The night air smelled of rust and wet stone. Cinica carried Noah on his shoulders, not with gentleness, not with cruelty, but with an indifference bordering on the comic. His steps were steady, absurdly steady, each boot striking the earth like a metronome—boots, boots, boots, boots.
Noah dangled there, battered ribs pressing against the faceless man's back. His blood dripped, warm and sticky, marking their path as though they were leaving breadcrumbs for wolves. The posture was ridiculous—like a child lugged by a drunken uncle—yet death clung to it.
For a long while, Noah was silent. He listened to the boots, to his own labored breath, to the echo of what he had left behind: Edward's face, wide-eyed with fear and youth, Matilda's tears, the gnawing smiles of shadows. Then finally, with effort, he forced out words:
"May I know… where we are going, gentleman?"
Cinica did not stop walking. His head turned slightly, as though acknowledging the question, Then, in the silence of his mind, Cinica thought—his voice as smooth and deliberate as if it had been delivered by Larissa Weems herself:
A reasonable question… though one I cannot answer. Not for lack of will, but for lack of mouth.
And then the thought pierced him—the thing has no mouth. He felt heat rise to his face, absurd embarrassment even at the edge of death. "Oh! Forgive me… I forgot." He chuckled, a hollow chuckle. "You haven't a mouth to answer."
Cinica walked on, silent as stone.
Silence filled Noah like a swelling tide. He thought: By now I ought to be dead. Torn apart in that store, feasted on like bread. He shivered. The image of Edward running—the boy's back small, fragile—stabbed him.
"No," Noah whispered to himself. "It was right… It was necessary. God forgive me, but it was right."
A strange gratitude welled in him. His sacrifice had been true; his judgment fast. His son lived, and in this pit of shadows, that was miracle enough. He closed his eyes, lips trembling in a prayer without form.
Elsewhere, in the small house where shadows prowled the windows like stray cats, Maria sat with her mind unraveling into a thousand streams. Ideas hammered at her skull—visions of machines, of equations, of instruments that might save or doom them. She pressed her temples.
Then the thought struck her, clear as a bell. She rose. From the wall she took it: the knife, Shaun's knife from Japan. The blade gleamed with a cruel honesty.
She sat again, composed, her fingers stroking the handle as though it were a quill. Across from her, Case 33 sat at the table, smiling his eternal smile.
The knife moved. Swift. Almost perfect. It arced toward his throat.
But—an error. A small one. The blade grazed rather than cut deep. And yet, 33 tilted his head, as though inviting it, accepting it, almost… loving it.
His smile did not fade. His eyes—those hollow caverns—flickered with something like peace. "I love you, Maria," he whispered, his voice thin as paper. "Thank you… for everything."
Green liquid spilled, halted mid-stream as if he commanded even his own death. His body shuddered, stilled.
Maria gasped. Her hand trembled. A single tear fell—shaped like a diamond, cruel and brilliant. She did not even know him, not truly. Yet she wept, for in his death she had glimpsed something unbearable: humanity where there should have been none.
She slumped into her chair. The sea of ideas pulled her under. Shadows of questions swirled: Were they enemies? Were they victims? Were we all the same?
She closed her eyes. At the table of the dead, she shared her silence.
The door creaked open. Edward entered, pale, red-eyed, every muscle trembling with exhaustion. In his hands: a box, small and fragile—an Arduino kit, Maria's last gift from their parents.
For a heartbeat, Maria's lips twitched upward. She might have smiled. She might have. But her brother's eyes—tired, sunken, crushed beneath what he had seen—extinguished it.
Behind him, Matilda appeared. Tears ran down her face, ceaseless, as though a spring had burst within her. She looked wilted, ruined—a rose that had bloomed too long in drought.
Maria's hand slid from the knife. She folded inward. Silence claimed the room.
Cinica's boots struck stone steps. A door loomed before them—an old building, once a company of his own. He opened it with one hand, the other still bearing Noah's weight as though it were nothing.
Inside, the air smelled of ink and mildew, of papers rotting in drawers. Shadows did not linger here; perhaps they feared him.
He set Noah down. For the first time, Noah saw him not as a savior, not as silence, but as something worse.
Cinica turned his head. And then it happened.
Where there had been no mouth, flesh split. Slowly, wetly. His face tore like paper under rain, and an opening appeared—not lips, not human, but a wound gaping wide.
His eyes opened too, bursting with blood, yet glistening like water.
Noah's breath hitched. Horror gripped him, but awe followed close behind.
Cinica gestured. Sit.
Noah obeyed, trembling. His knees gave way. He sat upon the chair of that decayed office as though upon a throne of judgment.
Cinica turned, stepped into a smaller room, and closed the door. For a moment, silence. Then—
Crying.
Harsh, racking, endless sobs, as though the faceless man were tearing the universe from his chest.
Noah froze. His hands clasped, unclasped. What being cries like that? What is he? What sin could weigh so heavy?
And then, through the weeping, words broke, strangled and raw:
"Forgive me, Liam…"
Noah bowed his head. He did not know who Liam was. He did not dare to ask.
But he felt it then—that even the faceless bore a past. And perhaps, in his wound of a mouth, in his weeping eyes, he bore all pasts.
Noah sat long in that ruin of a company, his heart torn between fear and mercy. He thought of Edward, Maria, Matilda—their faces flickered like icons in his mind. He thought of shadows, of smiles that did not end, of God watching from the silent heavens.
He thought of Cinica, weeping in the next room.
And he thought: Perhaps we are all shadows. Smiling. Pretending. Devouring each other slowly, reverently. And only in the moment of collapse—only in tears—do we remember we were human at all.
The boots would sound again soon. But for now, there was only weeping.
And Noah, clutching his chest, whispered his own prayer into the dust:
"Forgive us all."