The descent was a journey into the city's gullet. Each step on the cold, wet stone was a drumbeat counting down to an end he couldn't see.
The air grew thicker, the smell of ozone and decay so potent it coated the back of his throat.
The compass in his hand was a frantic, living thing, its vibrations traveling up his arm like a scream. He kept his flashlight beam trained downward, his other hand resting on the grip of his service weapon.
Whatever had killed Leo was down here. He could feel it.
He reached the bottom. The beam of his light pierced the absolute black, revealing… nothing.
It was a small, circular chamber, no larger than a prison cell. The walls were rough-hewn stone, slick with moisture. The floor was packed earth. It was utterly, completely empty.
No Grifter, no mysterious entity, no hidden altar. There wasn't even dust. It was a void.
He swept the light around again, his heart pounding a frantic rhythm of confusion and dread.
The compass was going wild, spinning in a tight, furious circle as if trying to point in every direction at once.
The source was here. It had to be. But there was nothing to see.
He spent ten minutes in that stone throat, running his hands over the walls, tapping the floor for hollow spots, searching for any crack, any seam he might have missed.
There was nothing. The chamber was a perfect, empty pocket. A dead end.
A cold, sickening realization dawned. He wasn't alone. Something was here. He just couldn't perceive it.
Theauthority of concealment.
It wasn't just hiding objects or moments; it was hiding itself, its very presence, leaving only the effects—the cold, the smell, the frantic compass, as mocking evidence of its existence.
Defeated, he climbed back up the stairs, his body heavy with a fatigue that went beyond physical exhaustion.
He replaced the trap door, the groan of its closing sounding like a tomb sealing. He slipped out of the mill, over the fence, and back into the world of light and sound, feeling like a ghost himself.
Back at the station, he moved like an automaton.
He went to his desk, pulled up the Mill case file on his terminal, and began typing the final report.
Case Status: Closed. Cause: Undetermined. Recommendation: No further action.
Each word felt like a betrayal. He submitted it, the digital chime a funeral bell for Leo and for a piece of his own integrity.
But it wasn't over. It couldn't be. As evening fell, a restless, gnawing energy drove him back to the mill. He had to see it again. He had to know.
He stood across the street, staring at the chain-link fence. He walked to the section he'd scaled hours before, the section cluttered with discarded pallets and rusted barrels.
It was gone.
Not cleared away. Gone. The debris that had provided his cover and his foothold had vanished.
The fence in that section was now pristine, unclimbable, stretching seamlessly to the corners of the property.
The ground where the pallets had been was just smooth, packed dirt. There was no sign anyone had ever been there, no sign he had ever breached the perimeter.
Foster stood there, the city's sounds fading into a dull roar in his ears.
This wasn't bureaucracy or a cleanup crew. This was something else. This was the environment itself being rewritten.
A higher power was not just covering its tracks; it was erasing the very possibility of the path he had taken.
The two possibilities laid themselves out in his mind with cold, brutal clarity.
One: he was losing his mind, constructing elaborate conspiracies from coincidences and stress. It was plausible. It was almost comforting.
But the former, the much more horrifying option, was the truth. Something was aware of him. It had watched him find its hiding place, and it had responded not with confrontation, but with absolute, effortless erasure.
It had folded the map while he was still trying to read it. The horror wasn't just in the thing itself, but in its perfect, untouchable secrecy.
He walked home in a daze, every shadow feeling watchful, every reflection in a dark window a potential eye.
The compass was still in his pocket, now cold and inert, its purpose seemingly fulfilled or its connection severed.
He entered the silent house. He went straight to Ortego's room. The boy was asleep, his breathing deep and even, his face smooth and untroubled by authorities and concealed horrors. The sight was a knife in Foster's heart.
If this thing was watching him, then it knew where he lived. It knew about Ortego.
He didn't leave the room. He slid his service weapon from its holster, checked the load, and set it on the floor beside him.
Then he sat with his back against the door, a sentinel in the dark. He was no longer the hunter.
He was the guardian of a single, fragile life in a world that could rewrite itself around them.
Sleep, when it finally came, was thin and fitful, filled with dreams of shifting walls and a needle pointing nowhere, and everywhere, all at once.