Evening clung to the town like smoke that had forgotten where it started. The bell above the saloon door still trembled behind him, a faint echo threading the wind. Silas walked until the noise in his chest matched the rhythm of his boots, then sat on the low step of a boarded storefront.
He took out the tin square. It didn't glow now, but the warmth of it lingered—like the memory of a hand that used to fit his. He turned it over once, twice, searching for proof of trickery: seams, hidden speakers, anything that would make sense of a girl's voice calling him Dad.
He told himself what he always did: It wasn't her. It was the machine doing what machines do—pretending.That thought settled him, though it felt less like truth and more like a lullaby he'd outgrown.
A wind moved through the alleys, carrying laughter from the saloon, dull and distant. He listened anyway. Laughter always reached him wrong—too bright, too far away. The world had a way of echoing through the parts of him that wouldn't heal.
Down the street, a boy chased a scrap of paper that darted and flipped like a pale bird. The wind caught it, sent it tumbling to Silas's boots. He bent to pick it up, but the boy froze. Wide eyes. A step backward. Then the child turned and fled, bare feet smacking the dust.
Silas looked at the paper. A weathered card—the Two of Hearts. His deck was missing that one. He'd lost it weeks ago, maybe years. The corners were soft, familiar. He slipped it into his pocket without thinking and whispered, "Guess you found your way home."
The Broker appeared the way dusk does—one moment not there, the next impossible to ignore."Funny thing," the man said, lowering himself onto the step beside Silas. "How things come back when they're ready, not when you want 'em."
Silas didn't look at him. "You followed me?"
"Rustwater's small. The wind tells me when a new storm blows in."The Broker wore a coat sewn from mismatched fabrics, the kind only confidence could hold together. His eyes were silvered mirrors—literal ones, polished glass lenses set where eyes ought to be. They reflected Silas back at himself in miniature.
"You heard the square," Silas said.
"I heard her." The Broker offered a dented flask. "You?"
Silas took it, drank metal-warm water that might once have been whiskey. "I heard a trick."
The Broker chuckled, soft and mean. "You always listen that way?"
Silas frowned. "What way's that?"
"Like the world's lying to you before it opens its mouth."
He didn't answer. He didn't have to. The Broker had named the habit better than he ever could.
"Most squares are corpses," the Broker went on. "Dead recordings. Yours…" He gestured with two fingers. "Yours is breathing. You light that thing up in public again, and whatever it's still connected to might come looking."
Silas stared down the street. "You mean the Archive."
"That's one name for it. I prefer the Root. Everything connected once—people, machines, memory, all tangled in the same wire. Then it burned. Some folks say it's still dreaming down there, and sometimes the dream calls out."
"And someone calls back."
"Exactly." The Broker tapped his temple. "Most can't hear it. But you? You got a wire still live somewhere in your skull."
Silas didn't like the taste of that idea. "You selling superstition or warning me?"
"Neither. I'm buying truth." The Broker's voice softened. "Let me take the square off your hands before it costs you more than remembering's worth."
Silas shook his head. "Not yet. I need to know what it wants."
The Broker's mirrored eyes tilted, catching the red of the sunset. "Maybe it's not the square that wants. Maybe it's you."
Silas stood. "You talk pretty for a man who deals in other people's lives."
"And you listen badly for a man trying to find his own."
The words hit harder than they should have. Silas left him there, the flask still warm in his hand.
He rented a room above the feed store—a narrow space that smelled of dust and engine oil. The fan above the bed turned slow and uneven, clicking like an old metronome. He sat on the mattress and laid the tin square on the table beside the deck.
For a while he just listened. The town had its own pulse: generators coughing, wind sliding through shutters, a dog barking at nothing. Beneath it, faint as thought, came the sound of static—like someone whispering underwater.
He leaned closer. The static shaped itself into syllables, then laughter, thin and bright. A child's laughter.
He grabbed the deck, set it over the square like a lid. The sound stopped. He exhaled, long and shaky."When the world forgets its order," he muttered, "you make your own shuffle."
But the silence that followed felt disobedient, alive.
He lay back and closed his eyes. Sleep came like a broken transmission—half noise, half dream.He was standing in a field of glass panels that stretched to the horizon, sunlight spilling across them in waves. A small hand slipped into his, tugging him forward."See?" the child's voice said. "It remembers light."
He tried to look at her face, but the panels flashed white, and he woke gasping. The room was dark. The deck had slid off the table, cards fanned across the floor like fallen leaves. The tin square glowed faintly through them.
Before dawn, a single knock on the door.
Silas reached for his revolver out of habit, then stilled. Whoever it was didn't wait for an answer. Footsteps receded down the hall. He opened the door to emptiness, the smell of ozone sharp in the air. On the windowsill, someone had traced a message through the dust:
DON'T PLAY WHAT YOU DON'T OWN.
Outside, tracks led south, fading fast in the wind. He followed them to the edge of town, past the rusted sign and the chime of keys. The horizon was a line of ember-colored light, the kind that doesn't promise a sunrise so much as warn of one.
He stopped, looked back once. The town still slept, the saloon's neon ghosting on and off like a faulty memory.
He took out the square. It hummed in his palm, alive again."Who's listening?" he asked the dawn.
Only the wind answered, sliding through the wreckage like breath through teeth.
He tucked the square away, pocketed the deck beside it. The two weights balanced each other—chance and history, chaos and recall. He almost smiled.
"If the past wants a rematch," he said, starting down the road, "I'll play—so long as I get to deal."