Elara ran through the lightless, bone-lined tunnels until her legs burned and the pursuing shouts of Henri and his men faded into the echoes of the Catacombs. She wasn't running aimlessly; she was navigating. Laurent's subtle comments about the old Roman system—the drainage, the air shafts—guided her. She found a narrow, unstable service ladder leading up from an old ventilation shaft and climbed, the two keys clinking softly in her coat pocket.
She emerged into a cold, wet morning in a small, forgotten patch of green space near the old Montparnasse cemetery. She was covered in dust, soot, and the pervasive mineral scent of the underground. She had escaped the Panthéon, but the price was immense.
The weight of the last two days—the betrayal, the chase, the abandonment of two allies—finally crashed down. Elara walked away, not crying, but brittle with resolution. She was alone. She was the only remaining guardian of the keys and the secret. Vance's ethical burden—the necessity of Loss—had become her reality.
She knew every public place in Paris was compromised. She needed to hide where a museum director couldn't easily look, but where an obscure academic might naturally be found.
She remembered an abandoned annex of the Observatory of Paris, a small, disused building Laurent occasionally borrowed for private astronomical research. It was outside the central network, protected by the university's bureaucracy, and filled with old papers and instruments—a curator's kind of safe haven.
It took hours to reach, traveling on foot and taking circuitous routes. She slipped inside the dusty annex using a maintenance key Laurent had given her years ago, settling into a cluttered room with a view of the quiet, sleeping domes of the Observatory.
Elara stripped off her filthy, soot-stained coat. She laid the two keys—the ornate Hourglass and the utilitarian Broken Circle—on a stack of astronomical charts.
She realized she had failed to help Laurent, but perhaps he hadn't failed her. As she helped him stand in the Cellule, he had pressed something into her hand that she had forgotten until now: a small, tightly folded scrap of paper.
She smoothed the paper open. It contained only three things:
A hastily scrawled, stylized letter 'J'.
A series of four geometric points.
A specific, small street address near the 17th Arrondissement.
J stood for Jules. The geometric points were likely a subtle marker on a map. Laurent, knowing he was bait, had prepared one last clue for Elara: the probable location of the Argentum Society's current holding cell—the prison where they had taken Jules.
Dubois had the Regulator, but he still needed the stabilization key, and he needed the threat of Jules and Laurent to ensure Elara didn't use it. She had to assume they were holding both men nearby.
Elara looked out at the lights of Paris beginning to turn on as dusk fell. Dubois's plan was now in motion at the Panthéon. She couldn't fight the Society and save the city alone. She needed Jules's cynical eye, his contacts, and his ability to expose a conspiracy.
The next move wasn't defensive, but a daring, precise strike.
"You wanted Loss, Monsieur Dubois," Elara whispered to the silent city. "But you only proved to me what must be gained. I am coming for Jules."