There are twelve notes on the chromatic scale. I take another step, brushing the flashlight beam through the stone walls. The sound of dripping water and the stale, cold air sends me back to memories of childhood trips to underwater caves on my summers. The voice reaches me again from the speakers above. Twelve keys on the piano. I stop the light on a picture taped to the wall. Half-burned. Icicle. The first henchmen. His mouth is open in a half-smile, blood painting his teeth the way I remember seeing on the news when he was finally killed by the police. Every piece of music you've ever heard is a variation of those twelve notes. Diving deeper into the cave, I spot another photograph. Blaze, with a hole in his forehead. I shot her on a bank robbery, when he was about to pull the trigger on an old lady behind the counter. I saved her life. These are all Psycho's henchmen. Men killed by the cops. They're all dead. Psycho is the only one left. The worst eighties pop song you've ever heard and the Beethoven's Fifth are the same song. They're scrambled different ways, that's all. Deeper and deeper through narrow corridors. Even the dripping sound is dimming away now. "Where are you, Psycho?" I venture, flashing the light left and right through more pictures of men and women I've killed. His army. His minions. His crazy gang he used to terrorize this city for so long. You can't run away from those twelve notes. Every song is the same song, you just hear it in a different order. I step through an archway into a large chamber. My eyes narrow and the light makes me go blind for a second. When I open them again, it's Psycho that I see – his tall figure looking back at me from a little island in the center of a black lagoon. All around him, spotlights casts four shadowed versions of himself in the still, black water. "It's over, Psycho," I say, raising the gun. "Let's go." "Yes, it's over," Psycho replies, and now his own voice fuses with his echoes in the speakers, like he's speaking to me from all different spots around. "No more different music. You can hear now." My feet reach the water, and I keep stepping, careful not to lose my aim at him. "Come with me." "Did you know Icicle was a huge fan of the Lord of the Rings?" I stop. My leg is already submerged to my knees. I'm halfway to him. "Before he met me. Before I made him what he was." Psycho laughs, and the laugh reaches me from behind and around and from his face. "They were all cops. Like you." "What are you talking about?" I ask, taking one more step towards him. "Twelve notes," Psycho says. "You like to kill just the same as me, Anton. Same as Icicle." I frown, still keeping the gun to his head. "All your life you arrange the notes that special way, so that your melody sounds just the way you want the world to hear. But one wrong note…" Psycho pauses, and he drowns his feet in the water too, taking a step my way. "Icicle was called Mark Benjamin, and he was a cop. Until I dressed a little boy in a horse mask, taped a gun to his hand and sent him out in the line of his sniper." "Don't come closer!" "He was gone, after that. That wrong note. Dissonant. That's all it takes to break a melody." Psycho smiles and takes another step. "He was my first henchmen. My first piece of broken down melody. My first love. Then came Thunder, who, I'm sure you know, was the one who killed Icicle." "What?" "Oh!" Psycho stops too, a look of fake surprise in his face. "You didn't know… Yes. Jeremy Falk. He worked with you on Homicide, right?" Falk. The man who killed Icicle. He was a hero, before he disappeared. "When I told him who Icicle was… Why he was Icicle. How he went insane because he killed a kid. How Icicle was his friend Mark, from Vice… That was a bit much for Jeremy. Too… dissonant." "Shut up," I say, but already my voice is a lot less confident. "I cared for him, too. I took him in. Told him everything was going to be fine. I told him not to feel bad about killing his friend. I gave him a new name – Thunder. He was one of us now." Psycho takes another step my way. "He was dissonant too." "You're lying." "Thunder, I'm sure you know… was killed by –" "Alice," I say, and I feel my hand trembling on the gun." "Alice Fischer," Psycho smiles. "You guys dated for a while, didn't you?" Psycho steps forward again. The whooshing sound of water splashing with each step he takes reaches me like from a great distance. "Fischer took it bad. She resisted, for a while. Tried therapy. Tried to stay away. But the notes were all wrong, already. She couldn't hear the right melodies, anymore." "No," I whisper, holding the gun with two hands now. "No." "Blaze," Psycho says, his smile widening even more now. "Shut up!" "Blaze," he repeats, and a flash of a dead body with a photograph of a dead woman with a whole in her forehead. A woman with her face burnt beyond recognition. A flash of me firing a gun against the woman, two weeks ago. "Tell me, is the autopsy out, yet?" Psycho asks me. We're within arm's reach now. "It's not true." "Alice liked being Blaze. While it lasted." Psycho fakes a sad look my way. "It's just a matter of learning to listen to the new melody. We're all the same. And now you too." "NO!" I yell, my finger shaking on the trigger. "Don't shoot me, Anton," Psycho pleads, with a smirk. "I'm your only friend now." "It wasn't her." "Don't you see? It was all for you. I know all about you, Anton," Psycho says, and now, for the first time, his voice is stripped of the sarcastic tone. "You wanted to be a cop since you were a kid. Before bed, your fantasies were all guns and knives and blood. Being the kid who rescues everyone in a shooting. Die Hard. Medieval swords. You thrive on violence. You rejoice on death." "Shut up. Shut up," I say. I feel the gun sliding down my hand, but I can't bring myself to hold on to it. "We are the same melody, Anton," Psycho continues. "I just had to find a way to put your notes in the right order." The gun falls to the floor, and a flash of Alice's dead eyes behind the burnt skin floods my mind. It was her. Of course it was her. How did I not see? "You've killed her, Anton," Psycho whispers. I feel his hand touching my cheeks. "You've killed your ex-girlfriend." I open my eyes. Under the translucent waving of dark waters, I spot the gun between my feet. I don't go for it. "I killed Alice…" I say, quietly. "And Alice killed Mark, and Mark killed Jeremy. Different melodies, Anton." Psycho puts another hand on my face, and I let him. "But it was all for you. They were just toys. Strings I had to pull to get to you." "Why?" "I knew Jeremy wouldn't break you. Or Mark. But Alice… Blaze… Blaze would break you." "It wasn't her fault," I hear my voice sobbing. "She was not herself, she would never kill anyone if she didn't know –" "Shhh," Psycho's voice reaches me, and he leans to my ear. "It's over now, Anton. It's just you and me now." "I'm a killer. I killed her," I say, quietly. "It's just you and me." Psycho whispers. "Now you know what it feels like. You can be my next one. My only one." From the speakers, Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor floods the chamber, reaching us from the corridors, the walls and the tall ceiling. "Our melodies are the same now, Anton," Psycho says, kissing me softly on the cheek.