Read Chapter 10: Missing Marc

Dawn was still two hours off when Camille heard the knocking. Not the firm, rhythmic rap of Julien checking in, but a frantic, scattered patter—someone hitting the door with the flat of both hands.

She was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table with her father’s old insulin cooler open before her, counting vials she’d counted a hundred times. She closed it and went to the door.

Mme Girard stood on the landing, her hair wild, a shawl clutched to her chest. Behind her, the hallway was crowded with neighbors—the ones who hadn’t yet gone to the basement shelter.

“It’s Marc,” Mme Girard said, her voice cracking. “He’s been gone three days.”

Camille blinked. “Three days?”

“The Lefèvre boy said he saw him heading down to the Rue de la Roquette early Tuesday, carrying his toolbox. He said he’d be back by evening. He never came back.”

Camille did the math. Tuesday. That was before the fire. Before the radio broadcast. Before the soldier’s confession. Marc had been gone longer than they’d known.

“Did anyone check his apartment?” Julien’s voice came from behind her. He’d emerged from the spare room, Léa at his shoulder, roused by the noise. His hair was mussed, his jaw tight.

“We didn’t dare.” Mme Girard wrung her hands. “The door’s locked. And with the soldiers at the perimeter, we thought—we thought maybe he’d been stopped. But now with everything you told us about the dawn—we didn’t know who else to ask.”

Camille reached for her coat. “I’ll go.”

“We’ll go,” Julien corrected. He grabbed his jacket and a flashlight. Léa was already pulling on her boots.

Marc’s apartment was on the fourth floor, one floor above Camille’s. The door was solid oak with a brass knocker shaped like a lion’s head—a relic from an earlier era. Julien tried the handle. Locked.

“Stand back,” he said. One shoulder against the door, he drove his weight into it twice. The lock splintered with a crack that echoed down the stairwell. They froze, listening. No shouts. No boots on stairs. Only the hum of tension that had settled over the building like a fog.

Camille stepped inside first.

The apartment was tidy but odd. Marc had always kept to himself, a quiet man in his sixties with a limp and a greying beard. He’d claimed to be a retired electrician. The apartment confirmed it: manuals on wiring and circuitry stacked on the coffee table, a soldering iron on the desk, spools of copper wire arranged by gauge.

But it was the ham radio that stopped Camille cold.

It sat on the kitchen counter, a sleek modern unit with a coiled antenna cable running out the window. The power supply was connected to a bank of car batteries tucked beneath the sink.

“He had his own comms,” Léa said softly, moving past her. She ran her fingers over the frequency dial. “This is military-grade. Not civilian. He didn’t just fix wiring.”

Julien was already at the desk, rifling through papers. “Camille. Come look at this.”

She crossed to him. On the desk, spread flat and weighted with a coffee mug, was a large technical blueprint. It took her a moment to recognize it—the 12th arrondissement power grid, with substations marked in red ink. Most were circled and crossed out, annotated with dates and notes in a cramped, precise hand.

But one was ringed in bold, urgent strokes. Q-4. The same substation marked on the map they’d found in the fire station.

“He knew about the grid,” Julien said. “Before the blackout. Look at the dates—he started tracking these substations months ago.”

Months ago. Before the EMP. Before the gas leak story. Before any of this had happened.

Camille felt a cold thread unwind in her chest. “He wasn’t hiding from the neighborhood,” she said slowly. “He was watching something. Preparing for it.”

“Or he knew what was coming and didn’t tell anyone,” Léa said.

Julien folded the blueprint carefully, sliding it into his jacket. “I need to find him.”

“We have two hours before dawn,” Camille said. “We can’t sweep the whole district.”

“I know Marc,” Julien said. He tapped the blueprint. “He was a volunteer electrician at the station before he got hurt. He has contacts, people he worked with. If anyone knows the back streets, the hiding spots, it’s him. And if he was watching the grid, he might know what Q-4 actually is. That’s intel we can’t leave behind.”

“You don’t even know he left voluntarily,” Camille pressed. “He might be dead in a ditch. He might have been taken.”

“Then I find out either way.” Julien’s voice was flat. Final.

Camille regarded him for a long moment. The flare of the fire station, the erased crew, the dying soldier’s confession—Julien had carried that weight silently, letting it harden into something resolute. He wasn’t asking permission.

She picked up her bag, the one with the insulin and the trauma kit at the bottom. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.” Julien shook his head. “You’re the only medical care this building has. If we don’t come back, the residents still need you.”

“If we don’t come back, it doesn’t matter.” Camille narrowed her eyes. “And Marc’s diabetic. He has a case of insulin in his fridge, and I checked his apartment before—nothing. He didn’t take his supplies. If we find him, I need to be there.”

Julien opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. She saw the calculation behind his eyes, the same weighing of needs she’d done a hundred times herself.

He nodded once. “We move in ten minutes. Wake the guard rotation. If we’re not back before dawn, they shelter without us.”

Camille didn’t answer. She was already heading for the stairs, a new list forming in her head—tourniquets, glucose, epinephrine—when she heard Léa call out from Marc’s bedroom.

“Camille. Julien. Come see this.”

They pushed through the doorway. Léa stood at the foot of Marc’s bed, holding a photograph in a cracked frame. It showed a younger Marc in uniform—French military, insignia she didn’t recognize.

Beside him in the photo stood a man with Julien’s eyes.

“That’s your captain,” Léa said quietly. Before the fire. Before the vanishing crew.

Julien stared at the photograph, his face unreadable.

Outside, the first grey light of false dawn crept across the rooftops.