Genesis. Volume 2

October 17, 1986. Chicago. Claire's apartment. Evening. Lisa checked her pencils for the fourth time. She knew it was pointless. She'd checked them that morning, then in the afternoon, then after lunch, and with each check the pencils didn't get sharper and the chalk didn't get longer. But the ritual calmed her. She picked up each pencil in turn, held it to her eyes, checked the lead, set it aside. Three regular, one red, one blue. Two pieces of white chalk, one yellow. The sharpener Max had lent her back in Brookfield. And her sketchbook—the same one with the map on the first page and Jack's portrait on the last. The page corners were dog-eared, the cover worn to pale streaks, but the sketchbook was still there. Alive. Like her. "Ready?" Arthur asked. He stood by the door, already in his jacket, backpack over his shoulder. The dagger was in his inner pocket, and Lisa knew it from the way he kept touching his chest—checking. "No," Lisa said. "But I'm going anyway." "That's the right answer." She tucked the pencils into the waist pouch Claire had lent her that morning. It was an old canvas bag with a worn strap, but it sat well—didn't bounce when she walked. Lisa fastened it, checked that it opened easily, and nodded. Jenny stood by the window. Her face was pale, but calm—like lake water before a storm. She was no longer rereading Martha's diary. She just stood and stared at the gray city, and Lisa knew: she was saying goodbye. Not to Chicago—to the part of herself that was afraid. Because today there was no time for fear. Max sat on the floor, tightening the bandage on his left hand—the one that wasn't burned. He wrapped his knuckles, pressed them with his thumb, checking if it would slip. The knife lay beside him, already sharpened to a mirror gleam. "Where's Rachel?" Sasha asked. She stood by the door, checking her pistol's magazine. The metal clicked as it slid into the grip. "Out scouting," Arthur said. "She said she'd check the perimeter before we leave." Sasha said nothing. But Lisa noticed her jaw tighten—barely perceptibly, for a fraction of a second. She didn't trust Rachel either. No one did, except Arthur. But no one said it out loud. Claire came out of the kitchen with a bag. Inside were sandwiches—cold, with cheese and ham—and a thermos of tea. "Eat," she said. "I don't know when you'll get the chance again." Lisa took a sandwich but didn't eat. She put it in her pocket. Maybe later. Maybe when it was all over. Maybe never. They left the apartment at six in the evening. October 17, 1986. Chicago. Maple Street. Evening. The coal cellar was on Maple Street, three blocks from the theater. It was an old brick building, long abandoned, with boarded-up windows and a collapsed roof. Isabelle had explained: it used to be a coal shop, then a warehouse, then nothing. The cellar was used during Prohibition to smuggle liquor into the theater. The passage was later bricked up, but Isabelle's father, Julian, had found it and drawn a map. The very same one Lisa now held in her hand. They entered through the back door. Inside, it smelled of damp, mold, and something acrid—saltpeter, perhaps, or old urine. The floor was littered with broken glass that crunched underfoot. Max led with a flashlight, Arthur behind him. Lisa stayed in the center of the group, Jenny behind her, then Sasha and Rachel, who had caught up with them at the entrance. "Clear," Rachel said quietly, squeezing through the door. "The perimeter is empty. The Fairfaxes don't seem to expect visitors through the cellar." "Good," Arthur said. Lisa noticed that Rachel was breathing hard, though she didn't look tired. Her eyes glinted in the flashlight beam—not with fear, but with something else. Excitement. The stairs to the cellar were narrow and steep. The wooden steps—rotten, spongy—gave way underfoot. Lisa descended carefully, holding the wall. The brick was damp, slippery, coated with something like moss but darker and greasier. It smelled of coal. Real, bituminous coal—the smell she remembered from childhood, when her father lit the garage stove. Below was dark. Max's flashlight revealed piles of coal—black, gleaming, like the backs of sleeping beasts. The coal sloped from wall to wall, and somewhere at the far end of the cellar, behind an old rusty cart, a dark opening gaped—low, no more than a meter high, blocked with half-rotten planks. "Here," Lisa said, checking the map. "Behind the planks." Max and Arthur took the planks together. The wood crumbled in their hands, leaving splinters. In a minute, the opening was clear. Beyond it lay a passage—narrow, dark, smelling of coal dust and stagnant water. "I'll go first," Max said. He shone the flashlight inside. "It's tight. Really tight. You'll have to crawl on all fours." "Or on your stomach," Sasha added, peering over his shoulder. "Twenty meters, at least." Lisa swallowed. She wasn't afraid of the dark. She wasn't afraid of confined spaces—at least, that's what she told herself. But when she knelt and peered into the passage, her heart skipped a beat. It wasn't just tight. It was like a grave. "I'll go after you," Arthur said, putting a hand on her shoulder. "If anything happens—I'm right here." "I know," Lisa said. "Just... give me a second." She closed her eyes, counted to five. Then opened them and crawled in. The passage was even tighter than she'd expected. The rough brick walls pressed in from all sides, and every few meters she had to twist sideways, scraping her shoulders. Dust hung in the air so thickly that Max's flashlight ahead looked like a blurred yellow blob. Lisa breathed through her mouth, trying not to cough. Coal dust settled on her tongue—bitter and oily. But the worst thing wasn't the tightness or the darkness. The worst thing was that she could feel: this passage wasn't just a tunnel. It was part of the theater. Part of the Maestro. The walls here were saturated with the same sweetish smell she remembered from the mirrored foyer. And the farther she crawled, the stronger that smell grew. "Lisa!" Arthur's voice behind her sounded muffled, like through cotton. "You okay?" "Fine!" she called back, though it wasn't true. She was trembling with fear. But she kept crawling. After five meters, she stopped. Max, crawling ahead, turned back. "What?" "I need to do something." Lisa pulled a piece of white chalk from her pouch. She pressed against the wall, found a relatively flat section of brick, and began drawing a circle. Her hand trembled—from the strain, from the awkward position, from fear—but she kept going. Circle. Horseshoe. Intersecting arcs. She drew quickly, without thinking, the chalk crumbling, leaving white traces on the brick. "Why?" Max asked. "So no one can follow us. And so the Maestro can't feel us here. It's protection. Weak, but..." "Enough," Jenny finished from behind Arthur. "I can feel the air changing. It's working." Lisa drew another circle five meters later. And another—ten meters on. Her fingers, gripping the chalk, began to sting. The brick was rough, abrasive, and she scraped the skin off her knuckles. The chalk crumbled, vanished, and she pulled out the next piece. The last one. Yellow. She'd been saving it, but here, in this tunnel, saving was deadly. "Almost," she whispered to herself. After twenty meters, the passage widened. First a little—she could kneel. Then crouch. Then Max ahead straightened to his full height and exhaled: "We're out." Lisa crawled out last. She stood, brushed the dust from her knees, her palms, her face. Her hands were filthy, her knuckles scraped raw, bleeding in places. She wiped them on her jeans and looked around. They stood in a narrow service corridor beneath the stage. The walls here were concrete, the floor old planks, and light seeped through the gaps. Somewhere above, music was playing—not recorded music, but live, orchestral. Violins, cellos, something stringed and languid. And voices. Hundreds of voices, blending into a steady, muffled hum. Footsteps. Laughter. The clink of glasses. Sasha, who had already climbed the portable ladder to the access hatch, made a hand signal. Lisa, Arthur, Max, and Jenny climbed up after her. Rachel stayed below—said she'd cover their rear. Lisa pressed her eye to the crack in the hatch. What she saw was surreal to the point of nausea. The main hall of the Palace Theater blazed with light. The crystal chandelier overhead burned with all its hundreds of candles, flooding the orchestra and boxes with warm, golden light. The seats, empty yesterday, were now filled with people—men in tuxedos, women in evening gowns, diamonds at their necks and wrists. They laughed, greeted each other, drank champagne from tall flutes. Waiters in white gloves glided between the rows, carrying trays of canapés and glasses. The air trembled with a mixture of perfume, cigar smoke, and that sweetish smell Lisa had come to hate. On the stage, before the closed curtain, an orchestra played. Musicians in black tailcoats performed a waltz—smooth, slow, like water in a pond. And among them, at the conductor's podium, stood a man Lisa had never seen before. He was alive—not a shadow, not a puppet—but his eyes were as empty as Julian's. "The theater's conductor," Sasha whispered. "Former. The Maestro keeps him as... decoration." Lisa looked at the guests and felt nausea rise in her throat. These people didn't know. They'd come to a private show, a high-society event, with no idea that they weren't the audience. They were the menu. In the center of the hall, by the velvet rope separating the VIP box, stood Cecilia Fairfax. She wore a black evening gown, a diamond choker at her throat, and smiled the smile of a hostess welcoming honored guests. Beside her stood Vivienne, cold and haughty as a statue. Isabelle was nowhere to be seen. "She should be here," Jenny whispered. "Isabelle said she'd wait for us in the service corridor." "Maybe she's delayed," Max said. "Maybe her mother didn't let her come." "Maybe." Lisa looked at the hall again. At the champagne flutes, at the laughing women, at the men adjusting their bow ties. And then she noticed something else. Above the stage, on the metal catwalks, shadows moved. Not human—fluid, oily, like the one they'd seen at the circus. They glided across the structures, taking positions. "He's preparing," she said. "The Maestro. He knows we're here." "Then let's not disappoint him," Arthur said. He pulled the dagger from his backpack. The blade glinted in the lamplight—and Lisa saw that the engraving had become clear again. The metal was healing itself. Or someone was healing it. "Positions," Sasha commanded. "Lisa, you're going to the foyer. Draw the circles. Everywhere you can. If the Maestro sends the shadows, the circles will hold them." Lisa nodded. She gripped the last piece of chalk in her hand. Her fingers stung, but the pain felt distant, as if it weren't hers. As if she'd already stepped beyond the point where the physical mattered. They slipped out from under the stage through a side door into the service corridor. Lisa went first—left, toward the mirrored foyer. Max and Sasha moved toward the wings. Arthur and Jenny stayed by the stage, waiting for the signal. Lisa walked down the corridor, her footsteps echoing off the concrete walls. The chalk in her hand was cold and solid. She knew what she was doing. She knew she might not come back. But she kept walking. Because there was no one else.