[A/N: Before I continue someone pointed a good idea, Koji being worried about Aleksander being stuck in lab all the time enrolls him in school, just for social life.
You can decide which one.
1)Riverdale
2)Briar University (Off Campus)]
The fire crackled quietly in the manager’s office of the New York Continental.
Winston sat in his high-backed leather chair, a glass of bourbon resting on the side table next to him.
He was halfway through a leather-bound first edition when the heavy wooden doors opened.
Charon stepped into the room.
His posture was, as always, perfectly rigid, but he carried a silver tray with a single, unsealed envelope resting on it.
Winston looked over the rim of his reading glasses.
He had known Charon for decades.
The concierge was a master of absolute neutrality, but today, Winston saw a very rare, subtle flicker of genuine interest in the man’s eyes.
Winston closed his book.
“What is it, Charon?”
“A message, sir,” Charon answered, stopping in front of the desk.
“The Ghost has accepted the bounty.”
Winston raised an eyebrow.
The Continental boards were filled with hitmen claiming to be ghosts, but there was only one the underworld capitalized.
A shadow that killed untouchable targets without ever leaving a footprint.
“Fascinating,” Winston murmured, leaning forward.
“Did you check the letter for traces?”
Charon let out a quiet, rare sigh.
“I did, sir.
The paper is standard, untraceable stock.
There are no fingerprints, no DNA, no fibers.
But more concerning is the delivery.”
Winston frowned slightly.
“What do you mean?”
“We have the most sophisticated security system in New York,” Charon explained, his voice entirely flat.
“I was at the front desk.
I turned my back to organize a set of keys.
It took exactly three seconds.
When I turned back, this letter was resting squarely on the marble counter.
No cameras caught a reflection.
The pressure sensors on the floor did not trigger.
We do not know who delivered it, or how.
Like his namesake, he is a ghost.”
Winston stared at the letter for a long moment, a sharp smile touching the corner of his mouth.
An assassin who could bypass Continental security without setting off a single alarm was a terrifying asset to have in the world.
“Well,” Winston said smoothly, picking up his bourbon.
“It seems the Board has finally found someone competent.
Notify the client that the contract is active.”
“Right away, sir,” Charon bowed and exited the room.
A few minutes later, Charon picked up a secure, encrypted line at the front desk and dialed a heavily routed burner number.
Miles away, sitting in a cheap, dimly lit motel room surrounded by thirty years of crime scene photos and frantic notes, Jasper Jordan answered the ringing phone.
His hands were shaking.
He had sold everything he owned for this one shot.
“Mr.
Jordan,” Charon’s crisp, professional voice came through the receiver.
“I am calling on behalf of our establishment.
Your request has been reviewed.
The Ghost has accepted your contract.”
Jasper gripped the phone tightly, his knuckles turning white.
After decades of police ignoring him, after a lifetime of looking over his shoulder and waiting for the monster to return, a heavy, crushing weight finally lifted off his chest.
He looked at the old, faded photo of his mother on the wall, and for the first time in thirty years, Jasper Jordan felt hope.
“Cortana,” Aleksander said, stepping into the center of the dark lab.
“Pull every file, police report, and cold case associated with the Trinity pattern.
Pin it all to the main projection.”
“Compiling data from FBI databases, local precincts, and state archives,” Cortana replied.
“Projecting now.”
Instantly, the air in front of Aleksander erupted into a glowing, 360-degree cylindrical wall of holographic data.
Dozens of glowing blue panels floated around him—autopsy reports, crime scene photos, geographic maps, and newspaper clippings spanning decades.
For a normal detective, it would take a lifetime to read through the chaotic mess of files.
Aleksander didn’t read it; he simply absorbed it.
His Absolute Mind caught every date, every cause of death, and every geographic coordinate in a fraction of a second.
He began physically pulling the floating holographic panels together, rearranging them in the air with his hands.
He didn’t see isolated tragedies.
He saw a perfect, terrifying mathematical equation.
“Thirty years,” Aleksander said softly, his eyes tracking the dates as he swiped a row of files to his left.
“And exactly thirty kill cycles.”
He categorized the floating data by the time of year, watching the clusters organize themselves in the air.
The FBI profilers thought the killer was erratic, striking randomly whenever the urge hit.
Aleksander saw the rigid, unbreakable schedule of a madman.
“Look at the seasonal clusters, Cortana,” Aleksander instructed, tapping a series of panels that glowed brightly.
“It’s practically a dark religious calendar.
I count fifteen murders in December.
Forty murders localized in the summer, specifically July and August.
And roughly twenty scattered through the spring.”
“That is a total of approximately seventy-five victims, Aleksander,” Cortana observed, her digital voice carrying a tone of calculated gravity.
“National law enforcement only connects him to a fraction of those.
Why the massive discrepancy?”
“Because law enforcement is looking for a standard serial killer, but this is a meticulously structured ritual,” Aleksander explained, his voice turning ice-cold as he analyzed the calendar data.
“And notice the timing of these seasonal surges.
They map out a teacher’s schedule with absolute precision.”
Cortana’s blue form flickered as she processed the data overlay.
“Academic breaks.
December corresponds with winter holidays.
July and August mark the summer recess.
The spring clusters align neatly with spring break.”
“Exactly,” Aleksander nodded, pulling up employment records across multiple school districts.
“He works as a teacher.
That is his cover, and it gives him a built-in reason for his seasonal free time.
When school is in session, he stays put.
When vacation hits, he packs up and travels to hunt.”
Aleksander swiped the victim files away, leaving only a geographic map of the United States overlaid with the suspect’s movements.
To the police, the cross-country travel appeared random.
But through Aleksander’s Absolute Mind, the dots connected instantly to a glaring logistical reality.
”Now look at the target locations,” Aleksander said, zooming in on scattered suburban neighborhoods across different states.
“He isn’t breaking into random houses.
He targets pristine, newly constructed family homes.
But forensic databases show zero signs of forced entry in over half his cases.
How does a man casually walk into dozens of locked, secure homes across the country without triggering alarms or leaving tool marks?”
Cortana tilted her head, running a multi-variable analysis.
“He would need prior access to architectural blueprints, master keys, and domestic routines.
But obtaining that legally across multiple states is nearly impossible for a civilian.”
”Unless his profession gives him a built-in excuse to be inside those exact neighborhoods,” Aleksander deduced.
He began filtering the geographic clusters against national commercial registries, zoning permits, and contractor databases.
”Cross-reference his travel dates with national non-profit construction and charity housing organizations,” Aleksander ordered.
A second later, a list of building permits and volunteer rosters flashed across the holographic display, aligning perfectly with the killer’s timeline.
”Logical reasoning dictates the connection,” Aleksander explained, pointing to the glowing data streams linking the charity projects to the murder sites.
“A prominent non-profit housing organization operating nationwide provides the ultimate cover.
Contractors and volunteers are legally invited onto residential properties.
They build the homes from the ground up, study the security layouts, copy the keys, and slip back in months later after the families have moved in—all under the guise of community service, completely off the police radar.”
Aleksander tapped a final file on the screen, bringing up a personnel record complete with a photograph of a mild-mannered, unassuming middle-aged man.
Arthur Mitchell.
“Pull his complete profile and history, Cortana,” Aleksander ordered, crossing his arms as he stared at the face of the man who had hidden in plain sight for thirty years.
A new cascade of holographic panels opened around Arthur’s face.
“Aggregating background data,” Cortana reported smoothly.
“Arthur Mitchell.
Born in 1943.
Gained a degree in education and spent his entire adult life working as a high school English and woodwork teacher.
Married with two children, heavily involved in community church groups, and a pillar of suburban respectability.”
“A classic mask,” Aleksander noted, his eyes scanning Arthur’s deep personal history.
“He spent decades building an ironclad reputation so no one would ever look twice at him.
But look beneath the surface history.”
Aleksander tapped a timeline showing Arthur’s early life.
“His trauma occurred when he was ten years old.
When his elder sister, Vera, take a shower.
When she noticed him in the mirror, she slipped, shattering the shower doors.
A shard of glass sliced her leg and she bled out in front of him.Their mother committed suicide shortly after out of grief, jumping off a bridge.
Finally he was left Arthur alone with his alcoholic father, Henry, who was verbally and physically abusive.
In 1964, Henry was found bludgeoned to death in an alley near a bar (presumably by Arthur, who was fifteen at the time).
This Arthur was left with a warped, fractured psyche—a psychological loop of intense guilt, believing that a child’s carelessness destroys a family.”
Cortana’s blue form shifted as she analyzed the psychological correlation.
“And because his behavioral patterns, you can see how that specific trauma directly dictates his four-stage ritualistic killing cycle.”
“Exactly,” Aleksander said, pointing to the structured files floating in the air.
“His killings aren’t random; they are a compulsion to recreate and punish the original tragedy over and over again.”
Aleksander broke down the sequence:
Stage One (The Young Boy): Finally, Ten-year-old boy is buried alive.
He represented Arthur as an “innocent” before he witnessed the death of his sister.
Arthur referred to the boy as “Arthur,” forcing him to wear pajamas and play with a toy train.
He then drugged the boy and buried him alive in wet concrete at a Four Walls One Heart site.
It was Arthur’s way of symbolically preserving the innocence that he lost.
Stage Two (The Young Woman): He forces a young woman in a bathtub to mimic his sister’s fatal injury, severing her femoral artery to recreate the fatal blood loss he witnessed in his childhood bathroom.
Stage Three (The Mother): He targets a mother with young children, forcing her to fall to her death to reenact his own mother’s suicide from grief.
Stage Four (The Father): He brutally bludgeons a father with a heavy object to punish the patriarchal figure he felt failed to protect his family.
“The charity housing work was just a logistical tool to scout the targets,” Aleksander concluded coldly, his eyes narrowing as he looked at Arthur’s current residential address popping up on the map.
“Every cycle is a meticulous loop of reliving his own broken past at the expense of innocent lives.”
Aleksander turned away from the holograms and walked toward his weapon rack, picking up his carbon-steel knives and the heavy iron chain of his kyoketsu-shoge.
“Found him,” Aleksander said quietly.
“Coordinate his current location, Cortana.
The Trinity Killer’s cycle ends this week.”