Genesis. Volume 2

October 16, 1986. Chicago. Claire's apartment. Morning. Arthur woke to the smell of blood. He sat up on the mattress before he understood what was happening. His hand shot to his backpack, where the dagger lay. But it wasn't that kind of blood. Not sweetish, not rotten—ordinary. Iron. Salt. Someone's wound. The smell hit his nostrils, and his stomach clenched. In the doorway stood Rachel. She was pale as old paper. Her dark suit—the same one she'd worn on the train—was torn at the shoulder, and blood seeped through the fabric, dark, almost black in the dim morning light. She leaned against the doorframe, gripping it with white-knuckled fingers, breathing heavily. Each breath came with a wheeze. "They found me," she gasped. "The Red Circle. I barely got away." Arthur jumped up. One thought pounded in his head: "She's on the list. She's an agent. She can be trusted." He hadn't even noticed how that thought had become a reflex—like the hand gripping a bat, like the breath before a strike. Tucker's list lay in his jacket pocket, and he'd never shown it to Sasha. "Sasha!" he shouted. "First aid kit!" Within minutes, everyone was on their feet. Rachel sat on a chair while Sasha cut away her jacket sleeve. The scissors tore through the fabric with a rip. The wound was long but not deep—a clean knife slash, no sign of infection. The blood had already begun to clot in dark patches. "Who did this?" Sasha asked, applying a bandage. The gauze immediately soaked red. "Kane's people," Rachel replied. Her voice was weak but steady. "They know you're in Chicago. They know about the show. They have a plan—they want to intercept the dagger before you use it against the Maestro." "Why?" Max asked. "The Maestro is their enemy. We're their enemies. Why wouldn't they let us kill each other?" "Because the Maestro is valuable to Kane alive. Weakened, but alive. Hundreds of memories are locked inside him. If Kane gets them, he'll become more powerful than all the Feasters on the East Coast combined." Arthur stared at Rachel. Something was wrong. Something elusive—maybe the way she held her shoulder, maybe the way her voice was too steady for someone who'd just escaped death. Maybe the way the blood on her sleeve was already too dark, too dried for a fresh wound. But Tucker's list tipped the scales. "She's on the list. Clean agent." "You need to rest," Sasha said. "No." Rachel shook her head. "I need to be with you. Tomorrow is the show. If Kane strikes, you'll need every gun." "You're wounded." "I shoot left-handed just as well as right." Arthur exchanged a glance with Sasha. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug—"Your call." And he decided. "She's on the list. She's an agent." "Alright," he said. "Stay." The day passed in preparation. Lisa laid the theater plan on the floor and continued drawing circles—she transferred them onto separate sheets to take with her and activate on site. Jenny sat by the window, rereading the last pages of Martha's diary, her lips moving silently. Max sharpened his knife—methodically, running the blade over the whetstone again and again, though it was already razor-sharp. The sound was meditative—shhhhik-shhhhik-shhhhik. Rachel sat in the corner. She didn't join the conversations, but she listened. And Arthur, absorbed in the plan, didn't notice how her cold eyes registered every word. "The locket," Jenny said, setting down the diary. "Isabelle said Cecilia wears it constantly. Even sleeps with it. If we destroy the locket before the Maestro takes the stage, he'll be disoriented." "And how do we destroy it?" Max asked. "Shattering it isn't enough. It needs blood. My blood." "You've already lost too much." "I have enough." Jenny squeezed her bandaged palm, and a pink stain bloomed on the white gauze. "I'm a Brooks. It's my job." Arthur wrote down every word in his notebook—not for memory, but to keep his hands busy. He was afraid that if he stopped, he'd start thinking. About Christian. About how his face had turned gray before their eyes. About Cecilia, who'd walked away without a single tear. About how tomorrow they could end up in his place. "What about the mirrors?" Lisa asked. She sat on the floor, cross-legged, her left hand scratching pencil across paper. "In the foyer. They're alive. If the Maestro uses them against us..." "The mirrors reflect fear," Rachel said. Everyone turned to her. She spoke quietly but confidently. "I've read the Circle's archives. The Maestro feeds on emotion. But his greatest strength is fear of oneself. If a person sees their own fear in the mirror, the Maestro gains access to their mind." "So we just don't look at the mirrors," Max said. "It won't work. There are dozens of them. You'll enter the foyer—and they'll be everywhere." Jenny went pale. Arthur noticed—noticed how her fingers, gripping the diary, turned white. "What?" he asked. "Nothing." "Jenny." She was silent for a moment. Then she closed the diary and looked up. "I'm afraid of mirrors. Since childhood. When I was little, I thought my reflection looked at me differently than I looked at it. That it wanted to switch places. Stupid, right?" "Not stupid," Lisa said. "Not in this theater." "But it's my fear. If the Maestro uses it..." "We'll be there," Arthur said. "We won't leave you alone in front of a mirror." Jenny smiled weakly. But the fear in her eyes didn't fade. They spent another hour discussing. Then Claire brought lunch—macaroni and cheese, simple food that tasted bland but warm. They ate in silence. When darkness fell, everyone began drifting to their corners—some to sleep, others to continue preparing. Arthur sat at the table, staring at the plan sheets. Tomorrow. Everything would be decided tomorrow. The door creaked. He looked up. No one. He didn't know that at that very moment, Rachel—who had slipped out of the apartment half an hour ago—was sitting in the Fairfax mansion's drawing room. A glass of whiskey sat before her, untouched. Opposite her, in a high-backed chair, sat Cecilia. The firelight reflected off her diamonds, making her eyes look like two cold coals. "They're coming through the underground passage," Rachel said. Her voice was dry and businesslike—no trace of her earlier weakness. "They have a map. A key to the coal cellar. The dagger is with Walker." "The dagger is no threat," Cecilia replied. "The Maestro can withstand it. What else?" "Brooks. She's afraid of mirrors. Panic-level. If you set up mirrors in the hall..." "They're already set up. Continue." "They plan to destroy the locket. Jenny said her blood can break it." Cecilia touched the medallion at her chest—the very one Isabelle had replaced. She didn't know it was a fake, and a cold smirk touched her lips. "Let them try." "One more thing." Rachel leaned forward. "Arthur Walker. He trusts me. I gave him a list of 'clean' agents. He thinks I'm his ally." "And what does that give us?" "If the Maestro wishes, I can deliver Walker to him. No dagger. No protection. The boy will lose everything." Cecilia took a sip of whiskey. "Tomorrow," she said. "Everything happens tomorrow." Rachel nodded. In the fireplace, a log cracked, and sparks flew up toward the portrait of the Maestro hanging above the marble mantel. The painted eyes watched them both with cold interest. October 16, 1986. Chicago. Claire's apartment. Evening. The night before the show arrived soundlessly. Lisa sat on the floor in the corner of the room, cross-legged. Before her lay her pencils—all of them. She sharpened them one by one, methodically, almost maniacally. The graphite broke with a soft crunch. She sharpened them again. Her hands were smudged with graphite dust, but she didn't notice. "You'll break the last one," Max said quietly. He sat on the windowsill, holding a mug of cold tea. "I have spares," Lisa replied without looking up. "This isn't about the pencils. It's about you." She stopped. The pencil in her fingers trembled—a thin wooden stick ready to snap. Lisa set it down on the floor and looked up at Max. "I'm scared," she said. "Me too." "But you don't show it." "I just don't scream. That doesn't mean I'm not scared." He paused. "When I put the knife into Rachel... back in the orchestra... I felt..." "What?" "Relief. Not shame. Not horror. Relief. Like I'd done what I had to do. And that scares me more than the Maestro." Lisa looked at him and saw not the paranoid kid with a knife she'd always thought him to be, but a tired boy who'd become a soldier too early. "You're not bad," she said. "You're just tired." "We're all tired." Jenny lay on the couch, turned toward the wall. She wasn't asleep—just lay with her eyes open, running through her mother's words in her mind, the faces in the portraits, the tear on Julian's cheek. Arthur sat at the table, staring at the dagger lying before him. He didn't touch it—just stared at the blurred engraving, at the thin vapor rising from the blade. Then, when the silence became unbearable, Max slid off the windowsill and sat on the floor, his back against the couch. Lisa moved closer. Jenny turned and let her hand hang down, touching his shoulder. Arthur walked over and sat down beside them without a word. They huddled together—five teenagers in a stranger's apartment, in a strange city, the night before a battle they might not survive. They didn't speak. They just pressed against each other—backs, shoulders, elbows—trying to find some scrap of safety in the warmth of another body. Lisa smelled of graphite, Max of metal, Jenny of bandages and blood. Lisa's eyes closed first. Then Jenny drifted off. Max held out longest, but eventually he dropped his head onto Arthur's shoulder. Arthur didn't sleep. He stared out the window at the gray dawn that hadn't yet come but promised to arrive. The dagger lay beside him, and he could feel its warmth through the backpack fabric. Tomorrow. Tomorrow it would all end. One way or another.