Chapter 6 The purple haze didn't just drift; it curdled. It clung to Kaelen’s lungs like wet wool, tasting of pennies and battery acid. Every step through the knee-high mist felt like wading through a river of cold honey, a viscous resistance that threatened to pull the boots right off his feet. He adjusted the heavy leather glove on his right hand, the hide creaking under the strain of his swelling limb. Beneath the cured skin, the weight was rigid and unyielding, a literal anchor of petrified flesh. The calcification had claimed his mid-forearm, turning muscle to granite and marrow to violet-veined quartz. It radiated a dull, thrumming heat that synced with his frantic pulse, a rhythmic reminder of the debt he was accruing. "One. Two. Three," Kaelen whispered. He counted the seconds between heartbeats to anchor himself. It was a technician’s habit, a way to measure the erosion of his own humanity against the steady decay of the world. Around him, the Sump breathed—a dumping ground for the Alchemist Guild’s violet-tinged runoff. It was a graveyard of discarded moments and failed experiments, where the air smelled of scorched ozone and overripe peaches. Somewhere in the gloom, a clock ticked backward. The sound was hollow, a metallic echo that seemed to come from the very marrow of the rusted pipes surrounding him. "Late, Auditor," a voice rasped. Vane stepped from behind a rusted turbine, the metal groaning as he shifted his weight. The scavenger was a patchwork of survival gear, his silhouette blurred by the shimmering, oily sheen of the silt that hung in the air like suspended dust. A respirator fashioned from a cracked Guild filter wheezed with every breath he took, the rubber mask stained with the same violet residue that coated the floor. He balanced a ceramic canister in one hand, the surface etched with the Guild’s interlocking gear sigil. Kaelen’s eyes locked on it. The stabilizer. Elara’s memories were dissolving into static, a slow-motion erasure of her very soul, and that canister was the only thing capable of stopping the bleed. He could almost feel the weight of her fading smile, a ghost of a memory that he was desperate to preserve. "The silt is thick," Kaelen said. His words were clipped, forced through teeth that felt like they were vibrating. "Movement is difficult. The entropy here is... non-linear." Vane spat a glob of dark phlegm into the mist. "Efficiency. You talk like a machine, Kaelen. Or what’s left of one. I heard the Mortuary was cold, but you look like you’ve been sitting in the freezer for a decade." "I am a technician. I deal in constants." Kaelen reached into his satchel with his left hand, pulling out a brass-bound Guild chronometer. Complex webs of interlocking gears and crystal escapements caught the dim light, reflecting the violet haze in a thousand fractured shards. "The trade was for a Tier-Four. This is accurate to a micro-second. It has been recalibrated to ignore the local drift." Vane didn't reach for it. He circled Kaelen, his boots crunching on metallic debris that sounded like breaking bone. His eyes tracked the way the Auditor’s right arm hung stiffly at his side, a dead weight that Kaelen couldn't quite hide. "Functional for who? I touch that, the Spirit Signature flags my biometrics. The Guild Enforcers will have my head before the next bells chime. I’m a scavenger, Kaelen, not a martyr." "I bypassed the resonance." Kaelen’s tongue sharpened with the taste of copper, a metallic tang that signaled the onset of a Synaptic Bleed. "It’s a mechanical fix. The signature is dormant. It won't wake unless you try to meld with the core." "Show me," Vane demanded, pointing to a patch of clear air near a collapsed boiler. "Clear the field. Prove the gears aren't just grinding air." Kaelen knelt. His knees popped like dry twigs, the sound echoing in the stagnant silence of the Sump. He laid the chronometer on a flat piece of scrap metal where the light seemed to fracture in the stagnant air. He reached for a precision screwdriver tucked into his belt, but his right hand remained a leaden weight. The leather of his glove stretched tight over violet-veined stone, the texture beneath the hide feeling like coarse sandpaper. He forced his left hand to work. It was clumsy, the fingers trembling as he struggled to align the tiny tool with the brass screws. The smell of scorched ozone rose from the device, a sharp, electric scent that made his eyes water. "One. Two. Three. Four," he counted, his voice a low hum. A rhythmic, metallic clack-hiss began to fight the local entropy. A ripple moved through the air, like a stone dropped into a pond of glass. The violet fog retreated, clearing a three-foot circle of absolute clarity. Inside that ring, the world looked sharp. Real. The rust on the pipes was no longer a blur; it was a jagged, crimson landscape. The ticking of the clock in the distance seemed to align with the chronometer’s heartbeat. "It holds," Kaelen whispered. He reached for the screwdriver to tighten the final tension screw, but his stone arm jerked. A spike of agony shot from his elbow to his shoulder, a white-hot needle of pain. The tool clattered against the metal, sliding into the silt with a soft splash. "You're rotting," Vane said, his voice dropping an octave. There was no pity in his tone, only the cold calculation of a man looking at a dying animal. "That purple rot—it’s the debt coming due. How many memories did you distill to stay upright? How much of yourself did you pour into those pills?" "A workplace injury." Kaelen stood, his breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches. The copper taste was overwhelming now, a thick coating on the back of his throat. "The stabilizer. Now. We had an agreement." Vane stepped forward, holding the canister out. The ceramic felt cold even from a distance. As Kaelen reached with his left hand, Vane’s fingers shot out with the speed of a striking viper and gripped Kaelen’s right wrist. The scavenger’s grip tightened on the leather glove, squeezing the petrified limb. He didn't find the soft resistance of flesh or the snap of bone. He found the unyielding, sandpaper texture of the stone beneath. Vane’s eyes widened, the pupils dilating until they were thin rings of gold. "This isn't a tremor. You're turning into a statue. You're a Hollowed-in-waiting, Vance. A walking corpse with a Guild badge." "Let go." Kaelen pulled, but the weight of his own arm anchored him to the spot. He felt the stone pulse, a violet light beginning to seep through the seams of the leather glove. "The deal is for the clock. Take it and leave." "I wondered why a Guild-bred high-flyer was down here in the muck," Vane hissed, his breath smelling of stale tobacco and filtered air. "You're scavenging for your own life. And you’re carrying the good stuff, aren't you? The high-grade essence that turns the clock back. The stuff they don't give to the dregs." "I have nothing but the trade." Kaelen’s chest felt heavy with the lie, a physical pressure that made it hard to breathe. He never lied about time—it was the only thing that was honest in this world—but for Elara, he would rewrite the stars and lie to the gods themselves. "Liar." Vane whistled, a sharp, piercing sound that cut through the low hum of the Sump. Two figures emerged from the shadows of the rusted boilers, their movements fluid and predatory. They were lean and hungry, the kind of men who lived on the margins of the Still. One held a length of rusted pipe that dripped with oily condensation; the other balanced a ceramic blade that seemed to drink the dim light. Kaelen backed away until his heels hit the vibrating skin of a turbine. The air felt heavier, pressing against him like a physical blow. The copper taste became overwhelming—the Synaptic Bleed was flaring, a storm of stolen thoughts beginning to swirl at the edges of his consciousness. "The pouch, Auditor," Vane said, his voice smooth and dangerous. "Give me the Time-Shards. I can smell the mother-memory on you. Sweet, like lilies in a summer rain. That’s pure source, isn't it?" "They are not for sale." Kaelen tucked his right arm close to his chest, shielding the leather pouch at his belt. The stone was throbbing now, a deep, bone-aching heat that made his vision swim. "Everything is a commodity here. Even the things you think you own." The man with the pipe swung. Kaelen ducked, the metal whistling inches above his scalp with a sound like a indrawn breath. He kicked a pressure valve on the turbine, his boot connecting with the heavy iron handle. A high-pitched scream of escaping steam erupted, white plumes hissing into the silt and creating a momentary wall of heat. Kaelen lunged through the cloud, his eyes stinging from the moisture. He needed the perimeter. He needed higher ground. His calcified arm threw off his balance, the weight pulling him to the right like a heavy pendulum. He stumbled, his shoulder slamming into a rusted pillar with a dull thud. A hand grabbed his hair, yanking his head back with brutal force. The cold, oily press of the pipe hit his throat, cutting off his air. "Don't move," the scavenger hissed in his ear. Vane stepped through the steam, his silhouette appearing like a ghost in the white mist. He didn't look at the chronometer lying on the scrap metal. He didn't look at Kaelen’s face. His eyes were fixed on the pouch, his gaze hungry and desperate. "You think you're saving someone," Vane said, his voice mockingly soft, almost a whisper. "But you're just feeding a ghost. Once the memory is in the pill, the person is gone. You're just keeping a shell warm." "You know nothing," Kaelen spat, the words tasting of blood. Vane sliced the pouch free with a single, practiced motion of his ceramic blade. The sudden lightness at Kaelen’s hip felt like a limb being severed, a phantom pain that radiated through his core. He lunged, a primal sound tearing from his throat, but the pipe slammed him back against the pillar, the air leaving his lungs in a sharp wheeze. "Look at him," Vane said, holding the pouch up to the dim light. He pulled out a single, shimmering pill. It glowed with a soft, golden light—the memory of a summer afternoon, of laughter and the smell of sun-warmed grass. "This is worth a hundred chronometers. The Guild pays a premium for 'Pure Source' essence. They don't care about the tools; they care about the fuel." "Please," Kaelen whispered. The word was ash in his mouth. That pill was Elara’s first step. Her first word. The memory of their mother’s face before the Still took her. Vane smiled, a jagged expression that didn't reach his eyes. "You're a fixer, Vance. So fix this." He tossed the pouch to an associate and backed into the silt, his form beginning to dissolve into the purple haze. The men released Kaelen, shoving him into the dirt with a final, contemptuous grunt. Kaelen scrambled to his feet, gasping for air, his hands clawing at the metallic silt. "Wait!" Vane stopped at the edge of the fog, the light of the chronometer casting a long, distorted shadow behind him. He flicked something toward Kaelen. It bounced off the scrap metal with a tiny, musical chime and rolled to a stop near Kaelen’s hand. An empty pill casing. "That one was the best," Vane called out, his voice fading into the distance. "The one you reserved for the very end. Tasted like sunlight. Too bad she'll never know. Too bad you'll forget why you're even crying." Kaelen picked up the casing. It was cold, the surface smooth and devoid of any warmth. The golden light was gone, replaced by a dull, hollow gray that seemed to suck the color from his own skin. He stared at it, his vision blurring. The memory was gone—not just from the pill, but from the world. He couldn't remember the laugh. He couldn't remember the sunlight. He only knew the shape of the hole it left behind, a jagged void in his mind that pulsed with a dull, phantom ache. "Kaelen?" Rhea Solis stepped into the clearing, her rifle held low but her finger resting on the trigger guard. She scanned the steam and the discarded chronometer before finding Kaelen huddled on the ground, his hand clenched around the empty casing. "¡Mierda!" she swore, the word sharp and jagged. She moved toward him, her boots crunching on metallic debris with a rhythmic, heavy sound. "What happened? Where's Vane? I heard the steam release from the ridge." Kaelen didn't look up. He closed his hand over the empty casing, the edges biting into his palm. "He took them." Rhea stopped, her frame tensing like a coiled spring. Her face hardened, the lines of exhaustion and vigilance deepening. She looked at his right arm, where the torn leather of his glove revealed a sliver of violet-veined stone, pulsing with a sick, rhythmic light. "He took the Shards? All of them? The ones for Elara?" "Yes." "Why didn't you use the Resonance?" she demanded, her voice rising in pitch. She knelt beside him, her hand hovering over his shoulder but never quite touching him. "You’re an Auditor. You could have burned their minds out. You could have turned their brains to slag before they even touched the pouch." Kaelen looked at her, and for a moment, she saw the sheer terror behind his technical mask. His eyes were bloodshot, the veins in his sclera turning a faint, haunting purple. "I couldn't. The limit... I'm too close to the edge, Rhea. If I had melded with them, I wouldn't have come back. I would have become the Sump. I would have become the Still." Rhea’s jaw tightened, her teeth grinding together. She stood up, her movements jerky and full of repressed anger. "You lied to me. You said you were stable. You said you had months before the calcification hit the elbow." "I had to fix the clock," Kaelen said, his voice cracking like dry parchment. "A device should not be broken. The entropy... it was winning. I had to show him it worked." "To hell with the clock!" Rhea kicked a piece of scrap metal, sending it clattering into the darkness. "We needed those pills for Elara. She’s going to forget who you are, Kaelen. She’s going to forget who she is. She’ll be a ghost in a dress, and you’ll be a statue watching her fade." "I know," Kaelen said, his voice a hollow whisper. He looked at the chronometer, still ticking in its circle of clear air, a small island of order in a sea of chaos. "Seven days. Six hours. Fourteen minutes. That’s how much time she has left before the decay becomes irreversible." "You’re missing the point, Kaelen." Rhea’s anger softened into something sharper and more painful: pity. She looked at the horizon, where the Guild Spire pierced the gray, stagnant sky like a needle in a vein. "Vane didn't just stumble onto you. He’s a scavenger, not a strategist. He knew what you were carrying. He knew exactly which pocket held the Shards." Kaelen froze, the empty pill casing falling from his numb fingers. "What?" "Scavengers don't know essence types by smell, no matter what that rat says," Rhea said, her eyes narrowing. "Someone who knows your sister tipped him off. Someone who knows exactly what you’ve been distilling in that basement. Someone who knows your biometric signature." Kaelen stood, his legs shaking under the weight of his own body. The realization washed over him, colder than the silt of the Sump. Vane hadn't been trading for a chronometer. He’d been performing a task, a calculated extraction of a rogue asset’s resources. "Sterling," Kaelen whispered, the name feeling like a curse. "The Guild doesn't let go of its assets," Rhea said, her voice low and dangerous. "They don't want the pills back for the medicine. They want you broken. They want you to realize that there is no escape from the ledger." Kaelen looked at his stone arm. The violet light was spreading—a slow, inexorable tide that was already creeping toward his elbow. "We have to go," Rhea said, grabbing his good arm and pulling him toward the edge of the clearing. "The Enforcers will be here soon. They always follow the smell of a broken deal." Kaelen didn't move. He looked at the chronometer, its brass gears still spinning with a beautiful, tragic precision. "I can't leave it." "Kaelen, leave the damn clock! It’s a beacon!" "It is functional," he insisted, his voice rising with a desperate, frantic energy. "If I leave it, the silt will get into the gears. The entropy will warp the crystal. It will become part of the Sump, Rhea. I can't let another thing break." He picked up the device with his left hand. It felt like a leaden burden, a weight that had nothing to do with gravity. He tucked it into his satchel, his movements slow and deliberate, as if he were trying to outrun the very air. "One. Two. Three," he whispered. "You're turning into one of them," Rhea said, her voice full of quiet horror as she watched him. "One of those things that only cares about the rhythm. One of the Hollowed who would watch the world burn as long as the bells rang on time." "I see the patterns," Kaelen said, his eyes unfocused. "The world is just a series of gears, Rhea. And someone has thrown sand into the works." He dropped the empty pill casing into the silt. It disappeared instantly, swallowed by the purple haze as if it had never existed. "We need to find Vane." "He’s halfway to the Aurelian Gate by now. He’s got friends in high places, or at least friends who want what he’s carrying." "Then we go to the Gate." Kaelen started walking, his right arm swinging like a heavy pendulum, his gait lopsided. "He has the memories. They are not his to sell. They are Elara’s life." Rhea followed him, her rifle held tight against her chest. "And if he’s already sold them? If they’ve been consumed by some high-tier Auditor who wants to remember what it feels like to be young? You can't un-eat a memory, Kaelen." Kaelen stopped, but he didn't turn. If the pills were gone, Elara’s mother would be a hole in her mind, a jagged gap filled with the gray static of the Still. She would look at the photos and see strangers. She would hear the songs and hear only noise. "Then I will find the person who bought them," Kaelen said, his voice dropping to a low, vibrating growl. "And I will take them back. I will reach into their mind and pull the light out of their eyes." "You can't take back a memory that’s been distilled. You know the Law of Irreversibility. Once it's gone, it's gone." "I can take back the time." He began to count again, his voice a rhythmic mantra that drowned out the sound of the Sump. One. Two. Three. Every heartbeat was a step toward the stone, a step toward the end of his own story. As they climbed the ridge, leaving the Sump behind, the smell of rotting peaches faded, replaced by the sterile, metallic scent of the upper districts. Kaelen’s arm throbbed—a deep, bone-aching pain that felt like his marrow was being replaced by molten lead. "Rhea," he said, his voice a mere whisper that barely carried in the thin air. "Yeah?" "How much do you remember about your parents? Really remember? Not just the stories you tell yourself." Rhea stiffened, her shoulders hunching. She tightened her grip on her rifle until her knuckles were white. "I don't talk about them. You know the rules." "Is it because you don't want to?" Kaelen asked, his gaze fixed on the glowing Spire in the distance. "Or because you can't? Because the details are... blurry? Like a painting left in the rain?" Rhea stopped in her tracks. She turned to face him, her eyes burning with a mixture of rage and a sudden, sharp fear. "What is that supposed to mean, Auditor? You think you’re the only one who’s lost things?" "The Guild," Kaelen said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "They don't just take the memories of the donors. They take the echoes. They take the people who remember the donors. It’s the only way to make the distillation pure. They have to erase the witness to make the lie true." Rhea’s face went pale, the color draining from her cheeks until she looked like a ghost herself. She looked away, her gaze wandering to the ruins of the lower city. "I remember a smell. Like rain on hot stone. And a song... something about a bird with silver wings. But I don't know who sang it. I can't see the face. Every time I try, it’s like looking into a mirror made of smoke." "They took them," Kaelen said. "They are building a world of ghosts where only the clock remains. And the clock doesn't care who is watching the time pass." He turned and continued up the path, his stone arm pulling him toward the earth. The ruins of an old clocktower loomed ahead, its hands frozen at twelve minutes past midnight, a jagged monument to the moment the world stopped. Kaelen paused, resting his good hand on the cold stone of the tower’s base. He tried to remember his mother’s face, to find the curve of her jaw or the color of her eyes. Nothing. Only the gray static. Only the sound of his own counting. "Kaelen!" Rhea called from further up the ridge. He ignored her, his focus shifting to the shadows in the distance. A group of figures moved toward the Aurelian Gate, their movements fast and efficient. They didn't have the ragged gait of scavengers; they carried the unmistakable aura of the Guild—the precise, measured strides of men who knew exactly how many seconds they had left. Kaelen reached into his satchel and touched the chronometer. The gears were warm, pulsing with a heat that matched the thrumming in his arm. He pulled the precision screwdriver from his belt and began to turn the tension screw, his fingers moving with a frantic, desperate grace. He wasn't fixing it. He was over-winding it, forcing the spring beyond its mechanical limits. The clack-hiss grew louder, a frantic heartbeat that seemed to shake the very air. The violet light from his arm bled into the brass casing, the metal beginning to glow with an incandescent, sickly radiance. "What are you doing?" Rhea asked, reaching him and seeing the glow. Her eyes widened in terror. "Kaelen, stop! You'll trigger a Bleed! You'll melt your own brain!" "I am recalibrating the local frequency," Kaelen said, his voice sounding like it was coming from a great distance. "You're going to kill yourself! You're going to turn into a Time-Echo!" "The time is not right." Kaelen looked at her, and for the first time, the precision of the Auditor was gone, replaced by a raw, desperate humanity that was more terrifying than the stone. "The clock is wrong, Rhea. The whole world is out of sync. I have to fix it. I have to make it stop." He turned the screw one last time, feeling the internal spring snap with a sound like a gunshot. The chronometer’s crystal spiderwebbed, a thousand tiny fractures appearing in an instant. A wave of violet energy erupted from the device, a pulse of temporal force that knocked Rhea back, her rifle clattering to the stones. Kaelen stood in the center of the ripple, his stone arm glowing with a light so bright it was blinding. He was the frequency. He was the anchor. He was the point where the world and the machine became one. And for the first time in his life, he wasn't counting. The world blurred. The ruins of the tower stretched like liquid, the stones flowing like wax. The figures at the Aurelian Gate slowed, their movements becoming sluggish until they were frozen in mid-stride, statues of flesh and bone. Vane was there, caught in the edge of the field, his face twisted in a mask of terror as he looked back at the wave of light reaching for him. He was holding the pouch, his fingers frozen around the leather. Kaelen stepped forward. He didn't feel the weight of the stone. He didn't feel the copper in his throat. He felt only the rhythm, the heartbeat of a world that had been paused. "Give them back," Kaelen whispered. His voice traveled through the frozen air, echoing in the minds of the men like a bell tolling in a cathedral. Vane’s hand began to shake, the temporal stasis fighting the command. The pouch slipped from his fingers, falling in slow motion, a dark shape drifting through the violet light. Kaelen reached out, his stone fingers inches from the leather. A new sound cut through the silence—the melodic, chilling cadence of silver bells. "Such a waste of potential, Asset 402." Kaelen froze, his heart stopping in his chest. The violet light flickered, the intensity of the field beginning to wane. The temporal force was being suppressed, pushed back by a superior resonance that felt like ice water in his veins. Alistair Sterling stepped from the shadow of the Gate, his crimson robes drinking the light, his movements fluid and unaffected by the stasis. "You were always so meticulous, Kaelen," Sterling said, his voice a smooth, melodic baritone that seemed to vibrate in Kaelen’s very bones. "It is a shame to see you resort to such... crude methods. Over-winding a Tier-Four? It’s like using a Stradivarius to drive a nail." Sterling seemed to float above the silt, his boots never quite touching the ground. He looked at the pouch hanging in the air, then at Kaelen’s arm, his eyes full of a predatory curiosity. "The rot has progressed faster than the ledgers predicted," Sterling noted, a hint of mock disappointment in his tone. "You are becoming the very thing you sought to master, Kaelen. You are becoming the fuel." "Where are they?" Kaelen rasped, his voice failing him. Sterling smiled, a slow, elegant movement of his lips. He caught the pouch with his fingertips, his touch light and reverent. "They are being processed. Returned to the Source to maintain the equilibrium of the city. You cannot keep what does not belong to you, Asset." "They are Elara’s. They are her life." "They are the Guild’s," Sterling corrected, his voice hardening just a fraction. "Everything is. Every breath you take, every memory you cherish—it is all property of the state. Even your sister’s decay is a resource to be managed." Sterling looked at the broken chronometer in Kaelen’s satchel and sighed, a sound like wind through dead leaves. "You broke a Tier-Four. Do you have any idea how difficult those are to manufacture? How many souls it takes to calibrate the escapement?" "I can fix it," Kaelen said, the instinct rising in him even now, a desperate need for order. "No," Sterling said, stepping closer until Kaelen could smell the scent of ancient dust and expensive incense. "Some things are meant to stay broken, Kaelen. Some things are more valuable as fragments." Sterling waved a hand, a casual gesture that shattered the stasis field like glass. The world rushed back in a violent, sickening surge of motion. Vane and his associates stumbled, gasping for air as the silt flooded their lungs. Rhea cried out as the gravity returned, her body slamming into the hard ground. "Take the Asset to the Mortuary," Sterling commanded, his voice echoing off the ruins. "No!" Rhea fired her rifle, the crack of the shot echoing through the ridge. The bullet traveled only a few feet before it stopped, suspended in a ripple of air inches from Sterling’s face. He flicked his wrist, and the projectile flew back with twice the speed, forcing Rhea to dive for cover as the lead slammed into the stone tower, sending a shower of sparks into the air. Kaelen tried to move, but his arm was lead again, a crushing weight that pinned him to the spot. A spike of agony hit his head, a blinding flash of white light. "One. Two. Three," he tried to count, but the numbers were slipping away. "The three hundred seconds are up, Kaelen," Sterling whispered in his ear, his breath cold against Kaelen’s skin. "The Bleed has begun. The Resonance Limit has been breached. Tell me... whose memories are you feeling right now? Is it your mother’s? Or is it mine?" Kaelen looked up, his vision swimming. For a second, the mask of the Alchemist slipped, and Kaelen didn't see a monster. He saw a reflection of his own obsession, a man who had traded everything for a moment of perfect control. "I... I don't know," Kaelen whispered, the words disappearing into the static. "Good," Sterling said, his voice a melodic purr. "That is the first step toward enlightenment. Forget the boy, Kaelen. Become the Auditor." Sterling walked toward the gate, the pouch of Elara’s memories swinging at his side like a trophy. Vane and the other scavengers, now cowed and silent, grabbed Kaelen’s arms. He didn't fight them. His mind was a whirlpool of voices that weren't his own, a chorus of stolen lives screaming in the dark. As they dragged him away, his boots carving furrows in the silt, he saw the chronometer lying in the dirt. The crystal was shattered. The gears were exposed to the elements, the delicate brass turning dull in the violet haze. Clack. Hiss. Stop. Kaelen closed his eyes, but even in the darkness, a whisper came from the deep static of his mind, a voice that sounded like his sister but spoke with the weight of centuries. "Who was the first?" the voice asked. Kaelen didn't have an answer. He only had the cold weight of the stone spreading through his chest, and the knowledge that the clock had finally run out. The last thing he felt was the sharp edge of a single, empty pill casing being pressed into his hand by the scavenger, a final, cruel reminder of what had been lost. Then, there was only the Still, and the sound of a heart that no longer knew how to count.