Chapter 13

     The fog had lifted, but the city felt no clearer. The streets had the same damp, oil-slick sheen, the air thick with the residue of something burned and buried. It was May now, but the cold clung to everything like a stubborn ghost. I stood in the middle of Ralston Street, where the printworks loomed like a mausoleum behind me. Achilles had vanished, and Madeleine—if she was even real—had slipped away like smoke in the dark.

     There were no signs of what had just unfolded. No bodies, no trap, no thick black liquid creeping over the floor like some sentient ooze. Just me, standing under the streetlight, my thoughts circling back to the same jagged edges they’d been scraping against for months.

     I tried to make sense of it—everything that had happened since February, since the city first began to unwind. Achilles had always been a step ahead, always pulling me deeper into his maze. But now I was starting to see something else: the cracks in his design, the places where the pattern didn’t hold. He wasn’t infallible. He had been leaving traces—intentionally or not. And somewhere, hidden in all those shadows and shifting echoes, was something that didn’t fit.

     The sluices had been closed for too long. The flow of information, of memory, had been bottled up, slowed to a trickle, and the more I tried to force it open, the more resistance I met. But now, as May settled in, something was beginning to shift. I could feel it—a pressure building behind the walls Achilles had constructed. Something was about to break.

     I returned to Pritchard’s clinic the next day, the dim, sterile light overhead flickering as I stepped into the waiting room. The air smelled of ether and old books, a stale mix of the living and the forgotten. The receptionist gave me a half-hearted glance, barely lifting her eyes from the magazine she was flipping through. Nothing ever changed here, except for the parts you couldn’t see.

     Pritchard was at his desk, his hands clasped in front of him, staring at the metrical radar as if it held some secret he hadn’t quite deciphered yet. He looked up when I entered, his expression calm, but there was something beneath it—something tired, as if the work of listening to the silence had worn him down.

     “You’ve come back,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, as though even speaking was a strain.

     “Achilles is slipping,” I replied, sitting down across from him. “There are gaps in his pattern. Places where the echo falls apart.”

     Pritchard nodded slowly. “He’s been keeping things closed for a long time,” he said. “But even he can’t stop everything from leaking out.”

     “What’s behind it?” I asked. “What’s he been hiding?”

     Pritchard leaned back, the radar still humming faintly on his desk. “Everything has its limits,” he said. “You can only lock things away for so long before the pressure builds. Ungifted sluices, blocked and boiling—eventually, they’ll burst.”

     I knew what he meant. Achilles had been sealing off the city, slowing the flow of information, of memory, but now the cracks were showing. The sluices were starting to give way, and with them, the truth—or some version of it—was beginning to spill out.

     But there was something else, too. A part of me, deep down, knew that whatever Achilles had hidden wasn’t just some secret or plot. It was bigger than that. The city had become a reflection of his control, his need to keep things orderly, predictable. And yet, there was chaos underneath. I had felt it—each time I saw Madeleine, each time Achilles vanished just as I was about to confront him.

     “What about her?” I asked, my voice low. “Madeleine. Is she part of it?”

     Pritchard’s eyes flickered with something unreadable, a brief flash of recognition or maybe regret. “She’s always been part of it,” he said. “Though I doubt she knows it. Achilles has a way of pulling people into his world without them realizing it.”

     “But why?” I pressed. “What does she have to do with him?”

     Pritchard looked away, as though the answer was somewhere in the shadows that lined the room. “She’s the reminder,” he said softly. “The one thing he can’t control. The one part of the story that doesn’t follow the rules.”

     I sat back, letting his words settle in. Madeleine was the deviation, the thing that had slipped through Achilles’ grasp. I had seen her more than once, each time fleeting, each time feeling like a half-remembered dream. She was woven into all of this, but I still didn’t understand how or why.

     And then it hit me: she was the key.

     If Achilles couldn’t control her, then she was the thread I needed to pull to unravel everything he had built. But the question remained: where was she, and why did she keep slipping away?

     “I need to find her,” I said, standing up. “Before it’s too late.”

     Pritchard gave a slow nod, but his expression was cautious. “Just remember,” he said, “once the sluices open, there’s no going back. Whatever Achilles has been hiding will come pouring out, and it might not be what you expect.”

     I left the clinic, the cold May air biting at my skin. The city felt different now, as though the tension that had been building for months was about to snap. I could sense it everywhere—the cracks in the streets, the way the buildings leaned just a little too close, like they were waiting for something to give.

     As I walked through the winding alleys, I caught glimpses of things out of the corner of my eye—shadows that moved too quickly, figures that disappeared before I could turn to face them. The city was alive in a way that felt unnatural, as though it was trying to speak, to warn me of something coming.

     And then, in the distance, I heard it. The sound of water, rushing and boiling, as if a dam had burst and the sluices had finally opened. I quickened my pace, following the sound, my heart pounding in time with the surging flow.

     The sluices were unblocked now, the dim places in the city where Achilles had hidden his secrets boiling over, releasing everything he had tried to contain. And somewhere, in the midst of that flood, was the answer I had been searching for—the truth about Achilles, about Madeleine, about the city itself.

     But as the water roared through the streets, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was too late. Whatever was coming had already begun, and there was no stopping it now.

     The air inside the printworks was damp, thick with the smell of rotting paper and rusted machinery. It felt like the room was breathing, exhaling the past in slow, heavy sighs. I moved deeper into the darkness, my steps echoing across the cracked floor. Achilles had disappeared, but I could still feel him, a presence just out of reach, like a pulse thrumming faintly beneath the surface.

     I wasn’t sure how long I wandered through the maze of old printing presses and dusty shelving before I noticed the smell—sharp, chemical, almost sweet. It burned in my throat, a faint taste of ether on the air, as if the whole place had been soaked in something volatile. I covered my mouth with my sleeve, moving cautiously forward.

     Then I saw it: a faint glint of light reflected off something wet pooling on the floor, a thick, dark liquid that seemed to spread slowly outward from the base of an old industrial sink. I crouched down and touched it. It was warm, viscous, sliding off my fingers like the skin of an unroofed wet amoeba. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just water or ink. It felt alive, as though it was moving with a purpose all its own, creeping outward in thin, glistening tendrils.

     I straightened up, scanning the room, and that’s when I saw her.

     She was half-hidden behind a stack of dusty pallets near the far wall, her dark hair slick against her face, eyes wide and haunted. For a moment, I thought she was just another ghost—a memory lingering in the corners of my mind. But then she moved, a faint shift, as though trying to draw back further into the shadows.

     “Madeleine?” I whispered, not trusting my voice to carry any louder.

     She didn’t respond. Her gaze was distant, as if she were looking through me, her expression slack with something that wasn’t quite fear, but wasn’t far from it either. I took a step toward her, but she recoiled, her lips parting as if to speak—but no sound came out.

     And then, just as suddenly, she was gone. A flicker, a shift in the darkness, and the space where she’d been standing was empty. I spun around, my pulse hammering in my ears, searching for any sign of movement, but there was nothing except the distant drip of water and the muffled creak of old machinery settling.

     I was about to head back toward the exit when I heard a voice—low, calm, coming from just beyond the dim circle of light. “You’re always a step behind, aren’t you?”

     I turned to see Achilles standing there, his figure emerging slowly from the shadows like a memory coming into focus. He was dressed in a long, dark coat, his face half-lit by the faint glow filtering through the broken windows above. His eyes, as always, were steady and unreadable, watching me with the same quiet intensity I’d felt months ago, when this all began.

     “Where is she?” I demanded, though the words felt hollow even as I spoke them. “Where’s Madeleine?”

     Achilles tilted his head slightly, his lips curling into a faint smile. “She’s wherever she needs to be,” he said. “The question is—where do you need to be?”

     I took a step closer, the floor beneath me slick with that strange liquid, still spreading in slow, thin rivulets. “This ends now,” I said, my voice low and sharp. “No more games.”

     Achilles’ expression didn’t change. “Endings are funny things,” he replied. “They’re never quite as final as we’d like to believe.” He glanced down at the floor, where the dark liquid continued to pool and spread, and then back at me. “But you already know that, don’t you?”

     Before I could respond, there was a sudden hiss—a release of pressure from somewhere above. I looked up just in time to see a valve burst on one of the old pipes, sending a jet of steam cascading down into the room. The cloud spread out, thickening the air, making it difficult to see. I stumbled back, blinking against the haze, my throat burning from the taste of ether that clung to the mist.

     Through the shifting steam, I saw Achilles move. He stepped forward, his figure wavering like a reflection on water, and for a moment, I thought he was coming toward me. But then he stopped, his gaze fixed on something just past my shoulder.

     I turned and saw it too—a trap, crudely set with wires and rusted springs, rigged to the base of an old press. It was smeared with the same dark liquid that coated the floor, and I realized then that it had been arranged to catch anyone who wandered too close. A weepy trapper’s trick, something desperate and half-baked, but effective in its own grim way.

     Achilles gave a faint, dismissive laugh. “Someone’s been busy,” he murmured. “But not busy enough.”

     I heard a metallic snap, and suddenly, one of the wires gave way. The old press shifted, groaning under its own weight, and I felt the ground tremble as the whole contraption began to collapse. I dove to the side just as the machine came crashing down, hitting the floor with a wet, sickening thud, sending up a spray of that viscous liquid in all directions.

     When I looked up, Achilles was gone. The steam was thinning, dissipating into the cold air, and there was no sign of him anywhere in the room. The only sound was the slow drip of liquid pooling beneath the fallen press, mingling with the dust and debris.

     I stood up, my legs unsteady, and glanced back toward where I’d seen Madeleine. But there was nothing—no trace that she’d ever been there at all, no sign that any of this was real. It was as if the whole scene had been conjured from the darkness and then swallowed back into it, leaving me standing alone in the damp silence of the abandoned printworks.

     But I knew better. I had seen her, even if only for a moment, and that meant she was still out there, somewhere. Achilles hadn’t won yet. There were still too many questions unanswered, too many things left to be found.

     I took a step toward the door, the cold air brushing against my skin like a warning. The path ahead was still dark, but I could feel it—something was shifting, the pattern was breaking, and whatever lay beyond would soon come into the light.

   Next chapter