Chapter 23
One week later…
Nox
We’d been in the safehouse long enough for the neighborhood to forget our faces. Long enough for my face to become another face in a city full of them, and for our footsteps to blend into the same steady grind as everyone else’s.
Which was kind of the point.
Mirae’s place sat next to a shuttered dye shop on a narrow lane that smelled like damp cloth, tannins, and old oil because it was still operating in secret. It was on the sort of street where people didn’t make eye contact because eye contact invited questions, and questions invited inspections.
I liked it.
I pulled on the worker’s coat Mirae had left for me.
It was heavy, stained at the cuffs, and crudely patched at the elbows.
I rubbed soot into the side of my cheek and pulled a cap low over my hair.
If you looked like you belonged to a workshop, people stopped noticing you.
If you looked too clean, they remembered you.
I stepped into the common room and found everyone already awake, sitting around with cups of dark tea. Elias had the city map folded open beside him.
Tamsin sat on the edge of a chair, boots laced, hair tied back, knife hidden under her coat the way Mirae had insisted. She looked like she’d slept, which meant she’d probably snoozed four hours and spent the rest of the night thinking. That was as close to rest as she allowed herself to get.
Her eyes flicked to me as I entered.
“Going out?” she asked quietly.
“Just going for a walk,” I said.
“Be careful,” she replied.
I nodded once. “Always am.”
She hesitated, then added softly, “Don’t do anything reckless.”
“Right,” I said, and made my voice light because if I didn’t, I’d give myself away. “I’ll bring you back something useful. Like a rumor. Or maybe a tasty pastry.”
Her lips quirked. “Make it an apple tart.”
“So demanding,” I replied with a wink.
I slipped out the back door.
London at this hour belonged to workers.
There were men pushing handcarts loaded with brass fittings, women hauling bundles of cloth, and apprentices wandering the streets with ink or grease-stained fingers and tired eyes.
Steam curled around ankles. A bell rang somewhere overhead, marking shift changes for factories that didn’t want to waste daylight.
I walked with the flow, hands in my pockets, shoulders slouched like I had nowhere important to be. If you moved like you were late, someone noticed. If you moved like you were bored, you disappeared into the crowd.
The machine shop district was two streets over. Men shouted over clanging presses. Sparks flared behind grimy windows. Above, a narrow catwalk linked two buildings, a worker crossing it with a coil of cable over his shoulder.
I paused just long enough to let the crowd pass, then crossed the street and drifted into the shadow of a brick archway.
From here, I could see the main road that cut toward the administrative quarter.
I was looking for Ashcroft.
That was where he’d be.
The first day I’d been here, I’d watched the road and learned nothing except that London moved like an organism. The second day, I’d started to recognize who belonged to which part of it. The third, I’d begun to see the ones who didn’t belong anywhere except in the service of someone else.
They didn’t wear uniforms. They didn’t have obvious weapons. They moved in pairs, always half a step behind the important people, eyes constantly scanning but never meeting anyone’s gaze. They had the posture of men who had permission to hurt you and weren’t afraid to do it.
A cluster of them appeared now, drifting down the road in a slow, controlled formation. That made my focus home right in.
I’d found him.
Marcus Ashcroft wore a long dark coat with a high collar and gloves that were too clean to have ever known actual work.
His hair was silver, neatly combed, and his face was calm in that way that suggested he had never been truly afraid of anything.
He walked at an unhurried pace, not because he lacked urgency, but because he expected the world to make room for him.
And it did.
People stepped aside without being told. A vendor lowered his eyes. A worker paused mid-stride as though he’d forgotten what he was doing.
Ashcroft stopped once to speak to a clerk holding a ledger. The clerk’s hands shook as he presented a stamped paper. Ashcroft glanced at it for barely a second before handing it back, already moving on.
I didn’t follow him directly. That was amateur work.
Instead, I watched the space around him, the way his escort rotated at intersections, the way one man always moved ahead to clear a path through tighter crowds, the way Ashcroft never once looked over his shoulder.
I left the archway and drifted into the crowd again, taking a parallel street that would keep me within sight of his route without ever crossing it.
I counted turns. Timed stops. Noted landmarks that mattered: a brass fountain that still ran; a steam vent that hissed louder than the others; a boarded-up storefront with fresh paint that didn’t quite match the decay around it.
I kept walking, head down, looking like nothing and nobody at the exact same time.
Ashcroft descended a stairway that I’d bet wasn’t on any public map.
I didn’t follow him down the same way. I took the parallel route. I found an iron ladder bolted to a wall, slick with condensation, leading to a catwalk that ran above the lower level. From there, I followed him.
I moved slowly, then crouched behind a pressure housing and waited when he stopped beside a man in a clean white coat who was walking with his head down. The man straightened too fast when he noticed who had approached him, hands shaking just a little bit.
“I’ve come for an update,” Ashcroft stated, his voice commanding.
“We’re making progress,” the man replied. “Dispersion held across three districts.”
Ashcroft’s voice was calm. Unconcerned. “And what about the onset?”
“Much faster,” the man responded. “Now it takes less than a minute, and not hours like before. The aerosol binds more efficiently now.”
Ashcroft nodded. “Good.”
Another voice joined, a female one, clipped and impatient. “We’ve been making great progress, Lord Ashcroft.”
That caught my attention.
Ashcroft stopped at the threshold. “Schedule the next release then,” he ordered.
The woman frowned. “Where?”
“North,” he said. “I want to hit the smaller towns. Border regions. Places that can be written off as ‘incidents.’ I want a way to ferret out and expose the wolves living in hiding in my country once and for all.”
My jaw tightened.
“And the timetable?” she asked.
“Within the next two weeks,” Ashcroft replied. “Before anyone has time to organize a response.”
He turned back the way he’d come, his escorts re-forming around him like water closing over a stone.
I waited until the sound of his footsteps faded. Then I waited longer.
When I moved, I took it slow, slipping back along the catwalk, down the ladder, out through a maintenance corridor that spat me into daylight behind a row of boiler stacks. I didn’t look back, didn’t run.
I meandered back to the safehouse and told my pack everything.