After three years of retirement, Alice Vonn thought she would never have to face that name again.
Former head of the FBI's criminal profiling team, once a genius, now a loser. During the hunt three years ago, the "artist" destroyed her partner in front of her, and also destroyed the calmness she relied on for a living. Post-traumatic stress disorder, severe insomnia, drug dependence - she traded seclusion in the countryside to survive.
Until a new body appears.
The pianist's fingernails were replaced with fragments of piano keys, and black agate stones were embedded in the eye sockets. The words provocatively written in blood on the spot read: "Out of tune."
The technique is exactly the same as that of the "artist", but more perfect.
The only clue is locked in the deepest part of the state mental hospital - Julian Blake, a former psychiatrist, a serial killer suffering from "messianic delusions", and the most fervent imitator of "The Artist".
He proposed cooperation, and the price was not money or freedom.
"Alice," he said, smiling, "you're off your medication. You want to feel the pain, because numbness is more shameful than collapse."
He knew her better than she knew herself.
And she must step into his game - because the last missing person is the daughter of her ex-partner.
But what she didn't know was that this hunt was designed for her from the beginning.
The mirror has been put up.
Who is the hunter and who is the prey?
Concept: When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares into you. This article explores "whether understanding evil is necessarily contaminated with evil" - the protagonist Alice relies on extraordinary mirror empathy to hunt down a serial killer, but in the process of entering the murderer's mind again and again, she is on the verge of the collapse of her self-identity. The work attempts to ask: Can trauma not become a curse? Are those who fight monsters destined to become monsters? The answer is not a simple binary opposition, but a profound dialectic about choice, boundaries and self-salvation.