Later that day, at a general hospital somewhere in Brooklyn Heights...Margaret and Rosalie came running through the hospital hallway and almost collided with a doctor stepping out of a ward.He paused, scrutinizing their faces before asking calmly, “Are you her family?”The two women were still trying to catch their breath.Rosalie was the first to recover enough to speak. “Where is my sister? If something happens to her today, this hospital will hear from my DiLaurentis family.”They had been on their way from the mass graveyard in the North District when the call from Richard came through. The car carrying the three of them, Serena, Richard, and David, to the graveyard that morning had been involved in an accident, and Serena had since been brought to the general hospital for observation. Margaret and Rosalie had dropped everything the second they heard, rushing there without pausing to inform another soul in the family.The elderly doctor remained composed. “It’s nothing that se

Serena couldn't remember who Julius Black was? Neither did she remember that there was still a survivor of the Langstons whom she had been married to? That morning, she had actively supported the patriarch's decision to attend the anniversary, not merely tagged along the way the rest of the family had.It was glaringly obvious to her family now that she truly didn't recognize the name, even though she had been the one to propose that fake name within the family in the first place.This...“Sister...” Rosalie wanted to keep speaking, unsure of what her ears were even hearing at that moment.But Margaret was quick to give her a subtle nudge to stay quiet.The doctor genuinely had to step in now, asking calmly, “Is she forgetting someone?”He had barely finished speaking when Margaret shot to her feet and squared her shoulders.“No, she is not forgetting anything at all. My daughter is perfectly fine and remembers everything exactly.” Her expression turned fierce again.But the doctor's

Margaret was just reaching the hospital ward when the doctor stepped out with his notebook in hand.“You did a good job, Doctor. Don’t worry, we’ll take it from here...”The elderly man didn’t move an inch. “I might be old, but I’m not blind. I missed it at first, I’ll admit that, but I’ve been in this profession long enough to recognize systematized amnesia when I see it. It’s rare. Rare enough that most doctors go their whole careers without seeing a real case. But it exists, and I believe that’s what we’re looking at.”“What are you talking about?” Margaret’s face scrunched up.“It falls under dissociative amnesia. Your daughter hasn’t lost her memory in general. That’s what threw me off at first. She remembers everything else with perfect clarity. What she seems to have lost is one specific person and everything tied to that person.”He continued, unhurried. “It tends to appear in one of two situations. Sometimes it’s someone who’s done something so painful to another person that

The old man couldn't move, nor could he react. His eyes were fixed on the rotating abyss of darkness. It was hypnotic, as it always was, tugging at his sanity toward a place that had no end.“Your wife and butler had to be killed off for you to get your head straight on loyalty. Do we go down this path again?” The voice from the hood echoed as ever, scraping through the ears of the listener.“Will you remember your first loyalty if I have to rid you of your granddaughter and butler today? Oh, he's dead already...”The moment he finished, the hovering daggers of darkness pressed harder against Deborah's throat.She sobbed even louder. “Grandpa, I don't want to die.”The sound of his grandchild's voice pulled the old man free from the abyss's hypnosis, and he blinked rapidly. He broke his gaze from the man's face, but kept him in sight all the same.“My first loyalty has always been to the Langstons.” Old Mr. Carrington managed to say, his eyes now fixed on Deborah. “If you kill her, do

Somewhere in Brooklyn Heights stood a raised mountain, the boundary line where the vast expanse of the woods gave way to a raging sea far below on the other side.It was the very same place where Elijah Langston had been ambushed earlier that day. The clouds above had only just finished gathering, dropping the entire mountaintop into darkness.Soon enough, dark smoke came rushing down out of the clouds, reaching the mountaintop and materializing into the figure of the man in the hood. The hood itself hadn't been drawn up this time, leaving his face plainly exposed as Richard DiLaurentis. Anger and impatience were written clearly across it as he hurried forward.He'd almost reached the edge of the cliff when he stopped, crouching to search the ground near the stone.The pair of Heaven-Piercing needles left there that morning were gone.He didn't waste time searching further. His eyes snapped up instead, sharp and furious, fixing on shapes already shrinking into the horizon.Helicopter