Genesis. Volume 2

October 18, 1986. Chicago. The Palace Theater, stage. Past midnight. The light had not yet died. It poured from the cracks in the boards, from the end of Lisa's line, from the dagger quivering in the floor like an arrow loosed at the limit of its bowstring. White, blinding, unbearable—it burst from beneath the stage, from every shard of mirror, from the portraits hanging in the gallery one floor above. Arthur heard the theater's walls groaning. Not in pain—in liberation. A dry, rasping creak ran through the beams, the plaster, the rusted chains of the fly loft. Hundreds of faces. Hundreds of souls. They tore free from the trap the Maestro had built over decades, and their cries were not cries—they were a song. Arthur knelt, shielding his face with his hand, and through his fingers he saw the shadows that had held him moments ago writhing and melting, leaving wet, rapidly evaporating stains on the boards. He saw Jenny, still at the edge of the stage, lift her head and stare at the light with wide eyes—its reflections dancing in her pupils, her irises contracted to pinpricks. He saw Max, emerging from behind overturned seats, dragging Rachel over his shoulder—alive but dazed, the knife still protruding from her thigh, a rag wrapped around the hilt to keep it from slipping. And the Maestro. He was no longer human. His mask had thinned to transparency, and through it, what he truly was emerged: a churning mass of shadows compressed into form, hundreds of faces spinning around a void. He was screaming—silently, but Arthur felt that scream throughout his body. A vibration. An ultrasound that made his ears ring and his vision blur. His teeth ached as if tapped with a tiny hammer. "You cannot!" The Maestro's voice was no longer his own. It came from nowhere, splitting into a thousand tones. "I am eternity! I am memory! I am art!" Arthur wasn't listening. He stared at the dagger. At the blade still jutting from the floor, at the thin, cobweb-like cracks spreading across the metal. They ran from the tip to the hilt, and within them, light pulsed—uneven, feverish. The dagger was at its limit. One more move, and it would shatter. "To hell with it," Arthur thought. He wrenched the dagger from the floor. The wood splintered, chips flying in all directions; one embedded itself in his cheek, but he didn't notice. The blade came free easily—too easily, as if something had pushed it up from below. And at that moment, the light streaming from the cracks flickered, faltered, and began to fade. The souls breaking free were the last to escape: they swept over the stage, over the hall, over the heads of the unconscious spectators lying between the rows—and vanished into the walls. Or into the sky. Arthur didn't know. He only felt a warm wind brush his face, smelling of old perfume and dust. Only darkness remained. And the Maestro. The demon stood at center stage, his form pulsing like an open wound. The light had drained most of him—he had shrunk, grown denser, more tangible. No longer an oily shadow, but a clot that almost had a shape. A human shape. Small. Shrunken. Heat radiated from him like a stove, and the air stank of burnt fabric and sourness. "You..." he hissed. "You will pay..." Arthur stood. His legs trembled, his knees buckled, but he stood. The dagger in his hand was warm—not hot, but warm, like something alive. The cracks on the blade glowed from within. The hilt stuck to his palm—whether from blood or sweat, he couldn't tell. "Maybe," Arthur said. "But not tonight." He stepped forward and drove the dagger straight into the Maestro's chest. Not into a shadow. Not into an illusion. Into the place where a human heart would be. The blade met no resistance. Like water. Like smoke. But the Maestro screamed—a real scream, the kind that makes you want to howl in response. High, piercing, it slashed through his nerves, and for a second Arthur went deaf. He felt the blade vibrating in his hand, felt the cracks widening, felt the metal singing as it absorbed what the Maestro was. The shadows collapsed inward. The demon's form crumpled like a deflating balloon and was drawn into the dagger—every last oily drop. The faces still clinging to him tore away with wet, sucking sounds and vanished. The scream cut off. Silence. And the dagger exploded. Arthur didn't have time to recoil. The blade shattered into three shards, and one of them—the largest, the one that had taken the Maestro—sliced across his right palm, tearing the skin. Blood sprayed onto the boards, mixing with dust and the remnants of Lisa's chalk line. The smell of iron filled the air—sharp, fresh. The pain didn't come immediately. First—numbness. Arthur stared at his hand, at the deep gash, at the blood seeping from the wound, and felt nothing. Then—burning. The skin around the cut began to throb, as if a nail had been driven into it. And then... Then something flared in his mind. His father's face. It appeared before his inner eye—clear, alive, warm. Mark Walker was smiling. He had crinkles around his eyes, gray hair at his temples, and he was saying something—Arthur couldn't hear the words, but he felt their meaning. "I'm proud of you. I always was." He even caught a scent—faint tobacco and machine oil, the smell that always clung to his father when he came home from the garage. And then the face flared. Like a photograph held over a candle flame. The colors faded, bled, the features distorted. The smile vanished first. Then the eyes—the same green as Arthur's own—turned into gray smudges. Then the wrinkles, the hair, the skin. The smell faded too, replaced by emptiness. Arthur watched his father's face erase from his memory, and he could do nothing. He tried to hold on—to cling to it mentally, lock it in, not let go. But it slipped away like water through his fingers. Like smoke. Like life. "No..." he whispered. "No, Dad... no..." He fell to his knees. The dagger—or what remained of it—fell from his slack hand. Three shards clattered across the boards and lay still in the dust. Arthur didn't notice. He stared at his hands, at his bloody palms, trying to picture his father's face. Even an outline. Even the color of his eyes. Nothing. Only emptiness. A white void where a smile had been a moment ago. As if someone had taken an eraser and wiped away the most precious thing he had. He felt that emptiness physically—a cold knot in his chest that wouldn't let him breathe. He began tracing his fingers across the boards. Frantically, desperately, as if he could draw the vanished face on the dusty wood. The blood from his palms left red, smeared trails. Crooked lines. Helpless strokes. He scraped the boards with his nails, tearing his skin, and felt no pain—only a dull, nauseating awareness that he had lost his father for good. "I don't remember..." he gasped. "I don't remember his face..." The sound that came from his throat wasn't a scream. Wasn't a sob. It was something in between—a hollow, hopeless whimper, the kind wounded animals make when they know they won't survive. He knelt, rocking back and forth, and tears streamed down his face, but he didn't notice them. Lisa. He remembered Lisa. Her face—clear, alive, with freckles on her nose. Her eyes—green like his, like their father's. He could see her. Hear her breathing. Feel her pain when the beam fell on her arm. But his father—no. Arthur clenched his fists. Blood dripped onto the boards. He stared at his hands and didn't recognize them. They were strangers'. Everything was foreign. Someone knelt beside him. Arthur felt the warmth—a hand on his back, between his shoulder blades. Jenny. She smelled of blood and bandages, but her hand was steady. Her voice was weak, hoarse, but alive. "Arthur. We're leaving. We need to go." "I don't remember his face," he said. Not to her. To himself. To the walls. To the world. "I don't remember." "I know," Jenny said quietly. "But you remember us. We're here. We're alive." He looked up at her. Her face was streaked with blood—her own, someone else's, mingled. The bandages on her hand were soaked through, and she was pale as a sheet. But she was holding on. She always held on. "Lisa?" Arthur asked. "Alive. Sasha's with her." "Max?" "Here." Max approached from the other side. His hands were covered in blood—not just to the elbows, but higher, almost to his shoulders. He carried Rachel over his shoulder—the same woman he'd stabbed. She was conscious but not resisting. Her eyes were closed, and she was muttering something—whether a prayer or delirium. Max moved heavily but steadily, his face set in grim determination. "I took her," Max said. His voice was hollow, as if from underwater. "She needs to be questioned." Arthur nodded. He didn't know why. Didn't know if it was necessary. But he didn't argue. "The underground passage," Jenny said. "Isabelle is waiting." They got up. Arthur looked at the stage. At the three dagger shards lying in the dust. At the blood. At the broken mirrors. At the empty orchestra seats where spectators had writhed in agony moments ago—now they lay motionless, their faces serene. Too serene. Empty. The Maestro had taken something from them as he died. Or maybe they'd simply blacked out from the horror. Arthur didn't know. He bent down and gathered the dagger's shards. One—cold. Another—cold. The third—warm. The one the Maestro had entered. Warm as a sun-heated stone, with a faint pulse running through it. He wrapped them in a handkerchief Claire had given him that evening and tucked them into his jacket pocket. The fabric immediately grew damp. "Let's go," he said. They headed for the exit. Across the stage, through the wings, to the coal cellar. Isabelle was waiting by the hatch, a flashlight in her hand, her face wet with tears. The flashlight trembled, its beam bouncing off the brick walls. "Hurry," she whispered. "The police will be here any minute." Arthur descended first. Jenny followed, supporting Max, who carried Rachel. Isabelle came last, bringing up the rear. The coal passage was as tight as it had been hours ago. It smelled of coal dust, dampness, and blood. Arthur crawled, his knees scraping against sharp stones, every inch echoing in his wounded palm. But the pain was distant. Unimportant. Only one thing mattered: his father's face was gone. And he couldn't bring it back. They emerged onto the street half an hour later. A fine drizzle was falling. The sky was gray as concrete, and somewhere in the distance, sirens wailed. The sound grew closer, rolling in waves, and the damp air smelled of smoke and ozone. Arthur turned his face up to the rain and closed his eyes. The water was cold. It washed away the blood, the dust, the remnants of the chalk line Lisa had drawn with her left hand. "I'll draw a way out," she'd said. "For all of them." She had. At the cost of her right arm. And he? What had he drawn? Nothing. Only emptiness. They caught a taxi and drove to Claire's apartment. Arthur was silent the whole way. He clutched the three dagger shards in his pocket and listened to the taxi's dashboard clock ticking. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. As if time still mattered. Claire met them at the apartment. She didn't ask questions—just led Max and Rachel to the bathroom, pulled out a first-aid kit, and began treating their wounds. Arthur sat on the floor against the wall, his back to the wallpaper, staring at a single point. Jenny settled beside him, resting her head on his shoulder. They didn't speak. An hour later, the Circle's doctors arrived. Two men in civilian clothes, with medical bags full of supplies. They examined Lisa—she was unconscious, her arm hanging limp, and even through the splint, it was clear how unnaturally the bone was bent. One of the doctors shook his head but said nothing. He applied a new splint and transferred her to a stretcher. "A private clinic," he told Sasha. "Outside the city. They'll operate there." Sasha nodded. She looked at Arthur. "Are you coming?" He shook his head. "I need to be here." "You need to be there." "Lisa is unconscious. She won't know if I'm there or not. And here..." He faltered. "Here are the dagger shards. Rachel's interrogation. And Jenny. She needs help too." Sasha didn't argue. She left with the doctors, and the door closed behind them. Arthur remained sitting on the floor, staring at the empty couch where his sister had lain moments ago. In his right hand, he gripped one of the dagger shards—warm, glowing faintly from within. His mind was a void. His father's face was gone forever. He didn't cry. He couldn't. He only stared at his bloodied hands and listened to the rain outside. Somewhere in the clinic outside the city, Lisa opened her eyes. Her left hand twitched, her fingers clenching into a fist. She tried to draw something in the air but couldn't. Only whispered: "Arthur... I drew... a line..." And slipped back into darkness.