The atmosphere in the basement of Starling Street was one of absolute silence, interrupted only by the metallic dripping of some distant pipe. Michell kept his hands in his coat pockets, but his fingers were tense. He did not take his eyes off Michael. The archivist, in turn, remained like an ice statue, observing Arthur's body with an almost clinical curiosity, devoid of any trace of horror.
The Silent Confrontation:
Michell took a side step, changing his viewing angle. He knew that Michael's story about "satellite interference" was an improvised construction, but what really intrigued him was not the lie itself, but the perfection of the execution. Michael did not show the haste of someone caught red-handed.
– "You were wrong" – Michell repeated, his voice low, almost a whisper to himself. – Arthur was the messenger. The "Gravedigger" used him to lure us to the construction site while Jorge Wintler was moved. But why kill him here? And why write this?
He looked at Michael, searching for a reaction.
– It seems that the author of this message expected someone specific to be here to read it, Michael. Someone he considers a worthy adversary.
Michael adjusted his glasses. He felt the weight of Michell's distrust, but his mind was already processing the next step. Arthur's death was not a miscalculation by the killer; it was the elimination of a weak point.
– Maybe – Michael replied, his voice flat. – Or maybe it is just a distraction. If we focus on the meaning of the phrase, we stop focusing on the trail of who wrote it. Should I call the forensics team now, or would you prefer to analyze the "geometry" of the scene first?
Michell let out a short sigh, a humorless laugh. He realized that Michael was trying to retake control of the narrative.
– Call them. But Michael... leave the record stating that I arrived first. It will make your report easier.
The Diversion of Focus:
While Michael stepped away to make the call, Michell knelt near the message written in chalk and lime. He noticed something that Michael, perhaps out of haste or overconfidence, had ignored: under the word "WERE WRONG", there was a small mark, a crease in the floor that did not belong to the concrete.
It was a circular pressure mark, the size of a coin.
Michell remembered the flashback with his father. The "hidden detail". He felt the spot and sensed a small metallic device glued under the edge of a pipe near the floor. It was a short-range transmitter, still warm.
Someone had been there seconds before Michael entered. Or worse: someone was listening to their conversation at that very moment.
The Return to HQ:
An hour later, the location was flooded with FBI agents and forensic lights. Célia was furious at having been left out, pacing back and forth while Owen tried to extract data from a security terminal that, predictably, had been fried by an electromagnetic pulse.
Michael was sitting on a stone bench, filling out digital forms with the same calm of someone organizing a library. Michell watched him from afar, leaning against his vehicle.
– "He knows that I know" – Michell thought, observing Michael's posture. – "And he knows I am not going to say anything right now."
The dynamic between the two had changed. They were no longer just colleague and archivist. They were two men keeping different secrets about the same crime.
Michael, while typing, allowed himself a brief moment of reflection. The message "You were wrong" was not for Michell. It was for him. The Architect knew that Michael would try to track him through the origami. The Starling address was an ego trap. The Architect wanted to show that, no matter how fast Michael processed information, physical reality would always be dictated by whoever moved the first piece.
Michael closed the tablet. The game was not just on the board; now, it was on the walls, on the floor, and on the skin of the dead. And the next move would require him to step completely out of the shadows, something he had avoided throughout his programmed existence.