The morgue was colder than Jack remembered.
Not the kind of cold that came from refrigeration units or steel tables. This was the deeper kind—the chill that settled in your bones when you were standing too close to something that was never meant to be uncovered.
The medical examiner on duty didn't ask questions. He owed Jack a favor. One from years ago, back when Jack still wore a badge, and people still called him Detective Stone without irony.
They didn't speak as Jack pulled the file. The one with Elara's name stamped on the cover.
It was supposed to be sealed. Buried. Classified.
But Jack had always known where the cracks in the system lived. He just hadn't had the nerve to look again—until now.
He opened the folder slowly.
Photos. Scans. Toxicology reports. A death certificate signed by a doctor Jack had never met and couldn't verify. Her face stared back at him from the attached ID print. Cold. Pale. Still.
He remembered seeing her like that. Or… he thought he did.
That was the danger of grief. It rewrote memory until even the lies felt honest.
Jack laid out the autopsy report on the counter. Measurements. Blood type. Dental match.
Something itched at the back of his mind.
He pulled out his lighter and flicked it, not to smoke, but to think. He always did that when he was putting pieces together. Tiny flame. Flicker. Focus.
The blood type was listed as AB negative.
But Jack remembered—clearly—that Elara had once made a joke about being "O-positive and hard to kill." They were at a diner. She had stolen his fries. He remembered laughing.
He cross-referenced her medical files. Blood type: O-positive. Confirmed.
That wasn't a clerical error. That was a substitution.
His breath caught in his throat.
The body on that slab hadn't been hers.
The photos in the report? The face was bruised. Damaged. The features are distorted. Maybe just enough to fool someone already drowning in shock.
And Jack had been drowning back then. Two years ago, his judgment blurred by heartbreak, by loss, by guilt.
He'd accepted the evidence because it hurt too much to hope.
But now? Now he had evidence.
He snapped a photo of the blood report and slid the folder back into the drawer like it might bite him.
The examiner, silent until now, finally spoke.
"You okay?"
Jack looked at him. Something in his face must've shifted because the man didn't wait for an answer.
He just nodded once and walked away.
Jack followed.
Outside, the sky was bruising. Purple-gray clouds hanging low, threatening another storm. The city's skyline looked sharp under the overcast light, like it had claws instead of spires.
Jack called Lena.
"You're not going to like this," he said when she picked up.
"When do I ever?" she replied.
"I need you to break into the Metro Medical Archive. Get the raw data from Elara's autopsy."
There was a pause. Then, quieter, "Jack…"
"I know."
"You're sure about this?"
"I'm sure it wasn't her."
Lena exhaled. "Okay. Give me two hours."
He hung up and stood there for a moment longer, watching people pass on the street. A mother pulling her son out of a crosswalk. A man yelling into his phone. A cab driver asleep at the wheel while the light was still red.
The world kept moving. Oblivious.
But something in Jack's had just broken loose.
If the body wasn't Elara's… then someone had planned it. Replaced it. Killed another woman and used her as cover.
And someone else had made sure Jack believed it.
Kael? No. If Kael had known, he'd never have given Jack the surveillance photo. Ezra? Maybe. But Ezra played games, not illusions.
Which meant there was another player. Someone inside the system. Someone with reach and timing.
The Raven Circle.
But why fake her death?
Unless… she hadn't just disappeared. She'd escaped.
And someone had punished her for it.
Or worse—used her as a prototype.
Jack's phone buzzed. A message from Lena.
Encrypted package. Autopsy data. Medical scans. DNA cert.
He opened them, scanning fast.
The DNA match? 86%.
Not enough for a confirmed ID.
But more than enough for a manufactured one.
The dental records had been submitted manually.
That wasn't standard. Dental ID came through a national system, digital and cross-verified.
Only one reason it would be done manually:
The originals didn't match.
He clenched his jaw, tucked the phone into his coat, and started walking.
His next stop wasn't a morgue.
It was the department's archive.
They'd sealed the original field evidence from the Elara case. Scene photos. Witness reports. Jack's own deposition. Supposedly inaccessible.
But Jack had keys even the city had forgotten existed.
Twenty minutes later, he was underground—literally—in a long corridor that smelled of mildew and red tape. Fluorescent lights buzzed overhead. The kind of place where truth went to die.
He used a stolen clearance card and entered a records room filled with thousands of boxed case files.
Row C. Shelf 18.
He found the box labeled: "Stone, J. / Vane, E. / Evidence Disposition — CLOSED."
He pulled it.
Inside: Photos. A sealed evidence bag. A glove.
Jack stared at it.
Latex. Torn at the thumb. Blood-stained.
He remembered this.
Elara had been wearing gloves the night she vanished. Thin black ones she always wore on artifact recoveries to avoid contamination. But they weren't latex.
And the blood type tagged on the bag?
AB negative.
Not hers.
Jack closed his eyes.
The autopsy wasn't just a substitution—it was built on fabricated evidence. Someone had staged the entire scene from the ground up.
Which meant…
They hadn't just faked her death.
They'd orchestrated a burial.
A silence.
A warning.
And he'd believed it.
His phone rang again. Lena.
"You're not going to believe this," she said.
"Try me."
"I decrypted a private message buried in the autopsy file. It was embedded in the metadata. Hidden like a fingerprint."
Jack frowned. "What kind of message?"
Lena paused. "It's an audio clip. Corrupted, but I cleaned it up."
Then she played it.
A woman's voice. Soft. Unsteady. Familiar.
"If you're hearing this, Jack… it means I failed. They found me. I tried to—"
Static.
Then again, clearer:
"—they're using the relics to rebuild me. Please. Don't let them finish."
Jack's knees buckled slightly.
Elara.
Not a ghost. Not a dream.
A prisoner.
Or a blueprint.
He gripped the evidence box tighter.
The case wasn't over.
It had never ended.
And now, it was personal all over again.