Chapter 16

The apartment building's security door hung open, the lock mechanism sparking where someone had forced it. I took the stairs three at a time, David's footsteps echoing behind me, his breathing ragged as he tried to keep pace.

"Marcus, wait—"

I didn't wait. Couldn't. The stairwell smelled like burnt plastic and something else, something chemical that made my eyes water. Fourth floor. Lily's door stood ajar, light spilling into the hallway.

"Lily!" My voice cracked. "Helen!"

Silence.

I pushed through the doorway. The living room looked like a tornado had torn through it—couch overturned, coffee table shattered, Helen's reading glasses crushed on the hardwood floor. A delivery box sat pristine in the center of the chaos, brown cardboard with no markings, no label, nothing.

David caught up, pulled his phone. "I'm calling—"

"Don't." The word came out harder than I intended. "No police. Not yet."

"Marcus, your sister—"

"Is gone because of me." I moved through the apartment, checking rooms with mechanical precision. Bedroom: empty, bed made, Lily's laptop open on the desk showing a paused Netflix screen. Bathroom: empty, shower curtain torn half off its rings. Kitchen: empty, except for two mugs of tea on the counter, still warm.

They'd been drinking tea when it happened. Casual. Safe. Home.

The pocket watch in my jacket felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

David stood in the doorway, face pale. "What's in the box?"

I didn't want to know. Wanted to leave it sitting there, Schrödinger's nightmare, all possibilities existing simultaneously until I collapsed them into one terrible reality. But I'd already made too many wrong choices tonight.

The box opened easily. Inside: a phone. Not Lily's—this one was older, a burner, the kind you buy with cash at convenience stores. A single text message glowed on the screen.

You chose the story. We chose the consequences. She has 48 hours. Bring us the manuscript and the watch, or we'll show you what preservation really means. Instructions to follow. Tell anyone, and the clock stops early.

"Jesus Christ." David read over my shoulder. "Marcus, we have to—"

"We have to what?" I spun on him. "Call the FBI? The police? You read the message. They're watching. They knew exactly when I'd be here, exactly how long it would take me to arrive. They've been three steps ahead this entire time."

"So what, we just do what they say? Hand over everything?"

"I don't know!" The words exploded out of me. I grabbed the edge of the counter, knuckles white. "I don't know, David. I don't know anything except that my sister and my mother are gone because I thought I could outsmart people who've been playing this game for decades."

The apartment settled into silence. Somewhere in the building, a dog barked. Traffic hummed on the street below. Normal sounds. The world continuing like nothing had changed, like two people hadn't just been erased from it.

David picked up one of the tea mugs, examined it. "No signs of struggle in here. Living room's destroyed, but the kitchen's untouched. They were sitting here, drinking tea, then something made them go to the living room."

"The doorbell. Lily said there was a delivery guy."

"But the box is inside. Which means they let him in, or—" He paused. "Or he was already inside when he called up."

The chemical smell. The forced security door. I'd been so focused on getting to Lily that I hadn't stopped to think about the logistics. How many people would it take to subdue two women, one of them a former ER nurse who'd dealt with violent patients for thirty years? How much planning?

"They've done this before," I said. "This isn't their first extraction."

"Extraction." David set the mug down carefully. "You're talking about them like they're professionals."

"They are professionals. The Preservation Society isn't some book club that got out of hand. They're organized, funded, connected. They knew about the manuscript before I did. They knew about Oracle. They've been watching me for weeks, maybe months." I pulled out the pocket watch, let it dangle from its chain. "And they want this badly enough to kidnap two people in broad daylight from a secured building in the middle of the city."

The watch spun slowly, catching the light. Its ticking seemed louder in the quiet apartment, each second a reminder of time passing, of Lily and Helen somewhere unknown, afraid.

David moved to the window, looked out at the street. "There's a camera on the building across the way. Traffic cam on the corner. If we could access the footage—"

"They'll have thought of that. Disabled them, looped them, something. These aren't amateurs."

"You keep saying that, but you don't actually know who they are. What they are." He turned back to me. "For all we know, it's one guy with a grudge and a flair for the dramatic."

"One guy didn't do this." I gestured at the destroyed living room. "One guy didn't build a network sophisticated enough to track Oracle's movements, to know about a manuscript that's been hidden for seventy years, to—"

My phone buzzed. Unknown number. I answered without thinking.

"Mr. Chen." The voice was male, middle-aged, with an accent I couldn't place. British, maybe, or someone who'd learned English from British teachers. "I trust you've received our message."

"Where are they?"

"Safe. Comfortable. Unharmed, provided you follow instructions precisely. The Preservation Society has no interest in hurting anyone. We simply want what belongs to us."

"The manuscript doesn't belong to you."

A soft laugh. "Ownership is such a fluid concept, don't you think? Your grandfather stole it from us. We're merely reclaiming our property."

"My grandfather—" I stopped. Took a breath. Getting angry wouldn't help Lily. "What do you want me to do?"

"Bring the manuscript and the watch to the address we'll send you. Tomorrow night, midnight. Come alone. No police, no FBI, no clever friends with hacking skills." A pause. "We know about David, by the way. Tell him the footage he's thinking about accessing has already been sanitized. Tell him that if he tries to trace this call, we'll know, and your sister will pay for his curiosity."

David's face went white.

"How do I know they're alive?" My voice sounded steadier than I felt.

"A reasonable question." Rustling sounds, then Helen's voice, tight with fear but unmistakably hers: "Marcus, don't give them anything. Don't—" A click, and the man was back. "Satisfied?"

"I want to talk to Lily."

"Tomorrow night, Mr. Chen. Bring what we've asked for, and you'll see them both. Disappoint us, and you'll spend the rest of your life wondering what their last moments were like."

The line went dead.

I stood there, phone pressed to my ear, listening to silence. David said something, but the words didn't register. All I could hear was Helen's voice, the fear in it, the way she'd tried to sound brave and failed.

"Marcus." David grabbed my shoulder. "Marcus, talk to me."

"They have them." Obvious statement. Stupid. But my brain felt like it was moving through molasses. "They want the manuscript and the watch. Tomorrow night."

"Okay. Okay, so we have time. We can—"

"We can what?" I pulled away from him. "We can't call the police. Can't trace the call. Can't access security footage. They've thought of everything, David. Every single thing."

"So we give them what they want."

"And then what? They let Lily and Helen go? Out of the goodness of their hearts?" I laughed, and it came out bitter. "They're not going to leave witnesses. The moment they have the manuscript, we're all liabilities."

David was quiet for a long moment. Then: "What if we don't have the manuscript?"

"What?"

"You said Oracle has it. The real one. What if we give them a fake?"

"They'll know. They've been looking for this thing for decades. They'll have experts, authentication methods, ways to verify—"

"Not immediately. Not in the moment of exchange." David's eyes had that look they got when he was working through a problem, the same look he'd had when we were kids and he'd figured out how to hack the school's grading system. "We give them something that looks right, get Lily and Helen back, then disappear before they realize it's fake."

"That's insane."

"You have a better idea?"

I didn't. That was the problem. I had no ideas, no plan, no leverage. Just a pocket watch that might or might not be important, a manuscript I didn't have, and forty-eight hours before people I loved started dying.

The burner phone buzzed. Another text: an address in Red Hook, a warehouse district that had been half-gentrified into art studios and craft breweries. Tomorrow night, midnight. Come alone.

"We need Oracle," I said. "If we're going to pull this off, we need the real manuscript. Or at least enough information about it to create a convincing fake."

"Oracle's not going to help us. She made that clear."

"She will if I tell her the Preservation Society has my family. She's been running from these people for years. She knows what they're capable of." I headed for the door. "Come on."

"Where are we going?"

"To find someone who doesn't want to be found."

The apartment building's hallway stretched out before us, fluorescent lights buzzing overhead. Behind us, Lily's apartment sat violated and empty, tea growing cold on the counter, a delivery box containing nothing but threats. Ahead, somewhere in the city, my sister and mother waited in the dark, and I had less than twenty-four hours to figure out how to save them without getting everyone killed.

The pocket watch ticked in my pocket, steady and relentless, counting down to midnight tomorrow, and I thought about the photo David had mentioned earlier, the one with the impossible timestamp, and wondered if the Preservation Society had already won this game before I'd even realized I was playing it.