It was God.
His jaw flexed. He stayed where he was, half-hidden behind rust and shadow. "You're not supposed to talk to me outside," he said, just loud enough for the nearest speaker to catch. "You like me alone."
"All the best conversations happen in public, when no one thinks they're part of it," the voice answered, shifting from masculine to feminine to something in between without pausing. A ripple passed through the eyes, lids fluttering. "Consider this… an announcement."
Across the street, the creatures had gone still. They didn't look toward the screens. They tilted their heads in a slow, listening motion, like dogs hearing a pitch humans couldn't.
Lucian didn't look away from the glass. "Announcement?"
"Yes." The voice warmed, as if pleased by his cooperation. "Names are important. Humans like to have them. It makes fear easier to point at." Every screen blinked in unison, pupils contracting. "The scientists who named those ones—" the eyes shifted toward the pole clingers "—call themCacophis. A tidy taxonomy. Accurate enough."
Lucian filed the word away under things that matter later. "And you?"
"I call them The Choir." The voice smiled without sound. "They sing. They gather. They follow the thrum of a conductor you've already met."
He felt the Totem's weight without touching it. "The tower."
"The Totem," the voice corrected, enjoying the word as if tasting it. "While it sat where it was told, it kept the Choir clustered, half-sleeping, half-waiting. Now that you've moved it, they are… curious."
"I didn't move anything."
"Mm." The screens flickered. Then, one by one, they bled together, merging into a single massive screen across the storefront.
The uncanny eye grew until it filled the whole glass front, wide and inescapable, the lashes long enough to cast shadows of their own. It dilated, then shrank to a pinprick, then dilated again. Lucian could almost feel its gaze pressing against his skin.
The eye seemed to focus its gaze as if it could peer around his lie and find the truth behind it.
"Then perhaps curiosity is simply a contagion. It spreads quickly." The pitch of the voice dropped, grew intimate. "You will see them again. Many times. Learn their habits. Learn the limits of their breath. The city will teach you to listen, if you live long enough."
Across the street, the two creatures darted up the pole in a sudden, silent sprint and vanished across the rooftops. The third reappeared in the second-story window, bent its head sideways as if testing a new angle, then slipped back into the building's dark.
Lucian felt the tug to move. He didn't like being pinned in one place while the screens talked. "Why tell me?" he asked, keeping his voice flat. "If you want a game, send the rules to my laptop like you've done before."
"I enjoy variety." The voice brightened, cheerful and cold. "And this isn't a game. Not yet. This is… orientation." The eye dilated, then narrowed until it was a thin line. "You like being prepared."
"I like not dying." He kept his eyes on the reflection. It kept him from looking like he was talking to himself in the middle of the street.
"Same thing, different sentiment." The eye blinked, a slow, vertical shutter. "A last gift: the Choir will answer the Choir. Calls beget callers. Don't give them reasons to sing, unless you mean to start something you can't finish."
Static crept at the edges of the sound, a crackle of cheap speakers protesting.
"One more thing," the voice added, offhand, like it had almost forgotten. "You should find a better place to live."
Lucian snorted. "Working on it."
"You'll need one." The voice split into different timbres at once, and for a heartbeat it sounded like an argument held in a single throat. "High sightlines. Narrow passages. Water. Doors that hold. Somewhere to gather the pieces you will need when I ask you for something larger."
Lucian furrowed his eyebrows and said nothing.
"Cities are good for choirs," the voice said, every pitch layered at once. "So many rooms to echo, metal to sing, corners to hide in."
The eye dilated fully, then snapped shut. Darkness swallowed the glass. When it opened again, the eye laughed—not in sound, but in a shudder that vibrated across the glass, until finally the speakers caught up and the laugh spilled out, human and inhuman all at once. Then the image collapsed, screens going black in a wave.
Lucian waited a full minute. Then another. He counted to sixty once more for good measure. Only then did he push off the fender and cross the street at an angle that kept his path clear of the last place the creatures had touched.
The hardware store yielded what he needed: a sledgehammer. Old but solid. He hefted it, felt its weight in his sore palm, and knew it would outlast the pipe by far. A scrap of leather behind a display, a bent steel prong scavenged from a collapsed bracket—simple tools. The strap had to be wide enough, strong enough, and anchored so the hammer wouldn't swing free on a run.
He laced the leather, punched the prong through and hammered it down until it bent secure. Two quick taps bent the prongs slightly upward, creating a catch. A makeshift holster.
He looped the strap over his shoulder, across his chest and back so the hammer rested between his shoulder blades. To deploy it, he'd have to reach back, hook the head, pull up, and slide it free—deliberate, awkward enough to prevent accidental drops, but fast once practiced.
He tested it three times in the alley, tugging the head free, slinging it back into place. Secure. Unobtrusive. Heavy, but not clumsy. As long as he wasn't flung upside down it would hold.
At a looted sporting goods store, he found a pair of work gloves—black, rubberized grip, stiff leather backing. He flexed his hand inside, the cut on his palm tugged and protested, but the glove braced it. Recalling the moment he tore his hand on the floating boulders, he nodded to himself content that it's less likely to happen again.
On the way back, he took a different route, cutting behind a shuttered café, past toppled patio chairs and a chalkboard menu that still offered glazed lemon blueberry scones and a two-dollar upcharge for oat milk.
A poster on the wall advertised a summer festival in a park that might not exist anymore. He paused at the mouth of the alley and listened. Far away, like a storm too distant to be seen, a thin series of howls climbed and fell, climbed and fell, overlapping each other. A warm-up.
He let the sound fade before he moved again.
Back at the apartment, he set the pipe beside the door and leaned the sledgehammer against the wall. Taking his gloves off he washed his hands, changed his bandage, and stood in the middle of the room, looking at the Totem. Silent. Waiting.
He tugged the notebook closer and added to his list.
Mall? he wrote. Clothes, tools, food, pharmacy. Many exits. Many angles. Bad if trapped. He tapped the pencil and wrote, Good for scouting a group. Then, after a pause: Adrian?
Just his name. No question, no plan. The letters looked stranger than they should have, like he hadn't written them in years.
He tried to see Adrian in this city—hands full, voice up, trying to make broken systems work because that was what he did. Lucian imagined him dragging people out of a bus, coaxing them toward a safe place, convincing them they'd be fine. He imagined the look he'd give if Lucian told him not to be stupid and save himself.
"Idiot," he muttered, not sure which of them he meant.
He closed the notebook. The room was quiet, the pressure soft on his skin, safe as anything could be anymore.
Tomorrow, he'd go south. See what the mall looked like. Maybe find more than supplies. Maybe find answers.
He lay down, boots still on, and kept his eyes open until the hum of safety wrapped him like a blanket. Somewhere far off, a faint, layered howl rose and fell.
Lucian closed his eyes.