On an afternoon train, Alice clutched her backpack and tried to smother thoughts of the man she fed on by focusing instead on Lottie, the stranger who turned her. She weighed the impossible odds of ever finding Lottie in the city, replaying the many small choices that led to their meeting and to her death and transformation, and fixated on the randomness of it all.

As the train filled stop by stop, Alice scanned every new face for Lottie’s, finding only fragments of resemblance among ordinary humans. The overlapping drum of heartbeats stirred a residual hunger she had assumed sated, revealing that even after feeding, the emptiness persisted as a constant, if quieter, need.

When a woman and child sat nearby, the memory of warm blood intensified Alice’s craving. She abruptly stood, rode to the next station, and exited one stop early to avoid losing control. In the harsh daylight she pushed herself across campus, ducking through buildings to lessen the sun’s effects, and reached her dorm exhausted and raw.

Inside, Alice found Lizbeth, Jana, and Rachel in shock. Fearing her own actions had been exposed, she braced for accusation, but they instead told her a student had been found in the Yard. When Rachel said the victim was Colin, Alice recognized him as the helpful acquaintance who had walked her toward the Yard on the night she killed him.

The group reported there was no official cause of death; Lizbeth suggested it was likely an overdose, which sent Rachel into tears as she insisted Colin had been kind and possibly significant in her life. Alice, sick with the truth and tempted to claim she had spared Rachel worse harm, stayed silent.

Leaving her grieving suitemates, Alice retreated to her dark room, collapsed onto her bed, and fell asleep, the secrecy of her crime and the permanence of her hunger settling around her.