Someone else, then.
Someone who knew what I'd done.
Someone who wanted me to pay.
I walked faster.
The city unfolded around me in fragments—a closed convenience store, a row of darkened apartments, a church witha broken steeple. I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I looked back, I'd see the shadow again, and if I saw the shadow, I'd have to admit that it was real, that someone was following me, that I wasn't as alone as I'd thought.
Or maybe I'd see nothing.
Maybe I'd look back and see empty street and empty corner and empty air, and I'd have to admit that I was imagining things, that I was paranoid, that I was losing my mind.
I didn't know which was worse.
The phone buzzed in my pocket.
I almost didn't look. Almost kept walking, kept my eyes forward, kept pretending that the world wasn't collapsing around me. But my hand moved before my mind could stop it, pulling the phone out, bringing the screen to my eyes.
New message.
Different number.
An address on the other side of the city. A name I didn't recognize. A time that was already passing.
Julian Cross.
Another lead.
Another man who might know something about Gabriel, about the Institute, about the network of buyers and sellers and handlers who'd turned human beings into inventory.
I stared at the name.
Cross.
Something about it felt familiar. Something about it made my skin prickle, the way the shadow had, the way the man at the counter had. Like I'd heard it before. Like I'd seen it written somewhere, in a file I shouldn't have opened, in a document I couldn't remember reading.
Cross.
Did I know a Cross?
Had I killed a Cross?
Was the shadow following me named Cross?
I couldn't remember.
I couldn't remember anything.
The phone screen dimmed. The address faded into sleep, waiting for me to wake it, waiting for me to decide whether to go or stay or disappear into the city and never come back.
I went.
I always went.
Because the alternative was sitting in a diner at three in the morning, eating cold french fries, trying to remember the face of a girl who might not have existed.
Because the alternative was admitting that Gabriel wasn't coming back.
