Who am I when I'm not performing, not chasing, not bleeding?
I didn't have an answer.
I didn't think I ever would.
The phone buzzed again.
I looked at the screen.
Warehouse district. Fourth and Main. 2 PM.
That was hours from now. Hours to fill. Hours to survive.
I walked toward the address, and I didn't look back.
The sun climbed higher, and the shadows shortened, and somewhere behind me, in a small office attached to a shipping depot, a dead man stared at the ceiling with eyes that would never close.
I didn't remember killing him.
I didn't remember why I'd come.
But I remembered Gabriel.
Two versions of him.
Kind and cold.
Loving and leaving.
Mine and lost.
"You're ready."
For what?
For anything.
For everything.
For the hunt that never ended, the search that never found, the love that was never real and still consumed me like fire.
I walked.
The city stretched ahead, indifferent and eternal, and I walked toward the next lead, the next name, the next body I wouldn't remember making.
Gabriel.
I'm coming.
I don't know who I am without you.
I don't know if I exist at all.
But I'm coming.
And I won't stop until I find you.
The sun burned away the last of the dawn, and the day began, and I kept walking, because stopping meant thinking,and thinking meant remembering, and remembering meant facing the possibility that the girl with the blonde hair had never been real.
