Genesis. Volume 2

October 10, 1986. New York. Hostel and Diner. Evening. Max prodded his cold burger with a fork. The burger was nothing special. The bun was soggy with grease, the patty rubbery, the cheese plasticky. But Max ate anyway—or rather, pretended to eat. He needed to keep his hands busy. And his eyes. And his thoughts. He sat by the window of a 24-hour diner across the street from the hostel. It was the kind of place that never closed because the customers didn't care what time it was, and the waitresses cared even less. It smelled of frying oil, stale coffee, and bleach—that ubiquitous mix that soaked into clothes in five minutes and didn't air out until the next wash. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, and one of them flickered rhythmically, casting stuttering shadows across the table. Max wasn't looking at his food. He was looking out the window. Behind the grimy glass, in a fine drizzling rain, stood two people. Liam held an umbrella—old, black, with a bent spoke—tilting it toward Emma, though he himself was already soaked through. Emma was saying something, her lips moving fast, nervously. Liam listened, nodding occasionally. Then she fell silent, and they just stood there—not touching, but not pulling away either—like two magnets that hadn't yet decided whether they'd attract or repel. Max stabbed at the remains of his burger. He'd completely lost his appetite. "You've been staring at them for ten minutes," Jenny said, sitting across from him. She didn't look up from Martha's diary, but the corner of her mouth twitched—whether a smirk or a tic, he couldn't tell. "I'm not staring. I'm watching." "It's the same thing." "No. 'Staring' means being intrusive. I'm just... observing." "It's called envy," Arthur muttered without looking at him. He was twirling a salt shaker between his fingers, salt spilling across the tabletop in a thin white trail. Max wanted to snap back—but couldn't. Because it was true. He was envious. Not of Emma. Not of Liam. Of what existed between them. Of how they stood under one umbrella, how Liam tilted his head to catch her whisper, how Emma adjusted the collar of his jacket—absently, without realizing she was doing it. It was so little—and yet unbearably much. Max had never stood under an umbrella with a girl. He rarely thought about girls at all—there were too many knives, too many shadows, too many sleepless nights in his life to leave room for romance. But sometimes, in moments like this, he felt a void. Not the global one left by Feasters. A small, personal one. A void in the shape of a person he'd never had. "They're a good pair," Lisa said quietly. She was drawing in her sketchbook, not looking up, but her pencil moved slower than usual. "He listens to her. She doesn't smoke around him." "She doesn't smoke at all," Max said. "Exactly." The diner door swung open, and Emma and Liam walked in—wet, their cheeks flushed from the cold. Emma shook the droplets from her hair, surveyed their table with its food scraps, and wrinkled her nose. "Burgers? Seriously? We're leaving for God knows where tomorrow, maybe to our deaths, and you're eating burgers?" "They were hot," Max said. "An hour ago." "Now they're cold and sad. Like you." "Thanks, Emma. You really know how to cheer a guy up." "I try." She sat down on an empty chair, and Liam sat beside her without asking permission. Their shoulders brushed—not on purpose, just a lack of space. But Max noticed that neither of them moved away. Lisa closed her sketchbook and stretched. Her face was pale, dark circles under her eyes—she hadn't slept properly since they'd arrived in New York. Maybe since they'd started this hunt altogether. "Let's go back," she said. "I want to check the map." "The map?" Liam asked. "She draws a map," Max explained. "With dots. Where we've been, where the Feasters are, where the threads are. She's got a whole collection now." "It's not a collection," Lisa said. "It's... I don't know. A network." Liam looked at her with curiosity but didn't press. He never pried, and for that Max was grateful. In their lives, there were too many people who asked questions and too few who simply sat beside them in silence. They paid—Arthur tossed crumpled bills on the table without counting—and stepped out into the rain. They had no umbrella, so they ran across the street, jumping over puddles and jostling each other. Max ran last, his knife weighing down his pocket, one hand holding it in place. The hostel smelled of dampness and someone else's tobacco. They climbed the creaking stairs to the third floor, and Lisa headed straight for the table by the window. Her map—a large sheet of paper pinned to the wall with thumbtacks—was waiting. She worked on it every evening. She'd started with the outlines of Brookfield, then added Detroit, then New York. The city contours were drawn in black ink, and over them—red lines connecting the dots: the "Genesis" mansion, the Ford Park factory, Barnum's Circus. Where they'd already been, the lines were thick, confident. Where they still had to go—dotted, trembling. But tonight, Lisa was doing something new. She picked up a soft pencil—3B—and began shading the area around one of the buildings. Max stepped closer and saw she wasn't filling it in randomly—it was the Majestic Theater, where they'd passed that afternoon. "What are you doing?" he asked. "I don't know," Lisa answered. Her hand moved on its own. The pencil laid down on its side, leaving not strokes but a solid black layer—dense, greasy, as if she were pouring ink onto the paper. But it wasn't just black. The paper beneath the pencil seemed to soak through, becoming oily, almost damp. A sweetish smell rose from the sheet—not ink, but rot. "Lisa, stop," Jenny said. "I can't stop." "Why?" "Because it's doing it by itself." Lisa finally lifted the pencil from the paper and raised her hand. Her fingers were trembling, black graphite under her nails. "I didn't want to draw this. I just... felt it." Max looked at the map. Around the Majestic, a black stain had spread—not smooth, but with jagged, torn edges like tentacles. It bled onto neighboring streets, crept toward Central Park, reached out in thin threads toward their hostel. "It's him," Emma said, her voice hollow. "The Maestro. He was there. In the theater. Or... he's still there. Waiting." "We walked right past it," Max said. "I didn't feel anything." "I did." Emma touched the medallion at her neck. "The smell. Perfume. Like my mother's. I thought it was just a memory, but..." "It was him," Jenny finished. She sat on the bed, nervously biting her lips—Max could see the lower one was already cracked and bleeding. "He knows we're here. He's reaching for us." "Or for you," Arthur said. He wasn't looking at the map. He was looking at Jenny. "You're a Brooks. If he's connected to your family, he can feel your blood." "Then why are we still alive?" "Because he's playing." Arthur set down the salt shaker he'd been twirling. "Like Crowley in the mansion. Like the Void at the factory. They don't kill right away. They wait for the prey to ripen." Silence fell over the room. Only the drip of water from the bathroom faucet could be heard—steady, like a metronome. Lisa set down her pencil and wiped her fingers on her jeans, leaving black streaks. She no longer looked at the map. "It's not just a map," she said quietly. "It changes. I'm not drawing new lines—I just trace over the old ones, and they... expand. As if he's growing." "Who's 'he'?" Max asked, though he already knew the answer. "The Maestro. His stain." Lisa swept her gaze across the room. "I don't know—maybe I'm going crazy. Maybe it's just ink and paper. But it's warm. I can feel him through the pencil." Max walked to the table and carefully touched the black stain on the map. The paper was cold. No magic, no warmth. Just paper. But when he pulled his fingers away, their tips were gray—whether from graphite or something else, he couldn't tell. "It's like the threads," he said. "We're all connected. And this map—it's the same network. Just visible." "And it's turning black," Emma added. Jenny got up from the bed, walked to the map, and stared at it for a long time. Then she touched the stain—like Max, with just her fingertips—but unlike him, she didn't pull her hand away. She closed her eyes. "I can feel him," she whispered. "Not here. There. In Chicago. He's waiting and... laughing. He knows we're coming." "How can he know?" Max asked. "Because we're a beacon. Sasha said so. We glow on their maps the way they glow on ours." Max looked at the black stain. It no longer seemed like mere ink. He saw outlines in it—a stage, orchestra seats, a figure in a cloak standing in the center with arms outstretched. An illusion, of course. But that illusion made his hands go cold. "We'll beat him," Arthur said. "Like we beat Crowley. Like we beat the Void." "We didn't beat Crowley," Emma countered. "We locked him up at the cost of Jack." "We stopped him. That's what matters." "And what if the price in Chicago is higher?" Jenny asked. "What if we lose not one, but..." "Don't say that." Lisa turned sharply to face her. Her eyes glistened—not with tears, but with anger. "We're not losing anyone. Hear me? No one." "You can't promise that." "I can. Because I'll draw circles. Lots of circles. As many as it takes. And no one will die." Max wanted to say something, but couldn't find the words. He just looked at Lisa—thin, pale, with black pencil streaks on her jeans—and thought about how she always did this. Drew to protect. Drew to remember. Drew to keep from losing her mind. "Everyone sleeps tonight," Arthur said, breaking the silence. "Train tomorrow. We pack up and leave in the morning. If anyone wants to stay up, fine—but sit quiet." "I'll keep watch," Max said. "You kept watch yesterday." "I won't sleep anyway." Arthur gave him a long look. Then he nodded. "Fine. Just don't sit there with your knife. You almost cut yourself last night." "I didn't cut myself. I was sharpening it." "At three in the morning?" "Three in the morning is the best time to sharpen knives. Every maniac knows that." Someone snorted—Emma, probably. The tension in the room eased slightly, like a stretched rubber band finally released. Lisa closed her sketchbook. Jenny blew out the candle on the table. Liam slipped quietly into the hallway—Max heard his door creak. Max stayed at the table, staring at the map. The black stain didn't move. But he thought—just thought?—that it pulsed. Slowly, rhythmically, like a heartbeat. "Chicago," he thought. "Tomorrow, Chicago." He pulled out his notebook, flipped to a blank page, and wrote: "The map is turning black around the Majestic. Lisa says the pencil moves by itself. Jenny feels the Maestro. I feel nothing. Is something wrong with me?" He reread what he'd written and added at the bottom: "Emma and Liam stand in the rain as if the war is in another universe. I'm jealous of them. It's shameful, but it's true." He closed the notebook and tucked it into his pocket. The hallway was quiet. Somewhere below, the clerk had turned on a radio, and muffled music drifted through the walls—old jazz Max didn't recognize, but which somehow felt familiar. He put his head on his arms and closed his eyes. He didn't feel like sleeping. But he fell asleep anyway—dropping into a dreamless darkness like cold water. When he woke, the map was still on the wall. The black stain hadn't disappeared. But he thought it had grown slightly larger.