March 1807.
Edge of the northern quarantine sector.
Just before dawn.
The trees here did not move with the wind.
They simply stood, brittle and stiff — as if afraid to whisper.
Étienne stepped carefully through the tangle of brush along the old fort road, one hand resting lightly on the hilt of his knife, the other shielding his eyes from the rising mist. The wall to their left loomed higher than any city structure. Once whitewashed and crowned with watch towers, now it looked like a mausoleum for forgotten orders.
Margot followed in silence, her breath shallow. Jules walked behind them, his eyes not on the path, but on the wall itself — following something invisible, like a scent or a sound too quiet for grown ears.
No birds.
No carts.
No voices.
Even Paris, in its worst days, never felt so still.
The wall bent westward, and they found the entrance: a rusted iron gate, chained carelessly — too carelessly — as if made for display rather than defense. Margot pressed her fingers to the chain. It was warm.
> "Used," she said.
Étienne nodded.
Jules stepped forward and knelt near the hinges. The dirt was soft, disturbed — recent tracks, too uniform for animals.
He looked up.
> "They bring things here at night."
> "What kind of things?" Étienne asked.
Jules stood.
> "Things that stop making noise."
They moved through.
Beyond the gate lay a courtyard of cracked stone and frozen moss. To the left: a collapsed barracks. Ahead: a squat stone building with narrow windows, sealed by iron grates. A single lantern burned inside.
The wind shifted.
They all smelled it at once — sharp, chemical, wrong.
Not rot.
Not decay.
Something closer to sterility.
Like a hospital where nothing healed.
They circled wide, ducking low past shattered crates, their shapes blotted by shadow. Margot pointed to a wagon at the far end of the yard.
Its tarp was still tied down.
Étienne crept forward, unfastened one of the ropes, and peeled back the cover.
Bags of "stone dust," just like the manifest had said.
He untied one. Slid a hand in.
His fingers came back white.
But not chalk.
Not flour.
Something finer.
Something that stuck to skin and didn't want to let go.
He sniffed. Pulled back instantly.
> "Not edible."
> "What is it?" Margot whispered.
> "Binder. Industrial. Maybe corrosive."
Jules crouched beside them.
> "They put it in the sacks for Faubourg too. But only sometimes."
Margot looked toward the squat building again.
> "Then the real answers are inside."
They crept toward it.
One window had been cracked from the inside. Through it, they could see rows of tables, sealed crates, jars labeled with military tags, and two sets of gloves left folded beside surgical tools.
No guards. No sound.
Only the humming of something mechanical from the back room — a low, pulsing churn.
And just above the window, faintly etched into the stone by a fingernail or knife tip:
> "La Cendre regarde. Ne tousse pas."
"Ash watches. Don't cough."
Margot felt the chill before she saw Étienne shiver.
Not from cold.
But from the feeling that somewhere nearby,
someone was waiting for them to breathe too loud.
---
They slipped inside through the window like breath through broken glass.
The room smelled of alcohol, lime, and something less distinct — like cloth that had been boiled, dried, then boiled again. Every surface gleamed faintly in the lantern glow, not from cleanliness, but from layers of polish meant to hide what had happened there.
Étienne stepped first, crouching low, boots silent on the tiled floor. Margot followed, blade already drawn. Jules stayed near the wall, eyes scanning faster than either of them.
The main room was divided into two halves.
On the left: a workspace.
Steel trays. Bottles. Empty vials. A book open to a page labeled "Respiratory Load Calibration."
On the right: storage.
Crates stamped with the seal of the Ministry of Health. Some labeled with dates from last year, others with only numbers and symbols.
> "This isn't a lab," Margot murmured.
"It's a test site."
Étienne opened the book. The ink was smudged, but one phrase stood out clearly:
> "Dose 3-C yields silent pulmonary disintegration within 3–4 weeks, depending on body weight and ambient moisture."
He turned the page.
> "Children exhibit fastest onset. Minimal outward signs."
Margot clenched her jaw.
> "This is why the flour changes. They're not just disguising shortages. They're mapping reactions."
A thud echoed somewhere deeper in the building. Not close — but too close to ignore.
They froze.
Étienne motioned: stay here.
He slipped down the hallway, past a locked closet and a door marked with a red slash.
Behind it, the thudding came again — softer now. Almost like breathing.
He pushed the door open.
Darkness. And then — eyes.
Not his own.
Eyes behind a steel grate, inside a room with no bed, no furniture — only people.
Three of them. Two women. One man. Skin pale, hair matted, mouths slightly open but making no sound.
One of the women blinked, slowly. Then whispered.
> "They said it was medicine.
They said it would help us work longer."
Étienne knelt.
> "Who are you?"
> "Farmhands. From Rouen. Came to help in the city."
She coughed.
Dry. Hollow. White flecks stained her lips.
Margot appeared beside him. Her face had gone still, flat with fury.
> "We take them."
Étienne nodded.
> "Now."
---
They broke the lock. Carried one woman between them; the other two could walk, barely. Jules led the way back through the yard, around the edge of the wagon.
But as they reached the gate —
a sound.
Boots.
Too many.
Not soldiers.
Long black coats. Cloth masks. Silent.
They were fanned across the courtyard now, between the wagons and the gate. Their faces were hidden. Their movements, rehearsed.
One stepped forward. The voice was calm. Male.
> "You're stealing Imperial patients."
Étienne stood straighter.
> "They're prisoners."
> "They're statistics," the man replied. "And you're disrupting valuable numbers."
Margot hissed.
> "Try to stop us."
> "I won't," he said.
"But he might."
And from the fog beyond the wall, a figure limped into view — broad-shouldered, burned, his coat flapping like dead skin.
La Cendre.
He didn't raise a weapon.
He just stared.
> "Hello again, Étienne.
You went deeper.
You found the marrow.
How brave."
> "You're torturing the poor."
> "No," La Cendre said.
"I'm preparing the future."
He pointed one ruined hand at the coughing woman.
> "That is not a person.
That is a question.
And I'm trying to find the answer before your revolution writes it in blood."
Étienne didn't wait.
He turned, shouted:
> "RUN."
And the shadows erupted.
---
They ran.
Not for victory.
Not for glory.
For witnesses.
Étienne grabbed the coughing woman and hauled her onto his back, her breath rasping in his ear like broken glass. Margot took the other two, one on each arm, dragging more than guiding. Jules sprinted ahead, impossibly fast for a child, already scanning the route they'd memorized — the collapsed drain, the weak point in the wall, the opening in the earth that no one remembered but them.
Behind, the figures in black moved without shouting. No guns. No calls. Just the sharp, collective sound of pursuit — boots slapping wet stone, coats whipping like lashes.
And among them, the unmistakable rhythm of a limp.
La Cendre did not run.
He followed.
Like a man watching fire walk into his house — curious to see how far it would burn.
The mist thickened as they crossed into the dead orchard. Trees bent inward, branches like fingers. The coughing woman shook violently now, white foam gathering at the edge of her lips.
Étienne's strength was failing, but he didn't stop. Not while she breathed.
> "Thirty steps!" Jules called ahead.
"Then right — broken gate!"
They reached it.
A pile of fallen stone covered the escape route. Jules was already pulling loose bricks, his small hands bleeding.
Margot dropped one of the women beside him and joined, heaving the stones with ragged breath.
Étienne collapsed behind them, the coughing woman nearly weightless now. Too light. Her chest moved — once. Again. Then stopped.
He didn't say anything.
He just closed her eyes.
And stood.
> "We still bring the others out."
The last bricks came free.
A narrow gap, just enough.
Jules vanished through. Then one woman, then the next.
Margot turned back to Étienne.
> "You first—"
> "No. I'll cover."
But she didn't argue. Not because she agreed — but because she trusted.
She slipped through, and Étienne turned.
They were already there.
Five figures. Close now.
And in the middle, La Cendre.
Face half-shadowed. Eye glinting like frost.
> "You ran like a man carrying meaning," he said softly.
"But all you've got is pain."
Étienne didn't answer.
Didn't move.
He dropped a small vial from his coat pocket. Smashed it underfoot.
Flash. Smoke. Salt.
The world vanished.
By the time the air cleared, the gap was closed.
And La Cendre stood alone in the orchard, boots crunching over chalked soil.
He bent down. Picked up a dropped cloth from the woman's sleeve — white, stained red.
Folded it gently.
> "Your flame grows, Étienne," he whispered to the dark.
> "But ashes fall faster than fire rises."
And beneath the orchard,
as the tunnel collapsed behind them,
Étienne and the others crawled into breathless dark
with two survivors,
a ruined page of formulas,
and the memory of a woman
who died for a loaf she never touched.
---
The tunnel was narrow and wet. Each crawl forward scraped their knees raw, but no one complained.
Jules moved ahead with a practiced rhythm, lighting the way with a stolen oil lamp. The women followed behind, coughing into cloth. Margot kept glancing back toward Étienne, whose shoulders sagged not from exhaustion—but from the weight of what didn't make it through.
They reached the widening—a forgotten chamber beneath a collapsed aqueduct. Here, Adam's scouts had stashed supplies weeks ago: dry blankets, stale bread, a jug of clean water.
The survivors drank like they hadn't tasted water in years. One wept soundlessly.
Étienne sat down against the wall, arms resting over his knees. His coat was stained with white. Not chalk this time—lungdust.
Margot joined him.
> "She died before we even cleared the yard," she said.
He nodded.
> "They killed her a long time before that."
A long silence.
Then Margot whispered:
> "Do you think he let us go?"
Étienne didn't answer at first.
> "No.
He let the story go."
Margot turned to him.
> "You think La Cendre wants this seen?"
> "I think he wants us to spread the fire.
Because he believes he'll survive the burn."
> "And what if he's right?"
Étienne's jaw tightened.
> "Then we make sure the fire learns how to choose its direction."
---
An hour later, back in the central vault, Captain Adam read the page they'd recovered.
It was soaked, torn, blood-stained.
But the words were clear enough.
Dosages. Timeframes. Locations.
And a code scribbled in the corner:
"W-9: tested, not distributed."
> "This means," Adam said, "there's another batch. One they didn't release."
> "Or one they're waiting to use," Étienne added.
> "Where?" Margot asked.
> "We don't know," Adam said grimly. "But if this page exists... there are more."
He looked at the two survivors, now sleeping under wool.
> "We hide them. Deep. If Fouché finds out they're alive—"
> "He won't," Étienne cut in. "Not until it's too late."
Adam nodded.
> "Then we move. We gather every underground contact, every courier, every mole in the Ministry."
> "We're not leaking truths anymore."
He slammed a fist down on the stone table.
> "We're going to flood the city with them."
---
And far above,
in a ministry archive room painted gold and silence,
Fouché stood before a sealed envelope.
Inside: a report.
Missing flour.
A breach at the quarantine fort.
And three names circled in red.
He lit a candle. Burned the page to ash.
> "Let them think they've escaped."
> "A city cannot survive without blood in its gutters."
He turned to the map.
And pressed his finger to a sector labeled W-9.
> "We'll see who remembers first."
And down below,
Étienne was already planning
to make sure Paris never forgot again.