Genesis. Volume 2

October 17, 1986. Chicago. The Palace Theater, main hall and stage. Night. They were found before they could take their positions. Arthur didn't understand how it happened. One moment they stood in the service corridor, waiting for Lisa's signal—and the next, shadows closed around them, cold, oily, smelling of rot and old velvet. Sasha raised her pistol, but a shadow knocked it from her hand before she could pull the trigger. The metal clattered against the concrete and vanished into the darkness. Max slashed with his knife—the blade passed through the shadow, harmless, only the air hissing in response. Jenny pressed her back to the wall, and Arthur saw her fingers fumbling at the edge of the bandage on her palm—she was ready to tear it off, to use her blood. But the shadows didn't attack. They simply surrounded them and herded them forward—giving them no chance to break free or slow down. They were pushed onto the stage. The chandelier's light struck their eyes—blinding, golden, unbearable. Arthur squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and when he opened them, he saw the hall. Vast, radiant, filled to the last seat. Hundreds of faces turned toward the stage. Men in tuxedos, women in evening gowns, diamonds, silk, cigar smoke. They looked at him with mild, polite curiosity—the way you look at an avant-garde performance you haven't yet understood but are ready to applaud. "Ladies and gentlemen!" The Maestro's voice filled the hall, amplified by the acoustics. He stood at the front of the stage, arms outstretched, his silk cloak shimmering in the spotlight. "I promised you a special performance. And here they are—our honored guests!" Applause. Polite, restrained. Someone in the front row raised a glass. Arthur stood in the center of the stage. The bat in his hand now felt like a pathetic piece of wood. Beside him—Max, weaponless, his face white. Jenny, her eyes burning with hatred. Sasha, held by two shadows, her pistol lying somewhere in the corner. Rachel was nowhere to be seen—either she'd slipped away, or... "No," he cut himself off. "Not now." "Do you know what fear is?" The Maestro turned to the audience. His voice was soft, enveloping, like warm syrup. "Not the petty, everyday fear—being late for a train or losing your wallet. No. I speak of the fear that lives inside every one of you. The fear you hide even from yourselves." He paused, his black eyes settling on Arthur. "Tonight, I will show you what that fear looks like. And I will take it. For my collection." He raised his conductor's baton. Arthur braced for an attack—for a shadow's blow, for pain, for anything. But nothing happened. The Maestro simply looked at him. And suddenly Arthur understood: the attack had already begun. It wasn't from the outside. It was from within. His father's face surfaced before his eyes. Mark Walker was smiling. It was the smile Arthur remembered from childhood—wide, open, with crinkles around his eyes. His father sat on the edge of his bed, holding a book—Treasure Island, old, its cover worn. He read aloud, his voice warm as a summer evening. "Fifteen men on the dead man's chest—yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum..." Arthur knew it was an illusion. He knew the Maestro was pulling the memory out of him. But knowing didn't help. Because the memory was real. Because it was all he had left of his father—the scraps that the Whisper hadn't taken, that Crowley hadn't taken, that the war hadn't taken. And now it was slipping away. "No," he whispered. "No, please..." His father kept reading. His face was so clear, so alive—every wrinkle, every eyelash, every strand of gray hair at his temple. Arthur reached for that face, tried to hold onto it, but it was melting like ice in warm water. The features blurred. The smile faded. His father's eyes lost their color. "NO!" Arthur didn't hear his own scream. He felt it—in his throat, his chest, his whole body—but the sound drowned in the roar that filled his head. He fell to his knees. The bat rolled from his hands. His fingers dug into his temples, as if he could physically hold onto the vanishing memory, squeeze it, lock it inside his skull. It didn't help. His father's face faded. Like a photograph held over a flame—the colors pale, the paper curls, and only ash remains. Arthur writhed on the stage boards, and from his throat came a sound that was neither scream nor sob—something in between, something that shouldn't come from a human being. He didn't hear the audience applauding. But they were applauding. They thought it was part of the performance. They clapped, watching the boy convulsing at their feet, their faces showing mild, condescending approval. Jenny stood three paces away. She saw everything. Saw Arthur fall. Saw his face contort in pain. Saw Cecilia in the box raise her champagne glass to her lips and smile—the same cold smile as yesterday, when Christian became a statue. Something inside Jenny broke. Not faith. Not hope. Something else—that internal barrier that keeps a person from doing what they fear most. Cecilia stood by the velvet rope separating the VIP box from the rest of the hall. She was two meters from Jenny. The locket with the letter "F"—the fake locket Jenny knew about—hung around her neck. But Jenny needed the audience to see. Needed the illusion to shatter. She lunged forward. The shadows moved toward her, but Jenny was already tearing the locket from Cecilia's neck—the thin chain snapped, and the medallion was in her hand. She flung it onto the stage boards and stomped on it with her heel. The metal cracked. Cecilia screamed—not in pain, but in fury. She still didn't realize the locket was a fake. But Jenny wasn't thinking about her anymore. She was thinking about Arthur. She picked up a shard of glass from the floor—the same one she'd used yesterday to cut her palm in the theater. The glass was dirty, covered in dust, but still sharp. Jenny gripped it in her right hand—the one that wasn't yet cut—and with one motion slashed her palm. Deep. To the pain. To the scream. Blood poured onto the stage boards. Not drops—a flow. Thick, dark, and in the dim spotlight, it glowed. A faint crimson radiance spread across the wood like oil on water. Jenny raised her bloodied hand above her head and screamed—not words, just a sound, full of fury, pain, and release. Blood sprayed onto the spotlights. Onto the curtain. Onto the first rows of seats. And the world cracked. The illusion the Maestro had sustained shattered with a deafening crash—as if someone had broken a giant mirror. The chandelier's light flickered and died. The golden glow that had flooded the hall was replaced by a harsh, cold, almost surgical light that came from nowhere. And in that light, the audience saw the truth. The stage was drenched in blood. Not stage blood—real blood. The shadows that had lurked in the corners now revealed themselves fully: oily, swirling, with indistinct faces that surfaced and vanished. They hung from the fly loft, coiled around the seats, reaching their tendrils toward the audience. And the Maestro... the Maestro was no longer an elegant gentleman in a silk cloak. His form wavered like a mirage over hot asphalt, and through it, something else emerged. Something vast, many-faced, woven from hundreds of faces frozen in agony. Someone in the hall screamed. Not applause—a real scream of terror. Then another. And another. Panic swelled like an avalanche. Men in tuxedos jumped to their feet, knocking over chairs. Women shrieked, clutching at diamonds that suddenly meant nothing. Waiters dropped their trays, champagne flutes rolling across the carpet, shattering. People rushed to the exits, but the doors wouldn't open. The shadows held them. Cecilia stood on the balcony, gripping the railing. Her face was white as marble, but she wasn't screaming. She stared at the stage, at Jenny's blood, at the Maestro's wavering form—and in her eyes, Arthur, still on his knees, saw not horror. He saw calculation. She was already figuring out how to use this chaos, how to reshape her plans, how to survive. The Maestro slowly turned his head toward Jenny. His face—the human mask still holding over the true form—contorted. Not with rage. With something more ancient. Hunger. "Brooks blood," he said, his voice an octave lower than before. "You spilled it willingly. On my stage. Before my audience." "Your audience is running," Jenny gasped. She stood swaying, pressing her wounded hand to her chest. Blood still flowed, drops falling onto the boards and burning into them. "Your theater is burning. Your collection..." "My collection will be enriched." He stepped toward her. The shadows behind him surged like black wings. Arthur tried to stand. His legs wouldn't obey. His father's face—what remained of it—hovered at the edge of memory, like a morning dream that vanishes the moment you open your eyes. He could no longer remember his smile. He could no longer remember his voice. But he remembered why they had come. He raised the dagger. The blade gleamed in the cold light. The engraving on it was clear—for the first time in days. The metal had healed itself. Or someone had healed it. Arthur didn't know how it worked. But he knew the dagger was hungry. As hungry as the Maestro. "Jenny," he whispered. "Hold on. I'm coming." She didn't hear him. But she was holding on anyway. The way she always had. The way her whole family had—generation after generation, paying with blood for the right to fight. The Maestro raised his baton for the final blow. And the hall dissolved into chaos.