Then, she found it. The paperwork for the cameras, with the access codes scribbled in pen on the front.

Of course, this meant she had to watch the footage.

She went to the kitchen, opened up a cabinet, and pulled out a bottle of whiskey—the good stuff, a birthday gift from a Scottish ex-boyfriend. This was the stuff she touched only on very special occasions. She poured herself a heavy shot into a juice glass and drank it all in one go. Then she pulled her curtains shut and sat in front of her computer. She went to the site, entered the codes, and was granted access. She clicked through the options, selecting Playback.

According to the news, the murder had occurred between five thirty and six in the morning. She set the playback time to start at 6:05. Then, with a deep breath, she hit Play, and then Rewind.

The footage was shot in night vision mode, which gave it a strange green-gray cast. And the first thing she saw was the body. It lay there alone on the concrete patio by the fence. It was strangely peaceful, if you ignored the gaping wound in the abdomen and the dark pool around it. Veronica swallowed hard and tried to control her breathing. Failure, her arse.

She could have stopped right there, could have immediately called the police, but something compelled her to keep watching. Horrible as it was, there was something compelling about being the first person to see the killer. He (or she) had to be on here.

She would be a hero—the person who recovered the footage. The person who caught the Ripper on film.

Veronica slowed it down, reversing gingerly. She watched the eerie sight of the blood seeping back into the body. The time markers ticked back. At 5:42 A.M., some of the dark objects around the woman began to move. Now Veronica could see what they were—intestines, a stomach—tucked neatly back into a gaping abdomen. Then the abdomen itself was carefully sealed up with the flash of a knife. The woman sat up, then rose from the ground in a sudden and unnatural way. The knife sealed a wound on her neck. Now she crashed into the fence. Now she was flailing. She was walking backward out of the garden.

Veronica paused the image at time stamp: 5:36 A.M.

The cameras had not failed, but her mind was slowly grasping what they had captured. And what they had captured made no sense. She became bizarrely calm, and played back the footage in the right order. Then she rewound and played it back again. Then she went to the kitchen and poured herself another juice glass full of whiskey. She threw up into the sink, wiped her mouth, and drank a glass of water.

She couldn’t keep this to herself. She would go mad.

PERSISTENT ENERGY

PERSISTENT ENERGY