The child’s whistle was a thin, clean blade in the thick, ugly air. It cut through the distant hum of the overloading Heart, through the shouts of the Unremembered patrols, through the frantic, metallic clatter in Sineus’s own skull. It was a simple, three-note tune. A bird call that had no place in this iron forest.
It was the signal.
Anja moved first. She slid from the hole in the factory wall without a sound, a shadow detaching from other shadows. Sineus followed, his body aching with a fatigue that went deeper than muscle. The drop to the alley’s grimy cobblestones was three meters. He absorbed the impact in his knees, the jolt a dull, distant pain. The air here was a foul cocktail of wet ash, stagnant water, and the sharp, electric tang of ozone left by the reality wave.
They had to move. The burned factory was a known location. A compromised position.
Anja led the way, her pistol a dark shape in her hand. They moved through a warren of service alleys, a maze of brick and rust that was not on any map. The Unremembered were everywhere. A patrol passed the mouth of their alley, a chaotic mob of men and women, their faces lit by the orange glow of a thrown torch. The red scarves they wore were like fresh blood against the monochrome decay of the district. They were hunting.
Anja pulled him into a collapsed alcove, a deep wound in the side of a tenement where a wall had given way. The space was tight, smelling of damp plaster and a century of coal dust. Through a crack in the remaining brickwork, Sineus could see a sliver of the street. It was enough. They pressed themselves against the cold, sweating wall, and waited.
The pressure of the two clocks was a physical weight. The first was the low, bone-jarring hum of the power station, a constant reminder of the bomb that would unwrite the district. The second was the clock of Lilya’s life, each second a grain of sand falling in an hourglass he could not see. His mind raced, turning over the impossibilities. The canals were blocked. The railway was destroyed. The streets were a killing ground. Every path was gone. Every door was locked.
He felt a frantic energy building in his limbs, a need to pace, to move, to do something. But there was nothing to do. There was nowhere to go. He was a master of control trapped in a cage of pure chaos. He forced his hands into fists, his nails digging into his palms. The small pain was an anchor in the storm of his thoughts.
The Ticker’s Rattle in his head was a constant companion now, a dry, unhealthy clicking that matched the rhythm of his own frantic pulse. It was the sound of the world’s gears grinding themselves to dust.
— They’re just a mob, — he whispered, the words tasting like ash. — No discipline.
— A mob with a cause is the most dangerous army in the world, — Anja countered, her voice a low rasp. She had not taken her eyes from the street. — They think they’re cleansing the world. They’ll burn it down to the foundations and call it a fresh start.
Sineus recognized the sentiment. It was a twisted, broken mirror of his own former philosophy. The desire for a clean slate. A world without the messy, painful contagion of memory. He had wanted to achieve it with precise, sterile tools. The Unremembered were using fire and hate. The end result was the same. Oblivion.
The whistle came again, closer this time. The same three notes.
Anja gave a sharp, barely perceptible nod. A boy darted from the shadows across the street. He was no more than ten years old, thin as a stray dog, and moved with a speed that was born of constant fear. His eyes were old, missing nothing. He was a creature of the Palimpsest, as much a part of it as the rust and the whispers.
He slid into the alcove with them, his breathing shallow. He looked at Sineus, then at Anja, his gaze lingering on her pistol. He was not afraid. He was calculating.
— You’re the one, — the boy said, his voice a hoarse whisper. He held out a grimy hand.
Sineus reached into his coat. Money was useless here. He pulled out a small, dense nutrient bar, a piece of military surplus he had taken from the workshop. It was a day’s worth of calories compressed into a hard, tasteless brick. To the boy, it was a treasure.
The urchin’s eyes widened. He snatched the bar and shoved it deep into his pocket. In its place, he pressed a small, tightly folded piece of paper into Sineus’s hand. The paper was damp and smelled of the sewer.
— The doctor said to hurry, — the boy whispered. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, he was gone, a flicker of movement swallowed by the darkness.
Sineus’s hands trembled as he unfolded the note. His fingers felt clumsy, disconnected. The paper was cheap, the pencil markings smeared. It was a simple substitution cipher, one Morozov had taught him years ago for passing notes during dull university lectures. A lifetime ago.
He decoded the message in seconds. The words formed, stark and brutal.
She is fading fast. Hours, maybe less.
The world narrowed to the five words on the scrap of paper. The distant hum of the power station, the shouts of the patrols, the cold brick at his back—it all vanished. There was only the message. The end of the second clock. The final grain of sand.
Hope was not just an impurity. It was a poison. And he had let himself drink it.
The frantic, metallic clatter in his head stopped. In its place was a slow, heavy tick. A single, mournful beat, like a great and ancient clock marking a final, irrevocable moment. The sound of a stopped watch. The sound of a world ending.
He felt nothing. A vast, cold emptiness opened up inside him, a void where Lilya had been. He had failed. He had run through a city of ghosts, fought monsters of memory, and made alliances with his enemies, all for nothing. He had been too slow. His science had failed. His desperate gamble on the occult had failed. He had failed.
The net closure was 90%. All exits were sealed. The two clocks had converged. There was no more time.
He crushed the damp paper in his fist. The gesture was small, meaningless. A final, futile act of a man with no choices left. The paper was just pulp now, the words that had destroyed him already dissolving into an illegible smear.
The cold emptiness inside him was perfect. A sterile void. The very thing he had once sought to create in the world, he now carried within himself.
A light rain began to fall, hissing on the hot metal of a nearby foundry. The air filled with the clean, sharp smell of wet stone.
Anja touched his arm. Her hand was steady.
— There is one more way, — she said, her voice quiet but hard as iron. — You won’t like it.
