Rainwater dripped down the fire escape's corroded railings, the metallic tang of rust mixing with engine oil as Ayla adjusted her soaked canvas bag. The puddle on the eighth step reflected a distorted version of herself, like a pencil sketch hastily erased.
"Max said there's an umbrella rack by the north entrance," Lila's voice crackled through the phone, background hisses of airbrushes painting her studio chaos. "Or wait—I'll steal an X-Acto knife to pry off a trash can lid as your shield?"
Ayla's chuckle bounced off peeling concrete walls. She was swiping her keycard at the service entrance when a half-buried sketchpad page caught her eye in the thirteenth step's crevice. Water had smudged the pencil lines, but the jagged strokes defining the wolf's ears made her fingers tremble—the exact technique from her high school days, obsessively layering 2B graphite.
The motion sensor light died. When her phone flashlight hit the paper, she noticed a charred hole in the lower right corner reeking of silver nitrate. As she lifted the page with Lucas's silver bookmark, tiny black crystals clung to the metal like iron filings to a magnet.
"Jesus wept..." Her whisper dissolved into damp air, fingernails scraping rust from the handrail. Footsteps echoed above—slow, dragging, favoring the right leg. Icy rainwater seeped through her Converse soles, crawling up her spine.
The rooftop storm washed the city into a blurry charcoal sketch. Ayla pushed dripping hair from her eyes as a gray hoodie vanished behind ventilation ducts. She stumbled over shattered terracotta pots, ceramic shards embedding in her palms, until clutching the sweatshirt snagged on chain-link fencing.
A broken crimson wax pencil fell from the pocket, her initials carved into the wood. Kneeling in the downpour, Ayla found only strands of silver-gray hair in the fabric's depths. The strands shimmered metallically under her phone light, smelling of familiar motor oil—like the stains on Lucas's sleeves after fixing his motorcycle.
"What fucking game are you playing?" Her scream fractured in the gale. Lightning split the sky, reflecting phantom images on office towers: her teenage sketchbook floating midair, rain-soaked pages restoring themselves.
Back in the fire escape, the wolf sketch had vanished. Fluorescent blue droplets hardened into tiny paw prints on the steps. As she swabbed samples, pencil scratches echoed from above—that same rhythmic whisper from high school study halls when she'd secretly drawn Lucas's profile.
Max's midnight call interrupted her UV scan of the hair. "Medullary traces of methamphetamine," he paused, "and antifreeze exclusive to Neumann labs."
Ayla yanked open her old sketchbook. On the page dated November 5, 2015, invisible ink now revealed schematics where a campus fountain once stood—the exact blueprint of the silver wolf sigil on Lucas's nape.
Metal screeched through the storm's roar. When she ripped back the curtains, a half-faded shoe print glistened on the fire escape, its tread pattern matching the ceramic shards from the rooftop.