The rain hadn't stopped.
Aldric stood on the curb after Cassian's taillights dissolved into the city. The water seeped through his coat. He looked up at his window — fifth floor, black and empty. He should move. He didn't.
In the glass door's reflection, something stood behind him. Taller. Still. Not his.
Aldric pushed inside. The lobby was warm and yellow, smelling of damp mail and old plaster. He didn't check his mailbox. The elevator was an ancient metal cage with a scissor gate that screamed when he pulled it shut. He pressed five. The cables groaned.
The brass panel above the buttons was polished to a dull gleam. In it, his reflection was warped — forehead too high, eyes too deep. And behind his reflection, a shape. Sitting. Waiting. Not breathing. Just watching.
He didn't turn around. The gate opened. He stepped out.
---
The apartment swallowed him in amber lamplight. He never used the overhead. The walls were papered with old newspapers — obituaries, scandals, weather reports for storms long passed. The furniture was sparse: a worn chair, a low table, a bookshelf holding only a clock that ticked like a limp.
He hung his coat. The folded prescription pressed against the lining. He walked to the kitchen, filled a glass with cold water, and drank.
When he lowered the glass, the corpse sat at the table.
Blue skin. Sunken eyes. The jaw trembling with the effort of a word that wouldn't come.
Aldric coughed — dry, hard. Wiped his mouth. Looked again.
Empty.
"Not yet," he whispered. "Not tonight."
---
The pharmacy was small, wedged between a laundromat and a dead storefront. The bell chimed. The air smelled of antiseptic and powder.
Aldric waited behind an old woman counting coins. Behind him, a businessman shouted into a phone about margins. Aldric held the prescription between two fingers.
The pharmacist was young. Clean. Optimistic. He read the paper and his face stilled — the subtle recalibration of a man who has just realized he's speaking to the dead.
"Sir... did the doctor explain? This is very strong. For severe pain only."
"I know exactly when I'll need it."
The pharmacist nodded and turned. Behind him, the corpse stood in a stained white coat. Blue lips curved. One finger rose — pointing at Aldric, then at itself.
*Ask him,* it rustled. *Ask him if he knows what death tastes like.*
Aldric took the paper bag. His fingers trembled. He walked out into the grey morning.
---
The garage smelled of oil and burnt coffee. Cassian sat in a grease-stained booth, a paper cup cooling between his palms. He hadn't drunk. His thumb was raw.
Erel sat across from him — older, quieter, hands mapped with scars.
"Aldric's different," Cassian said. "He has been for months. Do you know why?"
Erel was silent for a long moment. He turned his cup slowly on the tabletop.
"Have you ever been inside his apartment?"
"No. He doesn't let anyone in."
Erel nodded once. "Some doors stay closed because the man inside has forgotten how to open them."
Cassian leaned forward. "That's not an answer."
"No," Erel said. "It isn't." He stood, wiping his hands on a black rag. "I'll visit him soon."
He walked back to the open hood of the sedan and didn't speak again.
---
Night pressed against the window.
Aldric lay on his bed, eyes open, watching the ceiling. On the nightstand: the unopened pharmacy bag, cigarettes, an ashtray.
The weight came first. Cold and dense on his sternum. His breath shallowed.
He lifted his head.
The corpse sat on his chest. Inches away. The smell of wet earth and rusted iron and — beneath it, faint — old perfume. Floral. Something once alive.
On one decayed finger sat a silver ring. Clean. Untarnished. An inscription caught the orange streetlight filtering through the curtains: two letters intertwined. Or a word. *Forever.*
The corpse leaned close. Its voice was ground glass.
"Count the days. How many are left?"
"Enough," Aldric said.
A cold fingertip touched his forehead.
Aldric shut his eyes.
When he opened them, the room was empty. He sat up slowly, swung his legs to the floor, and walked to the living room. From his coat he took the prescription and a pen. On the blank back, he wrote:
*Day 1. Still alive.*
Three knocks. Hard. Deliberate.
"Aldric." Erel's voice, through the door. "Open up. I know you're in there."
Aldric looked at the paper. At the door. At the empty air where orange light pooled and nothing else sat waiting.
Then — just before he moved — a thought came, quiet and unbidden, the way dangerous thoughts always arrive.
*The corpse asks me to count the days. She never did. Not once in six years did the Boss ask how many days I had left. Not one word. Tools don't get asked that question.*
He folded the paper. Slipped it into his pocket.
*Not now,* he told himself again. The same words as last night. The same small door, shut against the same small fire.
He walked to the door and opened it.
---
*End of Chapter Two*