Chapter 20: The Mountain Town Crisis (5)
The man should have left earlier.
The thought circled him as he walked, not quite words, more a tightening behind the eyes, ‘you knew, you knew.’
He had seen the light go strange through the workshop windows, had felt the temperature drop too fast against his skin. He had told himself it would be fine.
Just one more task. Just a few minutes.
That was how it always started.
The man moved quickly, shoulders hunched, chin tucked, hands buried deep in his jacket pockets as if that might keep parts of him hidden. His boots struck the pavement louder than he liked.
Every step felt exposed, each sound an announcement he couldn’t take back.
The street was wrong.
Not empty, emptier than it should have been. This road usually held life even after dark: someone smoking by a doorway, a shopkeeper sweeping, a motorbike idling too long.
Tonight there was nothing.
Shutters were pulled tight, metal pressed flat against glass. Windows reflected him back at himself, his hurried stride, his stiff posture, over and over.
The man did not look back.
He couldn’t remember deciding that, only that the rule had settled into him fully formed. Turning his head felt dangerous in a way he couldn’t explain, as though something essential would snap if he did.
The first streetlight buzzed overhead.
Its yellow glow washed over him and he felt his chest loosen by a fraction. The man stepped into it quickly, almost stumbling, and forced himself to breathe more slowly. The light hummed. Ordinary. Mundane.
See? he told himself. Nothing’s wrong.
He fixed his gaze on the next streetlight and moved again, faster now, eager to cross the darkness between.
His thoughts began to spiral, half-remembered stories he wished he’d never heard, names of people who hadn’t come home, faces that had come back empty. He shoved the images aside with effort.
'Not me. I’m almost home.'
At first, the wind pushed against his face.
Cold, sharp, uncomfortable, but real. The man leaned into it, welcoming the resistance. It gave him something solid to push against, proof that the world still obeyed rules.
Halfway to the next light, the wind stopped.
Not faded. Not eased.
Stopped.
The man’s steps faltered. His body reacted before his thoughts could catch up, adrenaline flooding his system in a sudden, sickening rush. The air felt heavy, expectant, like the pause before a storm.
Then the wind started again.
From behind him.
The man’s stomach dropped as if the ground had fallen away.
The air pressed into his back, not violently, not yet, just enough to be unmistakable.
A presence.
A guiding pressure.
His legs felt heavy, sluggish, as though the pavement had turned soft beneath his feet.
‘No,’ his mind screamed.
‘No’
The man walked faster.
The pressure followed.
His breathing turned shallow and fast, chest tightening painfully as panic took hold.
He broke into a run.
The second streetlight loomed closer, its glow wavering faintly, and the man burst into it with his heart hammering.
For one precious moment, the pressure eased.
He didn’t stop.
His house was visible now, there, down the side street. The familiar outline struck him with such force his eyes burned. Walls. A door.
A lock.
‘Almost there.’
The man turned the corner, shoes skidding slightly, and that was when he heard the voice.
“Hey.”
It wasn’t loud.
It didn’t come from any clear direction.
It felt close in a way that bypassed his ears and settled directly in his chest.
Every instinct told the man to run.
He did not look back.
“Hey,” the voice said again, softer somehow, as if adjusting to him.
The wind surged.
It slammed into the man’s back now, no longer subtle. The force made him stumble, nearly pitching him forward. His legs felt wrong, heavy, uncooperative, as though they no longer fully belonged to him.
His house was right there.
The man fumbled for his keys, fingers numb and clumsy, heart pounding so hard it felt like it might betray him.
“Wait,” the voice said.
It sounded almost concerning.
The key slipped from the man’s grasp and hit the concrete with a sharp clink that echoed far too loudly.
Something inside him fractured.
A broken sound tore out of the man’s throat as he dropped to a knee, scrabbling desperately for the key.
The wind howled now, pressing into him, flattening his jacket against his back, making it hard to breathe.
‘Please,’ the man thought wildly.
‘Please-’
The voice laughed.
Not cruelly.
Curiously.
The man jammed the key into the lock and twisted. Nothing happened. Terror flooded him so fast his vision blurred.
Again.
Harder.
The metal ground loudly in the sudden stillness between gusts.
“Open,” the man whispered, the word tearing out of him.
The lock turned.
The man lunged inside, slammed the door shut with all his strength, and threw the bolt just as the wind struck.
The impact shook the entire frame. The door bowed inward, hinges shrieking as if something massive had hurled itself against it. The house groaned around him.
The man staggered back, tripped, and fell hard onto the floor.
The wind roared outside, pounding the door again and again, filling the house with violence and sound. For several endless seconds, it felt as though the structure might give way.
It stopped.
The silence was immediate and absolute.
The pressure vanished. The air settled. Outside, the night resumed its unnatural calm, as if nothing had happened at all.
Inside, the man lay curled on the floor, shaking uncontrollably, forehead pressed against the cold tile. His breathing came in short, broken gasps.
His hands ached from gripping nothing.
The man did not move.
He did not turn on the lights.
He stayed there, listening to the quiet, knowing with terrible certainty that if the door hadn’t opened when it did, if he had been alone in the dark for even a second longer, he would not have been himself anymore.
And somewhere beyond the streetlights and locked doors, the night waited.
Morning came thin and pale, like it was trying not to draw attention to itself.
The city woke reluctantly.
Shutters lifted in stages.
A few lights flicked on behind windows, then off again.
Somewhere down the street, a kettle began to whistle and stopped just as abruptly. The air held that same brittle clarity Lena had noticed all week, clean, cold, and faintly hollow.
They moved out together.
No pairs. No splitting up. No shortcuts.
Lena walked point out of habit more than instruction, her jacket zipped high, breath fogging faintly as she scanned the street ahead.
Gorchov followed a step behind, unusually quiet, his gaze drifting not to people or buildings but to the space between them.
Li Wei walked to her right, tablet in hand but eyes up, alert. Khalid brought up the rear, posture loose, awareness anything but.
The boss walked in the middle.
They reached the first ward at the corner where the narrow alley met the main road. Lena crouched, brushing aside a bit of grit with gloved fingers.
She froze.
The disc was still there.
But it was wrong.
The etched surface, once faintly iridescent, alive with a subtle tension, was dull.
Not inactive.
Spent.
Its lines were blackened, as if scorched from the inside out. When Lena touched it, there was no resistance, no tightening of the air. Just cold metal.
“…Boss,” she said quietly.
The boss knelt beside her and looked.
For the first time since the paperwork had arrived, his expression changed.
Not dramatically. Not visibly, if someone didn’t know him.
But Lena knew him.
The set of his jaw tightened. His eyes lingered a fraction of a second too long.
“Mark it,” he said.
Li Wei did, fingers moving faster than before.
They moved on.
The next ward lay at the base of a shuttered storefront. Khalid reached it first and swore under his breath.
Blacked out.
Not cracked. Not broken. Not forcibly removed.
Just… dead.
The third ward was the same.
So was the fourth.
By the fifth, Lena felt a tightness building behind her ribs, something cold and acidic. She straightened slowly, scanning the street around them.
Nothing looked disturbed.
No scorch marks. No displaced stones. No sign that anything had passed through.
Yet every ward they checked told the same story.
Li Wei stopped recording and looked up. “They didn’t fail,” he said carefully. “They were used.”
Gorchov crouched near a drain where another ward lay inert. He held his hand above it, palm hovering, eyes unfocused.
“There’s no residue,” he said.
“No backlash. No struggle.”
Khalid frowned.
“That’s not how it usually goes.”
“No,” Gorchov agreed.
“It’s how it goes when something knows exactly how much pressure to apply.”
They reached the open space near the railing, the overlook where Lena and Li Wei had stood the morning before. Lena already knew what she would find.
The wards along the railing were all black.
Every single one.
The city around them was awake now. A few pedestrians passed at a distance, heads down, moving with purpose. None of them looked at the group clustered near the edge. None of them slowed.
Lena turned slowly toward the boss.
“Okay,” she said. “You want to tell us what this means.”
The boss didn’t answer.
He stepped closer to the railing, resting one hand on the cold metal. He looked out toward the mountains, now fully visible in the clear morning light. Their ridges were sharp, almost painfully defined against the sky.
Li Wei swallowed.
“Boss.”
Still nothing.
Khalid shifted his weight.
“This isn’t normal depletion,” he said.
“This is coordinated.”
Gorchov straightened, towering over the dead wards. “It didn’t test them,” he said quietly.
“It didn’t probe.”
He looked at the boss. “It passed through.”
That got a reaction.
The boss’s fingers tightened on the railing.
Lena felt a slow, sinking certainty settle in her gut. “You knew this was possible,” she said. Not accusing. Just stating a fact.
“Yes,” the boss replied.
It was the first word he’d spoken since they’d started.
Li Wei frowned. “Then why-”
“Because,” the boss said, cutting him off, “the alternative was pretending we were safe.”
Silence stretched.
The wind picked up slightly, tugging at jackets, rattling the prayer flags overhead. For a moment, Lena felt that same instinctive urge she’d felt before dawn the previous day, to step back, to reduce herself, to not stand out.
She resisted it.
“How long ago,” she asked carefully, “did this happen.”
The boss looked down at the nearest ward. “Hours,” he said. “Not minutes.”
Khalid’s eyes narrowed. “While we were asleep.”
“Yes.”
Li Wei’s voice was tight. “And no one noticed.”
“No,” the boss said. “Because it didn’t want to be noticed.”
Gorchov exhaled slowly. “That suggests intent.”
“Yes.”
“And confidence,” Lena added.
“Yes.”
They stood there, five figures in the morning light, surrounded by a city that had no idea how close it had come to something else.
Lena crossed her arms. “So what now.”
The boss finally turned to face them fully.
“We adjust,” he said. “We don’t rely on static measures anymore.”
“Dynamic patrols?” Khalid asked.
“No.”
“Active engagement?” Gorchov offered.
“No.”
Lena frowned.
“Then what.”
The boss’s gaze moved from face to face, measuring, weighing.
“We become harder to separate,” he said.
Li Wei’s jaw tightened. “It already knows where we are.”
“Yes.”
“And it walked through our defenses,” Khalid said.
“Yes.”
“So what exactly are we doing?” Lena pressed.
The boss looked past her, down the street where the wards had failed in sequence, one after another, like a trail someone had deliberately left behind.
“We watch,” he said. “And we wait for it to make the next mistake.”
“And if it doesn’t?” Lena asked.
The boss didn’t answer that.
He turned away from the railing and started back toward the kitchen.
They followed without another word.
Behind them, the blackened wards sat quietly in the morning sun.
