4. Chapter Four Abby

Chapter Four: Abby

I was finally getting a look at what was behind that last locked door.

The morning light had barely begun to filter through the blinds of Nathan's apartment when I found myself in a situation I never trained for at Quantico. My hands, though steady, were slick with a cold sweat as I helped Nathan drag Tyler Matthews' heavy form across the hardwood floor. We worked together wordlessly, with him pointing and grunting what I needed to do.

It was only then that my eyes flicked across the clear floor, and the realization struck me that he wasn't just a minimalist.

He kept the floors clear in case someone died here.

Someone like Tyler.

"We're taking him downstairs," Nathan said after we'd gotten him to the mysterious door.

"You ever just, like, think about what's down there? When you're washing dishes or something?" I asked, more to distract myself from the weight of dead flesh between us than out of curiosity.

Nathan's face was a mask of regret under the strain. "I wish you'd never had to find out," he replied, his voice low and edged with something I couldn't quite place—was it guilt?

Then he shook his head.

"Come on," he said. "The longer we wait, the more unpleasant this gets."

We moved to the locked door, where Nathan punched in a passcode on a keypad; then the lock clicked, a sound far too ordinary for what lay beyond. He pushed open the door, revealing nothing but darkness. A shiver threatened to run down my spine—not from fear, but from the chill that seeped from the stairwell before us. Nathan reached for a switch, and the lights flickered to life.

Stairs, going down, down…

As we descended the stairs, the smell hit me—a potent mix of earth and decay that seemed to cling to the back of my throat. I tried not to gag, focusing instead on the solid feel of the cement underfoot and the sterile space that came into view with each step we took.

"God, that stench," I muttered, trying to keep my breathing shallow.

"It's going to get worse," he said matter-of-factly. "Just try not to throw up."

"It's going to get worse?" I said, my voice catching in my throat.

Nathan didn't reply, but I saw his jaw tighten. The muscles screamed under the weight of our burden, reminding me that the dead man between us used to be someone who walked and talked, who made bad jokes and worse decisions. Nathan went first, his muscles shifting as he moved, his skin glistening with sweat. Tyler's form swayed, dead eyes staring upwards, the electric saw from the kitchen wedged into his jacket. Tyler was still warm. It made me want to throw up.

I could drop him, bolt up those stairs, escape into the daylight. But I knew better. I was in this now; I couldn't—wouldn't—run.

The idea scared me less than it should have.

We reached the bottom, and my gaze fell upon an almost empty room with cement walls and floor, so clean it could double as a surgical suite—if not for the giant industrial composter squatting like a malevolent deity at the far side. It hummed softly, the sound a grotesque lullaby for what was to come.

"Nice place you got here," I said, trying to keep the quiver out of my voice.

"Thanks. Decorated it myself," he said, then his expression sobered. "Efficiency is key in any business, Abby."

I swallowed hard, the reality of it all sinking in like a body in a bog. This was where Nathan did his dirty work. The realization should have repulsed me, sent me running for the hills—but it didn't. And maybe that realization was the most terrifying part of all.

I watched Nathan stride over to the room's only other piece of furniture: a nondescript white cabinet. With a swift pull, he opened it, unveiling an array of saws and other tools that glinted with ominous promise under the harsh fluorescent lights.

"Help me with this," he said, gesturing toward a rolled-up tarp leaning against the wall beside the cabinet.

Together, we spread it out on the floor, the plastic crinkling loudly in the silence. Then, with a precision that suggested disturbing but obvious familiarity, Nathan began to line up the tools beside the still form of Matthews. Each item was placed with care, like a surgeon laying out instruments for a life-saving operation—only this was anything but.

"Did you bring the saw?" Nathan asked, his voice barely above a murmur.

"Uh, yeah." I reached for the electric saw we'd brought down from the kitchen, carefully pulling it out of Tyler's jacket. My hands shook slightly as I handed it to him. "You don't actually use this for both food and bodies, do you?"

"Last Thanksgiving, I found myself needing to carve a turkey." He glanced at the saw, then back at me, a ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "There wasn't a proper one upstairs. It was a matter of convenience."

"Convenience?" I echoed, my stomach churning. "You're truly psychotic, you know that?"

"Psychotic?" Nathan chuckled, the sound dark and hollow in the expansive room. "No, Abby. I'm just resourceful."

He turned away from me, focusing on the grim task at hand.

"Resourceful," I muttered under my breath, disbelief mixing with a macabre curiosity about the man before me. Nathan ‘Fangs' Zhou, the philosopher who tended orchids and chopped up bodies with equal finesse. The contradiction of him was dizzying, and yet here I stood, in the belly of his brutal world, feeling more alive than I had in years.

"Let's get started," he said, breaking into my thoughts. And so, we did.

The sound was sickening—a wet crunch followed by the mechanical whir of the blade biting through flesh and bone. It should have been horrific, the gore and the visceral reality of it all. Yet, as I watched Nathan work with clinical detachment, I found myself strangely calm, almost methodical in my assistance.

"Hand me another bag," he said without looking up, his hands covered in a slick crimson that was thin as paint. "They're biodegradable; every piece needs to be wrapped. Speeds up the process."

I did as I was told, suppressing the bile that threatened to rise at the coppery stench filling the air.

"Seriously, don't throw up," Nathan said, looking into my eyes. "Trust me. It'll make it worse."

I turned away, taking a deep breath. "Right."

As I watched him move, efficiently segmenting what once was a person into manageable pieces, a morbid thought struck me—I was witnessing a grotesque form of artistry.

"How do you stop yourself from throwing up?" I asked him. "Do you think of this as…I don't know, some twisted kind of gardening?"

"Exactly. Plants need to eat," Nathan replied, his tone deadpan as he dropped another piece into the bag I held open. "And I'm just helping them along."

"Right," I said, though the joke fell flat, heavy in the silence between us.

Minutes stretched into half an hour, and we worked in sync, a silent understanding developing with each passing second. The task was gruesome, but it was also quick, efficient—Nathan knew what he was doing, and disturbingly, so did I. I only needed a little direction and found myself a natural.

"Have you done this a lot?" I finally ventured, my voice sounding foreign in the dense silence of the basement.

"More than I care to admit," he answered, pausing to wipe his brow with the back of his arm, leaving a smear of red on his tanned skin. "But it's part of the business. When you're the Serpent's son, you don't get to choose which tasks fall to you."

"Nature of the business," I repeated quietly, pondering the weight of his words.

"Something like that." He met my eyes for a moment, and I saw the hint of something deeper, a flicker of regret? Resignation? It was gone before I could decipher it, hidden behind his stoic mask once more.

"Does it ever get easier?" I asked, breaking our rhythm as we prepared to load the body into the composter. The question hung between us—morbid curiosity mixed with fear.

Nathan didn't flinch, his voice steady. "It's not about it getting easier. It's about doing what needs to be done."

There was a cold finality in his words that made me shiver, but not from fear. There was something profoundly disturbing yet compelling about Nathan—the way he could talk about philosophy and tend to his orchids with gentle hands, then turn around and be this...executioner.

"How do you reconcile the two?" I blurted out. "The philosophy major, the gardener, with this?" I gestured to the grim scene before us, to the man who had once nearly ended my life and now…fuck, I didn't know what now. I thought he loved me, but maybe not anymore.

Nathan paused, his dark eyes locking onto mine. "Life is complex, Abby. We're all just trying to find balance."

We resumed our task, lifting the various pieces of Matthews' body into the composter. As we did, Nathan's gaze lingered on me, filled with an unspoken question.

"Are you good?" he asked, his voice low.

I met his gaze, taking a moment to look at Matthews' face one last time. "Matthews was always a creep," I confessed, surprising myself with the ease of my admission. "He hit on me, asked me out nonstop, objectified me...told me that the best way to get a better assignment was to sleep with him."

Nathan's brow furrowed. "Did you?"

I shook my head. "No, but he kept putting me in situations where it was harder and harder to say no," I said. "I guess I didn't really think about that until just now."

"Then I'm glad he's gone," Nathan said simply, his tone devoid of remorse.

Nathan's hand brushed against mine as he secured the lid onto the composter, a touch that sent a jolt through me—I thought he would recoil, but he didn't.

"Ready?" Nathan asked, his voice breaking through my thoughts. "This kind of thing…it can be a lot."

"Let's do this," I replied with a nod, more to convince myself than him.

He flipped the switch, and the machine roared to life. The sound was monstrous, drowning out any second thoughts that might have crept in. As the motor hummed, an acrid stench filled the air, making me retch.

"Jesus, that's bad," I gasped, covering my mouth and nose with my arm.

"Yeah, remember, throwing up will make it worse," he said as the machine started to roar and vibrate. "Come on. We need to clean the house before anyone else shows up."

I stumbled after him, my mind reeling. The gravity of what we'd done—what I'd become a part of—was suffocating. But there was no time to dwell on it. Nathan was right; we had to act fast.

"Where do we even start?" I asked as we emerged from the basement into the cleaner air of the main floor.

"Follow my lead," Nathan replied, his eyes scanning the room with a strategic focus I knew all too well. "We'll make it spotless. Just in case."

I followed him up the stairs. "In case of what?"

He craned his neck to look back at me. "What do you mean, in case of what? In case, when the law comes back, they have a warrant."