The Kill List in the Time Capsule

Fifteen men. All dead.

They died on the exact same day, ten years after our graduation, right back on the campus grounds where we started.

I was the only survivor.

The Homicide Detectives grilled me for hours, sweating in their cheap suits, but they found nothing.

They couldn't figure out why fifteen estranged men returned to campus in the dead of night.

And they certainly couldn't understand why I was the only one breathing when the sun came up.

One million dollars. That was the price for the full story.

Chapter 1

Every day, I copied and pasted that exact paragraph onto every major platform. TikTok, Reddit, X. The comments section was always a dumpster fire.

"Bro is down bad. Ain't reading all that."

Someone replied with a clown emoji: "Source: Trust me bro."

Another wrote: "Cool fanfic. Drop the Venmo or get lost."

I ignored them all. Until a notification popped up from a verified account on a niche forum.

Username: The Truth Seeker.

Real Name: Sterling. The host of the number one true crime podcast in the country.

His DM was short. Direct.

"How do I contact you?"

My heart slammed against my ribs. My palms sweated inside my gloves.

Ten years. I found you.

"I know what you're posting isn't fiction."

Sterling paused. He thought he was the hunter. "It's a confession to a massacre that hasn't made the news yet."

The man standing in the doorway of my cramped janitors closet called himself a journalist, but he looked like money. The kind of money that bought silence.

He claimed to be Sterling, the voice of justice. I looked at his handsmanicured, soft. I wonder how much dirt is hidden under those fingernails.

"There were sixteen of you in that Omega Kappa pledge class," he said, stepping into the room like he owned it. "Fifteen men have vanished. You're the only one left."

He scanned the room. He curled his lip at the peeling paint. The air smelled of bleach and old rust.

He turned back. His eyes swept over me like a scanner. He slid a thick manila envelope across my scarred metal desk. It hit the surface with a heavy thud.

Cash. Stacks of it. Bands of crisp hundreds.

I stared at it for a second, then pushed the envelope back.

"Mr. Sterling," I rasped, my voice like gravel grinding in a mixer. "A story is just a story."

His lip curled. A subtle twitch of annoyance.

"Cut the crap. You know secrets that could burn this university to the ground."

He leaned in, his expensive cologne battling the scent of ammonia. "If the cash isn't enough, we can negotiate."

I picked up my half-smoked cigarette from the ashtray and crushed it out. The embers died in a smear of gray ash.

"I told you online. The rest of this story costs one million."

"Are you insane?" He laugheda sharp, barking sound. "You're a janitor. You scrub shit for a living, and you're asking for a million dollars?"

He spun around, taking in my kingdom.

A cracked monitor sat on the desk, displaying static-filled feeds from the campus security cameras.

In the corner, a folding cot was shoved against the wall, the blanket stained with engine grease. A yellowed envelope sat on the pillowmy 'will'.

The remaining space was barely enough for two stools. We were practically chest to chest.

I stood up first. I loomed over him, just slightly.

"Then we have nothing to talk about. Seems you don't really want the truth."

Sterling ground his teeth. His jaw tightened. He hated losing.

"Fine," he snapped. "One million. But this" he gestured to the envelope, "is the deposit."

"I have conditions. Answer two questions first. I need to know if your story is worth the investment."

I nodded. "Ask."

"First. The deaths of those fifteen Omega Kappa brothers... did you have a hand in it?"

"Yes."

His eyes widened slightly. "Second. You were a scholarship kid. A genius. Why are you rotting in this basement as a janitor for ten years?"

"That answer costs extra." I leaned back, crossing my arms. "Listen to the story, and you'll understand."

He glared at me... "I'll come back in three days with the rest," he said, checking his gold watch. "But I have a condition, too."

"Delete the footage of me coming here. Scrub it."

I nodded toward the computer. "You're paying. You're the boss."

I hit a button under the desk. The magnetic lock on the heavy iron door clicked open.

As he turned to leave, I called out.

"One question for you, Mr. Sterling. Why pay a million dollars for a janitor's ramblings? What are you chasing? A Pulitzer? Or something else?"

He stopped. He didn't look back.

"That's not your concern," he said, his voice dropping a few degrees. "I pay. I make the rules."

He stepped out, disappearing into the dark maintenance tunnel.

Chapter 3

It hadn't been three days. It had barely been twenty-four hours.

I was on the night shift, the door to the maintenance room propped open, when Sterling returned.

This time, he wasn't empty-handed. He carried a bottle of Macallan 25 and a cashier's check for nine hundred thousand dollars.

He kicked the door shut with his heel and slid the check across the scarred metal desk.

"Want to verify it?"

"No need." I folded the check and shoved it into the pocket of my grease-stained coveralls.

He pulled up a stool, producing two crystal tumblers from his coat pocket. They caught the dim, flickering light of the security monitors.

"On your salary," Sterling said, uncorking the bottle, "youll never taste anything like this. This is liquid gold."

I smiled. It didn't reach my eyes.

"Thanks to you, I'll be drinking it with breakfast."

His smile froze. He didn't laugh.

He poured the amber liquid, inspecting the rim of the glass with a critical eye before sliding one toward me.

"Drink. Talk."

I nodded. But before I could speak, he froze.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

"Do you hear that?" Sterling asked, his head snapping up. "That ticking sound?"

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my old, battered Motorola radio. The green LED was pulsing rhythmically.

"You mean this?"

"You had that on you last time, too?" He raised his glass, trying to look casual, but his eyes darted around the room.

"Its part of the job," I said. "Not important."

It was important. It was the detonator synchronization. But you don't need to know that yet.

I picked up my glass and clinked it against his. The sound was sharp, fragile. I took a sip. The scotch burned, rich and smoky.

"The story is long," I said, leaning back into the shadows. "We have to start from the beginning."

Sterling nodded, signaling me to proceed.

"Actually, before the fifteen of them died... there was another death. Long before graduation."

Chapter 4

The scotch tasted like smoke and old iron. It reminded me of home. My college years weren't exactly Glory Days. I had come from a dead-end town in the Rust Belt. I was the first person in my zip code to get into an Ivy League school.

My dad was bedridden, his lungs shot from years in the mines. My mother was a skeleton. Skin and bone.

She worked double shifts at the diner by day and scrubbed floors at the hospital by night just to keep me and my little sister, Mia, alive.

That acceptance letter? To everyone else, it was a golden ticket. To us, it was a tombstone.

The scholarship covered tuition, sure. But the "Student Contribution," the mandatory health insurance, the textbooks? It was six thousand dollars. A mountain we couldn't climb.

I looked at the bill and told my mom, "Forget it. I'm not going. I'll get a job at the plant. I'll support Mia."

She slapped me. Hard. Her hand shook.

"You are going!" she screamed, her voice cracking. "Both of you are getting out! You have to climb out of this pit, Jude. You have to."

"But the money, Mom..."

"I'll handle the money."

She pawned her wedding ring. She took out payday loans with predatory interest rates that would haunt us for years.

So, she made a choice.

She had Type 1 diabetes. Insulin cost three hundred dollars a vial.

So she stopped buying it. First, she rationed. Then, she quit cold turkey. She gambled her life to save the cash for my first semester.

By the time I found out, the complications had set in. The gangrene took her left leg below the knee.

That was the price of my education. Her leg for my degree.

I took the crumpled bills. Seven thousand dollars soaked in sweat. And a bag of homemade beef jerky the neighbors shoved into my backpack.

I boarded the Greyhound bus to the East Coast.

Twelve hours on a cramped, worn fabric seat that smelled of stale smoke. I didn't dare close my eyes.

I kept my hand pressed against the inside pocket of my jacket, guarding that money like it was the nuclear codes.

The second I stepped onto the manicured campus, I ran to the bursars office. I paid the six thousand. I hid the remaining thousand inside a hollowed-out biology textbook under my mattress.

Only then did I let myself breathe.

I collapsed onto the mattress in my empty dorm room, exhaustion pulling me under.

I was a ghost in a world of billionaires. I never expected to find happiness here.

And I certainly never expected anyone to look at me twice.

Chapter 5

University life wasn't an experience. It was a sentence.

My world was cut into three brutal slices: the lecture hall, the library, and whatever degrading minimum-wage job kept me from starving.

Everything was gray. Until Selene.

We were in the same classes, but we lived in different universes until the night of the Omega Kappa Winter Gala.

We weren't guests. We were the help.

We were the only two "charity cases"full-ride scholarship studentshired to serve champagne to the sons of senators and oil tycoons.

Selene gripped a silver tray. The champagne flutes rattled against each other.

Chad, a fraternity senior with a trust fund bigger than my hometown's GDP, bumped into her on purpose. Champagne sloshed onto his tuxedo sleeve.

"Watch it, townie," Chad sneered, loud enough for the room to hear. "That suit costs more than your mother makes in a year."

Selenes face flushed crimson. She froze, gripping the tray, unable to speak.

I didn't think. I just moved.

I stepped between them, my white server's gloves clenched into fists.

"The floor was uneven," I lied, my voice steady despite the adrenaline spiking in my veins. "It wasn't her fault."

I stared Chad down. "If you want a refill, sir, go to the bar. Leave her alone."

Chad scoffed, looking at me like I was a bug he could crush with his wallet. "Whatever. Clean it up, trash."

He walked away, his friends laughing.

Selene looked up at me. Her eyesbright, wet, and defiantlocked onto mine.

"Thank you," she whispered.

From that moment, the line was drawn. Them against us.

We became comrades in this capitalist colosseum.

We found our sanctuary in the back alley behind the frat house. While the music thumped inside, we leaned against the freezing brick wall, sharing a single, bent cigarette Id saved from a crushed pack.

Selene pulled a half-empty bottle of Dom Prignon from her apron.

"I stole it," she said, a mischievous grin breaking through her exhaustion. "Figured they wouldn't miss it."

We passed the bottle back and forth, the expensive bubbles mixing with the taste of cheap tobacco. We talked about the cracked earth of our hometowns, the weight of our parents' expectations, and the terrifying hope that kept us going.

We were two soldiers sharing warmth in a trench. Terrified of getting hurt, but more terrified of freezing alone.

We knew. We both knew. But love was expensive.

A movie ticket. A single rose. Even a walk in the park felt like a luxury we couldn't afford. We were too busy surviving to live.

The shift happened on the night before Christmas Break.

We had just finished a shift shoveling snow from the Dean's massive driveway. We were shivering, our fingers numb, walking back to campus over the Old Bridge.

Below us, the city traffic blurred into streams of red and white light. A million lives, none of them ours.

Selene stopped. She pointed at a massive Christmas tree atop a luxury mall in the distance.

"It's so beautiful," she breathed.

She stared at the tree. She didn't blink.

The words tumbled out of me before I could stop them.

"One day," I said, my voice rough. "When we get out of here. When we make it. Well buy a real one. A ten-footer. And well put it in our living room."

She turned to me. The city lights reflected in her dark eyes like stars.

"Our... home?"

Snow began to fall, catching on her long lashes.

In that moment, the tuition bills, the hungry nights, the humiliationit all vanished.

There was only the wind on the bridge, and the girl in the red scarf.

"Selene."

I heard the tremble in my own voice.

"I love you. When we graduate, were leaving. Well go West. Somewhere warm, like California. Well get jobs, make real money. Well get married, have a kid... just live. Like human beings."

I had nothing. Just a promise. I gave it to her.

She didn't laugh. Tears spilled over, hot and fast.

She nodded, a fierce, determined motion.

"Yes," she choked out. "Yes, Jude."

The ice between us shattered.

On that snowy bridge, we didn't just fall in love. We signed a pact.

Us against the world.

Chapter 6

The days that followed were still poor, but they weren't dark. Not anymore.

We lived on the edge of poverty, but we had the light.

We juggled three jobs each. But in the gaps, Id buy her a wilted rose from the gas station with my tip money. For my birthday, she gave me a notebook filled with her handwritten architectural sketchesblueprints for a life we couldn't afford yet.

We hid in the furthest corner of the library, fingers tangled together under the table. Her fingers brushed mine. My pulse hammered.

We spent hours designing that faraway home. We argued over the color of the curtains. We debated whether the balcony should have roses or tomatoes.

Those fantasies were the fuel that got us through the grind.

Senior year arrived. The pressure mounted.

Resumes disappeared into the void. Rejection emails piled up. But we held onto each other. Just a little longer, we said. Were almost out.

Thats when I noticed the change in Selene.

She was exhausted. Her skin was translucent. She flinched when I touched her. Sometimes, Id catch her dry-heaving in the bathroom. Her knuckles were white against the porcelain.

It was spring. The flu was tearing through the dorms. I was worried. I dragged her to the Campus Clinic.

Dr. Hayes.

Ill never forget the name embroidered on his white coat. Or his face.

He didn't look at us. He just stared at his clipboard, bored, like he was reading a lunch menu.

"It's not the flu." Hayes didn't look up from his clipboard. "Pregnant. Eight weeks."

The room stopped. The hum of the air conditioner vanished.

My brain short-circuited.

Three years. We had been together three years. We slept in the same bed, held hands, kissed. But we stopped there. But we never crossed the final line. We were waiting. A baby meant the end of the scholarship, the end of the dream.

I looked at her stomach.

That child isn't mine.

Chapter 7

My heart didn't break. It froze.

The air left my lungs. My stomach dropped.

"Whose is it?" My voice was low, unrecognizable.

Selenes face went from pale to ghostly white. She grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into my skin.

"Jude... it's not what you think... I..."

"Not what I think?"

I ripped my arm away. My voice rose, cracking with humiliation.

"Then what is it? Tell me! How did this happen?"

I loomed over her. "Did you say yes?"

Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her lips trembled, but no words came. She shook her head. Her mouth opened, but no sound came out.

Her silence felt like a confession.

Why don't you deny it? Lie to me! Just tell me a lie!

The anger and the shame burned away my reason. I felt like the punchline to a cruel joke.

"Im such an idiot," I hissed through clenched teeth. "I actually thought... I thought we were different."

The deep-seated insecurity Id buried for years finally clawed its way out. Of course. A girl like her... and a nothing like me. It was inevitable. She didn't just cheat; she sold out.

"All those plans. That house. The future. It was all garbage to you, wasn't it?"

She looked up. Her eyes were hollow. She didn't speak. She couldn't.

That silence broke me.

I pointed a shaking finger at her face.

"If you won't explain, then we're done. It's over."

I turned around. I walked out of the clinic. I didn't look back.

I was terrified that if I looked back, I would shatter.

For the next month, I became a ghost.

I blocked her number. I avoided the library. I took shifts on the other side of campus.

Rumors swirled. They said the Dean had expelled her to protect a donor's son. They said campus police dragged her out in handcuffs and dumped her at St. Judes Mental Institution for "hysteria."

I covered my ears. I didn't want to know.

Until that afternoon.

I logged onto the campus anonymous forum.

The top post had thousands of views. The title was in bold, screaming red:

"EXPOSED: Scholarship Good Girl Goes Wild. Video Inside!"

The user was anonymous. The caption read: "A graduation gift from the Brothers. Save it before it gets taken down."

My hand shook so hard I could barely click the mouse.

A video player loaded. The footage was grainy, dark. But clear enough. It was Selene. Naked. Curled into a ball on a Persian rug. Her eyes glazed.

There were men. I couldn't see their faces, but I saw their signet rings. Omega Kappa.

I heard laughter. Cruel, baying laughter.

Snap.

The string of sanity finally snapped.

Rape.

It wasn't cheating. It was a massacre.

Guilt. Horror. Love. They choked me.

Who did this?

I sprinted out of my dorm, screaming her name in my head. Im sorry. Im sorry. Im coming.

I ran toward the Bell Tower, a sick feeling twisting in my gut.

But when I got to the quad, people were running. Not toward the dorms.

Toward the Bell Tower.

"Oh my god! Someone jumped!" a girl shrieked.

THUD.

A wet, final crack.

It exploded behind me.

Time stopped. The campus noise died.

I turned. Slowly. Mechanically.

On the gray concrete at the base of the Bell Tower, a figure lay broken.

She was wearing a red dress.

The Red Dress.

I bought it for her with the tips I saved from six months of double shifts at the Faculty Club. She said it was too bright, too bold. She said she was saving it for the Senior Formal.

Now, she was wearing it.

Her black hair was fanned out like a halo. Blood pooled beneath her. Dark and spreading.

She jumped. She shattered.

The world turned into a high-pitched ring.

I stood there.

And part of me died on that concrete with her.

Chapter 8