None Shall Sleep

The story follows 18-year-old Emma Lewis, the sole survivor of serial killer Daniel Huxton, who abducted her at 16 and held her for three days before she escaped. Now a psychology student at Ohio State University with a buzzed head and lingering nightmares, Emma is approached by FBI Special Agent Edmund Cooper of the Behavioral Science section at Quantico, Virginia. Cooper wants to recruit teenagers to interview incarcerated juvenile serial killers who refuse to speak to adult agents. Emma initially refuses but, after weighing the isolation of her trauma against the possibility of saving future victims, calls Cooper and agrees.

At Quantico, Emma meets her partner, Travis Bell, an 18-year-old training to join the US Marshals Service, whose father, Barton Bell, a US Marshal, was murdered by teenage serial killer Simon Gutmunsson during an arrest. Cooper assigns them files on five convicted juvenile killers. Their first subject is Clarence McMurtry, a 17-year-old convicted of strangling three elderly women, housed at a medium-security prison in West Virginia. On the drive, Emma and Bell share their respective traumas and begin building trust. The interview succeeds, though Emma suffers flashbacks afterward.

Cooper then fractures the team by adding Simon Gutmunsson to the roster. Bell storms out, furious that Cooper broke a promise not to include his father's killer. Cooper reveals the unit's true purpose: Gutmunsson, a 19-year-old responsible for 11 murders across three states, has been sending Cooper letters containing insights about an active serial murder case in Pennsylvania. Cooper needs someone Gutmunsson's age to conduct the interview, because direct contact only feeds Simon's manipulative tendencies. Emma agrees to interview Simon alone at St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Washington, DC, while Bell waits outside.

Simon's cell occupies the altar space of a former chapel. He is tall, white-haired, and terrifyingly perceptive. Within minutes he deduces Emma's identity from her college T-shirt and her name, connecting her to the Huxton case through newspaper reports. He probes her emotional wounds, asking about her guilt over the victims who died. Emma loses her composure but recovers enough to collect the completed questionnaire, which contains cryptic notes about the Pennsylvania killer.

Emma accuses Cooper of using her as bait, knowing a Huxton survivor would be irresistible to someone like Simon. Cooper admits he has been desperate for leads. Emma and Bell agree to continue on the condition that Cooper shares the case files. The Pennsylvania file reveals four teenage victims found in garbage dumps, all with their throats cut, hung upside down, and drained of blood. In a separate thread, Anthony Hoyt, a meticulous man living in Annandale, Virginia, scouts an isolated property ideal for ritualistic killings; he is the serial killer known as the Berryville Butcher.

Emma returns to St. Elizabeths, where Simon suggests the killer draws blood from victims before killing them, seeking something glowing in them that he wants to kindle inside himself. Emma takes this theory to the FBI Scientific Analysis lab, where analysts identify an asymmetry in autopsy photos: Left arms show more severe ligature abrasions across all victims, suggesting the killer deliberately scraped away tissue at the puncture sites to conceal needle marks. The team concludes the killer has medical training and likely transfuses victims' blood into himself.

A new crime scene surfaces in Berryville, Virginia. Emma and Bell disobey Cooper's orders and drive to the site, where three victims hang from ceiling beams, throats cut, hair shaved, and blood pooled beneath them. Emma theorizes the killer has acquired a permanent site and is abandoning disposable locations. Simon's twin sister, Kristin Gutmunsson, visits Quantico and provides critical insights: All the victims share a luminous, youthful beauty, and the killer stands beneath the suspended bodies naked, bathing in their blood. Television footage of Emma and Bell at the crime scene draws a reprimand from Cooper's superior, Section Chief Donald Raymond, who threatens to shut down their unit.

The investigation accelerates when Simon's orderly discovers that the Butcher has been writing directly to Simon, following his advice on technique and expressing interest in Emma. The Butcher signs his letters "Siegfried," after the Norse hero who bathed in dragon's blood to become invincible. Emma confronts Simon, who admits he withheld information to prolong her visits, and persuades him to write a reply letter. Bell traces the Butcher's mail route through Georgetown University to a dead man's address in Annandale, and the FBI sets a stakeout.

The stakeout fails when the Butcher escapes the perimeter. Cooper pursues him into Fairfax hospital, where Hoyt, now wearing surgical garb, identifies himself as Dr. Clive Ross. When Cooper lowers his weapon, Hoyt slashes Cooper's throat with a concealed scalpel, killing him. Raymond takes control of the case and shuts down Emma and Bell's unit, but Cooper's colleague, Agent Mike Martino, promises to share information unofficially. Emma discovers that at least five of the seven victims consulted alternative medical clinics using the same technician service, narrowing the suspect list to 12 names.

Raymond coerces Simon into cooperating by threatening to prosecute Kristin, and Simon places a personal ad inviting the Butcher to St. Elizabeths. Dr. Evelyn Scott, the asylum superintendent, gives Emma keys to a back entrance so she and Bell can monitor Simon during the operation. Hoyt has already infiltrated the facility, employed there for four months under his real name while posing as a paramedic called Clive Ross. He kills the FBI receptionist and the control booth technician, then locks all FBI forces out of the center building. When Emma, Bell, and Kristin encounter Hoyt in the great hall, he locks them inside Simon's room and returns with a stolen revolver, shooting Bell in the left side.

Hoyt forces Emma to haul Simon upside down in his cell, then to draw blood from Bell and Kristin at gunpoint. He injects their blood into himself in narcotic ecstasy. When he demands Emma's blood, she inserts the last clean needle into her own vein without the syringe barrel and releases the tourniquet, causing blood to gush onto the floor, deliberately wasting what Hoyt considers precious. Kristin, secretly conscious, drives the used syringe into Hoyt's face and grabs his revolver. Emma seizes the gun, and the three escape through a door using a key Emma had hidden in Kristin's pocket.

Knowing what captivity feels like from her own abduction, Emma cannot leave Simon caged with a killer. With only two bullets, she re-enters the chapel. Hoyt ambushes her with a scalpel, and she fires both rounds and misses. In a final desperate act, she wrenches the lanyard of keys from Hoyt's neck and throws them through the bars of Simon's cell. Simon frees himself and kills Hoyt with lethal precision, pausing to touch Emma's face and tell her she was something he did not anticipate. SWAT forces break through when the lights return.

At Cooper's memorial service, Special Agent Howard Carter, Cooper's friend and successor, gives Emma and Bell envelopes about new Behavioral Science units continuing Cooper's work. Bell tells Emma he knows what he wants to do. Emma puts on her running shoes, sets the unopened envelope against the base of an oak tree, and begins the drive home to Apple Creek.