Distance doesn’t help. Turns out, getting farther from the scene doesn’t make it any less vivid.
“How many souls did you guys collect?” I ask finally, the question that’s been clawing at me since Death sent me here. “Death didn’t say how much work was left. Just told me to ‘get rid of all of them.’”
A moment of silence stretches between us.
Cassian’s the one who finally answers. “Twelve stones. I filled most of them myself, once I found out what they were.”
My mouth falls open. “Wait…what?”
“Twelve,” he repeats.
I blink. “As in… one-two twelve?”
“As in twelve separate murderers,” Talon says, rocking back on his heels.
My shoes scrape the uneven concrete. For a second, the hallway feels like it’s closing in. Twelve stones. Twelve potential wraiths. Each one created out of someone evil.
“That’s… a lot,” I murmur.
“Understatement of the century,” Talon says cheerfully.
We angle left where the main corridor tees into an even older wing. The air changes here. It’s less dust and more cool, mineral basement. We pass a dead vending machine, its plexiglass spidered through the center, a paper cup crushed in the delivery slot.
Cassian leads, scanning without looking like he’s scanning. I wonder if he’s been on edge about the wraiths this whole time. Knowing him, probably yes. The man could plan a battle mid-orgasm if he had to. Actually… given recent events, he probably did.
“Radiology’s this way,” he says finally, brushing two fingers against a wall sign.
And considering this building’s history, it’s not hard to believe that radiology was where most of the real monstrosities happened.
The place is too secluded to have ever been normal.
The hall slopes gently, then levels out. A pair of double doors waits ahead, the push bars lashed together with a leather belt. The tape along the edges has aged to the color of old tea. Talon slips the belt free and nudges the door; it sticks for a moment before giving way under pressure.
Inside lies a suite of sorts. Just… make it lead and concrete and without any windows.
“Why does it always feel like the apocalypse was three years ago in these places?” I ask, scanning the room.
“I guess because many people died here,” Cassian mutters.
“Yeah… You may be onto something.”
We pass a door marked HOT LAB in peeling vinyl letters. The pass-through hatch is clamped shut with two steel C-clamps and a strip of angle iron screwed into the frame.
Cassian stops where the tile ends and raw concrete begins, the color somewhere between ash and a bruise. A maintenance door waits there, paint scraped off around the knob in a perfect halo. He pulls a heavy ring of keys from his pocket, an ugly, clinking thing that looks like it weighs as much as my forearm, and finds one by touch.
“Wow,” I say. “You actually locked it.”
He looks over his shoulder. “Yeah. In case we lost sight of you and you decided to wander. Didn’t want you ending up here alone.”
“As if I’d do that,” I mutter.
The door grinds open, hinges surrendering a long, metallic creak.
The room beyond is bigger than I expected. It looks like a service landing that was cleaned once, maybe years ago. Concrete walls, low ceiling, a mess of pipes overhead. Someone’s dragged in a few tables and shelves, scavenged equipment stacked wherever it fit. An old orange extension reel hangs from a hook beside a city map pinned up with magnets.
“When they built this place, they meant it to last,” I murmur, running my fingers along the rough wall.
Cassian shrugs. “Yeah. It was sealed off years ago. We just… claimed it.”
