Chapter 6 - Chapter 29 – Barcelona — Stillness in Mosaic

Chapter 29 – Barcelona — Stillness in Mosaic

The morning after the monastery, the city felt absurdly alive—taxis honking, vendors slapping awnings, schoolkids shrieking through sunshine that smelled of oranges and wet stone. Lucas Vale loped beside Serena up the hill toward Park Güell, heat already beading at his temples. Forty-eight hours in the Curators' subterranean "library of skipped seconds" had filled his head with impossible geometry and stricter moral algorithms; now the surface world attacked every sense, as if making sure he was still mortal.

Serena's camera swung against her hip. "Explain again why Gaudí's playground is the right testing range?"

"Roomy vistas, random buskers, tourists who can't tell an art prank from avant-garde theatre," Lucas said. "And the Curators suggested an open-air environment for first 'anchored echo'."

"When shadow cabals hand you homework," she muttered, "I worry."

He caught her hand, squeezing once. The Curators had been polite, clinical—taught him how to tether another mind so a companion could move inside a freeze bubble without frying their neurology. Serena had volunteered before he could talk her out of it. Partners or nothing, she'd said.

The park gates loomed, ceramic shards glittering. They paid, wove through the queue, and climbed to the mosaic terrace where the famous serpentine bench undulated like a frozen wave. Barcelona sprawled below in ochre and sea-green haze.

Lucas scanned minds: surface chatter of selfies, sunburn complaints, no void agents. "We're clear."

Serena flicked her recorder to standby, tucking it under jacket. "Ground rules first."

He nodded.

"Rule one," she said, counting on fingers. "No freezes longer than sixty seconds without my override. Two: never alter a crowd if collateral exceeds inconvenience—no more casino-scale hustles. Three: anchor me every time or I walk."

Lucas's chest warmed—trust disguised as ultimatum. "Deal."

She exhaled, nerves and thrill tangling in her smile. "Show me what silence really sounds like."

Lucas positioned them near the railing overlooking Eixample. He breathed, feeling the world's tick in the soles of his shoes. Curators had likened time to a braided river: freeze too hard, the strands snap. Anchor required gentler pull. He linked fingers with Serena, visualised their heartbeats syncing, then took half a step sideways—into the seam.

The park ceased.

Pigeons mid-orbit solidified into grey sculptures. A soap-bubble blown by a street performer hung glass-still, rainbow skin unbreathing. The chatter of tour groups fled, replaced by a hush so dense Lucas heard his own blood.

Beside him, Serena gasped—an audible sound inside a noiseless world. She moved, hair drifting rather than blowing. "I'm—inside," she whispered, awe skittering across her face. "Lucas, this is… deafening."

He smiled, pulse steady. "Walk."

They strolled the terrace. Each footfall felt like treading on thin ice; too much torque could fracture the pause. Serena lifted a pigeon's wing gently; feathers flexed but static tension refused to release. She let go, mesmerised.

"Vision's sharper," she noted. "Like hyper-HD."

"Brain's writing double frames," Lucas said. "Curators called it parallax stacking. You'll get a headache if we stay long."

They reached the bubble performer. Serena traced the iridescence halo, fingertip leaving no mark. Then her ethics caught up; she turned, searching the crowd of statues. "They breathe, right?"

"Metabolic processes crawl." He didn't mention risks—oxygen debt in lungs if freeze exceeded a threshold. Instead he pressed watch stem on bracelet. Ten seconds remaining.

Serena faced city vista, tears glassing her eyes. "We could save anyone," she said. "Stop bullets. Earthquakes. Wars."

"Or we could break reality," he countered, gentle. "Each pause displaces entropy. Curators hinted at fractures—tick-skip scars. Use sparingly."

Seconds dwindled. He exhaled, releasing anchor. Wind gusted, pigeons exploded into flight, bubble popped with wet snap, chatter rolled back like surf. Serena staggered, hand to temple.

"Headache?" he asked.

"Like I binge-watched every cine-frame of existence." She laughed, half-delighted, half-frightened. "Lucas, the power… I felt omnipotent for ten heartbeats."

"That's why boredom is lethal," he admitted quietly. "Once you've tasted sovereignty, reality's just decaf."

A hush fell between them, thick with possibility and dread. Serena lowered herself onto the tiled bench. "We need more rules."

"Agreed."

But before words formed, Lucas's telepathic net snagged an anomaly—mind full of static, not void but scrambled, as though thoughts were playing in reverse. He pivoted. Down the stairway, a teenager filmed them with a phone on gimbal. The boy's internal monologue repeated, that glitch was sick—viral—

Lucas swore. The micro-pause must have produced visible ripple—maybe the bubble pop appeared like a jump-cut. He reached with influence: phone battery critical—shut off. The boy frowned, tapped screen, and pocketed device, mumbling curses. Footage might still reside.

Serena tracked his line of sight. "Public exposure risk?"

"Minimal if I intercept cloud sync," Lucas said, though pulse quickened.

She touched his knee. "Rule four: plan media containment."

He nodded, but mind raced further: Curators might have seeded watchers to test composure. Or Graves's drone overhead? He scanned sky—nothing metallic.

A violinist began playing near the Hypostyle Hall entrance; the melody stitched through ambient noise, minor and haunting. Lucas's power-attuned nerves pricked—the tune beat three-quarter waltz matching his own heartbeat. Coincidence?

Serena rose, eyes narrowing. They descended steps. The violinist—a middle-aged woman with streak of silver hair—played with closed eyes. At her feet, open case held no coins, only a single Ouroboros card glowing faint. Another Curator emissary.

Lucas crouched, lifted card. Numerals illuminated: 00 : 05 : 00.

Serena inhaled. "Five-minute timer?"

The violinist's song ended, bow stilling mid-air. She opened eyes—emerald bright. "Gatekeeper protocol," she said softly, English with lilting accent. "You have proven tandem stability. Next demonstration: intervention under crisis, no collateral. Latitude embedded." She tucked violin away, stepped into crowd, vanished before brains processed.

Lucas flipped card; hologram projected GPS—Vatican City, subterranean coordinates. He and Serena exchanged looks.

"Rome in five hours by rail," she said, calculating aloud. "But card shows five-minute countdown already."

Lucas tapped bracelet—no change. "Trigger likely when next crisis begins." He pocketed card. "We need transport."

As they exited park, Serena's phone pinged—news alert: Historic district gas main leak—multiple injuries—Nàpols Street, 2 km east. Crisis delivered.

"What if they're orchestrating disasters now?" she whispered, disgust threading fear.

"Or predicting probabilities," Lucas said. "Either way, test started."

They sprinted down hill, weaving through cyclists. Lucas's muscles protested; freeze earlier still taxing. They reached Calle de Nàpols within four minutes. Fire crews cordoned area around a collapsed café front, windows blown, debris smoking. Bystanders screamed; two pinned under fallen signage.

Card inside pocket ticked 00 : 01 : 12.

Serena caught his arm. "You can't pause near first-responders—they'll notice skip."

"Then micro-target." He assessed scene—sign weighed maybe 150 kilos, well within TK threshold if adrenaline cooperated. But he'd never lifted more than ten. Curators demanded stretch.

He inhaled, flexed will, feel each bolt, each rivet. Telekinesis arced like live wire; metal trembled, rose centimetres.

Veins in neck throbbed; world vignetted. He channeled deeper, remembering drowning terror, migrants' trust. Sign rose fully; pinned woman dragged clear by firefighters, oblivious to unseen help. He lowered sign onto curb, knees quaking.

Card chirped—timer zero. It dissolved into dust. Test passed.

Serena hugged him tight amidst sirens. "Collateral zero," she whispered.

From corner of eye Lucas spotted figure filming again—same teen? No, older man, corporate headset. Data leaked. Always.

They backed away before questions surfaced.

✦ ✦ ✦

Two hours later they boarded AVE train bound for Madrid connection, Rome tickets purchased via crypto wallet. Lucas collapsed into seat, Serena beside him editing footage—she'd recorded crisis assist with lens hood shielding Lucas's gestures.

"Publishing?" he asked wearily.

"Archiving." She saved to encrypted drive. "One day the world will need truth. Not yet."

Train accelerated; Mediterranean coastline blurred. Lucas watched window reflection—his face gaunt, but eyes steadier than weeks prior.

Serena closed laptop, rested head on his shoulder. "Boundaries negotiated?"

"For now," he said. "But Curators escalate fast."

She chuckled softly. "So do we."

Outside, dusk set sky ablaze. Lucas allowed eyelids to drift, lulled by track rhythm. Yet just before sleep, he felt a faint tug—as if another walker brushed timestream in opposite direction, somewhere ahead on rails.

He opened eyes. Nothing. But the promise of community, hinted by Curators, teased wonder.

"Everything okay?" Serena murmured.

"Yeah," he said, squeezing her hand. "Just thinking how big the river is."

"Don't drown again," she teased, drifting to nap.

Lucas smiled at irony. Then let train carry them toward Rome, toward vaults beneath Vatican stones, toward next reckoning.

Three cars behind, Mason Graves lowered the business-class curtain, replaying thermal footage of Lucas's unseen sign-lift. He dialed a secure line. "Confirmed—phase-shift without pause. Adjust containment teams for mass-TK. Rome rendezvous unchanged." The hunt had boarded the same train.

Chapter 30 – Rome — Dust Between the Columns

Lucas Vale let the early-afternoon crowd push him off the platform at Roma Termini, shoulders rippling with aftershocks of the seven-hour rail sprint. Marble arches amplified every announcement into cathedral thunder. The old station smelled of espresso, suntan lotion, and historical inevitability. Beside him Serena Kaur kept her camera bag angled so the lens faced the milling travelers—habit, insurance, confession waiting to happen.

Their goal squatted five blocks south: the Jesuit-run Archivio delle Missioni, an ornate mausoleum of parchment officially closed for restoration. According to the violinist's whispered briefing beneath Park Güell, Curator breadcrumbs older than the radio age were filed below its nave—testimonies of "Tick-Skippers" who'd flickered through history before anyone coined the word. Lucas's chest thrummed at the term; it felt like seeing his own surname in a stranger's diary.

He scanned minds out of habit. Everyday thoughts swirled—gelato line?, Exam tomorrow, Why did she ghost me?—but no void-mind vacuums. Mason Graves, however, was somewhere close; Lucas sensed the man's signature clenched focus like a hot bead on the back of his skull. The hunter had boarded their train but never showed his hand.

Serena brushed his elbow. "Taxi or metro?"

"Feet," Lucas said. "Less metadata."

They slipped through streets where cobblestones popped weeds and Vespas hissed like insects. Sunlight bounced off pale façades, making the city feel two shades brighter than sensible. Lucas felt overexposed, as if Rome itself were a spotlight. Forty-eight hours inside the Curators' "library of skipped seconds" had been subterranean, womb-dark; Daylight now felt fabricated.

At Piazza dell' Esquilino, Serena slowed to capture B-roll of a fountain; Lucas checked the field-controller bracelet under his cuff—battery green, Hard-Lock ready. The sandstone emblem, holstered deep in his pocket, warmed at the thought of repositories; it behaved almost like a compass now, vibrating faintly when pointed toward the unknown. Or maybe that was his imagination—he hadn't ruled out chrono-psychosomatic effects.

"Here," he said minutes later.

The Archivio facade resembled a Baroque wedding cake some giant had abandoned mid-icing: twin bell towers, cracked stucco, scaffolding draped in white tarps like half-wrapped gifts. A plywood door bore a CHIUSO sign. Scarlet security tape criss-crossed the main portal, but a smaller service entrance on the alley side sported a simpler padlock.

Serena raised an eyebrow. "Brains or brawn?"

"Ethical mélange," Lucas replied, testing lock with a tug. It was sturdy but unshielded. He thought about freezing time—it would be cleaner—but Curators had warned: excessive pauses in high-population zones left turbulence others could detect. Better to nudge.

He reached into the lock's mechanical mind—though steel had no consciousness, its tumblers held shape and friction he could feel with telekinesis. A delicate push, a twist of his wrist, and the shackle popped. He flinched; each metallic click echoed guilt. Serena slid inside first, flashlight lens hooded by her palm.

The corridor smelled of mildew and candlewax. Dust motes quivered in hazy shafts from stained-glass windows taped for renovation. At the far end, double doors—oak, iron-banded—guarded the reading hall.

Lucas's thoughts drifted to Graves, stalking some parallel route. He paused to listen: distant city hum, no bootfalls. Still, the hunter had resources; drones, universal skeleton keys, determination. Lucas's shoulder ached where Graves's men had cuffed him nights before; memory spurred him onward.

Inside the reading hall, rows of oak tables sat beneath a barrel vault ceiling frescoed with saints giving side-eye to eternity. Rolling ladders traced floor-to-ceiling stacks curated by century. Electrical lights were dark, but afternoon sun pooled enough to navigate.

Serena's voice was reverent. "Smells like every library I hid in as a kid."

"Smells like time." Lucas unreeled the emblem; in here its warmth pulsed definite. He aimed it along aisles, watching intensity rise. "North wall."

They approached shelving tagged Relazioni ad Limina 1650-1700. Lucas expected brittle Latin volumes, but instead found a modern metal lockbox—gray, fingerprint reader blinking. A coded relic inside ancient covers. Curators or Vatican archivists? Either way, they hadn't anticipated a chrono-pick.

"Scan glitch?" Serena asked.

"Wrong biometrics," he said, flexing fingers. He contemplated Hard-Lock: thirty-second null field that could short the reader, though risked frying whatever electronics protected the files. Mechanical fallback: unscrew hinges. But speed mattered.

He tapped bracelet, selected Sync-Scrub—a lighter pulse designed to reset micro-controllers. He'd tested it only once on a train door. Heart drummed. He fired. A ripple—like static over water—shimmered across the lockbox. The LED died, then revived green. Lid clicked free.

Inside lay eight parchment folios sealed in plastic and a chipped crystal cylinder—quartz infused with filament gold, about the size of a lipstick. Emblem responded, glowing as if greeting kin.

Serena donned nitrile gloves, slid one folio out. "Latin," she murmured. "But notes scrawled in pencil—English."

Lucas read over her shoulder. The header: Report on the Provincial Miracle of Grenoble, 6 April 1699. Beneath, an inked description of a "young clockmaker's apprentice" who "stepped between moments" to rescue a bishop from falling timber. No angels—just time distortion.

Lucas's stomach dropped. Tick-Skipper lineage stretching centuries. He flipped pages: references to sighting of "the silent nun" in Toledo, a "blink duel" outside Prague. Each witness account ended with a symbol: double-ouroboros. Curators wearing church robes, three hundred years early.

"Library of skipped seconds indeed," Serena whispered, awe punching through skepticism.

He opened another folio dated 1916: trenches near Ypres, allied soldiers glimpsing a man strolling through shellfire, bullets frozen midair. Marginal note remarked Subject later recovered by 'Curatorial Field Chaplains.' A wartime retrieval team.

"If they've guided walkers this long," Serena said, "why the secrecy now?"

Lucas toyed with quartz cylinder; it hummed faint. "Maybe some walkers break rules. Maybe Curators broke theirs."

A footstep creaked in vestibule. Serena snapped folios shut; Lucas pocketed cylinder. Through lattice balustrade they saw flashlight beams—two security guards? Then Graves's silhouette appeared—sharp suit, shoulder rig glinting.

Lucas hissed, "We're found."

Serena grabbed camera bag, slung strap. "Exit strategy?"

"There's a trapdoor." He gestured to floor panel beneath rolling ladder's base—an old maintenance hatch. They knelt, pried it open revealing spiral stairs descending into gloom.

Before dropping, Lucas turned. Graves strode into main aisle, pistol lowered but ready. Their eyes met across saints and dust.

"Put the papers down," Graves called. "Rome doesn't need another miracle today."

Serena urged Lucas; they slipped below, hatch clicking shut as footsteps thundered overhead.

✦ ✦ ✦

The stairwell smelled of earth and candle soot. Motive lanterns lined walls dead. Serena flicked flashlight; mosaics of gears and hourglasses tiled the shaft—a technician-monk's wallpaper.

"How deep?" she whispered.

Lucas counted steps, mapping with telepathy for voids—none. "Twelfth-century sub-crypt likely. Maybe older."

At bottom, the tunnel opened to a circular chamber lit by phosphorescent paint. At center stood an iron orrery, planets replaced by clock faces spinning independently. Around it, alcoves housed stone plinths draped in velvet. One cloth had been tossed aside revealing a metal door, smaller than a man, set flush into floor like a miniature vault.

Serena approached the orrery; its second hands spun while minutes stayed. Time loops. "Art or machine?"

Lucas brushed quartz cylinder along bronze struts; gears whirred, aligning faces to 12-12-12. A soft chime rang. The floor door unlatched with sigh.

He knelt. Inside recess lay a single notebook bound in red leather, modern elastic strap. He opened: first page blank, second page title Chronometric Ethics Directive – Draft. Authors field empty. Footnotes cross-referenced Curator manifest numbers. Serena's jaw slackened. "We just found Vatican's ghostwriter room."

Above, Graves's voice echoed through stairwell, closer. "Vale! Not a step further. Jesuit security will storm in five."

Lucas pocketed notebook, clasped Serena's hand. "Freeze or fight?"

She considered. "Curators said each overt freeze risks fracture. But Graves won't hesitate to leak."

Lucas agreed. Fight might injure; freeze might cascade. Unless—he eyed orrery. Perhaps designed as stabiliser.

He anchored with Serena, stepped into seam again, this time expanding radius just enough to include orrery. Immediately gears slowed, absorbing paradox like flywheel.

In the hush, they sprinted back up stairs. Graves stood mid-landing frozen, eyebrows mid-arch. Lucas plucked magazine from his pistol, pocketed it. He whispered apology—he would return ammo after talk.

They emerged into archive, still paused. Lucas slid folios into Serena's bag; she documented shelf numbers. Forty seconds left. They reached front corridor; Lucas felt strain—anchor dragging, but orrery's buffer muted feedback.

Ten seconds. He exhaled, released freeze inside entry vestibule. Sound crashed back; outside alarms wailed—someone tripped sensors. They ran into alley just as museum-police patrol car squealed to curb.

"Plan?" Serena puffed.

"Blend." Lucas threw micro-influence—police focusing on building's other flank. They melted into Saturday tourist flow.

Blocks away, they ducked into a café pantry, catching breath amid roasted-bean smell. Serena pulled notebook, flipped pages; entries were half-written philosophical debates: Should a walker intervene in natural catastrophe?Does stopping time negate free will? Signatures none. Last page new, only an Ouroboros watermark and blank lines—waiting.

Lucas traced it, chills prickling. "They want us to write code of conduct."

"Or test if we're worthy to." Serena met his gaze. "Are you?"

His answer remained in flux when phone vibrated—unknown number, text: "Tick-Skipper ledger unlocked at Swiss vault. Collect before midnight." Curators again, or rival faction.

"Zurich next," Lucas muttered, brain spinning.

But Serena pressed finger to lips, tilting head. Footsteps outside pantry. Mason Graves's baritone: "I just want to talk without firearms this time."

Lucas shut fridge door gently, heart hammering.

The refrigerator motor sputtered, freezing in mid-hum—Graves had triggered a portable dampener field, locking time in a three-metre radius around pantry exit. Lucas and Serena stood trapped between humming compressors and the hunter who finally learned how to cage a Skipper.

Chapter 31 – Paris — Whisper in the Ossuary

Lucas Vale felt the hum before he heard it—a low, predatory throb that pinned air molecules between the pantry's stacked espresso sacks and the humming refrigerator motors. Outside the swinging door, Mason Graves's voice floated through the sudden hush like a hunter reading bedtime stories.

"Time to talk without fireworks, Lucas."

The portable chrono-dampener he'd planted outside the jamb worked exactly as advertised; the pantry was a three-metre oubliette where clocks, flies and telepaths alike were locked in the same obedient second. Lucas tried a tentative reach for the seam—nothing. Powers sheathed, dead weight. Serena's dark eyes met his in the half-light, calculating.

Graves rattled the handle. "Come on out before the batteries die. We both know you'll still be in there when the field drops—and I'd prefer to escort you somewhere more civilized than a walk-in fridge."

Lucas's shoulder throbbed where freezer air met old bruises. Ten minutes earlier he'd been basking in the thrill of the orrery freeze and the notebook labeled Chronometric Ethics Directive. Now the pages bulged inside Serena's bag like a secret eager to scream.

She mouthed a question: Plan?

Lucas grimaced: Stall.

"Graves," he called, voice muffled by stainless steel, "you ever consider therapy for abandonment issues?"

A dry chuckle. "Tactical patience isn't abandonment. I've tracked you across three continents. You can't spend your life sprinting between seconds and calling that freedom."

Serena lifted her camera, switched to audio record. Lucas gave her a small nod—public leverage mattered. He dug in his pocket for the quartz cylinder; dampener negated its Curator resonance too. Still, metal could beat tech.

He inspected the walk-in's ceiling vent—industrial screws. With no TK he'd need leverage. He whispered, "If the field's radius is exact, the vent grate might be just outside."

Serena stepped onto a milk crate, unscrewing first bolt with a butter knife she'd nabbed off a prep shelf. Outside, Graves's footsteps paced.

"Battery pack on that gizmo lasts what—five minutes?" Lucas projected. "You're gambling I won't pop a full pause the moment it dies."

"Already thought of that." Graves sounded closer now. "Secondary null grid in the corridor. You'd emerge into another snare. Matryoshka physics."

Serena freed the grate. A breath of cooler, moving air whispered through—a corridor void outside dampening zone. Lucas boosted her onto metal shelving; together they wriggled into the square shaft, pulling her bag last. Stainless panels groaned, but café noises covered the escape until Serena's shoe slipped, clanging like church bells.

Door burst wide; Graves cursed. Lucas hauled Serena up a final elbow-twist and they belly-crawled three metres before gravity warned they'd cleared the field. Static crackled behind; his power sense flickered back on like streetlights after blackout.

"Freeze until I count two," he hissed.

He gripped Serena's ankle—anchor—and stepped sideways into the seam. Refrigerator hum died mid-whine. In the hush they slid forward, dropping through another vent panel onto a hallway lined with flour sacks. Serena landed in his arms, teeth clacking.

He counted one, two, three heartbeats—shorter than Curator advisories but enough—and released. Sound roared, field behind them still active, Graves shouting at a staffer for ladder access. They bolted through service corridors and into the chaotic warren of Trastevere back-streets.

Two sleepless bus rides and a budget flight later, they touched down at Orly under a jaundiced dawn. Paris greeted them with drizzle that smelled like history rinsing its hair. Serena sipped vending-machine espresso while Lucas scanned the transient crowd for Graves's intel net—none yet. The notebook and quartz cylinder were sewn into his jacket lining beneath duct-tape patches; every bump reminded him purpose had weight.

A taxi dropped them near Denfert-Rochereau just as commuter tides surged. Catacombs tours wouldn't open for an hour, but Lucas's Curator breadcrumb didn't care about official schedules. Beneath the roundabout lay millions of bones—and, according to a translation scribble Serena found marginal to a 1791 folio, "the sealed mouth of the chronos serpent."

Rain slicked the pavement. Serena tugged her hoodie low. "We break in, grab clue, and out before Graves's drones adjust, yes?"

"Simple enough." He tried levity, failed; exhaustion calcified his smile. Telepathic ripples rode the morning—urban static but no void blanks. They slipped into a maintenance alley behind the catacombs museum. An iron access hatch sat at street level, padlocked and alarmed.

Serena pulled out a homemade RF jammer—souvenir from a Hong Kong info-broker. "Four-minute window."

Lucas braced, loosed TK like invisible pry bar; the lock snapped. They descended a narrow shaft into a concrete utility tunnel dripping with rusty condensation. Serena crouched, unspooling rope ladder. Lucas dropped last, listening to water echo.

Headlamps speared dark. They wove through service corridors until familiar ossuary tunnels opened—walls of femurs mortared by anonymous centuries. Lucas exhaled reverence; even time-skippers had scale.

The emblem thrummed stronger, heat kissing his thigh. He led Serena deeper, turning left at a pillar marked Arrete: c'est ici l'empire de la mort. Past the public route, a welded gate barred further pilgrimage. He touched bars; chilled iron sang of centuries.

"I'll scout," he whispered, and paused half-second—enough to step through bars without noise. Inside seam he unlatched deadbolt, then returned to Serena's timeline and swung gate silently.

She entered, camera rolling on infrared. "Lucas, bones are shifting," she murmured.

It wasn't hallucination. The stacks subtly pulsed, like lungs under skin. Lucas realised vibrations came from underfoot—hidden mechanism? He followed tremor to a dead-end shrine skull arrangement. At center, a limestone slab fit into wall with hairline gap. An oval double-ouroboros sigil glowed faint where dust had been wiped.

Quartz cylinder warmed in his pocket. He slotted it into depression; stone clicked, retracting. Behind lay a brass seal embedded in ancient mortar—eight interlocking gears printed with Latin script.

Serena snapped photos. "Any traps?"

Lucas reached telepathically—gears held no thoughts but mechanical intent: torsion springs, pressure plates. He glimpsed metal wires ready to spark. He swallowed. "Definitely traps."

Curator training echo: TK removal must be even torque. He inhaled, extended telekinesis delicately around outer ring, rotated millimetres counterclockwise. Gear resisted, then settled. A metallic sigh vented ages of stale air.

Something thunked overhead.

"Uh," Serena began.

A spear of stone slammed from ceiling where they'd stood seconds prior, shattering femurs in avalanche. Dust blossomed. Lucas shielded Serena, pulling them behind column. More grinding—ceiling segments shifting like tectonic teeth.

"Fallback freeze?" she yelled over rumble.

He tasted blood from earlier strain. One more big pause could crash him, but bones didn't negotiate. He anchored Serena, stepped into seam the instant another slab dislodged.

Static hush swallowed collapse. He sculpted TK to shove debris mid-freeze, redirecting arcs like slow-motion billiards so gaps formed. Sweat chilled his spine. Anchor tether vibrated—a sign Serena's brain was near threshold. Thirty-second limit spiked fear. He hauled her through zig-zag path of stilled rubble toward an alcove that glowed with hidden lamplight.

Twenty seconds. Inside refuge, a spiral staircase descended through bedrock. He released freeze; world roared behind.

Debris crashed, sealing corridor; dust cyclone choked screams. But staircase remained open. Serena coughed, eyes wild but alive.

"Ten out of ten for trap drama," she rasped.

Lucas checked bracelet—battery red. Heart hammered arrhythmic. "Down or back?"

"Down," she said. "If trap meant to kill curiosity, it failed."

They descended. Spiral gave way to an antechamber carved from limestone, walls inlaid with clock hands pointing twelve. At center stood a marble lectern; atop it—a leather-bound ledger embossed with their initials L.V. and S.K.

"Okay, spooky," Serena breathed.

Lucas opened first page. Handwritten today in neat block letters:

Trial of Resonant Mercy complete.

Draft Ethics Directive to be authored herein.

Blank pages number twenty-seven—one for each "potential" awaiting guidance.

Serena looked stricken. "They expect us to write rules for others like you?"

"Like us," Lucas corrected softly. "Anchor tech means both."

He turned next page; blank parchment glimmered faintly. In corner a line inked itself before their eyes: Rule #1: Seconds are lives.

Serena lifted pen from lectern tray. "They're not subtle."

Lucas breathed iron damp. "Then we won't be either." He wrote beneath: Power exists to preserve wonder, not harvest boredom.

Pen strokes flared, sealing. Stone groaned; hidden vents exhaled warm air scented with myrrh. Curators' approval—or mechanical coincidence—he didn't know.

A buzz jolted pocket. Graves's voice on recorded message: "Vale, you're burrowing deeper. Every rabbit hole ends in a trap with no daylight. Call me before I start pumping concrete."

Signal coordinates tagged to message—fifty metres above them. He'd traced path.

Serena tightened grip on camera. "We finish later. Need exit."

Lucas grabbed ledger, quartz, Serena's hand. They retraced steps to spiral top, finding rubble settled into climbable slope. As they scrambled, Lucas heard dim clang—someone welding shut the maintenance gate.

Graves was sealing tomb.

They reached obstruction: iron bars fused by welding rig. Beyond, Graves's silhouette lit by flood-lamp.

"Didn't want the Vatican dragging you in," he called. "But if you insist on relic hunting, I'll quarantine the site."

Lucas considered freeze but battery dead. Instead he passed ledger to Serena. "Ready for psychological warfare?"

She smirked, pressed REC, and strode to bars. "Mr Graves, smile. We're livestreaming. If you entomb journalists, Interpol kisses your consultancy goodbye."

Graves hesitated—thoughts spiked guilt, public image dread. He lowered torch. Lucas sensed fissure. He TK-nudged rebar weld—still hot—cracking seal. Bars opened enough.

They stepped through. Graves holstered torch, eyes on ledger. "One look, Lucas. Then we walk out together."

Lucas weighed options—fight, freeze, trust. He opened ledger to fresh rule, let Graves read. The older man's jaw clenched, then loosened into something like respect mixed with longing.

"Seconds are lives," Graves repeated. "Don't waste mine, Vale."

Lucas extended hand. Graves took it.

Above, distant sirens hinted authorities en route. Alliance—fragile, necessary—sparked.

As they climbed to night-cooled streets, Serena whispered, "Rule two might be 'Enemies can pivot.'"

Lucas squeezed ledger, muscles trembling from spent chrono-adrenaline. "Or 'We rewrite definitions every step.'"

In his pocket, the sandstone emblem pulsed—northward. Toward Zurich. The river of seconds rushed harder.

On the rooftop opposite the catacombs exit, a woman in silver visor filmed their emergence; between fingers she twirled a watch frozen mid-tick. She spoke into comms: "Subject confirmed cooperative with both adversaries. Initiate Potentials sweep."

Chapter 32 – Montmartre Rooftop

Lucas had always imagined Paris from postcard angles—sepia cafés, accordion melodies drifting on the breeze—but by the time he, Serena, and Mason Graves climbed the final iron ladder to the rooftop of a shuttered painter's studio in Montmartre, the city looked nothing like a relic. It pulsed beneath them, electric veins of traffic threading through Haussmann boulevards, cranes pricking the skyline like unfinished punctuation. Past midnight drizzle glazed zinc rooftops into mirrors; each saucer dome and slanted chimney doubled in the rain-slick darkness.

They had been on their feet for eighteen hours, sprinting from catacomb collapse to crowded metro, detouring around police cordons Graves swore he hadn't called, and finally lying low in a disused artist co-op whose proprietor owed Graves an old favor. The roof hatch groaned shut behind them, muffling the argument still echoing in the studio three flights below—Graves negotiating with some unseen fixer to secure forged Swiss IDs. Up here, for a few heartbeats, there was only wind and the hiss of car tires.

Serena exhaled like she'd been surface-diving too long. Her curls had escaped her hood, jeweled with droplets. She moved to the parapet, steadying her camera on the ledge, panning across the night cityscape. Lucas watched the red focus-light blink and felt tension uncoil inside ribs he hadn't realized were locked.

She didn't speak until the camera's card hit two minutes of B-roll. "I needed altitude," she said softly, lowering the lens. "Catacombs still feel like they're crushing my lungs."

Lucas joined her, palms flat on wet stone. Below, Place du Tertre looked abandoned save for stacked café chairs and a single streetlamp burning sodium gold. He took a breath so deep his bruised shoulder twinged. "Better than a pantry fridge, at least."

She huffed a soft laugh. It blurred into a shiver; the night carried March's last bite. Lucas slid off his field jacket and draped it over her shoulders without asking. She allowed it but didn't quite smile, and that almost-smile hurt more than rejection.

For twenty minutes they stood in companionable quiet. Wind tugged at the jacket's hem; Serena snapped a few stills of Sacré-Cœur in silhouette, the basilica's white domes turned pewter by cloud-filtered moonlight. Lucas tried not to eavesdrop on her thoughts, but the seam between their minds had thinned since Park Güell; stray impressions leaked—half-shaped worries about Zurich, about ethics pages still blank, about Graves's sudden "pivot." He pulled his awareness tighter, warding privacy, but the act felt like cupping ears in a cathedral.

When Serena finally spoke, her voice carried the hush of wet clay being shaped, tentative and malleable. "If Zurich goes sideways, will you pause the whole city to save us?"

Lucas searched the Seine-side glow for an honest answer. "I… don't know. The bigger the canvas, the longer the ripple. Curators warned me entire populations can feel post-pause vertigo. That's thousands of people stumbling into traffic, planes skipping autopilot loops." He winced. "I'd rather bleed than do that."

Serena hugged jacket closer. "Good." She seemed to taste the word, unsure if it belonged. "But promise you won't bleed alone."

"I won't," he said. The vow settled warm in his bones.

She pivoted, back to the city, hip against parapet. Raindrops beaded her lashes. "We wrote Rule One tonight. 'Seconds are lives.' Rule Two needs a spine."

Lucas met her gaze—streetlights turned her dark eyes almost amber. "Got a draft: 'Power multiplies when shared, decays when hoarded.'"

Her brows lifted, impressed. "Math of morality. I like it."

He pulled the ledger from inside his shirt—pages dry, stitched tight. Handing her a fountain pen swiped from the ossuary's lectern, he watched as she leaned the book on the parapet and inscribed the sentence with careful strokes. Ink gleamed midnight blue, then sank into parchment. The margin shimmered faint; Curator tech acknowledging the new axiom.

"There." She recapped pen. "Two rules. Twenty-five pages to go."

Lucas tucked ledger away. "We'll need bigger pockets for wisdom."

Silence returned but richer, anchored by shared creation. Wind spiraled cigarette smoke from a window two buildings over; an unseen neighbor coughed. The city hummed like a motherboard.

Lucas realized he was staring at Serena's mouth. The lamplight outlined her lower lip, a droplet hanging like punctuation. He felt gravitational pull more potent than any telekinetic thread. In the seam of their joined seconds, his pulse synced to hers—da-dum, da-dum—then skipped, uncertain.

She sensed it; her breath paused. Not frozen—consensual stillness. The world sped on beyond their rooftop, but between them time sluiced slow, sticky as honey. Lucas leaned forward, heart beating tinnitus in ears.

Just before their lips met, a thought burst off Serena's mental surface—too loud, too naked to ignore: If he reads this, I'll never be safe again.

Lucas recoiled like slapped. The gap between them filled with Paris rain.

Serena blinked. "What?"

"I—I'm sorry." He stepped back, palms lifted. "I didn't mean—"

"You read me." Accusation brittle as cracked ceramic. She clutched jacket closed like armor. "I felt it. You stole that moment."

"It shouted," he said, voice small. "I tried walling off, but—"

"But curiosity won." She turned away, pacing along rooftop tiles slick as oil. "God, Lucas. I have almost-kisses with normal men all the time without worrying they'll shovel through my skull."

He winced. "I've never done that to you deliberately."

"That doesn't matter. Intent can't un-see." She faced him again, eyes shining angry-bright. "Do I get to have any private corners left?"

He folded arms, suddenly aware of cold. "I can practice harder. Curators said discipline sharpens with anchors."

"Practice," she echoed, voice laced with something darker than sarcasm—disappointment. "Love as a biofeedback exercise."

Knife clean to ribs. Rain intensified, drumming awning sheets jutting from neighboring roofs. For a minute they became two statues carved by weather—distance widening though feet barely moved.

Below, the streetlamp flickered, and Lucas felt déjà vu tick—the subtle pressure-drop that preceded void-mind agents. He scanned rooftop array: no blank psyche, but the prickle of surveillance. Across boulevard, the woman in mirrored visor—same silhouette from catacomb exit—stood under a dormer, phone levelled, watch spinning in fingertips like a coin.

"Serena," he warned, gesture small.

She tracked his gaze; resentment banked, replaced by professional alert. "Visor lady. She's livestreaming."

Graves shouldered through hatch behind them, breathless. "My fixer saw her drone on thermal. She's Curator counter-ops—'Gatekeeper' brand, maybe." He extended a monocular. "Watch has gel core. She'll freeze you mid-stride and bag you."

Lucas ground teeth. "Not tonight." He checked bracelet—battery half; Pin-Flash ready. But if he fired across street, bystanders in apartments would notice. Rule One echoed: seconds are lives.

Serena set camera on tripod, zoomed long lens. "I'll jam her uplink." She flipped a switch on her RF jammer. A warble pierced air. Visor woman cocked head, noticing feed drop.

Graves drew compact pistol with tranquilizer dart. "I hit her, we interrogate."

Serena blocked barrel with palm. "Live rounds? Collateral."

"Sedative," Graves growled.

Lucas weighed options. Freeze bubble would include Serena, exclude visor; but rain was heavy—freeze artifact would create visible cut in droplets. Yet moment demanded decisive gesture, something Serena could trust.

He turned to her. "Anchor synergy. Share freeze small as heartbeats."

Her jaw tensed, but she nodded—their earlier argument shelved for survival. She stepped beside him, fingers intertwining—not romantic, functional.

Wind roared; Lucas inhaled, slid into seam, dragging Serena. The world muted except for their thudding pulses and Graves's blurred motion, outside anchor radius.

Across street, visor woman froze mid-step, rain halted mid-arc around her watch. Lucas sprinted along parapet, each stride hemorrhaging energy. Serena kept pace; their tether felt solid, her trust a taut wire.

They reached ledge facing visor's roof, mere meters across an alley. Lucas measured trajectory, TK primed. He hurled the quartz cylinder like a comet; in freeze it traced glowing arc, embedding in dormer frame beside visor woman's shoulder. Cylinder's Curator failsafe pulsed—Lucas had bet on it doubling as null beacon.

He collapsed anchor.

Reality slammed. Cylinder detonated in violet flash—harmless but blinding. Visor woman staggered, watch slipping from her hand. Graves's dart sang across gap, finding her neck. She crumpled behind railing.

Rain resumed its natural descent. Lucas balanced on edge, breathing ragged. Serena's grip trembled; he felt her headache bloom—a side-effect of joint freeze. He guided her back to safer roof tiles.

Graves holstered gun, satisfaction curdled by worry. "We've two minutes before her backup sweeps."

Serena massaged temples. "Then Zurich."

Graves tilted head. "Ledger pages safe?"

Lucas tapped chest pocket. "Rules in progress."

He met Serena's eyes. Emotion there—fear, admiration, lingering hurt. He whispered, "I didn't choose to read you. But I'll choose to earn you back."

She studied him, then gave a small nod—truce, not forgiveness. "Start with Rule Three: consent is sacred."

Lucas's throat tightened. "We'll write it on the train."

Below, sirens woke; visor woman's team inbound. Graves gestured to roof hatch. "Exit, Skippers."

Lucas offered Serena the jacket once more—this time she accepted without hesitation, though fingers brushed his with caution. Together they followed Graves down creaking ladders into painter's loft, leaving Montmartre bathed in cold sodium silence.

In alley, Graves's fixer idled a nondescript Citroën. Bags already packed: burner passports, Swiss francs, rail tickets. As engine growled to life, Lucas glanced back. The rooftop silhouette of visor woman's unconscious body blurred in rain; drones circled, their LED eyes searching.

Lucas squeezed Serena's hand. She let him—for now.

The Citroën melted into Paris traffic under the dying night. Above, first hint of dawn painted clouds the color of healing bruises.

At Gare de Lyon platform, an electronic billboard flickered mid-advert to show Lucas and Serena's passport photos stamped POTENTIALS WANTED — REWARD IN CRONONS. Commuters gasped, phones lifted. Graves muttered, "They went public." Lucas felt the seconds tightening like noose around the day yet to begin.

Chapter 33 – Lyon Briefing

Mason Graves had rehearsed the phrase chronal anomaly sixteen times before the elevator doors parted on Interpol's seventh floor. He still wasn't sure it would land. Words rarely survived first contact with politics, and Lyon's grey headquarters was nothing but politics stitched into concrete.

A young liaison hustled him down a corridor lined with ballistic glass. On the other side, analysts huddled over holographic maps pulsing with heat signatures and news crawls. Every screen now sported the same red banner he'd authorized an hour earlier: POTENTIALS WANTED – GLOBAL BOLO. Lucas Vale's wide-eyed passport photo; Serena Kaur's narrowed gaze; reward denominated not in dollars but cronons, the Curators' own off-ledger currency. An inside joke only a dozen people on Earth understood.

The liaison keyed a biometric pad and ushered Graves into Conference Room Bernini. Twelve officials sat around a horseshoe of smoked-glass tables—Interpol cybercrime chiefs, representatives from Europol's new Meta-Threat Unit, two UN observers, plus Dr. Amélie Luntz of CERN's Time-Domain Lab, here to translate the impossible.

A single empty seat awaited Graves. He slid his dossier onto the table, clicked a pen he didn't need, and let the hush ripen.

"Thank you for assembling on short notice," he began. "What I'm about to present may read like speculative fiction. I ask only that you compare the timestamps."

He tapped a remote. The wall screens stitched into a four-panel montage:

Panel one: Dubai surveillance footage—Lucas pausing a roulette ball mid-air, frames skipping like torn film.

Panel two: cellphone video from the Colosseum scaffolding disaster—Lucas lifting a thirty-kilogram beam one-handed against physics.

Panel three: thermal feed from Montmartre half an hour ago—three human silhouettes incandescent against a rooftop; one dart of violet light blossoming as Graves's tranquilizer found its mark.

Panel four: Paris billboard flash—Interpol's own face plastered beside Serena's.

"We're not hunting a magician," Graves said, voice steady. "We're hunting a latency in the fabric of time, wearing a leather jacket."

Across the table, Deputy Director Esteban Ortiz leaned back, arms folded. "Your file calls Mr. Vale a Tick-Skipper. Sounds like Saturday-morning cartoons."

Dr. Luntz cleared her throat. "A Tick-Skipper is a hypothesized human capable of nonlocal manipulation of temporal flow—historically anecdotal until these recordings. If even ten percent of Graves's dossier holds, this is a physics event, not criminal theater."

Ortiz wasn't appeased. "Physics or not, the APB went live with no committee vote. That billboard campaign is already trending under #RealLifeXMen. Public panic is political."

Graves allowed himself a thin smile. "Politics bends to spectacle, Director. We either shape the narrative or chase it. The billboard served three functions: crowdsource sightings, force Vale into flight patterns we can model, and flush third-party actors. It worked—our Gatekeeper operative flushed first."

He clicked again. A still frame of the mirrored-visor woman slumped on a Paris rooftop filled the screen.

"Regina Kovács, Hungarian national, plausible Curator asset. She's alive, in custody, and currently radioactive with chrono-gel residue."

At that, several officials murmured. Gel tech was classified above Top Secret; the fact Graves's private task force had darts laced with neutralizer raised eyebrows, but no one said it aloud.

Ortiz leaned forward. "Your report says Kovács mentioned a term before passing out: Potentials Sweep. Care to translate?"

Graves opened a palm. "The Curators—a decentralized cabal long rumored—classify susceptible individuals as Potentials. They're recruiting or culling, we're unsure. Vale is their white whale because he's already active. Today's sweep suggests they're widening the net."

He advanced slides: nine dossiers with blurred faces and last-known locations—Bangkok, Lagos, Vancouver, Lima. "We believe these eight are dormant Potentials who just had their names posted to clandestine exchanges alongside Vale's."

Dr. Luntz inhaled sharply. "If everyone with the genetic quirk gets activated at once—"

"Entropy," Graves finished. "A thousand minor anomalies ripping holes we can't patch."

A heavy silence descended, punctuated by rain clattering the glass.

Ortiz tapped fingertips on tabletop. "Assume I believe you. What do you propose?"

"Task-Force Prometheus," Graves said, fond of the name's mythic heft. "Interpol umbrella, but I lead the kinetic wing. Objective: intercept Vale before Zurich midnight, leverage his cooperation to map Curator infrastructure, and secure the Chronometric Ethics Directive he carries."

When slides changed to show the leather ledger with glowing ink, even skeptical faces leaned in.

Graves pushed the moment. "Vale isn't a terrorist. He's a symptom. If we bring him in alive, he becomes translator. Kill or corner him and he'll freeze Paris again—longer, broader. We decide whether tomorrow morning's headline is 'Interpol prevents temporal arms race' or 'Europe wakes in commuter pile-up of the century'."

Deputy Ortiz rubbed cinnamon stubble, weighing. "Authorization for lethal force?"

"Secondary," Graves replied. "We have dampeners scaled for city blocks." He slid a black puck the size of a hockey disc across table. "Latest prototype. Nullifies chrono-pauses without harming bystanders."

Dr. Luntz raised an eyebrow. "Unless you misalign phase; then everyone's neurons misfire."

Graves didn't blink. "Calculated risk."

Ortiz sighed. "We'll draft the resolutions. Prometheus gets provisional charter." He glanced around; no one objected. "But you answer to this committee, Mr. Graves. Overstep, and you join your quarry on that billboard."

Graves dipped head. "Understood."

He packed his dossier. Inside he felt both triumph and a flicker of regret. He had walked roof ledges with Lucas, seen the young man hesitate rather than unleash chaos. Vale wanted to fix time, not shatter it. But good intentions built no fences. Graves would build them for him.

South-bound night train, car 17

Lucas sat on a fold-down seat outside the lavatory, hands jammed in pockets, watching corridors flick by like scenes in an old zoetrope. Serena slept in their compartment—finally surrendered to exhaustion—while Graves coordinated in the next car, whispering into encrypted earbuds like a man surgically dividing loyalties.

Lucas's eyes burned with afterimages of the billboard. Every time a passenger had walked by the digital advert, Lucas had held his breath. No one had connected the dripping-wet, hoodie-shrouded fugitive on their platform with the groomed passport mugshot. Not yet.

He extended his perception cautiously, sifting through sleepers' dreams—paperwork nightmares, overdue rent mantras, one wandering fantasy about spiced hot chocolate. Normal lives. Lives the Curators claimed to protect by testing him like a lab rat.

He felt the ledger pressing against ribs. Rule Three—Consent is sacred—glimmered faint behind the leather, as if the page retained a heartbeat. He wondered how many rules it would take before he trusted himself around Serena's thoughts.

The lavatory door unlatched; Graves emerged, holstering his phone. "Zurich in five hours. Rain all the way."

Lucas straightened. "You secure the vault's address?"

"Swiss Storage Banque, Uetliberg branch. You and Serena go in. I run perimeter with null puck. No heroics."

Lucas narrowed eyes. "Thought Prometheus wanted me captured."

Graves's mouth twisted. "Prometheus wants results. Zurich vault might hold Curator ledger—names of every Potential. If you find it first, we control the release."

"You mean you control it."

"I mean we." Graves glanced down corridor, lowering voice. "Interpol sanctioned task force tonight. The more cooperative you appear, the less they'll authorize headshots. And the longer Serena stays off a rendition jet."

Threat wrapped as favor; Lucas tasted anger but recognized half-truth: Interpol's net was inevitable. He could fight every fisherman or steer the boat.

He exhaled. "Fine. But after Zurich, we renegotiate."

Graves nodded once, slipping back to his compartment. Lucas returned to theirs, easing door shut.

Serena lay curled on bunk, jacket draped like a pledge. Moonlight strobed through window slats, painting her face in bars of silver. Lucas perched on edge, resisting urge to scan the dreamscape. Instead he opened ledger, flipped to fourth blank page. Pen hovered.

Rule Four:

He hesitated. Outside rails sang on iron—measureless countryside rolling under wheels.

Silence respects the mind, action respects the world, he wrote, unsure if aphorism or apology. Ink glowed, accepted.

A shadow shifted at door glass—conductor? Lucas looked up in time to see a small circle of black adhesive pressed against pane. Pulse spike: dampener puck.

He sprang, but corridor erupted in blue shimmer. The air thickened; time sagged—not freeze, but sludged like syrup. He could still move, but effort quadrupled. In doorway stood a woman shape, visor replaced by matte hood—another Gatekeeper, Kovács's partner.

Serena jolted awake, confusion carving her features as motion slowed. Lucas shoved ledger beneath mattress, lunged. The air fought every inch. The intruder raised palm; a miniature gel ampoule glowed indigo.

No anchor, no clean pause. Lucas summoned TK like a hammer, slamming ampoule back against woman's chest. Gel burst; she screamed, stuck inside her own stutter field. The dampener disk thudded to floor, shorting sparks, deactivate.

Time snapped to normal; Serena scrambled upright. Lucas kicked disk down hallway like a puck, heard it clatter into lavatory.

Graves appeared, dart gun raised, eyes wild. "I heard—"

Lucas gestured. Hooded agent writhed, coughing chrono vapor. Graves knelt, cuffing her with anti-phase shackles. "Prometheus asset," he muttered. "They moved faster than I hoped."

Serena grabbed her camera, filming. "Evidence that task force unrolled lethal tech on civilian train."

Graves shot her a dark look but didn't stop recording.

Lucas steadied shaking hands. Rule Four ink cooled behind him—already tested.

"Welcome to prime time," Graves said, hauling captive away as passengers began opening doors, bleary and terrified.

Lucas met Serena's eyes. In their shared fear glowed something sturdier than romance—mutual stewardship of seconds. She offered a tight nod. He returned it.

Outside, rain drummed carriage windows like a metronome counting down to Zurich.

Chapter 34 — Midnight Lines

Lucas Vale awoke to the susurration of wheels on track metal, a lullaby that vibrated through the narrow bunk and into his bones. For a dizzy instant he forgot where he was; the darkness outside the railcar window could have been any night anywhere in the world. Then the previous evening's chaos sluiced back—Graves's briefing in Lyon, the Interpol sanction flashing across every screen, the hooded Gatekeeper agent incapacitated with Graves's tranquilizer dart while Serena filmed proof of illicit dampener tech glittering in the corridor air. Lucas's knuckles still ached from that brief grapple.

He blinked at the austere ceiling lamp that swayed with each curve the train took along the Rhône. Somewhere beyond thin steel walls, miles of night-shrouded countryside unfolded under half-hearted starlight, but inside the sleeper carriage everything smelled of recycled air and weak espresso. A muffled clang echoed down the corridor, the sound of a vending hatch resetting. In the bunk above, Serena exhaled a small sigh, no doubt turning over to face the wall.

Seconds are lives, he reminded himself—his first rule—though in the languid hours before dawn even seconds felt drowsy. He swung his legs off the cot, careful not to jar Serena's mattress. The carriage's linoleum welcomed his bare feet with a shock of cold. He listened: no alarms, no thudding boots, just the train's steady clatter. The null-puck dampener Graves had slapped on the captured Gatekeeper operative should have blinded any trackers to their compartment, but paranoia had its own circadian rhythm, and it rarely slept.

Lucas eased the door open. The corridor lights ran on motion sensors; they bloomed in pale stripes ahead of him like a landing strip. Near the end car, Graves sat slumped on a fold-down seat, dark coat draped over his barrel chest, eyelids at half-mast yet unmistakably alert. The man embodied exhaustion without yielding to it, all coiled muscle and constantly scanning irises. In his lap rested a second puck, thumb poised on its activation stud as if the device were an extension of his nervous system. He nodded when Lucas approached.

"Hour till the Swiss border," Graves rasped. "I'll wake Kaur soon. Thought you'd be asleep longer."

"Tried," Lucas whispered. "Dreams were louder than the train."

Graves grunted; it was a sound that could have meant agreement or dismissal. "Border patrol will sweep for contraband and flagged biometrics. The puck masks anomalous signatures, but facial rec is an issue. Serena's finessing your disguise."

Lucas's pulse quickened. He had outraced police motorboats and casino security teams, but border guards were a different beast; bureaucracy had patience. "Finessing how?"

Graves answered by tilting his head toward the compartment. "Ask her." Then, with a glance angled like a dagger: "Remember, cooperation keeps us all breathing the same air."

Lucas knew a half-threat when he heard one but said nothing. Graves's leverage was real, yet so was Lucas's growing sense of moral latitude. The task-force leader could brandish pucks and protocols; Lucas had frozen hurricanes in mid-gust.

Back inside, Serena was sitting cross-legged on the lower bunk, laptop balanced on her knees. She wore Lucas's oversized hoodie, sleeves swallowing her wrists, hair in a messy knot that made her look more university hacker than investigative journalist. The captured agent's null puck and dampener bracelet lay disassembled on the table beside her, circuit guts exposed.

"You look like you time-walked through a meat grinder," she said, without looking up.

"I feel worse," Lucas replied, and the honesty of it surprised them both into a short laugh.

Serena patted the mattress. "Come here. Op-sec class in session. Graves promised me a whole five minutes before launch window—which, given his theatrics, is basically a semester."

He sat opposite, knees touching hers. The laptop screen showed a face-swap engine mid-render: his own features blended with grainy passport photos of men from assorted EU databases—just enough bone-structure overlap to fool automated gates, not enough to ping a direct match.

"I harvested public domain images from news archives," she said. "Stitched a synthetic ID: Lukas Vahl, dual-national Norwegian-German, ski instructor. Kept your eye color but tweaked the orbital distance. Subtle, quick."

Lucas tilted his head. "I look… older."

"Wisdom lines," Serena teased. "Wear them with humility." Then, more serious, "Deepfakes evolve hourly. Border control tests for artifacts, but most rely on algorithms that can't parse micro-emotion in real time. You just need to blink at the right cadence."

"Blink cadence?"

"Humans blink every two to ten seconds. People forging IDs either stare too long or flutter like moths. So, five-second average. Natural, but be mindful."

Lucas nodded, absorbing the lesson. Rule two—power multiplied when shared—felt validated in her meticulous craft. He could freeze time, but Serena could freeze suspicion.

She closed the lid. The cramped compartment smelled faintly of rumpled cotton and solder flux. "Tell me about those dreams that kept you awake," she said.

The question hooked deeper than he expected. Images surfaced: turbulent dark water, a steel beam, small hands clawing upward as seconds elongated into dread. The flashback to drowning—his origin trauma—had resurfaced after Graves's null-field brushed his power the previous night. Yet he hesitated; sharing that memory felt like giving up a piece of the ledger they still couldn't read.

"Just fragments," he murmured. "Old stuff. Pops up when I'm low on adrenaline."

Serena's gaze softened. "We can catalogue them later. Might help map your trigger thresholds. Op-sec isn't only disguises; it's mental hygiene too."

"You're turning my nightmares into data points."

"I'm an investigative journalist," she said, shrugging. "Patterns are everything."

The train rattled through a tunnel, lights flickering. Lucas felt an avalanche of fatigue but also a low, buoyant thrill—the sensation that purpose was coalescing, not merely around his abilities but around a team. For years he'd equated intimacy with exposure, exposure with weakness. Now Serena talked about mental hygiene as casually as contraband circuits, and the part of him that stayed iced behind chronal barriers began to thaw.

She reached across the small table and tapped the partial null-puck shell. "I think I can reverse-pulse this dampener," she said. "Turn it into a flare. Burst radius maybe five meters. Overload any anti-tech field the Curators throw at us."

Lucas whistled low. "You can do that on a sleeper train with a multitool?"

"Give me chewing gum and I'll hack NORAD," Serena replied, deadpan.

"You two are adorable," Graves said from the doorway. He stepped in, trench coat sweeping dust off the threshold. "But border's in forty-five. Pack your circus."

Serena snapped her laptop shut. Lucas collected the puck components, slid them into a toiletry bag. The captured Gatekeeper agent, still unconscious, had been relocated by Graves to a maintenance closet; local police at the next stop would find a sleeping stranger with no ID and no recollection of lost time, a neat administrative puzzle.

Minutes later, they convened in the vestibule between cars. The air tasted of axle grease and leftover cigarette smoke. Graves distributed forged passports: Serena as a Czech travel blogger, himself as a Belgian insurance auditor, Lucas as the ski instructor persona. He affixed a slim communicator bead behind Serena's ear, another behind Lucas's.

"Channel three," Graves instructed. "Only speak if you must. Keep chatter below two words."

Lucas glanced out the narrow window. Dawn spread a cool lavender gradient over the jagged horizon—the first trace of the Alps. He swallowed a knot of anticipation; Switzerland meant vault steel and secrets older than his earliest heists.

Serena tugged his sleeve. "Remember the blink cadence." She demonstrated: gaze forward, count silently to five, blink, slight breath. He mirrored her until it felt subconscious.

The locomotive slowed. Announcements in French and German crackled overhead, welcoming passengers to customs checkpoint Vallorbe. A pair of Swiss border police boarded, uniforms crisp, pistols holstered but visible. They moved car to car, scanning faces, comparing IDs to hologram readers clipped to their belts.

Lucas's heartbeat drummed double-time. For a lunatic moment he considered freezing the scene, slipping past with Serena while time lay fractured around them—but Graves's null puck could cross-interfere with his field. No improvisation. He exhaled and trusted the disguise.

Their turn approached. The first officer—a stocky man with a nose reddened by cold—glanced at Graves's document, nodded, and swiped. Green light. Serena next: minor pause while her photo loaded; the second officer studied her hair color, then stamped. Green.

Lucas stepped forward, plastered a modest smile across his composite face. Handed over passport. Five seconds, blink. The officer's scanner beeped once, flickered amber, then green. "Danke, Herr Vahl," the man said, returning the booklet. Lucas's fingers nearly trembled with relief.

The trio shuffled back to their compartment, silent until the police moved on. Graves finally released a pent-up grunt. "Well, look at that. My tech works, your face works, the world keeps turning."

"It was Serena's face," Lucas said.

"And your restraint," Serena added, impish.

Graves clicked his communicator bead. "Next objective: Zurich Hauptbahnhof at 0700, then direct tram to Enge district. From there, foot approach to Swiss Storage Banque's armored annex. You two will handle insertion. I keep the perimeter hot."

Lucas raised an eyebrow. "Insertion meaning lift the ledger without obliterating Swiss banking security?"

"Preferably," Graves said. "They already have protocols for kinetic robbers. Chronal anomalies? Less so. But if you trip an alarm every agency in Europe descends in minutes."

Rule three—consent is sacred—echoed in Lucas's ears. The ledger belonged to entities who trafficked in temporal secrets without permission. Taking it felt justified, but the collateral risk weighed heavy.

Serena folded her arms. "Show us the internal schematic again."

Graves produced a holoprojector pen. A slanted cross-section of the vault floated over the corridor floor: four subterranean levels, concentric rings of steel, motion lasers, biometric locks. A blinking dot indicated their target deposit box.

"Null puck deploys here," Graves said, pointing to an access shaft. "Lucas does a slow crawl in chrono-pause, weaving between sensors. You have ninety seconds of dampener overlap before my field loses coherence."

"Ninety seconds vault-side?" Lucas asked.

"Subjective," Graves replied. "You stretch it how you like, but once the puck reactivates you'll feel interference."

Serena leaned closer to the miniature projection. "If Lucas freezes time inside laser grids, will the beam still trigger heat variance?"

"Lasers freeze too," Lucas said. "Light's tricky. It stops propagating relative to me, so no detection. The problem is mechanical triggers—pressure plates, inertial sensors—they're still bound to rest-state until I unpause them."

"We could cushion the ledger box," Serena murmured, mind already engineering solutions. "Foam pellets under the case, microfilament suspending the weight. Swap with equal mass placeholder."

Lucas admired how effortlessly she treated physics as puzzle pieces. Together they looked like conspirators in a child's diorama, bending rules of nature with thread and gum.

The projector clicked off. Graves pocketed it. "We hit at 09:13. Swiss punctuality is predictable—shift rotation, lobby tours, coffee delivery. Window of distraction."

The train lurched as brakes engaged for Lausanne. Through the window, morning poured across Lake Geneva in ribbons of silver. Lucas felt an unexpected pang—beauty glimpsed on the run, never savored. He wondered how many such vistas he'd blurred past with time suspended. Serena seemed to read the thought; her hand brushed his, a silent acknowledgement that awe could coexist with urgency.

A shrill chime signaled platform arrival. Commuters in down jackets shuffled outside, but the sleeper carriage remained sealed for long-haul passengers. Lucas watched through glass as a boy spun circles on the platform tiles, arms spread airplane-wide. The motion tugged at him—a reminder of childhood wonder untouched by temporal trickery.

When the train doors closed again, Serena exhaled. "After Zurich, we disappear. New identities, low bandwidth. No more flashy heists until we decrypt that ledger."

Graves snorted. "Tell that to your boyfriend when boredom stalks."

Serena's cheeks flushed, though whether from the label or the cold breath hovering between them Lucas couldn't tell. He spoke before she could retort. "My boredom's on a leash now. Purpose is the collar."

"If that philosophy holds," Graves said, "keep it tight when bullets fly."

Three hours later, they disembarked at Zurich's central station. Clocks ticked in hypnotic unison above the hall, each second hand sweeping like the blade of an unseen guillotine. Lucas felt the collective rhythm as a low-grade hum beneath his skin; his power yearned to syncopate, to seize the gears and hold them mid-stroke. He resisted. Not yet.

Their tram ride to Enge district passed unnoticed amid suits and schoolchildren. Serena whispered course corrections into his ear when surveillance cameras loomed—step left, adjust scarf, look bored. By the time they reached the discreet annex of Swiss Storage Banque, Lucas could practically feel her fingerprints guiding his posture.

The bank occupied a white-marble façade set back from Bahnhofstrasse's luxury storefronts. A bronze relief of Helvetia guarded polished doors. Graves peeled off across the street, phone to his ear, blending with morning pedestrians. He tapped the communicator bead: channel open.

Serena squeezed Lucas's hand, then released it. "See you on the other side of the lasers." She slipped into the lobby first, heels clicking authoritative rhythm. Lucas followed, head bowed, a tourist searching for currency exchange.

Under the cathedral-high ceiling, security turnstiles scanned magnetic passes. Serena flashed credentials from a shell corporation; the guard waved her toward private deposit boxes. Lucas trailed two meters behind.

He felt the world narrow to a tunnel: Serena's stride, the guard's heartbeat audible over marble echoes, Graves's voice a faint static in his ear—"All units, phase green." The fourth rule he'd coined on the train—Silence respects the mind; action respects the world—vibrated like a mantra.

They descended a spiral staircase into a lower vestibule where retina scanners glowed red. Serena presented her iris; Lucas feigned a sneeze to mask his own reading. The scanner accepted both. Beyond, a steel door thicker than submarine hulls wheezed aside.

Graves's voice sharpened. "Null field deploying—three, two, mark." Lucas felt the puck's wave pass through stone and muscle alike, a bass note humming under reality. Time fissured at the edges of his perception like glass under pressure.

He stepped between photons. The world froze. Serena became a statue mid-breath, copper strands of hair suspended in invisible wind. Even the ledger's lock indicator light halted its blink at half-illuminated amber.

Yet something felt off. In the stillness, Lucas caught a motion—a sliver, a shimmer at the periphery of the chronal freeze. His chest tightened. No one else should move here.

He pivoted slowly, senses flaring. At the far end of the vault corridor, a figure in matte-black sneaking suit floated a fraction above the ground, eyes meeting his. The stranger's pupils constricted in surprise, mirroring his own.

Another Tick-Skipper.

Then, like mercury recoiling from a magnet, the figure flickered and vanished, leaving a faint smear of afterimage.

Lucas's pulse roared despite the vacuum of sound. Graves's countdown resumed in his earpiece—"Seventy seconds left." Serena remained inert; she hadn't seen. He faced the ledger box, mind racing: Was the phantom a Curator scout, or an ally answering the same encrypted call? Either way, the board had just gained new players.

He hoisted the case, slid Serena's foam cradle beneath, replaced mass with precision. Yet his focus kept snagging on that impossible eye contact across frozen time. Boredom would never be the enemy again; instead, uncertainty had donned a face.

As time prepared to spool forward, Lucas whispered into the void, unsure who might hear: "Seconds are lives. Whose life are you?"

The null field collapsed. Lasers resumed their imperceptible dance; Serena drew breath; LED lights blinked in sequence. Lucas locked the replacement case and nodded to her. She grinned, mission success in her eyes.

But Lucas's gaze lingered down the corridor, to where the stranger had stood. A question hung there, bright as a comet's tail.

And questions, he knew, were just beginnings in disguise.

Chapter 35 — Zurich — Clockwork Breach

Lucas Vale tasted copper on every breath—a twinge of altitude, recycled vault air, and the metallic promise of disaster. The foam-padded ledger case weighed no more than a hotel Bible in his gloved hands, yet his pulse insisted it was forged from neutron stars. Beside him Serena Kaur snapped the false clasp shut on the placeholder box they had left behind. Above them, the steel ceiling thrummed with the distant hydraulics of security shutters starting their hourly calibration. Ninety unbroken seconds since Graves's null-puck pulse had faded; the world around them ticked again—too loud, too curious.

"Exit path?" Serena whispered, voice low enough that the nearby infrared mics would register it as air conditioning noise.

Lucas angled his head, listening through the communicator bead. Graves's reply came thin and crackling: "Lobby rotation's begun. Guards splitting for coffee run in T-three minutes. Lift shaft eight is your window. Don't miss it."

Easy instructions on paper. In practice, the annex's subterranean maze sprawled like a Swiss watch gutted for inspection—layered gears of sensors, pressure tiles, and zeitlock doors whose quartz brains pinged headquarters if they opened out of schedule. Lucas's earlier chrono-pause had allowed them to glide through most of it, but returning topside required something he hadn't tried before: a relay of micro-freezes, leapfrogging between zones while leaving just enough tick in the air to keep the vault's heartbeat steady.

Serena slung her backpack, laptop cord dangling like a tail. Her pupils flicked to the broad corridor outside their alcove. "Laser grid's cycling every twelve seconds." She tapped her watch. "It resets to full power for three."

"Tough but doable," Lucas said. And he meant it; after the apparition he'd glimpsed—another walker slipping the seconds like silk—his own risk threshold felt painfully mortal. There were others. Some might be allies, more might be predators. Either way, dying in a bank hallway from hubris felt embarrassingly pedestrian by comparison.

They stepped into the corridor's hush. At first glance the passage resembled an art gallery: brushed-steel floor, recessed lights, motionless cameras. But the invisible beams slicing the air were bright scarlet in Lucas's chrono-sense—a sixth-sense overlay he perceived only the moment he pulled the world into slow stasis. Timing their dance without freezing everything would require finesse, like juggling knives while blindfolded.

Serena inhaled. "Twelve, three, twelve," she murmured, cadence locked to the cycle. "On four we sprint."

Lucas's mind split: half listening to her count, half listening to the building itself—the low mechanical murmur of vault compressors, the elevator's counterweight rattling up two floors. He allowed the noises to weave into a tapestry of beats, syncopated with the lasers' surge.

"Four," Serena breathed.

Lucas stepped forward—then snapped the corridor into pause for precisely half a heartbeat. The beams solidified in his perception, ribbons of red glass stretching floor to ceiling. He slid sideways through the jagged lattice, ledger hugged tight, and released the freeze before the security system registered a hiccup. At his back, Serena rolled under a beam, ponytail brushing the floor tiles, then popped up beside him, eyes wide with adrenaline.

"That's one," she whispered. "Eleven more."

He smiled without mirth. "I'll invoice the Curators for gymnastics lessons."

They progressed in spurts—Lucas dropping micro-pauses no longer than a blink, Serena exploiting each frozen frame to dive, pivot, or tiptoe through negative space. After the fifth cycle his temples throbbed; the partial stops demanded precision, fragmenting his perception into stroboscopic slivers. Fatigue pooled at the base of his skull, familiar nausea pricking his throat. He ignored it, focusing on rule one: Seconds are lives.

Ahead, vault sector C intersectioned with a marble stairwell descending into darker territory. The elevator Graves flagged—their ride up—sat one level below. But an unscheduled obstacle blocked the landing: a pair of armored personnel in matte bark-brown uniforms, palms flying across holographic tablets. One held a cylindrical scanner emitting pale blue pulses—the annex's spectral sweep for dampener residue. Graves's null-puck signature might linger like ozone, waving a neon sign at them.

"New patrol," Serena hissed.

Lucas cursed under his breath. "Laser schedule's shot; we can't double back without tripping patterns."

"Could freeze them," she offered.

He shook his head. "Elevator's on automated diagnostics; if I pause the floor plate sensors for more than fifteen seconds, system logs a stall and locks down the car."

"So," Serena said, shifting weight to the balls of her feet, "we need them to decide to leave on their own, inside normal time."

Lucas met her gaze, reading the sparkling schema forming behind her eyes. Micro-influence—his gentlest trick—could nudge surface emotions for half a minute. Enough to redirect a guard's suspicion, perhaps spark an urgent desire for coffee or a bathroom break. He'd practiced on pickpockets and pushy salesmen; two disciplined Swiss operators inside a fortified bank felt… experimental.

"Worth a shot," he murmured. "I'll ride your voice as anchor. Ping them with chatter about a code glitch in sector D—something requiring immediate manual reset."

"I love when you outsource lying to me." She smirked, dialled her tablet to a blank diagnostic screen, and strode into the landing's glow.

The guards lifted rifles instinctively, though their fingers remained outside trigger guards—professional, not jumpy. Serena raised her empty hand, smile cordial. "Entschuldigung. My system flagged an anomaly near coolant pipelines. Code Kappa-Seven. If it's the same phantom loop we saw last quarter, it can cascade into multiple false positives. Protocol says manual verify; can you gentlemen double-check before we sign off?"

Lucas flexed his telepathy, threading tendrils into the guards' surface thoughts—curiosity pricked by Serena's jargon, mild irritation at distraction, underlying pride in procedure. He nudged the pride, amplified the sense of duty. The left guard's eyes narrowed, running risk calculus; Lucas laid a second whisper: the itch of urgency, the faint dread of blame if they ignored a potential fault.

Surface emotion tilted. The guard glanced to his partner. "Kappa-Seven? That was a mess last time," he said in German. "Let's run it."

They turned as one, moving briskly down a side corridor—exactly opposite the stairwell. Lucas exhaled, knees weakening. Micro-influence always skimmed dopamine and left his limbs humming like cheap speakers.

Serena shot him a sideways thumbs-up. Then both jolted. Across the marble step, an edge of shadow rippled—a fleeting distortion like heat haze where none should exist. A figure leaned at the threshold, half hidden by vacuum between ticks. The phantom Skipper again.

Lucas froze of his own accord, no power required. The stranger stood perhaps twenty metres away, features masked by a carbon visor, limbs lax, as if bored by reality's flow. On their tarp-black chest a sigil winked: three concentric circles intersected by a diagonal slash. Curator iconography, rotated ninety degrees from the museum artifact Lucas had lifted in Dubai. Confirmation punched his lungs tidy: the Curators had Skippers, and they were field-deploying them.

He stepped toward the apparition, ledger forgotten. Even in motion, time felt syrup-thick—every footfall a drumbeat in a dead stadium. Half a second, and the figure blurred, turning corridor corner without haste. Except the cameras should have flagged any unbadged movement; and the lasers—they still shimmered across that hall. Whoever they were, they moved through detectors as Lucas did. Or better.

Serena's fingers curled around his sleeve. "Not now," she whispered, drawing him back to mission. "Talk later, run now."

He tucked the ledger tight and followed her down the stairwell. Metal treads rang underfoot. One level down, they reached a maintenance corridor lined in rough concrete. Pipes ran overhead, sweating condensation. The elevator call panel glowed amber—car en route.

Graves's voice pierced static: "Seismic sensors just pinged a non-listed mass reading two hundred kilos in sector C. You triggered something?"

"Negative," Serena said.

Lucas considered. Sector C. The phantom. Two hundred kilos—someone in heavy gear, maybe with equipment. His skin chilled; if another Skipper had breeched, Prometheus's entire op might already be compromised.

Elevator doors parted with a hiss. Inside, muting foam lined the walls—standard for cash-handling transports. Serena slid in first, swiped her badge to restrict destination to ground lobby. Lucas pivoted to face the corridor as doors started closing.

A silhouette appeared at the far end. Same visor. The stranger raised two fingers—not a gun, just a gesture—then tapped their temple in salute. Doors sealed, cutting the view. The car lurched upward.

"Care to explain?" Serena demanded.

"Another walker," Lucas breathed. "Spoke in gestures."

"Language of what?"

"Invitation maybe. Or warning."

Graves cut in: "Lobby clear, but you'll have eight cameras on exit. Two show minor lag from earlier freeze stutter; don't add a third."

Serena's thumbs danced across her tablet, sending a burst of corrupted checksum packets to camera nodes. It would look like random buffer noise—the system's equivalent of a tickle that demanded a resync patch. Thirty-second blindness.

Elevator chimed. Doors slid open onto the personnel vestibule behind public counters. Lucas's shoes met polished limestone. Without breaking stride, Serena offered a curt nod to the concierge manning an internal terminal, flashed her badge, and marched for the glass rotunda. Lucas adopted the stoic boredom of a courier on deadline.

They passed a chrome sculpture shaped like overlapping Möbius strips. Lucas read passing minds out of habit—tourist wondering if his safe-deposit insurance covered cashmere, teller calculating lunch calorie allowances, guard fantasizing about paragliding on Sunday. Normal thoughts, all blissfully ignorant of stolen cosmic ledgers or ticking Skippers.

The outer doors whooshed. Zurich's brisk morning slapped his cheeks. Trams clanged, commuters laughed into earbuds, pigeons bargained for crumbs. In the static hush of bank corridors he'd nearly forgotten the volume of ordinary life.

Across the street, Graves leaned against a newsstand, trench coat collar high. He scanned them once, then started walking north without waiting. Standard counter-surveillance rhythm: team passes handler at staggered intervals and converges later. Lucas fell in ten paces behind Graves; Serena drifted across to a bus shelter, using reflective glass to ensure no tails latched on.

They reached a pedestrian archway beneath an old stone viaduct. Inside, the smell of roasted beans mingled with sawdust from the crafts market. Graves ducked behind a storage kiosk stacked with wine crates. Here, out of CCTV sweep, he finally spoke face-to-face.

"Ledger secured?" he asked.

Lucas handed it over. "Scan for trackers before you cheer."

Graves's handheld null-scanner whined once, then flashed green. "Clean." He raised eyebrows. "But you look rattled."

"Saw another one," Lucas said. "Curator grade. Moving like me, maybe faster."

Serena arrived, cheeks flushed from brisk pacing. "And they logged an anomalous mass in sector C," she added. "Could be that Skipper."

Graves muttered something profane in Flemish. "So we weren't the only fireworks at nine thirteen."

He popped the ledger's outer latch halfway, revealing brushed-titanium panels engraved with older alphabets—Phoenician, maybe, overlaid by QR-like chronoglyphs. Graves swallowed. "What exactly did we steal?"

"Answers," Lucas said. "Or new questions. Either way, the board just got bigger."

A klaxon wailed in the distance—a siren from the bank's rooftop perhaps. Lucas calculated: if the Curator Skipper had tripped a failsafe, local police would spin up roadblocks in minutes. He pictured armored BMWs cutting Bahnhofstrasse, drones mapping heat signatures, snipers posted at tram junctions. Zurich did precision panic like nowhere else.

Graves tucked the ledger inside a climate-sealed sling bag and tossed Lucas a black beanie. "Change silhouette. We're ghosting to the lake. My safe wheels are docked south basin." He turned to Serena. "You scramble extraction route two?"

She nodded. "Rented Renault already parked under Viadukt. Plates spoofed till noon."

"Good. Move."

They slipped through the market's bustle. Lucas kept an ear on chatter; police bands hadn't yet spiked but vibrations in conversation—the way vendors glanced at hovering news choppers—hinted at gathering storm. Every nerve in his body buzzed with post-heist comedown, the kind that once fueled his addiction. Yet layered beneath excitement was unease: he hadn't felt truly alone in his powers for years, but the sudden proof of competitors made the world both vaster and narrower. Vaster with possibility; narrower with peril.

As they emerged near the Sihl River footbridge, Serena slowed. "We need contingency if Curator assets show again. Your powers, my prototypes, Graves's pucks—they're predictable. That Skipper? Unknown variables."

Lucas studied the rippling water below. A rower sliced morning fog, each stroke crisp. "We codify a fifth rule," he said quietly. "If seconds are lives—then mirrors are warnings. Any power we spot in someone else, we plan for the worst iteration."

Serena's gaze locked on his, approval tempered by worry. "That'll keep you alive. But keep you human?"

"Human enough to care who gets hurt," Lucas replied.

Graves signalled from the parking alcove: hurry up. They jogged across, climbed into the Renault. As the engine growled to life, Serena pulled her laptop again, already decrypting a thumbnail from the ledger's encrypted drive. On the screen bloomed a spreadsheet of GPS coordinates, each tagged with time-stamped sigils identical to the phantom Skipper's chest symbol. Twenty-seven entries scrolled in silent accusation.

"Targets," she whispered. "Or recruitment list."

Lucas leaned back, pulse syncing with the car's idle rumble. He wasn't bored—far from it. The game had cracked open, revealing levels layered deeper than Swiss vaults. Somewhere, that visor-clad stranger paced between ticks, perhaps glancing at a newly empty deposit box and smiling behind mirrored glass.

Lucas shut his eyes and pictured the future: mountain cabin, ledger spread across timber table, decoding session stretched into dawn. And outside, in every city that held a coordinate, more walkers testing the boundary between thought and motion.

The Renault pulled into traffic. Police sirens crescendoed behind, but time—their fickle ally—bent just enough for escape.

Rule four whispered: Silence respects the mind; action respects the world.

Next action: decode the ledger, find the others.

The question thrummed louder than any alarm: When the mirrors finally faced one another, which reflection would Lucas become?