The brass key was cold in Foster's palm, a tiny, heavy secret. He had finished crafting it late into the night, the scrape of the file a counterpoint to the city's distant hum. Now, it lay in his pocket alongside his police whistle, two tools for two different kinds of lock.
He was at the station early, hoping for a quiet moment to think. The wax impression was safely destroyed. The original key was logged back into evidence. All that remained was his duplicate and the question of what it opened.
He pulled the Davidson file, not for the crime scene photos or the witness statements, but for the evidence log. He found the photograph of the bone chip, ○ 卄 ○.
He laid his notebook beside it, open to a fresh page. He drew the key. Then, almost without thinking, his hand moved again, sketching the ornate ventilation grate from outside the Aethelstan Club—the line bisecting waves.
He stared at the three images:
A key from a mugger near the alley. A bone chip on a victim in the alley. A symbol on a grate near a building he desperately wanted to enter.
They were points on a map, but the lines connecting them were invisible.
A sudden, sharp pain lanced through his temple. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut.
—the smell of rain on hot pavement, not cobblestone, the shriek of tires, a woman's laugh, cut short—
The memory was a physical blow, vivid and alien. It was a flash of a world of asphalt and cars, a world he knew was Andrew's. It lasted only a second, leaving him dizzy, his knuckles white where he gripped the edge of his desk.
"Ambrose. You're pale."
He looked up, his vision swimming slightly. Lieutenant Martha Holmes was standing over him, her gaze analytical.
"Just a headache." he managed, closing his notebook to cover the drawings.
"Hmph. See that it doesn't interfere with your duties. The report on the factory assaults is due by noon." She didn't wait for a reply, moving on to her next task.
Foster took a steadying breath. The memories were becoming more frequent and more intense. They weren't just feelings anymore, they were sensory invasions. He needed to get a grip.
He was Foster Ambrose. He had a job to do.
The day passed in a blur of paperwork and routine inquiries. He finished the assault report, his mind only half on the words.
—
That evening, he found Ortego in the living room, frowning at a complicated looking school project—a model of the city's steam-and-hydraulic power grid, made of wire and painted wood.
"This is impossible," Ortego groaned. "I don't understand how the pressure regulators are supposed to work."
Foster looked at the model. Without thinking, his hand reached out, his fingers instinctively adjusting a misaligned valve connection.
"See, the primary feed has to be here, otherwise the backflow will cause a pressure drop in the secondary system." he heard himself say. The words, the knowledge, felt like they came from a deep well within Foster Ambrose.
Ortego stared at him, his frustration replaced by surprise. "Since when do you know about hydraulic engineering?"
Foster froze, his hand still on the model. The knowledge was there, clear and precise, and it wasn't his. It was another ghost, another piece of the man whose life he'd stolen. "I… I must have read it somewhere." he mumbled, pulling his hand back as if burned.
He retreated to the kitchen, his heart thumping. The intrusions were getting worse. They weren't just memories of Andrew's life, they were skills and knowledge from Foster's own, resurfacing sharply. He was like two men written on the same page, and the ink was starting to blur.
He needed an anchor. Something that was solely his.
He went upstairs and opened the desk drawer. There it was, nestled under a stack of blank paper.
The blood-stained notebook.
He didn't take it out, he just looked at the dark, rust-colored blotch seeping through the cover. This was his truth. His deaths. His point of origin in this chaos.
The sight of it calmed him. It was a horror, but it was his horror.
He closed the drawer and took out his own, clean notebook. He opened it to the page with the key and the symbols. He was the investigator. He was the craftsman. He was the point where these two broken lives intersected.
However disorienting, Foster's knowledge was a tool. Andrew's perspective was a lens.
He looked at the drawing of the key. Albright the Locksmith. Regent and Sycamore.
First, he would find what this key opened. Then, with the money steadily growing in the geography book, he would buy his way into the Aethelstan Club. He would use every tool, every ghost, and every borrowed skill at his disposal.
He was no longer just trying to survive the mystery. He was going to study it.