her a charred dog tag. "Found your new jewelry."

The tag cooled into a key. Lila pressed it to her throbbing sternum. The imprint matched Selena's locket pattern.

"Where are they?" She nodded to the children.

"Eating real cake." Ayla kicked the broken clock. "Turns out icing beats IV drips."

The mansion groaned. Somewhere beneath them, magma hardened into a wolf-shaped tomb. Somewhere above, a stitched mouth learned to scream.

Postscript: Lullaby Feedback Loop

That night, the rescued girl with stolen freckles crawled into Ayla's cot.

"He says you owe him a dance," she whispered, breath smelling of sulfur and vanilla frosting.

Ayla's knife was at her throat before fully awake. "What else?"

The child tapped her stitched lips. Clock gears ground in her chest.

Always grinding.