Jonah counted exits before he counted anything else three ground-level doors, all padlocked from the inside, a freight elevator shaft gutted through the center, the platform hanging two levels up on a rusted chain.
Salt and diesel under all of it, dock-smell, nothing he needed to name twice.
Uno, dos, tres, under his breath the Spanish count held steadier than the English one would have.
Murphy was back at the short-let, asleep; the bond hummed quiet in the back of his skull, relief at four walls, no awareness of the warehouse or the plan.
Jonah checked his watch.
2:08 a.m.
Six minutes until Carl executed Klaus.
Five was en route the Notebook said Five arrived at 2:19, five minutes too late to stop the shot, early enough to extract Klaus alive and traumatized.
That was canon.
Jonah was here to redirect one piece: Carl’s death, which in the original timeline happened three days later when Cha-Cha turned on him for being sloppy.
The Notebook said Klaus was on the third level, gagged, zip-tied to a chair bolted to the floor.
Carl was six feet from Klaus with orders to close the file by 2:14.
Cha-Cha was on the second level clearing a perimeter.
She would reach the third in four minutes.
Jonah started climbing.
The freight elevator shaft had rungs welded to the east wall maintenance access, forty years of rust, bolts loose in three places he could see.
He went up slow.
His hands were cold.
The rungs were colder.
At the second level he heard Cha-Cha’s voice through the grate, clipped and mid-century.
“Hazel.
Perimeter is clear.
I’m moving to three.”
Hazel’s voice crackled back through a walkie.
“He’s still breathing.
Carl says two more minutes.”
Jonah kept climbing.
The third level opened through a narrow hatch behind a stack of crates.
He came up behind Carl’s blind spot.
Carl was mid-forties, gray suit, briefcase on the floor beside him.
Klaus was six feet ahead, gagged, hands zip-tied behind the chair.
Blood on his face from where someone had hit him.
His eyes were open and focused on something in the corner Jonah could not see.
A ghost.
Probably more than one.
Carl checked his watch.
2:11.
Three minutes.
Jonah moved two steps closer.
Carl did not turn.
Jonah spoke at conversational volume, the way the Rumor wanted to be spoken.
“I heard a rumor that your hand reached for your own gun.”
The predicate hung in the air for half a breath.
Carl’s right hand moved.
Not a flinch.
A clean, deliberate reach to his own holster.
His fingers wrapped the grip.
Drew.
The barrel came up and around.
Carl’s face did not change.
His eyes did.
Wide.
Confused.
The kind of confusion that arrived too late to stop the body.
The shot cracked through the warehouse.
Carl fell.
The briefcase tipped.
Klaus made a sound behind the gag not a scream, something quieter and worse.
The cost arrived.
Jonah’s Toronto apartment number 412, he’d lived there two years after Marisol died was gone.
Gone.
He reached for the image of the door and found a blank wall.
Below that: the year he met his wife.
2015.
He had never had a wife.
The memory was someone else’s.
It had been his five seconds ago.
Now it was a sentence he could read in his own handwriting with no feeling attached.
Met Sarah, 2015, coffeeshop on Bloor Street.
The name meant nothing.
Cha-Cha’s voice on the stairs.
“Carl.
Carl.
Report.”
Jonah turned.
Ran three steps to the freight elevator shaft.
Jumped.
The Jump misfired.
He had aimed for the alley six blocks west.
The kit put him on the dock, twenty feet from the warehouse’s south wall, flat on his back on wet concrete with his lungs forgetting how to work.
The mood-rule.
He’d been moving too fast, the aim had been sloppy, and the Jump had dumped him where the velocity wanted to go instead of where he’d asked.
He rolled onto his side.
Stood.
His knees worked.
The dock was empty.
Shipping containers stacked three high, a crane against the sky, no people.
Jonah pulled the Notebook out.
His hands were shaking.
He wrote standing, the pen skipping on cheap paper.
Rumor T2 confirmed.
Carl dead.
Used his own hand.
Cost: Toronto apartment number (412), year I met my wife (2015, Sarah, Bloor Street coffeeshop name means nothing now).
Jump T1 misfired to dock (mood-rule: velocity overrode aim).
Klaus alive.
Five extracts in eight minutes.
He closed the Notebook.
Put it back in his jacket.
The shaking did not stop.
Inside the warehouse Cha-Cha was yelling.
Footsteps on metal.
A door slammed.
Jonah turned and walked east along the dock until the warehouse was behind him and the city opened up ahead.
He did not run.
Running brought attention.
He walked like a man leaving a shift.
At the corner of the dock access road he stopped.
Pulled out his phone.
No messages.
Patch was at the precinct.
Five was Jonah checked his watch four minutes out from the warehouse.
Klaus would survive tonight.
Carl would not.
The Commission would correct.
The Rumor had been bigger than the alley rat.
Bigger than the traffic cop.
A T2 Rumor could move a body part against the person’s will.
That was the line.
T1 adjusted behavior.
T2 commanded flesh.
Jonah put the phone away.
Started walking.
Three blocks west he found a payphone outside a closed diner.
Dropped two quarters.
Dialed the precinct.
The desk sergeant picked up on the second ring.
“NYPD.”
“I need to leave a message for Detective Patch.
Tell her Vega called.
Tell her Klaus Hargreeves is alive at a warehouse on Dock 47.
She’ll want to send a car.”
He hung up before the sergeant could ask questions.
By the time he got back to the short-let it was 3:00 a.m.
Murphy was still asleep in the corner.
The bond was quiet.
Jonah sat on the couch with his coat still on and the Notebook open on his knee.
He read the page about Sarah three times.
The handwriting was his.
The year was clear.
2015.
Bloor Street.
A coffeeshop he could not picture.
He had been married, maybe, or engaged, or it had been heading that way.
The Rumor had taken the whole year and left only the fact.
He could recite it.
He could not feel it.
He turned the page.
Wrote.
New rule: T2 Rumor takes years, not days.
The cost scales.
A T3 will take more.
Use T2 only when the alternative is worse.
He closed the Notebook.
Lay down on the couch.
Did not take off his boots.
Murphy’s breathing was the only sound in the room.
The bond carried relief at the quiet, suspicion that it would not last, and a deep, animal certainty that the man on the couch was pack.
Jonah closed his eyes.
Carl’s face had not changed when the hand moved.
The confusion had been in the eyes only.
The body had obeyed before the man understood what he was doing.
That was the Rumor.
That was the kit.
Somewhere in the warehouse Five was extracting Klaus.
Somewhere in the precinct Patch was reading a desk sergeant’s note and deciding whether to send a car.
Somewhere in the Commission a file was updating and Carl’s name was moving from Active to Deceased and a correction protocol was opening.
Jonah did not know most of that yet.
What he knew was smaller: Carl was dead by his own hand, Klaus was alive, and the cost was a year of his life he could name but not remember.
The Notebook held the fact.
The feeling was gone.
That was enough.
Sleep found him around 3:12, Murphy’s breathing steady in the corner and the bond gone quiet between them.
Outside the window the city kept moving without him.
The night wasn’t finished.
This part of it was.