There was a moment when Judith cut him off on a rooftop stairwell, both of them framed by a dye-sky and surveillance floodlight, faces inches apart.
"You shouldn't do this, Brendon!" she hissed, in a voice as sharp as any siren. Behind her, the whine of the radio and the barked orders of the officers came like a chorus.
He caught his breath, chest heaving. He could have stopped. He could have let them cuff him. He could have let the station and the mayor and the public drag him through a slow crucifixion.
But he didn't stop.
"It's not about me," he managed, voice ragged. "They'll stop at nothing. Kelvin's counsel is definitely doing this to buy more time. They'll bury the ledger. They'll poison this case with rumors. With the help of constant controversies. I can't— and I won't—" His chest rose and fell. "I can't be a performative scapegoat while the real people who profited walk away in suits."
Judith's face tightened. "Do you think running will help? Do you think hiding helps Whitney's case?"
"I am not hiding." he said. "Please don't let them tie me to Drago and call it justice. Don't let them kill the investigation with a camera angle. Please try to see the bigger picture."
Her fingers trembled on the holster. For a second he saw the conflict in her eyes — a little facial change: the law, her oath, the town's pressure, and the wolf who had once reached down to help a trembling new recruit find her stride. She swallowed; the line of her jaw moved.
"You're making me to choose," she said softly, as if to herself more than to him.
"You always did," he said.
The rooftop was slick with rain. The radio hammered orders from the mayor's office; the cameras had turned the entire town into a stage. Below them, the city's lights pooled like spilled oil.
Judith stepped closer. Her hand went to the radio at her belt for a breath — then she looked up at Prospect Street where the chief shouted orders — and finally, in a movement that felt like mercy and punishment both, she lowered her weapon.
"Chief—" she said into her radio in an almost-boyish voice, the kind used in the station's internal channel. "I'm...I'm going to have to report a failed arrest. He — I couldn't — he bolted away. He jumped a low wall and got away. I... I tried."
On the line, the chief barked a single terse question. There was an edge of disappointed steel. "You let him go?"
"There were civilians," she answered, voice soft and strained. "Shooting is too much dangerous. I prioritized containment."
The chief's voice was low, almost a groan. "Report it formally. We'll log it as an escape. Keep searching."
When she ended the transmission she turned back to Brendon. "I'm sorry, Brendon. For the way this went down. For all of this." Her eyes were wet now, more from the impossibility of the situation than from the night's exertion.
His own throat closed. "Judith—"
She stepped back, and in that step was the final, public severing of an allegiance. She was following orders. She is still a person, painfully, and bound by a badge, a code, an institutional fear that loved tidy scapegoats. She had done what she thought was right — protected civilians, obeyed command. But she had also, through the crack in the sky, allowed him a sliver of escape.
He ran.
The chase took him across rooftops, down narrow alleys, curving through a maze of places thieves and watchdogs knew like the lines of their hands. He felt the city under him — old bricks, throwaway plastic, a thin sheen of rainwater on tile. At one point, a corner flashed him into an old railway line; he vanished into the underbrush beside it and scrambled across a mud-banked bank before surfacing on the river's edge.
Behind him the shouts thinned. The city's cameras were merciless; they would compile a narrative. But he had time. Time is a strange luxury for someone with the mayor, the council, and the press against him. Time let you move. It let you breathe. It let you think.
He ducked under the pedestrian bridge and sat on a wet stone, lungs burning, heart slamming like a hammer. The portrait Elena had drawn had been slid deep into his jacket. Whitney's face looked at him when he opened the jacket — an accusation, a demand, a human being who had been stolen into a spectacle. He placed the folded sketch on his knees, fingers tracing the shade of a cheek. He needed to move, to plan, to stop being hunted and start hunting the killer.
He could feel his phone zip with messages — Tyson's number, then a dozen texts. Robert's name lit up: braced, raw. Sofie's pings came like a machine: tracks, mirrors, IPs. Spfie's handle glowed cold and unreadable, then a simple encrypted ping: got eyes on Kelvin's counsel ledger. Read only.
He sat there in the rain, the city humming, and for the first time in longer than he cared to count, he felt the poetry of the wolf-legend Drago had mocked: half man, half animal, equally condemned and useful. The howl he'd given them in the station was now a fragment on a thousand social feeds — edited, replayed, misrepresented. But the need that made him run was cleaner: it wasn't about legend or revenge. It was about a portrait and a girl whose death had been turned into a spectacle.
He would not be the person they would hang for convenience.
He stood, pulled his coat tight, and turned toward the city's dark veins.
Behind him, at postal desks and in mayoral briefings, the machine began to shift. The mayor would draft a press statement. The council would circle and call for heads. Chief Tyson would be smeared with the difficulty of choosing between mayorship and loyalty, and Judith would fill in forms her hands did not want to write.
But he, a wolf, was loose on the other side of town — unaccounted for, unresolved. He had a bargain with Drago and an outline of a clue. He had a portrait that was no longer just paper. But one thing he had. He had Camelia's promise of administrative eyes.
Somewhere down the river a magnet of lights blinked like a fever. The world would remember the roar. But the story was not over — only refitted into quieter hands.
He walked into the night with the rain in his ears and the city sprawling like a map beneath his feet. Cameras followed; so did the whispering wind. He would be charged. He would be hunted. He would be hated by a town that preferred simple villains. But still he has to go. He has to meet Ninja Fox somehow. She can only help him now.
His first move is to contact Camelia.