Chapter Three
Aldric was seated in his single worn chair, staring at a patch of wall where space number 48 was still vacant. He rose slowly, his joints complaining like old floorboards, and walked to the door. He did not check the peephole. He did not ask who it was. He knew.
He opened the door.
Eril stood in the dim hallway, hands buried in the pockets of his overcoat. Raindrops still clung to the shoulders of the dark wool. He did not smile. Aldric did not greet him. They stood there for a long, empty moment — two men who had once shared something, and had spent years pretending they hadn't.
Aldric stepped aside.
Eril entered without a word, his eyes sweeping the apartment. The walls papered with obituaries and newspaper pages — all of them folded open to the accidents section, the crime reports, the death notices. Black headlines screamed silently from every surface. The single shelf bore only a clock that ticked like a limp. The low table, empty except for an ashtray crowded with dead cigarettes. The air smelled of stale smoke and something else — something sweet and chemical, barely masked.
Eril's gaze lingered on nothing and everything.
Aldric gestured toward the chair. Eril sat.
Neither spoke as Aldric moved into the small kitchen alcove. The sound of water boiling. The clink of two ceramic cups. He returned with black coffee, no sugar, and set one cup before Eril. Then he lowered himself into the chair opposite, the leather sighing under his weight.
Eril wrapped his hands around the cup but did not drink. He watched Aldric over the rim.
"Hello, Aldric," he said finally. "You've seemed strange these past few days. Would you tell me what's happening to you?"
Aldric lifted his own cup. The coffee was bitter and hot. He let it burn his tongue before answering.
"Drink first."
Eril hesitated, then raised the cup to his lips. He took a small sip, grimaced slightly at the bitterness, and set it back down. "Alright."
Aldric placed his cup on the table with a soft clink. He leaned back, his grey eyes fixed on Eril with the flat, unblinking calm of a lizard on a rock.
"First," Aldric said, "this is none of your concern, Eril. Second — since when do you ask about me? Since when does my well-being interest you?"
Eril's jaw tightened. A flicker of something — irritation, perhaps guilt — passed behind his glasses. "Come on, Aldric. Don't be like this."
Silence. Aldric said nothing. He finished his coffee in slow, deliberate swallows, his eyes never leaving Eril's face. When the cup was empty, he placed it down and folded his hands over his stomach.
Eril let out a short breath through his nose. He shook his head, and when he spoke again, the pretense had drained from his voice. What remained was business.
"Fine. I wanted to act like a friend. But let's end this little farce." He reached into his coat and withdrew a folded slip of paper. "The Boss is pleased with your work. She wants to reward you. But there's a case you need to close first. Win it. Everything you need is on this paper."
He held it out. Aldric did not take it.
"Put it on the table," he said. "And leave."
Eril's eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. Then he set the folded paper beside his untouched coffee cup and rose to his feet.
"Alright. Goodbye, then."
He walked to the door, opened it, and paused on the threshold. For a moment, it seemed he might say something else — something beneath the script, something real. His back remained turned. His shoulders held a tension that had nothing to do with the job. Then it passed, and he stepped into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind him with a soft click.
Aldric did not move. The paper lay on the table, white and crisp against the dark wood. The clock ticked. The rain tapped against the window like impatient fingers.
He sat motionless for a long while.
Then, slowly, he reached for the paper.
He unfolded it. An address. A warehouse. The industrial district on the east side of the city. A date — three days from now. And below that, a single initial: F.
No instructions. No details. Just a place and a time.
Aldric read it twice. His expression did not change. He reached into his coat pocket, withdrew a box of matches, and struck one. He held the burning paper between his fingers — and for a moment, three seconds at most, he did not let it go. He simply watched the flame eat the address, the date, the single letter. As if he were watching something else burn entirely.
Then the heat reached his skin and he dropped the blackening curl into the ashtray. It crumbled into ash, joining the grey dust of a hundred dead cigarettes.
The warehouse. Again. How many years had it been? Ten? More?
He stood and walked to the window. The rain had softened to a drizzle. A single figure stood on the opposite sidewalk, collar turned up, face tilted upward.
Eril. He had not left.
He had crossed the street and was standing there, hands still in his pockets, watching. Aldric did not wave. Did not move. He simply stood in the dark frame of his window and stared back.
Below, Eril raised one hand — not a wave, but a signal. Small. Deliberate. Then he lowered it, withdrew a phone, and typed something quickly. The Boss. She would know, within seconds, that the paper had been delivered. That the machinery was still turning.
Eril pocketed the phone, turned, and walked away. His figure dissolved into the grey veil of rain.
Aldric's eyes drifted to the reflection in the glass. His own face stared back — pale, gaunt, eyes sunk deep in their sockets. And behind his reflection, something else. A shape. Sitting in the chair Eril had vacated.
He did not turn around. He closed his eyes, counted to five, and opened them again. The reflection was empty.
"Not yet," he whispered to the glass. "Not tonight."
He stood at the window a moment longer, watching the street where Eril had been.
She pulls the string and the puppet walks, he thought. She always assumed the puppet had no thoughts of its own. No plans. No anger buried so deep even the puppet forgot it was there.
He let the thought breathe for a little longer this time.
Then he turned away from the window and walked to the bedroom.
Cassian sat on the edge of his unmade bed, the glow of his phone screen carving sharp shadows across his face.
He was scrolling through old photographs. Years of them. He stopped on one picture and zoomed in. Three men. Cassian, younger, grinning at the camera. Aldric, standing slightly apart, his smile faint and guarded. Eril, his arm slung casually over Cassian's shoulder. And a fourth figure. Cropped out. Blurred at the edge of the frame. Only a shoulder and a wisp of dark hair remained.
Cassian stared at the smudge of pixels for a long moment. He didn't zoom in further. He already knew it wouldn't help.
He set the phone face-down on the mattress and sat in the dark for a while, not moving.
Then he picked it up again and pressed Eril's name.
The line rang twice. "Cassian." Eril's voice was flat, distracted.
"I've been thinking," Cassian said. "You visited Aldric."
A pause. "Yes."
"And? How is he?"
"He's just tired. Don't worry. He'll be fine in a few days."
Cassian's thumb drifted toward his mouth. He caught himself and lowered it. "Really? Since when do you reassure people?"
A beat of silence. Then Eril's voice, quieter: "Just let it go, Cassian."
"Maybe I should visit him myself. I don't think it's just exhaustion."
"No." Too quickly. "You shouldn't. Isn't this your vacation? Rest. Ask him when you get back to work."
Cassian's eyes narrowed. He looked at the cropped photograph still glowing on his screen. "Alright," he said slowly. "Since you're the one saying it."
The line went dead.
Cassian lowered the phone and stared at the wall. Something was wrong. He had known it since the moment Aldric smiled at an empty rearview mirror in the rain. And now Eril — Eril, who never cared enough to lie — was lying to him.
He looked back at the photograph. At the smudged fourth figure.
Who were you? he thought. And why did Aldric cut you out?
He didn't put the phone down. He held it in his lap, in the dark, and waited for a thought that didn't come.