CHAPTER 272: ASHES AND ABSENCE

The streets felt different here.

Not louder, not rougher—just quieter in a way that made you pay attention. These neighborhoods didn’t have programmable shade panels or hover-cleaners. The train station had rust creeping up the rail supports. The corner store I passed still used physical locks. A woman stood at the edge of the road selling steamed buns from a pushcart, her eyes flicking to mine with the briefest glimmer of recognition.

I gave a polite nod and kept walking.

Station 47 used to sit between a pharmacy and an auto-parts lot, tucked behind an old tire shop with cracked windows. The road bent slightly before you got there—just enough to feel like you were ducking into a different world. Two years ago, this had been my world. As Mr. Fox, I’d learned what it meant to act without hesitation. To charge into flame and not flinch. To steady people who thought the end had come and get them out alive.

Fire was honest.

It took. It consumed. It never pretended to be anything else.

The men and women at 47 knew that. They faced it anyway.

Which is why my stomach twisted when I turned the final corner and saw what remained.

Nothing.

No hum of trucks. No sirens. No movement.

Just an empty shell.

The building was still standing, but the sign had been removed—only the outline of where the metal used to hang was left. The windows were boarded up, the red paint faded to a sickly rust-orange. A "For Lease" sticker clung crooked on the front door, its edges curling from the heat.

I stood on the curb, hands in my pockets.

There were no children pointing at the engines anymore. No trainees sprinting drills in the back lot. No Chief Ryan barking orders with his mug half-full and his heart twice as big. No Logan, who wanted attention and caused fires himself. No Mr. Fox, either.

Just me.

And I was too late.

I crossed the street slowly, walking up to the steps like it might still open for me. The locks were changed. The keypad dead. I pressed a hand to the glass.

Cold.

The air inside looked stale—dust hanging in the gaps where beds used to be, where equipment once gleamed under flickering strip lights. It had been gutted. Stripped down to silence. Someone had swept, at least. It wasn’t abandoned—it had been retired.

Which somehow felt worse.

I stepped back.

Three names came to mind—Chief Ryan, Logan, and Mr. Fox.

Chief Ryan had been the backbone of this place. I heard that he was a retired military soldier with a half-deaf ear. Though I never got to ask him about it fully. He died on duty. Trying to pull a minor from a collapsed roof. I can’t believe I was the one who had to announce his death to the public.

Logan... well.

Cipher.

He had built fires just to put them out. Not because he hated people—but because he hated being forgotten. And the System? It didn’t reward calm. It rewarded performance. He played with fire, literally. Made himself the hero. Until one day, the wrong person got caught in the blast radius.

That was when Mr. Dust exposed him.

Which is to say—I exposed him.

As Mr. Dust, I’d worn a detective’s badge. As Mr. Fox, I had worked beside Logan. Two masks. One betrayal.

I ran the names over in my head again, slower this time.

Chief Ryan. Logan. Fox.

Dead. Disgraced. Disappeared.

No wonder the station shut down.

With the heart gone and the spine corrupted, the limbs didn’t have much left to do. I could see it now. The city would’ve reviewed the reports, seen the scandals, made a budget cut, and folded the building into memory.

They probably didn’t even hold a ceremony.

I stepped around to the back alley.

A few stray crates were still stacked against the wall. I saw the old hose rack—warped from weather but still upright.

Back then, it had felt like a win.

Now?

Now it felt like the last breath of something that hadn’t been allowed to finish living.

A part of me wanted to feel angry. To blame the department for folding too fast. To blame Cipher for being selfish. To blame the government for turning everything into politics and number crunches.

But deep down, I knew better.

They needed me.

And I left.

I hadn’t returned after Ryan died. I hadn’t checked in after Cipher was caught. I hadn’t stood in the gap when people needed a leader. I’d gained a new job instead. And then another. And another.

Chasing power like it could redeem all the moments I let go.

And maybe it had. Maybe the people I’d saved since then justified it. Maybe the chaos I’d unraveled and the agents I’d fought and the girls I’d protected made it worth it.

But maybe didn’t feel like enough here.

Not in front of what used to be a home.

I closed my eyes for a moment and listened.

No sirens. No boots. No callsigns.

Just the wind.

And a rustle of paper.

I opened my eyes and turned. There—pinned to the back of a nearby post, half-torn and clinging on by one staple—was a poster.

It looked old. Weather-worn. Corners curling.

I stepped closer.

It was a wanted notice.

But there was no name.

No face.

Just the header:

WANTED: INDIVIDUAL POSING SIGNIFICANT THREAT

Below it, a blank space where a photo should be. A smudge of distortion. A visual censoring. And then the line that bothered me most:

If you recognize them, report immediately. If you do not, trust your instinct.

I stared at it for a long time.

This was the second time I saw this poster. The first being in front of Lily and Charlie’s home.

I felt a sense of unease looking at it. Like I should do something about it.

This wasn’t just about someone on the run.

Every instinct in my body screamed that whoever this man could possibly be, he is beyond dangerous.

I scanned the alley. No cameras. No drones. Not in this neighborhood. This wasn’t A-Rank housing. This wasn’t even c-Rank. This was the edge—places you only went if you had nowhere better to go. Which meant most people wouldn’t report what they saw. Or if they did, the delay would be long enough for whoever was watching to still catch the signal.

They’d placed these here on purpose.

I ripped the poster down taking it with me.

My hand lingered on the paper. It was rough. Printed cheaply. It didn’t come from a top-level government branch. More likely, this was distributed through one of the lesser programs—maybe even a local police officer printed them. It was the kind you used when you didn’t want to ask for permission to conduct surveillance.

Life wasn’t sunshine and rainbows.

No surprise there.

But the fact that this poster had no face...the fact that no one knows about this possibly dangerous criminal made me feel horrible.

I walked back to the front of the station one last time. Looked at the shuttered door. Let the wind run its fingers through my hair and tried to remember how it used to feel—being the first one out the door during a call, the tension of the hose line, the split-second math of structural collapse. The heartbeat of something bigger than yourself.

And then I turned away.

Step by step.

No alarms.

No glory.

Just ashes, and absence.

But I was still walking.

Still learning.

Still moving forward.

I had one more place to see today.

And maybe, just maybe, there was something still left to build.