The Gearhall was a sanctuary of resonant silence. For seven days, it had been Liam's entire world. He had spent countless hours in the Pacted archives, not reading, but listening. He sat amidst shelves of forgotten histories and proscribed texts, learning to filter the cacophony of the past. Before, his power had been a torrent, a chaotic flood of psychic impressions that threatened to drown him. Now, under Borin's unforgiving tutelage, he had learned to build a dam in his own mind. He could stand in the path of the river of time and allow only a single, focused stream to pass. The screaming had subsided, replaced by a profound, humming quietude he hadn't known was possible.
He sat with Ronan in the small, spartan commissary, nursing a cup of steaming, bitter coffee. Ronan, for his part, looked different as well. The frantic, almost desperate energy that usually clung to him had settled. His training in the probability-locus chambers had taught him control, showing him how to influence the flow of fate with a gentle nudge rather than a desperate shove.
"Do you really think we'll find anything?" Ronan asked, breaking the comfortable silence. He idly spun one of his ivory dice on the metal table, its passage unnaturally smooth and long. "We stared at those schematics for days. The Redactor's touch felt… absolute. Like a hole burned through reality."
"It was," Liam agreed, his gaze distant. "But nothing is absolute. Even a vacuum has an edge." He felt a fragile new confidence stirring within him, a feeling so foreign he was almost suspicious of it. "He was looking for something. I can feel it. I just couldn't hear the question over all the other noise. Now… now it's quiet."
The summons came, as it always did, without preamble. A simple chime echoed through the commissary, and they knew Borin was waiting.
His office was a chamber of shadows and secrets. The only light came from a single green-shaded lamp on his vast oak desk, illuminating the source of their obsession: Elias Vance's schematics. Borin sat behind the desk, a monolithic figure carved from granite and patience.
"The time for theory is over," Borin said, his voice a low rumble that seemed to vibrate in their bones. "Your training was designed for a single purpose. To give you the tools to crack this puzzle. Show me it was not a waste."
Liam stepped forward, his heart a frantic drum against the cage of his ribs. He retrieved the Focusing Lenses from their velvet-lined case. The brass was cold against his skin. As he slid them on, he felt the familiar, low-grade hum of the attuned quartz crystals against his temples. The world didn't look different, but it felt different, as if he were standing on the shore of a vast, unseen ocean.
He placed his hands on the parchment, the paper cool and brittle beneath his fingertips. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and built the wall of silence in his mind. Then, with a focused will that felt like flexing a brand-new muscle, he aimed his consciousness like a spear. "What were you looking for?"
The psychic backlash hit him like a physical blow. He was instantly plunged into a suffocating cold, the signature of the Redactor's power. It was the feeling of absolute null, a sterile void where memory and history ceased to exist. He felt a phantom presence, a being of immense, chilling focus. It was like fighting against a powerful current, and for a moment, he felt his own memories start to fray at the edges, threatened by the sheer gravitational pull of the void.
Focus, he commanded himself, channeling Borin's harsh voice in his memory. He pushed back, using his own sense of self as an anchor. He forced his way through the psychic scar tissue left by the Redactor. He saw fleeting, fractured images—not from the parchment's past, but from the Redactor's. A gloved hand. The scent of antiseptic and dust. An overwhelming sense of disdain, as if the very existence of history was an impurity that needed to be cleansed.
And then he broke through. Beyond the cold, beyond the void, was the parchment's own faint, terrified whisper. It was the memory of its creation, the moment its fibers were pressed together. And woven into that very origin, a ghost in its DNA, was the symbol. A flowing river embraced by a water wheel. A watermark.
"Got it," Liam gasped, stumbling back from the desk. He ripped the Lenses off, the sudden sensory whiplash leaving the room spinning. His hands shook uncontrollably as he grabbed a pen and sketched the symbol on a notepad. The image was burned into his mind. "A watermark. From a paper mill. That's what he was trying to find. Or erase."
Ronan rushed to his side, steadying him. Borin rose slowly from his chair. He took the notepad, his gaze intense. He studied the sketch for a long time, and for the first time, Liam saw something in the old spymaster's eyes that went beyond cold calculation. It was the grim satisfaction of a hunter who has finally found the tracks of his prey.