The key felt like a live wire in his pocket. Foster waited two days, until his next scheduled day off, to follow its lead. He needed to be Foster Ambrose, civilian, not Officer Ambrose, for this. Dressed in his own—Foster's own—worn jacket and trousers, he walked the route from the police station to the corner of Regent and Sycamore.
The building Mr. Havelock had mentioned was there, a four-story structure of brick stained with smoke that had clearly been renovated. The ground floor now housed a modern bank, all polished chrome and glowing holographic signs.
But around the side, almost hidden in a narrow alley, was a separate, older entrance. A simple, unmarked black door with a tarnished brass mail slot. And beside the door, a row of tiny, antique lockboxes for tenants, their brass fronts green with age.
His heart thudded against his ribs. This was it. He approached casually, scanning the numbers. Most were modern keycard slots, but a few at the very end, seemingly forgotten, still had physical keyholes.
One of them was numbered 4B. The number meant nothing to him, but the keyhole was the right size.
With a cautious glance down the alley, he slipped the brass key from his pocket and inserted it. It fit perfectly. He turned it. The mechanism was stiff, but with a gentle, persistent pressure, it gave way with a solid, satisfying clunk.
The small, hinged door swung open. Inside was not a stack of letters or a package. It was a single, slim, leather-bound journal. He slid it out, the leather cool and smooth under his fingers. He quickly relocked the box and slipped the journal inside his jacket, feeling its weight like a second heart.
He didn't dare look at it there. He walked for twenty minutes with his senses on high alert, before ducking into a quiet public park. Finding an empty bench half-hidden by a large, flowering bush, he finally opened the journal.
The handwriting was neat, precise, and utterly unfamiliar. The entries were not dated, but they were chronological.
—The Mandate grows restless. The old agreements are fraying. They speak of a 'Thinning' and demand more... concessions.
—Secured the Albright location. The resonance there is stable. A good place to store the research. H. is skeptical. Thinks we are drawing lines on a map we cannot read.
"Albright location?" Foster's mind raced.
—The Davidson subject was a mistake. Too public. The energy was wild and untamed. It left a mark, a... signature. The silence afterward was not our doing. Something else imposed it. Something that does not want to be seen.
Foster's blood ran cold. Davidson. This wasn't just connected, this was a direct account. The "wild energy," the "signature"—it had to be the death he had read about in the file.
And the "silence"... the three-minute void. The journal confirmed it was unnatural, and that even the writer, part of this "Mandate," was afraid of it.
He flipped a page.
—The Aethelstan remains the best venue. The old families and the new money, all in one place, all blind to the currents flowing beneath their feet. Our club within the club prospers. The H.A.M. has its hooks in deep.
H.A.M. High Ancient Mandate. The club that received preferential treatment. The pieces were snapping together with terrifying speed. The social building wasn't just a place for secrets, it was a battleground, or a boardroom, for forces manipulating the city's hidden layers.
He needed to get inside. Now. The money in the geography book was no longer just for knowledge.
It was for survival.
—
Back at the station the next day, Foster carried the journal's revelations like a hidden bomb. He had to act normal. He focused on the one thing that could ground him: work.
"Any luck with the cold case files?" a cheerful voice asked. Eliza Ramirez was at his desk, placing a fresh stack of forms in his 'IN' tray. "You've been spending a lot of time in the archives. Neil said he saw you down there looking like you were trying to read the walls."
Foster forced a smile. "Just trying to get a feel for the city's history. Sometimes the past explains the present."
"Well, if you need any files pulled or cross-referenced, let me know!" she said brightly.
"I've got a system. Neil's the tech wizard, but I'm the one who actually knows where everything is." She winked.
"He's great with the 'how,' I'm better with the 'where' and 'what.'"
It was a simple offer, but it highlighted their roles. Neil understood the machines. Eliza understood the people and the paper. They were both more valuable than he'd realized.
Speaking of Neil, the tech guy practically collided with him an hour later near the evidence cage, his arms full of tangled cables.
"Ambrose! Hey," Neil said, adjusting his grip on the cables. "That thing with the Davidson footage is still bugging me. I ran a new deep diagnosis. It's not just a void. There's a… a digital residue. A pattern in the way the data was erased. It's not a deletion, it's an overwrite. Someone, or something, didn't just turn the camera off. They replaced three minutes of the scene with a perfect, pre-rendered loop of an empty alley."
Foster stared at him. This was far beyond his understanding of technology. "You can tell that?"
"I can't prove it in any court," Neil said, lowering his voice. "The method is… it's theoretical. It's like someone used a billion-dollar weapon to swat a fly. Why? That's the part that keeps me up at night. Why go to such insane lengths for a random mugging?"
It wasn't random, Foster thought, the journal's words echoing in his mind. It was a mistake. It left a signature.
"Keep me posted, Neil," Foster said, his voice low and serious. "Anything else you find, no matter how small."
Neil looked surprised, then nodded, a glint of professional camaraderie in his eyes. "You got it, Ambrose."
Foster returned to his desk, his mind reeling. Eliza's organizational skills could help him navigate the city's documented past.
Neil's technical genius could help him decipher its hidden, digital present. He had been trying to do this alone, but he had assets, if he was smart enough to use them.
He opened his bottom drawer, pretending to look for a form. His fingers brushed against the blood-stained notebook.
The feel of the stiff, crusty cover was a jolt, a brutal reminder of his own personal, bloody past amidst this sprawling conspiracy.
A sudden, sharp image flashed behind his eyes:
—a woman with Ortego's smile, her hands dusted with flour, laughing as she handed a younger Foster a rolling pin. The smell of cinnamon and yeast. A warmth that ached with loss—
He slammed the drawer shut, the sound louder than he intended. Ben Frank, passing by, gave him a curious look.
"Ghost walk over your grave, Ambrose?"
Foster just nodded, unable to speak. The ghost was Foster's own. And it was just as real, and just as painful, as his own.
He had two mysteries to solve now. The one in the city, and the one in his own head. And both were demanding answers at the same time.