The public holiday dawned bright and unjustly cheerful. Foster stared at the ceiling from his bed, the concept of a "day off" feeling like a taunt from a universe with a twisted sense of humor.
_Of course._
He thought.
_The one day my police persona is required for a full shift is the day my political persona gets a forced vacation. This world is literally scheduling my identities._
The irony was so perfect it was painful.
He dragged himself out of bed, his body protesting against the early hour. In the hallway, he nearly collided with a brightly energetic Ortego.
"No school!" The boy announced, as if revealing a profound secret of the universe.
"What's your excuse? I thought you had your fancy side job today."
"Public holiday." Foster grumbled, heading for the kitchen.
"The city's corruption and redevelopment schemes are taking a well-deserved break. Crime, however, is not."
Ortego followed him, a grin spreading across his face.
"So it's just you and the other brave guardians of justice holding back the tide of chaos? Very dramatic."
He snatched the milk carton from Foster's hand before he could pour it, sniffing it suspiciously. "Huh. It's fresh. You're learning."
"Don't sound so surprised." Foster said, reclaiming the milk. He felt a familiar, fond exasperation.
In the middle of his personal maelstrom, Ortego was a fixed point of normalcy, a grounding wire of teenage sarcasm.
"What are your plans for this day of freedom? Re-wiring the house? Defeating the national physics Olympiad?"
"Maybe." Ortego said with a shrug. "Liam and I are going to the museum. They have a new exhibit on pre-industrial power sources. Water wheels, steam engines... you know, the simple stuff."
He gave Foster a long look. "You should try it sometime. Simple."
"Simple sounds like a dream." Foster muttered into his coffee.
At the station, the holiday atmosphere was a thin veneer over the usual grim business. The place was quieter, but the air still smelled of stale coffee and desperation.
Foster's first stop was his desk drawer. He didn't open it, just rested his hand on the cool metal, feeling the presence of the blood-stained notebook inside like a dormant heartbeat.
The words were still there, he knew.
The gate is not a door.
The book is not a shield.
The heart is the key.
They had not changed in the two days since their appearance, but their weight hadn't lessened either.
Shaking off the dread, he pulled the Mill case file. Davidson was officially closed, but Leo's death was a live wire, buzzing with unnatural energy. Neil's analysis of the "whispering device" was the key. He needed to understand what Leo had been listening to.
He was so engrossed in the file that he didn't hear Captain Hanson approach until the man was standing beside his desk. Foster's entire body went rigid.
"Ambrose."
Hanson's voice was, as ever, flat.
"The mill union is filing a grievance. Claiming our 'lack of progress' is a cover-up to protect the company from negligence lawsuits."
He placed a memo on Foster's desk. "I need a comprehensive summary of the forensic findings. Something I can use to shut them down. Make it bulletproof."
Foster's mind raced.
_Is this a genuine order, or a test? Is Hanson, on behalf of Withersby, trying to see how I'd handle the "anomalous" evidence?_
"Yes, sir. I'll have it by end of day."
Hanson gave a curt nod, his gaze sweeping over Foster's desk, lingering for a split second on the photograph of the strange scratches on Leo's arms.
"See that you do." He turned and walked away, leaving a vacuum of cold air in his wake.
Foster watched him go, every sense on high alert. The captain's demeanor had been no different than usual—cold, efficient, impersonal.
But after the visit from "Andrew Garfield," every interaction felt loaded with hidden meaning.
_Is he waiting for me to slip up? To mention a power drain or a cold spot?_
He spent the next hours crafting the summary. He documented the blunt force trauma, the wrench, the lack of forced entry.
He mentioned the "atypical lacerations" and the "localized power outage" as contextual oddities, but framed them as irrelevant to the core facts of the homicide.
It was a masterpiece of bureaucratic obfuscation, designed to satisfy a captain and pacify a union while burying the terrifying truth.
He felt dirty handing it in.
The rest of the shift was a slow crawl. He helped Eliza sort through a backlog of evidence tags, the mindless work a welcome respite.
He avoided Neil, not wanting to be pulled back into the vortex of aetheric resonators and digital voids.
Returning home that evening, the cheerful holiday feeling of the city felt like an insult. He found Ortego in the living room, surrounded by sketches of water wheel designs.
"Save the world?" Foster asked, dropping onto the sofa.
"Just trying to harness the power of flowing water. You know, easy stuff." Ortego said, not looking up from his drawing.
"You look like you tried to harness the power of a brick wall. With your face."
"Feels like it." Foster admitted. He looked at his brother, so focused and unburdened. "The museum any good?"
Ortego finally looked up, his eyes alight.
"It was brilliant. They had this massive model of the old city, showing how they redirected the streams to power the first factories. It's all connected, you know? The water, the steam, the electricity... it's all just different ways of tapping into the same energy."
The words struck Foster with the force of a physical blow. It's all connected.
_The water, the steam, the electricity. The Davidson alley, the mill, the Refinery project. The blood-stained notebook, the journal, the authorities._
He felt the puzzle pieces of his fractured life straining to click together into a picture so vast and terrifying he couldn't yet see its edges.
For now, all he could do was focus on one piece. The Mill case. It was the thread, and he was determined to pull it, no matter what unraveled.