Chapter 10

     April had come quietly, but the city’s silence felt deliberate, like a breath held too long. I walked through streets that seemed to pulse with the ghost of winter’s chill, the air still heavy with dampness, though the fog had begun to lift. The days felt longer now, each one unfolding like a letter left unopened on a desk, each hour carrying the weight of what hadn’t been said or seen in weeks.

     My memories of March were fragmented, scattered across the recesses of my mind like broken glass. I had pieces—glimpses of places I’d been, faces I might have seen—but they didn’t connect in a way that made sense. They seemed to float just out of reach, like syllables strung together without meaning. And in that emptiness, Achilles’ name still lingered, an unresolved echo that refused to fade.

     I’d come here, to the clinic on West Harlow, with the vague notion that there might be answers—or at least someone who could help me stitch together the holes in my memory. The building was old, a faded brick structure with a crooked sign out front that read: **Pritchard’s Clinic for the Hard of Hearing.** I hadn’t expected much, just a name I’d come across, a faint trail that seemed to lead nowhere but still called out for me to follow.

     Inside, the air was thick with the medicinal smell of antiseptic and old leather. The waiting room was empty except for a young receptionist who barely looked up from her magazine. She gestured vaguely toward a hallway at the back, where a closed door stood beneath a flickering overhead light. I made my way down the corridor, the sound of my footsteps dull against the linoleum floor.

     I opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit office. A man sat at a desk cluttered with papers, a stethoscope draped loosely over his shoulders. He was older, with thin hair and eyes that seemed to look past things rather than at them. He didn’t acknowledge my presence, didn’t even look up as I approached.

     “You’re Pritchard?” I asked, though the name had already lost some of its weight. He looked up slowly, as if pulling himself out of a deep, unreachable place.

     “They say I’m a healer,” he replied, his voice barely more than a murmur. “Though I doubt anyone believes it these days.”

     I studied his face. There was something off about him, a disconnection, like he was half here and half somewhere else. “I heard you specialize in—” I hesitated, searching for the right words. “In cases where things don’t add up.”

     He finally turned to face me, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “Things don’t add up more often than you’d think,” he said, his eyes still distant, as though listening for something I couldn’t hear. “The mind, the body—they don’t always speak the same language.”

     It wasn’t the answer I’d been looking for, but I pressed on. “I’ve been… losing time,” I said, the words feeling inadequate as they left my mouth. “Days, weeks—whole months that seem to vanish. I need to know if there’s a reason.”

     Pritchard nodded slowly, as if I’d just confirmed something he already knew. “Time has a way of slipping through the cracks,” he said. “We all miss pieces, here and there. But it sounds like you’ve been missing more than most.”

     He reached across the desk and picked up a small, metal device—a kind of handheld radar, no larger than a pocket watch. It had a single button on the side and a needle that quivered faintly at its center, like the measure of a pulse. “I use this for what they call ‘metrical resonance,’” he explained. “The theory is that everything leaves a trace—echoes, vibrations, even thoughts. If something’s out of alignment, it might show up here.”

     I wasn’t sure whether to believe him or not. The device looked like a relic from another era, something built more for theater than for science. But I’d been chasing ghosts for so long that any lead felt worth following. “Go ahead,” I said, sitting down in the chair across from him.

     Pritchard switched on the device, and the needle began to twitch, moving erratically as he passed it over my temples, then down the sides of my neck. It hummed softly, a low sound like a radio trying to find a signal. He paused, his brow furrowing slightly. “There’s… something,” he murmured, the needle jerking toward the far end of the scale.

     “What does that mean?” I asked, trying to keep the skepticism out of my voice.

     “It means,” he said slowly, “that whatever happened to you left an impression. A resonance.” He leaned back in his chair, setting the device on the desk. “But I can’t tell you what it was. Only that it’s there, still echoing.”

     I felt the familiar coldness settle in, the kind that came when answers only raised more questions. “Achilles,” I said, almost as if testing the name against the air. “Does that name mean anything to you?”

     Pritchard’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes grew distant again, like he was listening for a sound beyond the reach of normal hearing. “I’ve heard the name,” he said. “But not here. Not in this place.” He looked at me, and for the first time, there was something sharp in his gaze, a hint of urgency. “If you’re chasing him, you’re not the first.”

     “Then where?” I pressed. “Where have you heard it?”

     He reached into a drawer and pulled out an old map, yellowed and creased with age. He spread it across the desk, his finger tracing a line that wove through the city, a series of points marked in faded ink. “These are the places where people disappear,” he said. “Where time slips away. Achilles’ name has come up near all of them. Like he’s marking territory. Or maybe looking for something.”

     I stared at the map, the pattern forming in front of me like a constellation in the night sky. Each point seemed to lock something in place, walls around a world I didn’t understand. And I could feel it again—that pull, that echo, as if the metrical radar was still vibrating somewhere inside me.

     Pritchard folded the map, placing it back in the drawer. “You might find answers,” he said, “but they won’t make sense. Not unless you’re willing to see the world differently.”

     I stood up, the cold ache in my jaw throbbing faintly, a reminder of everything I still didn’t know. “What are you?” I asked, the question slipping out before I could catch it. “A healer, or something else?”

     Pritchard’s faint smile returned, the kind that never quite reached his eyes. “I’m just a man trying to listen,” he said. “Even if I can’t hear what’s being said.”

     The room seemed to grow smaller as I walked back into the hallway, the light overhead flickering in and out. The metrical radar’s hum still resonated somewhere in the back of my mind, an echo that refused to fade.

     Outside, the city felt quieter, as if it was listening too, waiting for the next sound to break the silence. I knew Achilles was out there, somewhere, still playing his game. And I was left to follow the traces he’d left behind, trying to understand a pattern that seemed to fold in on itself with every step I took.

     I turned away from the clinic, feeling April’s chill settle into my bones, and set out toward the first point on Pritchard’s map. It was time to see what echoes still remained, and what truths they might carry.

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