His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to work the latch.
“I kept the hard copies. Safer, unhackable,” he said.
The lockbox was a Pandora’s treasure trove of deceit. Inside, the city unraveled before me—not as it seemed, but as it truly was. Photographs of deeds with names blacked out. City plans sprawled across yellowed parchment and crisp blueprints, their lines intersecting in patterns that felt both familiar and wrong. Buildings marked for purchase. And running through it all, like veins in a body, were the old aether channels—the ones only druids and hocus-pocus healers pretended to care about. By fifth grade, everyone knew those channels didn’t mean a damn thing.
But don’t tell that to the druids or their tree-hugging, leaf-loving, hocus-pocus followers preaching about sacred channels and nature’s balance. They’d pushed their woo-woo agenda through Congress if they had the money. But this city? This city doesn’t give a damn about druids or their so-called channels. It’s the all versus the individual, the everything against the no one.
I studied the faded map of lines, the kind I hadn’t laid eyes on in years. Certain intersections leapt out, familiar places I’d strolled past a thousand times without a second glance—until now.
“Are you telling me the crazies were right about those aether channels?”
“Hell if I know, Jack. But someone very powerful seems to think so,” Bart stammered, his hands twitching as he dug frantically through the papers. He pulled out a blueprint of a sleek, modern building paired with an official document, the Governor’s seal stamped in bold at the top. “This. This is what started it.”
He handed me a piece of black cloth, its texture strange—smooth but rough, almost like leather.
I don’t like this, Frank said. I don’t know why, but… I really don’t like this, Jack.
My stomach tightened, threatening to claw its way up my throat as I unfolded it. It looked like an odd sort of map. Etched onto the cloth were silver lines, gleaming faintly, their patterns flowing and swirling with an organic elegance—until they didn’t. Jagged notches disrupted the natural currents, breaking the graceful flow and forcing it into sharp, unnatural bends. The aether’s course was twisted here, bottlenecked into something distorted, something fundamentally wrong.
I traced the lines, trying to make sense of the map, but the streets didn’t look familiar. The layout was... off. It wasn’t like any city I’d ever seen before. It felt alien, like a place that shouldn’t exist but somehow did.
“Where is this?” I asked, my voice low, steady.
“No clue,” Bart admitted, shaking his head. “I’ve tried to figure it out, believe me. But I’m no cartographer. It doesn’t match any map I’ve been able to borrow or buy.”
“You think this is why the precinct was bombed?” I pressed, holding the map up between us. “This is what they didn’t want anyone digging up?”
“It’s all connected. All of it! I knew I might need this file one day… in case they hurt her.” Bart was a faucet now, words spilling out in a rush. “When you were running errands for Kane that day—remember the case?”
“Of course I do,” I said quietly. “It was an odd job Kane had taken on for us—an inheritance dispute. Rich kid wanting his father’s estate. Normal white-collar stuff. I already looked into it; the case was clean.”
“Of course it was. The files Kane needed from the precinct burned up with everything else—except for one copy, accidentally rerouted to the wrong district office. A clerical error. Dumb luck, really. When the precinct blew, I put out feelers, Jack. I wanted to find the bastard responsible as much as anyone else. So, I asked around, tried to piece things together. It wasn’t until the smoke cleared that the file showed up. One of my buddies found it and routed it my way, thinking I might make sense of it. I wasn’t supposed to see it—none of it—but there it was, sitting on my desk like a loaded gun.”
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Bart’s voice quavered, climbing with every word as he gestured wildly at the scattered papers, his hands trembling so badly they seemed barely able to hold onto the mess. “I nearly shit myself when I realized it was the same file Kane was after. I swear, Jack, I wanted to call you right then and there—but I didn’t know where you were. And... and I didn’t want to drag you into it if it turned out to be nothing.”
He yanked a few pages from the pile, slamming them down on the counter—a tangle of contracts, land deeds, and official stamps. His finger jabbed at one in particular, the ink smudged from his sweaty grip.
“It wasn’t about the estate, Jack. It was about the land. And guess who the little brat sold it to a year later?”
I scanned the papers, my eyes catching on one of the few names not blacked out: Tomas Winthrop. Governor of New Amsterdam.
Bart’s laugh was sharp, bitter. “First, I thought maybe he was pulling the strings, right? Makes sense. Governor’s got the power, he’s in the right place, all that crap. But then I thought, him? Tommy Winthrop?“ He spat the name like it left a bad taste in his mouth. “No. I knew the guy before he dipped his toes into politics—dumber than a box of rocks. Winthrop’s not the mastermind here; he’s a moron. A goddamn puppet of a puppet. Too dumb to be scared, even when he should be.”
Bart’s voice cracked, his panic growing. “It didn’t sit right, so I kept digging. And what I found... Jack, it’s not about what’s there. It’s about what isn’t.”
I thought back to Aylin, to how I’d figured her out. P.I. work was often just that; a deadly game of elimination—except, if you were wrong, you were the one eliminated.
He fumbled through the papers, his fingers trembling as they brushed over maps and ledgers. “Look! Here! Half the funding sources? Gone. Names redacted. Trails that lead to nowhere. It’s like someone erased themselves from existence.” He looked at me, his eyes pleading for understanding. “I didn’t know what to do, Jack. You—goddamn it, you were my best friend. Best man at my wedding, remember? I wanted to tell you. I swear I did. But what I found... you’d have done the same.”
I let him ramble, the words coming faster now, almost tumbling over each other.
“Cat’s nothing, Jack. Even the Council—they’re nothing compared to what’s coming. This is... this is big. This is ancient. And it’s everywhere. Every damn part of the city is infected with it.”
I leaned forward, my voice like a blade. “Infected with what?”
Bart’s face went pale, his lips trembling. This wasn’t fear of death. It was something deeper. The fear of a man who had watched everything he loved torn from him—a man that would give anything to keep them safe. I knew that look too well.
His lips moved, shaping words that never made it past his throat, stolen by the air itself. His eyes showed confusion, and then terrible recognition. The room shimmered and the rift-soot tremble slightly, revealing the colors underneath. Magic.
The moment of silence that followed was absolute—the kind that stretches in the breath between the squeeze of the trigger and the brutal bark of a revolver. His face crumpled, eyes wide and shimmering with a desperate plea, a sadness too deep to put into words—a sorrow that knew the inevitable was already here.
If I were more human, I would have shaken in fear. But I had no heart to pound in my chest, no pulse to quicken. I watched as Bart tried to speak, as if the words would save him.
Frank moved, an instinct beyond either of us, a cold rush rippling beneath my skin. The leather of the jacket slithered and tightened, creeping like ivy over my shoulders, ribs, arms, until I was encased in his embrace. I felt myself being pulled and then—
A blinding white flash. Time fractured, freezing for the briefest moment as light bent and twisted, warping Bart’s terror-stricken face into a grotesque mask. His lips still moved, slow and distorted, as if melting under the bloom of fire—a vivid, violent flower of heat and shock. Then, with a sudden, shuddering exhale, time snapped loose, and the world surged forward, racing to catch up.
Then came the roar, and the world exploded.
Heat. Blinding, searing heat, swallowing everything in its path. The room crumbled inwards, the pressure collapsing windows into jagged teeth, the walls splitting at their seams. Flames rolled through the house like they had been waiting for this moment, a chaotic symphony of fury and release.
The blast picked me up, or perhaps it was Frank who dragged me, the world blurring into an incomprehensible rush of color and light.
There was fire, there was the shattering sound of everything breaking apart, and then there was nothing.
Peace.
For a moment, I was untouchable, drifting through the chaos, separate from it, beyond it.
And then, it was over. The roar faded, and all that was left was silence—hot, thick, and final.