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Chapter 4 - Midnight at the Docks

The docks were a rotten maze of rust and broken wood, smelling of salt and old secrets.

I moved like a shadow, every nerve screaming.

"Erika!" I called out, voice barely a whisper.

A figure stepped out of the fog, her.

She looked haunted, eyes glassy but sharp.

"You shouldn't have come," she said.

"Where've you been?"

She shook her head. "It's not safe for me anymore."

Behind her, the fog thickened, and I heard it, the faintest knocking.

We both froze.

Then, a voice: "You're running out of time, Miles."

We ran, heart pounding, knocking, chasing us like a curse.

The city's dark corners seemed to close in, swallowing us whole.

A figure blocked our way, Bald Moss's men, silent and deadly.

I grabbed Erika's hand, knife ready, but there were too many.

The fight was brutal, sharp and fast.

Blood spilt on the cracked steps, hot and sticky.

But in the chaos, Erika whispered, "Trust no one. Not even me."

Her words burned into me like acid.

After the fight, the city seemed quieter than ever.

I sat on a rooftop, the cold biting my skin, staring at the broken skyline.

Erika was silent beside me, distant and cold.

The knocking was gone for now.

But I knew it was only the calm before the storm.

The nightmare was just waking up.

She showed up like a shadow crossing the cracked street, a whisper sliding between broken buildings. No warning, no invitation. Just Ava, smoking, cold, impossible to ignore.

"I told you," she said, eyes flickering like dangerous flames, "you can't run from the knocking. It's already inside you."

I wanted to shove her away. Wanted to yell. But all I did was watch her, every nerve screaming, heart pounding like a war drum.

She stepped closer, the smell of cigarettes and something darker trailing behind her.

"I'm here to help. Or maybe to save you from yourself."

The truth in her voice was terrifying.

A call came in the middle of the night. No number, just silence on the other end.

Then, the tapping. Slow. Deliberate.

My door.

I grabbed the knife, heart thrashing like a trapped animal.

When I opened it, nothing but a crimson handprint was smeared across the peeling paint.

No words. No threats.

Just blood.

A message.

And the knock that would never stop.

Lyle was waiting in his cramped apartment, surrounded by screens and wires like some modern witch.

"Listen," he said, voice cracking, "I've found something."

He pulled up files buried deep in government servers, files with my name stamped all over them.

"I wasn't just hiding. I was a pawn. Part of something bigger. Something fucked up."

The walls closed in as I stared at the truth I never wanted to see.

Cain Mercer's voice was a sermon and a threat.

"The knocking is salvation," he preached, eyes burning with fanatic fire.

His followers gathered in the shadows, eyes glazed, hands trembling with fear and hope.

They waited for the end, or the beginning.

I knew their faith was a poison spreading through the city's veins.

And I was caught in the centre.

Erika's eyes were wild, haunted.

"I'm tired, Miles," she whispered, voice breaking.

She stood at a crossroads between truth and survival, love and betrayal.

"I can't keep running this with you."

Her words hit me like a fist.

But in her pain, I saw something worse.

The knocking wasn't just outside.

It was inside us all.

She didn't ask.

She just pulled me down by the collar, lips crashing against mine like a storm.

We fell into each other, clothes half-off, mind half-there. Ava was smoke and heat, dangerous and soft all at once.

I knew I shouldn't. But I needed something real, something burning.

Her hands traced my scars like they were her map to somewhere darker.

"You're shaking," she whispered.

"I don't know who I am anymore."

She licked the words off my mouth like honey off a knife.

"That's why I like you."

But when it was over, I saw it in her eyes, regret, maybe.

Or something worse.

It wasn't a warning.

It was a corpse.

Left in my hallway, half-smiling, eyes wide open like he'd seen God and wasn't impressed.

The body was cold, stiff, naked except for a paper taped to its chest.

"Next time, we won't miss."

Signed with a moss leaf pinned to his tongue.

That was Bald Moss's way.

Quiet. Bloody. Precise.

This wasn't random. It was a reply to a question I hadn't even asked yet.

And a promise I wasn't sure I'd survive.

Erika didn't open the door.

She was inside, lights off, shadows thick, gun resting on the table like a sleeping animal.

"I don't trust you anymore," she whispered.

"I never asked you to."

"But I followed you."

She looked at me like I was a stranger in her dreams, some man she used to believe in before the whole world burned down around us.

"You killed her," she said.

I didn't answer.

Because she wasn't wrong.

Not completely.

A photo slipped under my door. Old. Grainy. Real.

Patricia, smiling, alive, now. Holding a newspaper from this week.

My stomach dropped like an elevator with snapped cables.

Alive? Impossible.

Dead? Also impossible.

Ava saw the photo and laughed without humour.

"She always knew how to haunt a man."

"Where was this taken?"

She shrugged. "Somewhere that wants you to come looking."

I held the photo in shaking hands and knew…

This was the new game.

And I was already playing.

There's a door inside my mind.

It knocks now.

Not just at night. Not just in the hallway.

But inside me.

Soft. Rhythmic. Patient.

I feel it behind my eyes. Behind my teeth. In my spine.

I wake up hearing it. I sleep with it whispering.

Ava touches me, but I'm not there.

Erika watches me like I'm a bomb waiting to go off.

Lyle calls and says the signals are stronger now.

Cain Mercer preaches louder.

Bald Moss sends more corpses.

And Patricia?

She's alive.

The knocking won't stop.

And now?

Now it's mine.

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