---
Chapter 22 – The Muse of Fury
The spoon rested on the saucer like a silver tongue, catching a glint of afternoon light. Chameleon's gaze remained fixed on the street beyond the café terrace, though the man he had been watching—Lucas Cain—was already gone, swallowed by the city's slow churning traffic.
For an outside observer, his stillness might have seemed meditative. Inside, his mind moved like a series of sliding doors—quiet, precise, each thought falling into place without hurry.
Lucas was interesting in a mild way—unpracticed, unaware, carrying some unidentifiable quirk that made him stand out. But he was not the reason Chameleon had returned.
No. The real reason had nothing to do with Lucas Cain.
It had to do with him.
---
Years ago, when Chameleon was still a young man, already known in certain shadowed corners for his ability to blend into any environment, he had met Alexander.
It had been in an unremarkable rehearsal hall, of all places. Chameleon had been there under a different name, observing a mark for a job that required nothing more than information-gathering. The job should have been simple.
Then Alexander walked in.
On paper, he was ordinary. The kind of face you forgot the moment you turned away. Yet in practice, Alexander was an impossibility.
Chameleon prided himself on the completeness of his mental maps—how every person in a room slotted neatly into predictable coordinates. Body language, vocal cadence, microexpressions: all of it reducible to patterns.
But Alexander disrupted those patterns at will.
One moment he was the most commanding presence in the space—people's eyes followed him without knowing why. The next moment, he seemed to vanish into the background, even when standing in plain sight. Conversations drifted past him, glances slid over him, as though he had ceased to exist.
It wasn't just skill; it was a distortion of perception itself.
Chameleon tried to map him. Failed. Tried again. Failed again. Each failure was a tiny fracture in his otherwise perfect sense of control.
And then it happened.
A feeling.
It struck him not like a gradual sunrise but like lightning through dry bone. Hot, consuming, jagged. Not admiration. Not awe. Something far uglier: fury.
Not because Alexander had wronged him—Alexander had barely noticed him. But because Alexander represented something Chameleon could neither imitate nor dismantle with precision. The man had made him feel, and Chameleon had spent his entire life constructing an existence where feeling was irrelevant.
It was unacceptable.
Alexander became his muse—not in the way artists speak of love or beauty, but in the way a predator learns the scent of the only prey worth hunting. Chameleon followed him, studied him, tried to corner him in moments where his ability might falter.
He failed.
And then, one day, Alexander was gone. Vanished so completely that even Chameleon's most intricate networks came up empty. The trail ended like smoke on wind.
---
Years passed. Chameleon's work continued. The absence of Alexander was both a relief and an itch that never healed. Without the muse, there was no fury. Without the fury, there was no feeling.
And then—three weeks ago—he had seen a familiar shift in the edges of a crowd near the academy. It was subtle, almost ignorable, but Chameleon's mind had already catalogued it years ago. The ebb and swell of collective attention around a single figure, the impossible trick of being both the center and the void.
Alexander was back.
The details were different: a new name, perhaps a new face, but the pattern was unmistakable.
This time, Chameleon would not fail.
---
The chair had been the first clue.
It seemed absurd, even to him, that something so mundane could serve as a link, but the moment he heard whispers that "Mr. Nobody's chair" had been purchased at auction, he knew. Alexander's old haunt had been dismantled piece by piece, and someone—whether out of nostalgia or arrogance—had taken that chair into the world again.
Tracking the buyer led him, eventually, to the academy.
To Lucas Cain.
Lucas did not fit Alexander's profile perfectly—too young, too unrefined, the wrong patterns in his movements. But there was a scent of connection, like smoke clinging to cloth long after the fire had burned out.
Perhaps Lucas was simply a student. Or perhaps he was something more—a decoy, a shield, or even a thread that led directly back to Alexander.
In any case, proximity to Lucas would place Chameleon closer to the truth.
---
The waiter approached to clear the cup. "Another coffee, sir?"
Chameleon looked up with the easy warmth he'd practiced for years. "No, thank you." His voice carried the exact note of polite finality that made strangers instinctively step back.
He paid, rose, and adjusted his coat. Each movement was measured—not for effect, but because everything he did was measured.
He walked in the opposite direction of Lucas's car, knowing that unpredictability in routine kept predators—other predators—at bay.
This was not the time for pursuit.
This was the time for positioning.
---
Across town, Lucas slouched in the car seat, scrolling idly through his phone. "Hey, Sebastian," he said, "do you think that new teacher—uh, Chameleon guy—was staring at me? Or just, like, zoning out?"
Sebastian, eyes on the road, answered without hesitation. "Likely zoning out, sir."
Lucas nodded. "Yeah. He's probably just one of those serious acting types. The kind who writes poems about chairs."
Sebastian's mouth twitched once, but he didn't comment.
---
Back in his apartment, Chameleon slid a thin folder from his desk drawer.
Inside: a page of names, places, and intersecting lines. At the center, underlined twice, was a single word: Alexander.
Beneath it, in smaller script, was another: muse.
He had no intention of letting this version of Alexander vanish again. This time, he would dismantle him piece by piece until there was nothing left to vanish.
For Chameleon, that was not hatred. Not vengeance.
It was simply the restoration of order.
And if Lucas Cain was the first step in that restoration… so be it.
---