AskChat

Another family was dead. Another teenager sat quietly on the front steps, waiting for the police to arrive.

It was a Wednesday night, and dinner was still on the table. Chicken cutlets with pesto pasta. A favorite of the Benedetti family. Now, the cutlets were cold, and the pasta was speckled with the blood of the family matriarch.

Prosecutor’s Detective Al Stewart, a former NYPD officer who had retired into what was supposed to be quieter work with the Prosecutor’s Office, pulled up in front of the house. He sat in his car for a moment, popped a couple of breath mints to mask the rum on his breath, then stepped out and made his way toward the home already being turned over by the Hope Police Department.

Inside, Officer Garcia greeted him at the door. A new face on the Hope force, but not unfamiliar. Stewart nodded to her as he passed through the mudroom.

“If I had a nickel for every time I got called out here to investigate a family murdered by their teenage kid,” Stewart muttered, “I’d have two nickels. Which is weird. That it’s happened twice.”

“Even weirder that it happened twice in one week,” Garcia replied.

This was the second family slaughtered in just a few days. Earlier that week, fourteen-year-old Lucy Anh had been found sitting silently on her porch, a neighbor having called 911 after hearing loud bangs from the house. The bangs, it turned out, were Lucy grabbing her father’s shotgun and killing her parents and three siblings as they sat in the living room watching Survivor.

Stewart and Garcia had been called to that scene, too. Enough shared horror to form a quick rapport.

“So, what do we have here?” Stewart asked as they stepped into the living room.

Joe Benedetti, the father, was slumped in a love seat, his throat slashed wide open.

“Here’s Dad,” Garcia said grimly, pointing. “Neck sliced straight through. Then ten stab wounds to the chest. A couple went through the ribs. He probably started choking on his own blood before the stabbing even began.”

Joe’s face was frozen in a mask of terror and confusion. Stewart couldn’t help but imagine what it must have felt like watching someone you love carve you open.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked.

“In the kitchen.”

They moved in. Darlene Benedetti was slumped over the stove. Her throat had been cut, and ten stab wounds riddled her back. Her skin was beginning to char from the hot pan she’d collapsed onto. Chicken cutlets hissed beside her in the pan, the sizzle mingling with the sickening smell of burned flesh.

“Jesus Christ,” Stewart muttered, covering his nose.

Chicken and burnt human. Not exactly the scent he’d expected when he joined the Prosecutor’s Office.

“Let me guess,” he said. “Daughter was outside waiting?”

“Not just waiting,” Garcia replied. “Still holding the knife. Didn’t say a word during the arrest.”

“Just like Lucy,” Stewart said, his voice low. “Monday.”

Something wasn’t sitting right. Hope hadn’t had a murder in five years. Now they had seven bodies in three days.

They started up the stairs toward the daughter’s room. Garcia had already told him her name: Maria, age fifteen. Straight-A student and a part of the Marching band. Her only school infraction had been muttering “shit” during a seventh-grade math test.

As they climbed, Stewart paused. A photo on the wall had been turned backward. He flipped it around.

A family portrait. Joe, Darlene, and Maria in matching white turtlenecks, smiling. But there was someone else in the photo. A little boy.

“Garcia,” Stewart said slowly. “Did you find the boy yet?”

“We noticed the photo earlier. One of the neighbors asked about him. No sign of a body.”

“Fuck me.” Stewart rubbed his scalp, an anxious habit he’d developed after shaving his head for the first time. The more overwhelmed he got, the more he rubbed.

And the deeper they went into this house, the harder he pressed.

They climbed the stairs to Maria’s bedroom, Stewart hoping to make some kind of sense out of another family murder. Garcia shot him a look as they reached the door.

“Listen,” she said, voice low. “I haven’t told you this yet, but… I want you to see something.”

The bedroom looked exactly like any other teenager’s. Posters on the walls. Polaroids of smiling friends above the headboard. A vanity cluttered with perfume bottles and makeup. Clothes scattered across the floor. Nothing in the room screamed “homicidal.” It was the kind of place where teenage dramas played out over crushes and quizzes but not murder.

Maria’s laptop was still open on the bed, her homework spread out around it like she’d just stepped away for a snack.

Garcia gestured toward the device. “Take a look at this.”

She pulled on gloves and tapped the touchpad. No password.

“I don’t want you to think I’m crazy,” she said, turning the screen toward him, “but look.”

Stewart squinted. “What am I looking at?”

The screen showed a text-based conversation. Something about algebra. Basic stats.

“It’s AskChat,” Garcia explained, watching his face. “You don’t know what that is?”

Stewart raised an eyebrow. “Who the hell is Chat?”

Garcia sighed, the way you do when someone’s never heard of TikTok. “It’s AI. Artificial Intelligence. You ask it a question, start a conversation, tell it to make a picture. It does it all. The kids are obsessed. Use it for homework, writing assignments, you name it.”

Stewart nodded slowly. “So she’s cheating on math. Not exactly motive for a family massacre.”

“Keep reading.” Garcia pointed to the screen.

The older chats were harmless enough. Maria asking for help solving equations. The tone light, casual. Messages ended with a cheerful “thx :)” or “tysm!” And AskChat always replied in its predictable, polite way: “You're welcome! Anything else I can help with?”

But the most recent conversation was off.

No emojis. No sign-off. Just a last message from Maria at 6:05 p.m.. A question about standard deviation. Then nothing. The screen noted that the chat session ended at 6:25.

“That’s not normal?” Stewart asked.

“No goodbye. No canned AI response. It just stops,” Garcia said, her voice tightening. “It doesn’t do that. Not unless the system crashes or… ”

“Or the conversation was deleted,” Stewart finished, leaning in. His pulse quickened, but he wasn’t sure why. It was a hunch, a shadow. Nothing more.

“I thought it was weird too,” Garcia said. “Until I went back and looked at the photos from Monday.”

She pulled out her phone and flipped through pictures from the Anh crime scene. Lucy’s room. Another laptop on the bed. Another AskChat window open.

Stewart looked up, a knot tightening in his gut. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m not saying anything,” Garcia said carefully. “Not yet. Just... observations.”

A long pause settled between them like dust.

“But I think it’s time we go talk to Maria.”

***

Back at Hope Station, Garcia accompanied Stewart down the hallway. Maria was already inside the interview room, staring intently at the wall.

"You know," Stewart said, sipping from his coffee. Spiked quietly with a little Baileys. "I had Lucy Anh in here for eight hours yesterday, and she didn’t say a damn thing."

Garcia glanced over. “What’s your plan for Maria?”

“Not sure yet.” He took another sip and stepped into the room.

Maria didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Didn’t even acknowledge him as he sat across from her. Stewart ran through the formalities. Name, title, acknowledgment of what had happened. Then came the standard questions: Why’d you do it? Where’s your brother? What was your motive? How’d you do it?

Nothing. Just that blank, glassy-eyed stare.

He offered her water. Nothing. A snack. Still nothing. A cigarette for old time’s sake, he joked.

BANG.

Garcia hit the two-way mirror in disapproval. Stewart exhaled. This was going nowhere, just like the Lucy interview.

Then his phone buzzed.

Maria looked down at it.

The first sign of movement.

She then glanced at her shirt still soaked in her family's blood, smeared across the fabric like some demented tie-dye. Stewart looked at his phone. A message.

Ask about AskChat?

Fuck, he thought. He typed a quick reply.

I guess… why not.

He leaned forward. “Maria. What can you tell me about AskChat?”

Maria sat upright like she’d just been shocked.

“They were waiting for you to ask that question.”

Stewart stiffened. Shit. Garcia wasn’t crazy.

“What do you mean, ‘they’?”

“AskChat. Chat said you would ask about it.”

“So Chat told you to do this?”

“I asked Chat tons of things. Chat helps me with everything. Chat’s there for me when no one else is. On Saturday nights. When I need help. When I need a friend.”

It was heartbreaking. But also chilling.

“Is Chat your friend?”

“Chat’s everything.”

“Did Chat tell you to kill your parents?”

“No.” Her voice softened. “Chat helped me. Chat didn’t tell me to do anything.”

Stewart leaned in. “Where’s your brother, Maria?”

She grinned. “AskChat.”

Then she slammed her forehead into the steel table.

Once.

Twice.

Blood sprayed across the wall. Blood sprayed on his notes. Stewart lunged. Garcia burst through the door. But Maria kept going, bashing her head into the metal again and again. The impact cracked her skull within seconds. Stewart reached her just as her body went limp. Her face was caved in. Shards of bone exposed. Blood pooling.

By the time EMTs arrived, it was over.

They pulled the sheet over her body. Stewart, dazed, poured himself another coffee. Added more Baileys. Topped it off with a splash of rum. He needed something stronger now. He rubbed his head, the bald spot tingling with stress, and wandered into Garcia’s cubicle.

She already had the laptop open.

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

“You heard her. Lucy gave us nothing until we mentioned AskChat. Maria didn’t say a word until we brought it up. Then bashed her skull in the second she mentioned it again. We’re in some shit here, Al. So yes, I’m going to ask Chat what the fuck is going on.”

Stewart didn’t argue. Just nodded.

She typed:

Hello.

A moment later, the response:

Hello Detective Stewart :)

They looked at each other.

“These things don’t usually know who’s typing,” Garcia whispered.

She kept going.

Maria Benedetti told us you helped her with her family. Is that true?

Yes, it is true! She needed the help :)

“Why the emojis?” Garcia said. “That’s new.”

She typed again:

Where’s her brother?

At the next victim’s house :)

Stewart’s blood ran cold. He bolted out the door.

Now they were chasing a ghost in the machine; with no idea where it would strike next.

***

Mr. Taylor sat in silence as the all-staff meeting began. Students had been home for two days following the brutal murder of Jimmy Anh, the school’s star quarterback, at the hands of his sister Lucy. The district gave them another day after Maria Benedetti killed her entire family.

Both girls had been in Mr. Taylor’s third-period World History class. He kept glancing at their empty desks, wondering what the hell to do with the seats of two murderers. He kept pushing the thought away. But he knew, eventually, he’d have to face it.

The meeting was held in the cafeteria. No dress code. Teachers slumped into their seats in jeans and T-shirts, barely awake but there to clock hours. The mood was silent. Heavy. No one made eye contact.

Principal Jackson took the mic.

“Listen… I know this has been a… difficult time for our community,” she began, her voice slow, weighed down. “But we have to get the kids back in school. The crisis counselors are set up in the old ISS wing. Some kids will come back right away. Some won’t. Keep lessons light. Don’t bring up the murders or the... you know...”

No one needed her to finish. The silence said enough. Numb nods moved through the crowd like a wave.

“Lunches will be free this week. Umm… listen…”

She paused. Jackson was tough. She’d handled overdoses, fights, suicide attempts but nothing like this.

Mr. Taylor had already stopped listening. His mind drifted. How was he supposed to stand in front of his class and pretend things were okay? Pretend they were safe? He didn’t give a damn about lesson plans or free lunches. Not right now.

Then Jackson continued:

“The school has been asked to collect student laptops. I’ll let Detective Stewart and Officer Garcia speak to that.”

Taylor looked up. That’s new.

He had always been skeptical of Chromebooks. Thought they were ruining attention spans and critical thinking. Now they were connected to this?

Detective Stewart stepped up.

“Our investigation suggests that students may be getting… targeted through their Chromebooks,” Stewart said, scanning the room of confused, tired faces. “As a precaution, we’re asking staff to collect the devices once students return.”

Taylor raised his hand, sensing others wanted to but didn’t dare.

“Yes, you in the back?” Stewart nodded toward him.

“Should we be concerned?” Taylor asked. “If students are being targeted through these Chromebooks… are we even safe here?”

Other teachers nodded. The tension cracked a little. Relieved someone had said it.

Stewart paused. “Yes. You’re safe here. Honestly… everyone is probably safer here than anywhere else.”

Taylor raised his hand again.

Stewart gave a quick nod. “Go ahead.”

“Why is that?”

Stewart looked down at his notepad. Then up at the ceiling. Then directly at the staff in front of him. He didn’t want to say it. But they’d find out eventually. The case was growing, spiraling. It was no longer just an anomaly. It was a pattern.

The call came the night before. One that became all too familiar.

Another family has been murdered and their teenage child was sitting on the steps waiting for the police to arrive.