Chapter 14

     The city was quiet, but it was the kind of silence that made you uneasy, like standing in the eye of a storm. It wasn’t a pause; it was a prelude to something bigger. I stood in an alley off Edison Boulevard, the cold May wind biting at my face, the sky a dull gray, thick with clouds that threatened rain. Everything felt off-kilter, as if the world was holding its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

     I’d been following the trail Achilles had left behind, but the closer I got, the more the lines blurred. Each lead I picked up felt like a dead end, a loop that circled back on itself without revealing anything concrete. And yet, there was something there—a pattern, a rhythm I couldn’t quite catch. It was like listening to a melody where one note was always missing.

     The truth was, I was second-guessing everything. Achilles had a way of playing with your head, turning you around until you couldn’t tell whether you were following his plan or stepping right into his trap. I kept hearing Pritchard’s voice in the back of my mind: *once the sluices open, there’s no going back.* But it was too late for caution now. The sluices were open, the water rushing out, and I was standing in the flood.

     As I moved down the alley, the sound of a bell echoed faintly in the distance—deep, mournful, the toll of something ancient and immovable. A tocsin, a warning. But for what?

     I kept walking, the bell’s sound growing louder with each step. It wasn’t just a warning bell, though. It was something else—something woven into the city’s fabric, a signal, a tone that vibrated beneath the surface, hidden in the streets, the buildings, the very air. It reminded me of Achilles, his constant presence, always there even when he was nowhere to be found.

     Wit. That’s what it came down to, didn’t it? Wit versus wit. A battle of minds, of strategies, played out on a board where the pieces kept shifting. Achilles was playing the long game, moving the pieces with precision, anticipating my every move before I even knew I’d make it. But there was something he hadn’t accounted for, something he’d overlooked.

     Madeleine.

     She was the anomaly, the crack in his plan. The place where wit and control slipped out of his grasp. I’d seen her—fleeting, like a ghost, but real enough to remind me that Achilles wasn’t untouchable. She was the thread I needed to pull, the missing note in the melody that would unravel everything.

     I turned the corner, and the bell’s toll became deafening. Ahead, the street opened up into a square, the bell tower looming over it like a sentinel. The sound vibrated through the air, thick and oppressive, rattling my bones. It felt like the city itself was trying to tell me something, to push me toward the answers that had been hidden in plain sight.

     I stood in the middle of the square, my heart pounding in time with the bell. It was all coming together now—the scattered clues, the strange patterns, the unanswered questions. Achilles had been manipulating everything, controlling the flow of information, blocking the sluices. But something had changed. His control was slipping, and that’s why the bell was tolling. A tocsin, a warning to both of us. He was losing his grip, and he knew it.

     But so did I.

     I scanned the square, searching for any sign of movement, any trace of Achilles. The bell continued to toll, its sound filling the air, but the streets were empty. I was alone, or at least it felt that way. But Achilles was always watching. That much I knew.

     “Are you there?” I muttered under my breath, my voice lost in the echo of the bell.

     For a moment, there was nothing but the sound of the tocsin, the relentless, rhythmic tolling. But then, from somewhere just out of sight, I heard it—a faint laugh, low and mocking, carried on the wind.

     I spun around, but there was no one there.

     The laugh came again, closer this time, and I felt a chill creep up my spine. It wasn’t Achilles. I knew that laugh. It belonged to someone else. Someone who had been slipping through my thoughts, just out of reach, like the missing piece of the puzzle I couldn’t solve.

     Madeleine.

     I turned back toward the square, and there she was, standing at the edge of the shadows, her figure half-hidden in the mist that was beginning to settle over the city. She wasn’t looking at me, not directly. Her eyes were fixed on something in the distance, her expression unreadable. But I could feel it—the connection between us, the unspoken understanding that we were both caught in this web, tangled in Achilles’ game.

     She didn’t move, didn’t speak. The bell continued to toll, its sound vibrating through the stones beneath our feet, but she remained still, like a figure in a dream, just beyond the reach of reality.

     I wanted to call out to her, to close the distance between us, but something held me back. There was a tension in the air, a feeling that if I stepped forward, everything would unravel too quickly, that the careful balance Achilles had created would collapse before I was ready.

     And then, as suddenly as she had appeared, Madeleine turned and disappeared into the mist, her figure swallowed by the fog as though she had never been there at all.

     I stood in the square, the bell still ringing, my mind racing. The pieces were falling into place, but the picture they formed was still blurry, incomplete. Achilles had set the game in motion, but Madeleine was the key to unlocking it. And now, I had to find her before the final toll of the bell.

     Wit versus wit. Tone versus tocsin. The game was far from over, and the stakes had never been higher.