Read Chapter 13: Aftermath of Doubt

The shard was warm against Mack’s palm, though that was probably just his own body heat bleeding into the metal. He’d been holding it for the past twenty minutes, standing in the narrow service corridor behind the ventilation stacks, turning Salazar’s gift over and over like a worry stone. The Warden’s sigil was etched into the broken curve of the housing—a coiled serpent biting its own tail. The same sigil that had been stamped onto the removal order sitting in his jacket pocket.

Two pieces of evidence. Two different stories. And the only thing they agreed on was that his father had been in the middle of it.

The intercom above his head crackled static. Mack ignored it, pressing his thumb into the serpent’s coils. The Warden had been calm. Reasonable. That was what bothered him most. A guilty man would have pushed back, threatened, raised his voice. The Warden had done none of that. He’d simply laid out the file like it was a weather report, offered to burn it, and asked Mack to do a small thing in return.

But his father’s letters didn’t read like the letters of a thief. They read like the letters of a man who’d found something he wasn’t supposed to find.

The intercom crackled again. A voice he didn’t recognize. “Riley, you still down there? Gatekeeper shuttle’s running late. They want you back at the junction by 2300.”

“Copy,” Mack said, though he didn’t move.

He thought about Elena. About the fury that would cross her face when she heard what he’d agreed to. About whether he could even blame her for it, since he wasn’t sure he blamed himself. The Warden had asked him to spy on the Gatekeepers. Mack had said yes. But agreeing to something and doing it were two different things, and the space between them was where a man could still choose.

He shoved the shard into his pocket, next to the file.

He wasn’t going to spy on the Gatekeepers.

He was going to warn them.

---

The meeting point was a maintenance alcove off the G-line, tucked behind a decommissioned pump room that smelled like rust and old grease. Elena was already there when Mack arrived, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed. The lantern in her hand cast hard shadows up her face.

“You’re late,” she said.

“Shuttle ran slow.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

Mack set his toolbag down. He’d rehearsed this speech three times on the walk over, and it still sounded like a confession. “The Warden made me an offer.”

Elena’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of offer?”

“My father’s name cleared. The removal order burned. In exchange for keeping an eye on the Gatekeepers. Reporting back what they’re doing in the western tunnels.”

He watched her process it. The shift from suspicion to anger happened in the set of her jaw, the way her fingers tightened around the lantern’s handle. “You took the deal.”

“I said I did.”

“Mack.”

“Listen to me—” He held up a hand. “I said I did. I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

Elena stared at him. The silence stretched long enough that he could hear water dripping somewhere in the dark. Then she stepped forward, and her voice came out low and hard.

“Are you out of your mind? You just handed him a leash. He’s going to expect reports. He’s going to test you. And the moment you don’t deliver, he’s going to know you’re lying, and then that file goes back in a drawer and your father stays a thief forever.”

“I know,” Mack said.

“And what about Salazar? What happens when he finds out you’ve been taking meetings with the Warden? He already doesn’t trust you.”

“He gave me the shard.”

“He gave you a piece of metal. That’s not trust, that’s bait.”

Mack exhaled. He pulled the shard from his pocket and held it up between two fingers. The lantern light caught the serpent sigil, making it gleam. “Two things, Elena. Two different stories. My father wrote that the Warden concealed a body in the network. The Warden wrote that my father stole the Key. Somebody’s lying, and I don’t know which one it is. But you know who does?”

Elena said nothing.

“Salazar. And the Gatekeepers. They know where the Key went, or they wouldn’t have that shard. They’ve been on the other side of this fight since before I showed up. So if I go to them—if I actually go to them and tell them what the Warden asked me to do—maybe they stop seeing me as a Society loyalist and start seeing me as someone who has a reason to be on their side.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we’re no worse off than we were this morning.”

Elena was quiet for a long time. Mack watched her face, looking for the crack in her armor, the place where she’d admit he had a point. But what he saw instead was something closer to hurt.

“You should have told me before you met with him,” she said. “You should have told me before you made the deal. We’re supposed to be in this together.”

“I’m telling you now.”

“After the fact. After you already put yourself in his debt.”

Mack set the shard on a rusty pipe joint and ran a hand through his hair. “I know. I’m sorry. But I had to make a call. And this is the only way I can figure out who’s actually telling the truth.”

Elena shook her head. She picked up the shard, weighed it in her palm, then handed it back to him. Her fingers brushed his, and she didn’t pull away.

“Fine,” she said. “You talk to them. But I’m coming with you.”

---

The trip back uptown took longer than Mack wanted. The evening rush was in full throat, trains packed shoulder to shoulder, and he spent the ride pressed against a door window, watching the tunnel walls flicker past. By the time he climbed the stairs out of the 96th Street station, the sun had gone down and the streetlights were buzzing on.

His apartment building was four blocks west. Five minutes of walking with his hands shoved in his pockets, the shard and the file rubbing against each other like a reminder of everything he was juggling. He was thinking about how to approach Salazar—whether to send word through the usual channels or go direct to the western tunnels—when he rounded the corner onto his block and stopped.

Two men were standing outside his building’s front door. They weren’t tenants. They were both wearing loose jackets that didn’t quite hide the bulk of something under their arms, and they were looking up at the windows like they were counting floors.

Mack’s landlord, Vinny, had a way of handling late rent that didn’t involve phone calls.

Mack stepped back into the shadow of a brownstone stoop and watched. One of the men took out a phone, talked for a moment, then pointed toward the fire escape on the north side of the building. The other man nodded, and they split up—one taking the front door, the other heading into the alley.

Three months. That was how far behind he was. Vinny had been patient, and Mack had been hopeful, and neither of those things had lasted.

He slipped around the back of the building, keeping his head low. There was a service door for the boiler room, and Mack had a key. He let himself in, took the stairs two at a time to the third floor, and unlocked his apartment door as quietly as he could.

The place was a mess. He didn’t own much, but what he had was scattered—clothes on the floor, dirty dishes in the sink, a pile of mail on the counter that had been growing since last month. He grabbed his duffel from the closet and started packing. Work shirts. A spare hammer. Assorted tools. He didn’t have time to be careful, just fast.

He heard the floorboard creak in the hallway.

Not the front door. The window.

Mack crossed to the fire escape and wrestled the window up. The frame was painted shut—he hadn’t opened it in a year—and he had to shove it with his shoulder, biting back a curse as the wood squealed. Overhead, a boot grated on the metal landing.

He got his head and shoulders through just as the apartment door swung open. He didn’t look back. He swung his legs out, hit the landing on both feet, and let his weight drop him down the ladder two steps at a time. The iron rungs vibrated under him. Above, somebody shouted.

He hit the alley running.

By the time the neighbor’s orange tabby skittered out of his path, Mack had covered three blocks and ducked into a subway entrance. He stood at the bottom of the stairs, breathing hard, duffel slung over his shoulder while the train rumbled past below.

So that’s what it was. He didn’t have rent money. He didn’t have a safe place to sleep. And now he had two men who might come back, and a landlord who wasn’t going to be patient anymore.

He needed money. Fast. And the only account he could draw on paid in secrets, not cash.

He pulled out his phone and sent a message to a number he’d only used once before—a burner line Salazar had given him during their first meeting.

*We need to talk. Name a place.*

The answer came four minutes later, as the next train pulled in.

*Central. The old Oyster Bar. Tomorrow, midnight.*

Mack pocketed the phone. He had somewhere to go.