The heavy oak door behind the sanctuary was kept sealed, groaning in protest as it creaked slowly open. The sound drew his gaze. A figure entered, moving with a peculiar, gliding stillness.
A pale woman in a long, severely cut black coat, one of Marrow's ubiquitous "librarians." All sterile grace, perfectly composed features, and eyes that seemed perpetually veiled, observing everything while revealing nothing.
She approached him without a sound on the marble, holding a slender folder.
She stopped a respectful distance away and extended the folder towards him, the gesture economical and devoid of warmth. It bore a red seal, complex and unfamiliar, pressing into the cardstock.
"What is it now?" he asked, his voice rough, a low rumble in the cold air. But he already knew. He felt the familiar, leaden weight of impending complication settle in his gut.
He took the folder. The top sheet bore a name, stark and damning: Gene. And next to it, a series of attached images, crisp and damning in their own right. Images of Igor, his face caught in a moment of wary openness. Images of Maisie Lennox, looking fragile but resilient.
And then, screenshots and timestamps from surveillance footage: the humid, vibrant green of a hidden greenhouse, Gene standing close to Igor, a hushed conversation captured on grainy audio. Gene's hand brushing Igor's arm, a gesture of comfort? Connection? A stillness, a hesitation in her voice as she spoke.
"She's trying to save him," The librarian's voice was flat, toneless, like data output. "Them."
Jack's jaw tightened, a muscle working furiously beneath the skin. Contempt curled his lip. "Save them?" he scoffed, the sound harsh. "Maisie Lennox is nothing but a ghost in a dress, clinging to the memory of a dead man's power.
Igor is a dog that forgot its leash, bound to slip loose and bite the wrong hand eventually. She thinks she's playing savior to them?" He spat the word 'savior' as if it were poison.
The librarian remained silent, her veiled eyes giving away nothing. She wasn't here to debate or offer an opinion. She was only here to provide the information, to observe his reaction. To report.
To Marrow. Always, to Marrow. Everything circled back to her.
Jack turned away from the librarian, his back stiff. His gaze went skyward, drawn to the gaping holes in the ruined ceiling, where tenacious ivy had pushed through the cracks, a creeping green violation of the sacred space.
The old pipe organ, its massive pipes silent and dust-laden, stood like a hulking, broken beast in the corner. The pews were empty, rows of silent witnesses to a war that had become a chapel of betrayal, a sanctuary for hard truths and colder calculations.
He'd strutted through the lie, drunk on power, certain he held the strings. Now the truth festered, he was never in control. Just a fool in a gilded mask, mistaking manipulation for mastery, cruelty for strength. He zoned out, thinking of a conversation months before.
Anchored once more in the present chill, Jack stepped up onto the shallow rise of the altar, the cold stone seeping through his boots. He looked down at the space where a priest might once have knelt, hands clasped in prayer.
"I built this movement," he said aloud, the words echoing slightly, flat and without comfort in the vast space. "Brick by bloody brick. With my hands, with my blood, with my will."
The sound of his voice didn't fill the emptiness; it only seemed to emphasize it.
"Then burn it," the librarian murmured, her voice a dry, almost imperceptible whisper from where she stood, a dark, still shape against the backdrop of ruined light.
He looked up sharply. Her tone wasn't cruel, wasn't accusatory. It was merely... matter-of-fact. A simple statement of consequence, or perhaps a suggestion delivered without inflection. An instruction. From above. From her. From Selene Marrow herself, delivered through her impassive herald.
The silence, thick and heavy as a shroud, seemed to anticipate something dreadful. Then, as if answering a silent, malevolent decree, the fractured glass high above yielded. A single, agonizing crack, like a bone breaking, tore through the oppressive stillness
. A long, crimson claw of shattered glass detached itself from the stained pane, dragging the feeble light with it in a slow, deliberate descent. It hesitated, suspended for a breath, then plunged, exploding against the cold marble floor near the altar.
A ghastly rain of ruby and gold shards sprayed outwards, each a tiny, glittering dagger glinting in the gloom.
Jack didn't flinch. He didn't react to the sudden violence of the sound or the cascade of glass. His focus had already shifted.
He turned slowly, deliberately, and stared down the long aisle of the empty, decaying cathedral. His eyes, narrowed and hard, seemed to bore through the dust motes dancing in the faint light, seeing only the ghost of the figure who had walked this path with him.
A faint smirk played on his lips, a cruel twist that hinted at the pleasure he derived from the memory. It wasn't fondness; no, fondness was for fools. It was the satisfaction of knowing he'd held power, that he'd bent another soul to his will, and then, with a flick of his wrist, discarded them.
The decay surrounding him, the crumbling stone and rotting wood, mirrored the state of that discarded soul, and he found a perverse beauty in the ruin. He'd built it, after all, brick by agonizing brick.
And wasn't he, ultimately, the architect of everything worthwhile? A chilling thought, wrapped in the comforting delusion of his magnificent importance.
He rose and walked to a window, the city lights twinkling below like a scattered collection of fallen stars. He felt a surge of power, a chilling thrill at the thought of manipulating events, of orchestrating Gene's downfall.
He would not simply defeat her; he would break her, dismantle her facade, and he would rise above the wreckage, a phoenix born from the ashes of her reputation.
He allowed a slow, predatory smile to spread across his face. "If Gene wants to play saint," he muttered, the words a low, lethal promise, the cold air accepting their malice, "then I'll give her a martyr's death. And I'll build my pyre from the ashes."
He closed his eyes for a moment, savoring the image, the exquisite satisfaction of complete and utter control.
He would make her pay for daring to be good, for daring to expose the darkness within him. And in her destruction, he would find his twisted salvation.