The walk home was a visual education in this new world. Foster forced himself to slow down, to stop seeing the cobblestone streets and chrome fixtures and start reading them as a text. He noted the way the gaslight flickered off the polished brass of a new-model automobile. He watched a street vendor in a patched wool coat sell roasted nuts from a cart while using a wireless earpiece to take orders. The dissonance was the point, he realized. This wasn't a world in transition; it was a world that had settled into its own unique hybridity.
He found a small grocery, its windows filled with produce both familiar and strange—purple carrots next to glowing green fungi. He bought a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a bottle of milk, using Foster's remaining cash. The act felt was domestic, a stark contrast to the morning's horrors and the station's realities. He was building a life, brick by brick, inside a stranger's skin.
When he arrived home, the smell of something burning greeted him. Ortego was in the kitchen, looking sheepishly at a smoking pan.
"I was trying to make eggs," the boy said, waving a towel to clear the smoke. "You're usually the one who cooks."
Another point. Foster Ambrose cooked. Andrew Garfield had lived on takeout. "It's fine." Foster said, his voice softer than he intended. He took the pan, scraped the blackened remains into the bin, and started anew. The simple motions—cracking eggs, whisking them, melting butter—were a strange kind of ease. It was a problem with a clear, edible solution.
Ortego watched him, leaning against the counter. "You're still being weird, you know."
Foster kept his eyes on the pan. "Long day."
"Captain Hanson again?"
"Something like that."
They ate in relative silence, the only sound the clink of forks on plates. Foster studied Ortego. He was a bright kid, observant. He was a thread connecting Foster to this life, a thread that could easily unravel if pulled too hard.
"What do you know about the Davidson case?" Foster asked, trying to sound casually professional.
Ortego shrugged, swallowing a mouthful of egg. "The guy who got killed in the alley? People at school are saying it was a Grifter."
Foster stilled. "A Grifter?"
"You know. The stories. Things that live in the steam tunnels and old factories. They come out at night." Ortego said it with the casual belief of youth, a mix of superstition and accepted local lore.
It was the first time Foster had heard a name for the darkness. It was just a story, a myth. But myths, he was learning, often grew from a seed of truth. He filed the word away: Grifter.
—
The next day at the station, Foster adopted a new strategy. Instead of hiding, he would engage. He needed to be Foster Ambrose, Police Officer, not just a ghost wearing his badge.
He went straight to Martha Holmes' desk. "Lieutenant. The Davidson case. I'd like to review the witness statements again."
Martha looked up from her work, one eyebrow slightly raised. "Having a thought of your own, Ambrose?" A smile played on her lips. She gestured to a file on the corner of her desk. "Knock yourself out. The lead detective thinks it's a dead end. Too many conflicting accounts."
Foster took the file and retreated to his desk. He spent the morning cross-referencing statements. The witnesses were of the city itself: a night watchman from a nearby factory who spoke in thick, old-world slang, a college student who gave her statement via a video call on a sleek device, a bakery owner who complained the commotion had ruined her dough starter.
Their stories were a mess. One saw a "hulking shadow." Another insisted it was "just some guy in a long coat." A third heard "a sound like tearing canvas." But as Foster laid the statements side-by-side, he noticed a pattern they had all missed. None of them had actually seen the attack itself. Their accounts began moments after the violence, drawn by the sound or the victim's final, gurgling cry. The three-minute window Neil had mentioned—the perfect digital void—was the exact span of the attack. It was a silence that had swallowed the act whole.
This wasn't just a lack of evidence; it was an erasure.
He spent the afternoon on another case, a series of burglaries in the more affluent, old-money district. The victims reported missing jewelry and silver, but nothing else. It was straightforward, mundane. But as Foster read the reports, he saw another pattern. Each home had outdated, mechanical locks. Each burglary occurred on a night when the home's new, electronic security system had been conveniently disabled by a local power fluctuation—fluctuations the power company had no record of.
It was clever. It used the city's technological limitations against itself.
_This isn't a Grifter; this is a human with a very specific skillset._
He presented his findings to Martha. "It's not a random spree. They're targeting specific houses with specific security vulnerabilities. They know how to create a power drain, probably with a portable device. They're hunting antiques."
Martha listened, her expression unreadable. When he finished, she nodded slowly. "Good. That's actual police work. Follow it. Check with the pawnshops, the antique dealers. See if anyone's moving fancy silverware."
It was a small victory, but it felt monumental. He had used his own mind, Andrew's mind, to see something Foster's colleagues had missed. He was no longer just forging reports, he was doing the job.
On his way back from a futile visit to a pawnbroker who'd seen nothing, he passed a grand, imposing building made of white marble. It stood between a modern bank and a centuries-old church, somehow belonging to both. Ornate brass letters were engraved beside the door: The Aethelstan Club & Social Foundation. He saw a well-dressed man in a top hat and another in a sharp modern business suit both nod to a doorman and enter.
_A place for people of various affiliations._
He mused. A place where secrets might be traded behind closed doors. He filed the sight away, a curiosity for another day.
That evening, he sat at Foster's desk in the bedroom. The blood-stained notebook was in the drawer, a sleeping monster. In its place, he opened a fresh, clean one. At the top of the first page, he wrote: Observations.
He began to write, not as Foster, not as Andrew, but as the new, amalgamated being he was becoming. He wrote about the Davidson case and the three-minute void. He wrote about the burglaries and the targeted power drains. He wrote about the word "Grifter." He wrote about the Aethelstan Club.
He was no longer just reacting. He was investigating the world itself. The gravity of his situation was no longer a crushing weight, but a focal point. Every trivial detail—a boy's superstition, a power fluctuation, a grand building—felt significant. They were pieces of a puzzle he was only beginning to comprehend, and he had a chilling feeling that they would all, one day, fit together.