The café breathed in the quiet of evening—the kind of silence that lived beneath the gentle percussion of porcelain and the whisper of old jazz bleeding from a corner speaker. Rain and roasted coffee mingled in the air, warm and earthy.
Outside, the city wept. Streets turned to mirrors, catching neon in their glassy surfaces.
Elijah hunched over his laptop in the corner booth, his face carved from shadow and screen-light. Nearly an hour now—two coffee refills and counting. Long enough for the storm outside to seep into his thoughts, blurring the edges between weather and static.
His screen was alive with shifting code. Green text climbed upward like luminous veins, pulsing with data pulled from somewhere deep in Crestwood's police network.
Three nights ago, he'd planted the malware himself. Walked right into the police server center with a corrupted drive and the kind of nerve that made locked doors feel like suggestions. Patience and timing—that's all it took. Well, that and the absolute certainty that you belonged wherever you decided to be.
Now, finally, it was bearing fruit.
**ACCESS GRANTED: Police Database - Internal Investigations Division.**
A ghost of a smile touched his mouth. "Finally."
His fingers found their rhythm on the keys, typing in filters with practiced ease. He wasn't fishing—he knew exactly what he was hunting for. Genevieve Gray, Crestwood's newly minted police chief. Word on the wire said she was already neck-deep in the Azaqor killings, those ritual murders that defied explanation. Elijah didn't deal in rumors. He needed hard proof.
The cursor blinked once, lazy and certain. Then the text appeared.
**Subject: Azaqor Case – Identity Pattern**
**Author: Chief Genevieve Gray**
**Summary: Preliminary data alignment suggests a 73% probability that Lucien Drayke and the Azaqor Entity are the same individual.**
Elijah went still. His expression remained neutral, carved from stone, but his heart kicked against his ribs like it was trying to escape.
"So she knows." The words barely made it past his lips. "She's already seen the connection."
He leaned back, the chair creaking softly, and began copying the file. Four layers of encryption, buried in false directories that led nowhere. The screen's glow caught in his eyes—cold, sharp, calculating.
That's when he noticed her.
The waitress. She'd passed by before, but now she lingered closer—just a breath away from his table, tray balanced perfectly on one hand. Auburn hair swept into a neat knot. Professional smile.
"Refill?" Her voice was smooth as cream, friendly enough.
Elijah glanced up, meeting her eyes for half a second. "No, I'm good. Thanks."
She smiled—held it a beat too long—and her gaze dipped to his laptop before she turned away. Her footsteps faded into the ambient noise of the café.
Probably nothing. Just a waitress doing her job.
Still, something about the way she moved made his instincts prickle. Too precise, too measured. Like she was listening for something beyond the music.
He dismissed the thought and returned to his work.
Minutes crawled by. The café maintained its gentle rhythm. Rain tapped secrets against the windows. Then—a disruption. The cursor stuttered mid-blink. One of his monitoring windows flashed red before snapping back to green.
Elijah's frown was immediate. A glitch? He checked the connection log. Steady.
But the laptop fan had developed a new sound—a high-pitched whine that didn't belong.
He didn't like that sound at all.
His fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up the diagnostic panel. There—a foreign signal had slipped into the local frequency. A short-range wireless.