The rain had grown quiet by the time they reached the car. The city's lights lay scattered across puddles, each reflection broken and trembling, as if the ground itself couldn't keep secrets. Caleb waited until Kemi slammed the passenger door before speaking.
"We'll rest a few hours. Then we follow the key."
Leona nodded, fingers tracing the thread around it. The metal was still warm, the kind of warmth that suggested pulse instead of heat. "Basement level seven," she murmured. "Flooded, forgotten, and waiting."
"Places like that always are," Caleb said. "Waiting."
Kemi groaned into her seatbelt. "If this ends with ghosts or curses, I want hazard pay."
"If it ends with anything alive, you'll owe me breakfast," Caleb replied.
Mahmoud laughed from the back seat. "Both of you should worry about water levels, not ghosts. We'll need proper equipment—boots, lights, a way out that doesn't rely on luck."
Leona looked out the window. The warehouse loomed behind them, its windows dark, as if already dreaming of who might return. "Luck got us this far," she said quietly.
Caleb started the car. "Luck's a bad research method."
They reached the archive district before dawn—rows of municipal buildings that used to believe in order. The air smelled of paper and ozone. Mahmoud found a side gate half-swallowed by ivy. Inside, concrete steps descended into something that had forgotten daylight.
Kemi aimed her torch. "Basement seven. This feels like an invitation to drown."
"Plans lie," Caleb said again. "Water remembers."
His tone wasn't dramatic—it was reverent, like someone quoting scripture in a foreign tongue.
Leona adjusted her flashlight beam and started down. Each step echoed too long. The deeper they went, the more the air thickened—humidity and iron, and something else, a faint perfume that didn't belong underground.
At the landing for B6, a rusted sign leaned sideways. Beneath it, the final flight plunged into shadow.
Mahmoud tested the railing. "Stable enough."
"No one's been here in years," Leona said.
"No one official," Caleb added.
At the bottom, a double door waited. One half hung off its hinges; the other was welded shut. The key in Leona's hand seemed to twitch toward the broken side. She slid it into the bent lock. It didn't fit—yet the metal hummed, a quiet vibration like a yes disguised as maybe.
"It wants a match," Caleb said.
"Or a memory," she murmured.
She twisted. The lock yielded with a sigh. Air rushed out, warm and stale. Beyond the door, a single corridor sloped downward, lined with collapsed pipes. Somewhere ahead, water moved—slow, steady, deliberate.
Kemi muttered, "Tell me again why we're not calling the fire department."
"Because they'd bring ladders," Caleb said. "We need mirrors."
The corridor ended in a vault door half-submerged in dark water. The surface reflected their flashlights, scattering light like broken glass. Above the door, faded letters read ARCHIVAL ROOM C7. Beneath them, a newer engraving shimmered faintly under corrosion:
THE COLLECTOR'S SIGNATURE
Leona's breath caught. "That's not an archival mark."
"No," Caleb said. "That's a warning."
He stepped closer, scanning the grooves. "Someone re-etched this recently. Not years ago—months."
Mahmoud crouched by the waterline. "You feel that current? There's an outlet under the door. Something pumps through every few seconds."
"The building's flooded," Kemi said. "Or the city's pretending it isn't."
Leona held up the key. "Basement seven," she whispered again. "The Handler said this level didn't exist anymore."
"That's how you hide a confession," Caleb replied. "Erase it from maps, keep it breathing underground."
The key turned smoothly this time—too smoothly. A hidden latch clicked, and the vault door began to shift. Water gurgled inward, dark and cold, tasting of rust and old regret.
A soft hum filled the corridor. Not mechanical—vocal, almost harmonic. The sound of something waking up to its own memory.
"That's not a pump," Mahmoud said. "That's music."
Leona stepped forward. The key pulsed once in her palm, then went still.
Inside, a single chamber waited. Ceiling low, walls lined with plastic sheeting, the floor a thin sheet of water that mirrored everything upside down.
At the center stood a plinth. On it, another frame—smaller, silver rather than gold, sealed behind tempered glass. Beneath it, a plaque etched in clean type:
LOT 0 – ORIGIN / UNCLAIMED / ARTIST UNKNOWN
Leona felt the room narrow. "They kept it here," she said. "Before the auction even began."
"Kept or buried," Caleb said.
"Same thing, isn't it?" Kemi murmured.
Leona approached. Her reflection moved across the water, trembling slightly. The silver frame seemed to pulse in rhythm with her steps. She crouched, fingertips inches from the glass.
Inside the frame—just a faint sketch: a river, a figure kneeling, hands submerged. The lines unfinished, waiting for color that had never come.
Mahmoud's flashlight caught something near the bottom corner—an inscription so small it looked accidental:
A.
Caleb frowned. "That's impossible."
"Why?"
"Those are my initials."
The silence thickened. Even the drip from the ceiling hesitated.
"You signed this?" Leona asked.
"No. I've never seen it."
"Then someone wants you to think you did."
Caleb's jaw set. "Collectors forge to control narrative. This—" he gestured toward the frame "—is a weapon disguised as tribute."
Leona studied the lines again. The kneeling figure, the river bend, the angle of light—it wasn't exact, but it echoed her own sketches, the studies Francine had once called pre-memory drafts.
She whispered, "Someone knew both of us before we met."
Kemi backed toward the door. "That's it. I'm out. Paintings that predict people are above my pay grade."
Mahmoud stayed still, squinting. "Look at the glass edge," he said. "Condensation, but only inside. Something's breathing in there."
Leona leaned closer. The fog on the inner surface formed a faint spiral. As she watched, it condensed into two words written backward:
ASK HIM.
She recoiled slightly, heartbeat pounding. Caleb caught her elbow. "What?"
"It wrote," she said. "On the glass."
"What did it—"
"Ask him."
He froze. For the first time since she'd met him, certainty left his posture. "Ask who?"
The spiral vanished, replaced by a single fingerprint pressed from the inside.
Kemi swore softly. "All right. That's my cue."
Leona forced herself to look away. "We document, then we leave."
"Agreed," Caleb said quickly.
They snapped photos—angles, reflections, condensation patterns—anything the morning might erase. When she turned her camera off, the room seemed to breathe easier.
On their way out, Mahmoud paused at the threshold. "Do you hear that?"
Leona listened. Water trickled against the wall in deliberate rhythm—three beats, pause, two beats, pause. Like a code.
"Morse?" Kemi asked.
"No," Mahmoud said. "Heartbeat. Slower than ours."
Leona looked back once more. The silver frame stood perfectly still. Yet in the reflection of the shallow water, its image trembled slightly—as though something inside the glass had shifted weight.
Caleb locked the vault behind them. The key resisted this time, protesting in a low whine before releasing.
When the latch clicked, a small wisp of vapor escaped, curling toward Leona's hand before dissolving.
"What do we tell the Handler?" Kemi asked, voice low.
"Nothing," Leona said. "Not yet."
"She'll know we opened it."
"Then let her wonder what we found."
They climbed the stairs in silence. Every step carried the sound of dripping water—fainter now, as if the level below them had swallowed its own evidence.
By the time they reached the gate, dawn had begun to blue the horizon. The air outside was cold enough to bite.
Caleb stopped at the curb. "If that frame carries my signature—"
"You'll prove it didn't," Leona said.
"You think they'll listen?"
"I don't care if they do."
He smiled faintly. "Good. Because truth and auctions have never shared a roof."
She glanced at him. "You're shaking."
"I'm not."
He was. Just barely. Enough to make her reach out—then stop.
"We'll find who did this," she said softly.
"We'll find why," he corrected.
Behind them, the building exhaled one last warm gust through its broken vents. It smelled faintly of turpentine and river moss—the scent of things that never learned to stay buried.
Leona held the key between her palms, the red thread damp from sweat and rain.
"The Collector's Signature," she murmured. "What kind of artist signs with someone else's name?"
Caleb looked toward the horizon where sunlight fought through mist.
"The kind," he said, "who plans to be caught."