The notebook lay under the desk, a dormant predator. Foster did not retrieve it.
He spent the remainder of the night on the floor, his back against the wall, watching it from across the room.
The initial, paralyzing terror had subsided, replaced by a cold, grinding dread. This was a problem with no protocol, no partner to call, no superior to brief.
Telling anyone was unthinkable. To confess to Captain Hanson or Martha Holmes would see him stripped of his badge and committed to an asylum.
To bring it to the Oxford Club was to risk exposing his most vulnerable secret to a neurosurgeon of unknown allegiance, a volatile noble, and a naive girl.
It was a death wish.
Information in this city was a contagion, and he would not risk spreading it to Ortego. His brother's safety was the one non-negotiable line in the shifting sands of his reality.
When the first grey light of dawn filtered through the window, he moved. His body was stiff, his mind raw, but a grim resolve had taken hold. This was his war. His alone.
He approached the notebook not as a terrified victim, but as a detective. He used a pen from his desk to carefully flip it closed, then slid it into a large evidence bag.
He handled it with the detached professionalism he would afford a unstable explosive. He needed to analyze it, to understand the how before he could even begin to grapple with the why.
Had the words been there all along, hidden by some trick of the mind or light? Trauma could create blind spots. Or was it something else? A message that had… manifested?
At the station that afternoon, the mundanity of his work was a surreal contrast to the storm in his mind. He filed paperwork on the mill homicide, officially labeling it:
Unsolved – Lack of Evidence.
He attended a briefing on a new series of petty thefts. He drank coffee with Eliza, who complained about the new filing system she herself had designed.
He was Foster Ambrose, competent if quiet officer.
But beneath the surface, his mind was a fortress under siege.
The gate is not a door. The book is not a shield. The heart is the key.
The words cycled like a mantra of doom. They felt less like a message of hope and more like a set of instructions for a ritual he didn't want to complete.
During break, he went to the evidence locker on a pretext and, alone in the aisle, used a portable multi-spectral light from Neil's lab—borrowed without asking.
He shone different wavelengths on the evidence bag containing the notebook. No hidden inks were revealed.
The paper was of a common, modern stock. The ink was standard ballpoint. There were no chemical traces, no residues he could detect.
Forensically, it was clean.
The horror was in the content and the context, not the composition.
This left him with two equally terrifying possibilities:
He had suffered a profound psychological break, a delayed psychotic episode triggered by his deaths, or the rules of this world were far more fluid and malevolent than he had dared to imagine.
—
That evening, he forced himself to sit with Ortego for dinner. He listened to the boy's stories about school, about his friends, about a new theory in fluid dynamics.
He asked questions, he engaged. He was present in a way he hadn't been for weeks. It was an act of sheer will, a bulwark against the chaos.
Protecting Ortego's normalcy was now intrinsically linked to solving his own abnormal nightmare.
Later, in the silence of his room, he did not open the evidence bag. He placed it on his desk, a contained threat. He then opened his own, clean journal.
He wrote down the three lines. He stared at them, not as a victim, but as a codebreaker.
The gate is not a door. The gate was a place of death, not a passage. An end, not a beginning.
The book is not a shield. Relying on the past, on the memory of my trauma, would not protect me.
The heart is the key. Not my physical heart, torn out. My will. My core. The thing that made me reject death.
Andrew Garfield's stubborn refusal to die.
It was a theory, fragile as glass. But it was a start.
The Lonely Saviour's war was no longer just against the city's hidden factions. It was against the very nature of his own existence.
And the first battle was to be fought in the quiet of his own mind, with a blood-stained notebook as his only map.
—
The next day, the ritual was now precise, almost sacred in its grim necessity.
7:45 AM. The private restroom. Five pennies in the slot. The lock engaged.
Foster worked with the efficiency of a man assembling a weapon.
The dye was quick-acting, transforming his hair into a severe, polished black.
The gel followed, slicking it back until not a strand was out of place.
The clothes—the crisp white shirt, the black vest, the silver-rimmed glasses, were his armor.
He tucked the "Andrew Garfield" ID into the wallet.
By 8:15, Officer Foster Ambrose was gone, replaced by a man who looked like he dissected financial reports for breakfast.
His first appointment at the UIAF was with a colleague, a sharp-eyed man named Robert who specialized in commercial zoning.
"Garfield, good, you're here," Robert said, not looking up from his data-slate.
"We have a problem. Councilman Vance is furious. The historical society is blocking his pet project—a new aquatic center in the old merchant district. Withersby and his crew are citing 'foundation instability' and 'preservation of character.'"
Withersby. The name from the Mandate meeting. The historical society was a front, or at least a tool.
"What's the real reason?" Andrew asked, his voice calm and analytical.
Robert finally looked up, a cynical smile on his face.
"The real reason? The old families don't want a modern eyesore—that's what they call it. Bringing the 'wrong sort' into their precious district. It's about keeping the boundaries clean. The H.A.M. doesn't like its quiet disturbed."
He said the acronym casually, a piece of common office knowledge.
Andrew kept his expression neutral, but his mind cataloged the fact.
The High Ancient Mandate's influence was an open secret in these circles.
"The solution isn't to fight the historical argument," Andrew said, thinking aloud.
"It's to co-opt it. Propose a design that incorporates the old brickwork from the demolished warehouses. Frame it not as a new construction, but as a 'reclamation' of the district's industrial heritage. A place for the children of the old workers to play."
It was a cynical, political ploy, and it felt utterly natural coming from Andrew Garfield's mouth.
Robert stared at him, then a slow grin spread across his face. "Garfield, you're a bastard. A brilliant bastard. That might actually work."
The morning was a whirlwind of such conversations. He met a client, a nervous woman from a "new money" family who wanted to buy a house in an old-money neighborhood but was being subtly blackballed.
"They say the plumbing isn't up to code." she fretted.
"It's not the plumbing," Andrew said, reviewing the property list.
"It's the name. You need an intermediary. A respected local figure to make the offer on your behalf. It adds a layer of… acceptable provenance."
He was becoming a broker of social legitimacy, a trader in unspoken rules.
He left the UIAF at 2:30 PM, his mind buzzing with the intricate, dirty ballet of power and perception.
The taxi ride to the restroom was a buffer zone.
The transformation back to Foster Ambrose was a shedding of skin. The gel washed out, the vest exchanged for a worn jacket, the sharpness in his eyes softening into a cop's weary observation.
By 2:58 PM, he was walking into the station, nodding to Eliza.
"Long morning?" she asked, handing him a stack of message slips.
"Something like that." Foster mumbled, heading for his desk.
The contrast was jarring.
One world dealt in social slights and multi-million-dollar projects; the other in bloodstains and broken lives.
He focused on the mill case, re-reading the witness statements.
Anya, the weaver, had mentioned Leo was working on his device, trying to make it more "sensitive."
He made a note to have Neil look at the device's remains, to see if it could be reverse-engineered.
But the Davidson case still tugged at him. The old woman's words—"a scratchin', like metal on old stone"—resonated with the "atypical lacerations" on Leo's arms. He needed to talk to someone who understood the city's old bones.
On his way out at 7 PM, he didn't go straight home.
He detoured to Oak Lane. The bell on Havelock's door chimed its familiar, comforting tune.
The clockmaker was at his bench, the massive clock tower movement now partially reassembled, a beautiful, complex skeleton.
"Foster. You look tired."
"Long day." Foster said, leaning against the counter. The smell of metal and oil was a balm.
"I had a question. About the city's… foundation. The really old parts."
Havelock didn't look up from the delicate spring he was adjusting.
"The city isn't built on rock, son. It's built on compromise. And some of those compromises are older than the stones."
"What does that mean?"
"It means," Havelock said, finally setting down his tool and looking at Foster, his eyes serious.
"That some things were allowed to stay in the dark so that others could live in the light. We built our world on top of theirs, and we agreed to pretend they weren't there. But an agreement needs two sides to keep it."
He gestured to the clockwork.
"A gear can't decide to stop turning. It throws the whole mechanism into chaos."
He was talking about the Grifters. The Thinning. He was confirming the core of the journal's claims, but in the language of a craftsman.
Foster felt a surge of gratitude for this man, this anchor to a simpler truth.
"Thanks, Mr. Havelock."
"Don't thank me," the old man said, turning back to his work. "Just be careful which gears you try to turn."
Foster left, the warning settling in his gut.
He had navigated the political sharks, done his police duty, and now received another cryptic message from the city's oldest sage.
He was a man living in three worlds at once, and the effort was slowly splitting him apart.
But for now, he had one more promise to keep: Mrs. Gable's data-slate.