Lottie didn't know she had crossed the line until she was already too far to find her way back.
It started with another task.
Simple.
Ordinary.
At least by their standards.
A journalist.
One of Hargreave's last true believers.
A man still foolish enough to think words could save a city already strangling on its own rot.
Carmen handed Lottie the name over breakfast.
Julian didn't even look up from his coffee.
There were no elaborate instructions.
No careful warnings.
No hint of mercy hidden between the lines.
Just a glance.
Just a nod.
Just permission.
And it was enough.
Lottie followed the journalist for two days.
Watched him kiss his wife each morning — a small, tender thing that made her chest ache in ways she refused to name.
Watched him hug his daughter — a girl still growing into shoes too large, tripping over the cracks in the street but laughing as she fell.
Watched him stay up too late in the cramped office above the bakery, tapping out words he believed could build a wall strong enough to hold the darkness at bay.
And for the first time, doubt crept in.
Thin.
Persistent.
A splinter she tried to ignore.
She told herself she was one of them now.
Wasn't she?
The kill was messy.
Not clean.
Not elegant.
The blade went in too high, caught the ribs.
The journalist screamed — a raw, human sound, thick with terror and something worse.
Hope.
He begged.
Not for his life.
For her.
Begged her not to do this.
Begged her to remember who she was before they handed her the knife.
But Lottie didn't stop.
Couldn't.
By the time it ended, she was shaking, blood painting her skin in frantic, ugly strokes.
She stumbled into the alley, her breath sobbing out of her like a broken accordion, hands raw and red and reaching for something that wasn't there.
Looking for Carmen.
Looking for Julian.
Looking for anyone to tell her she was still clean enough to matter.
But no one waited in the dark.
No one came.
She was alone.
And it was only then, knee-deep in the ruin of herself, that she finally understood:
She had never been chosen.
Only used.
Only sharpened.
Only broken.
Carmen sat by the fire that night, a battered book of poetry resting against her knee, fingers turning the pages like petals she intended to set alight.
Julian lounged nearby, whiskey dangling from loose fingers, the fire painting the hard planes of his face gold and cruel.
When Lottie stumbled in — soaked, hollow-eyed, dripping with everything she had destroyed — they both looked up.
Neither moved.
Neither spoke.
They let her stand there, trembling, waiting for forgiveness that would never come.
Lottie dropped to her knees.
The sound of her sob cracked the silence.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
Carmen tilted her head slightly.
"Sorry for what?"
"For doing it wrong," Lottie gasped. "For feeling anything."
Julian smiled, lazy and sharp.
"Feelings are for corpses," he said.
"And you're still breathing," Carmen murmured, closing her book with a soft, heavy thud.
"But not for long," Julian added, voice almost gentle.
Lottie lifted her head.
And in that terrible, glittering moment, she understood.
She was not their daughter.
Not their soldier.
Not even their mistake.
She was a weapon.
A match already burning too close to their fingertips.
A name they would not bother to remember once she was gone.
Hargreave found the journalist's body the next morning.
The blood had soaked through the office floor, staining the bakery below with wide red smears that no soap could scrub away.
He stared at the wreckage.
At the photograph still tucked into the dead man's breast pocket — a little girl with missing front teeth, smiling into a world that no longer wanted her.
He lit a cigarette with trembling hands.
Not from fear.
From rage.
From grief.
From the brittle, final understanding that by the time he caught them —
if he caught them —
there would be nothing left of London to save.
Only ruins.
Only ghosts.
Only the spiral, carved so deep into the city's bones that no one would ever unmake it.
Back at the flat, Carmen read aloud from the same battered book, her voice low and steady, making even the ugliest words sound beautiful.
Julian lay sprawled at her feet, eyes closed, mouth smiling faintly.
Lottie sat alone by the window, wrapped in silence, watching the fog wrap itself around the broken streets.
Waiting.
Waiting for forgiveness she had never earned.
Waiting for an end she would not see coming.
The spiral tightened.
The city's breath hitched.
And Carmen smiled, soft and private, as she closed the book.
Because this - This was the true art.
Not the killing.
Not the blood.
But the slow, beautiful breaking of everything that thought it could survive them.