The ache didn't fade.
That was the first thing Ethan noticed when they reached the brownstone again and shut the door behind them. The adrenaline wore off, the city noise dulled, but the hollow pressure in his chest remained—quiet, steady, wrong.
It wasn't pain the way a wound hurt.
It was absence.
He sat at the kitchen table, elbows braced against the wood, staring at his hands like they might explain themselves if he waited long enough.
Maya poured him a glass of water and slid it across the table. "Drink."
He did, mechanically.
The water tasted flat.
"Tell me," Ethan said finally. His voice sounded farther away than it should have. "What did it take?"
Maya leaned against the counter, arms crossed. She didn't answer right away. When she did, her tone was careful.
"Tell me what you feel."
Ethan frowned. "I feel… tired."
"That's not new."
"No," he admitted. "This is different. It's like…" He searched for the word. "Like something is missing, but I can't tell what shape it was."
Maya nodded once.
"That's how it starts."
Ethan's jaw tightened. "Starts what?"
She pushed off the counter and sat across from him. Up close, the fatigue in her eyes was impossible to miss.
"When the bag takes something small," she said, "it takes potential. Memory. Emotional weight. Things you don't notice until you need them."
Ethan swallowed. "That doesn't sound small."
"It is," she said gently. "Compared to what it could take."
He stared at the table. "So what did it take this time?"
Maya studied him.
"Think about the woman you saved," she said. "Think about how you felt."
Ethan did.
Relief. Fear. Determination.
Something else tugged at the edge of his mind, just out of reach.
"I felt… proud," he said slowly.
Maya tilted her head. "Did you?"
Ethan froze.
He searched the memory again. The moment her chest rose with breath. The look in her eyes when she realized she was alive.
He remembered knowing it mattered.
But the feeling itself—warm, grounding—was gone.
His stomach dropped.
"I know I should feel something," he whispered. "But it's like… the echo of it. Like reading about an emotion instead of feeling it."
Maya closed her eyes briefly.
"It took a piece of your capacity for joy," she said. "Not all of it. Just enough to balance the scale."
Ethan laughed softly, broken. "That's… that's messed up."
"Yes," Maya agreed. "It is."
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his face.
"So if I keep using it," he said, "it keeps taking pieces."
"Yes."
"And eventually?"
Maya didn't soften it. "Eventually you become very effective. And very empty."
Silence stretched between them.
Ethan looked toward the room where the bag rested against the wall. It looked harmless. Patient.
"How do you live with it?" he asked quietly. "Knowing that every time you help someone, you're… carving yourself up?"
Maya met his gaze. "You choose what you're willing to lose."
He shook his head. "That's not a choice. That's a countdown."
A faint, sad smile crossed her face. "Welcome to divine arithmetic."
Ethan stood abruptly and paced the room. "There has to be another way. A limit. A workaround."
"There are limits," Maya said. "They're just not merciful."
He stopped pacing and faced her. "Then why haven't you walked away?"
She didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she reached up and tugged her sleeve aside, exposing the faint outline of scars beneath her skin—thin lines of light that faded as quickly as they appeared.
"Because some people don't get a choice," she said. "And because once you know you can stop suffering… not doing it becomes its own kind of sin."
Ethan absorbed that slowly.
He thought of the woman on the sidewalk. Thought of all the others he'd seen in the city—hungry, broken, invisible.
He thought of the envelope. The name. The certainty that the bag had a plan for him whether he agreed to it or not.
He exhaled.
"Okay," he said. "Then we need rules for the cost."
Maya's eyes sharpened. "Such as?"
"I don't use it for convenience," he said. "Not for money. Not for comfort. Not for shortcuts."
She watched him closely.
"Only when it matters," he continued. "Only when the alternative is worse than losing a piece of myself."
Maya nodded slowly. "That's how you stay human longer than most."
Ethan looked at the bag again.
"How long is 'longer'?" he asked.
Maya's gaze drifted toward the window, toward a sky that never quite looked empty anymore.
"Long enough," she said, "to change the world."
A faint vibration rippled through the air.
Subtle. Easy to miss.
Maya stiffened.
"Do you feel that?" she asked.
Ethan frowned. "Feel what?"
Her jaw tightened. "Someone else just noticed the signal."
"Angel?"
"No," she said. "Worse."
She moved quickly, grabbing her jacket. "We need to relocate again. Now."
Ethan's chest tightened. "What's coming?"
Maya paused at the door and looked back at him.
"A collector," she said. "Something that doesn't judge or observe."
She opened the door.
"It just takes."