Lira looked at him. “You really think this will work?”

Ezra ran a hand through his hair, fingers tangling in the strands. “It’s the best idea we have right now.”

She turned to Callen. “Do you have another?”

“Yes,” Callen said. “But it will get you killed.”

“Then we’re doing Ezra’s plan,” Lira said. Her voice came out sharper than she meant. She softened it. “We don’t have much time.”

Callen tilted his head like he was listening to something far away. “We have a little. The window hasn’t closed yet.”

Ezra frowned. “How can you tell?”

Callen met his eyes. “Because you’re not crying.”

Ezra froze. His jaw tightened, but he didn’t speak.

Lira forced the moment to keep moving. “Okay. How do we start?”

Ezra dropped his satchel on the bench and unfolded a paper map of Greystone. He pointed at three locations. “We need three places to record sound. If we know what it sounds like at three edges of the pocket, we can find the middle—like drawing a triangle around a shadow.”

Lira nodded. “Three corners show you the center.”

“Exactly.” Ezra pulled out his gear:

• His phone.

• A small black dictaphone that fit in her palm.

• A microphone shaped like a T, covered in soft foam

“We record two minutes of ambient sound at each spot. These devices pick up what I call ‘breath gaps’—tiny silences between noises that human ears miss.”

Lira tilted her head. “And what do the gaps tell us?”

“In normal places, the gaps are messy. Life is messy—wind, traffic, birds, background chaos. But inside a pocket, the gaps are too clean. Too smooth. It’s like something sanded off all the little flaws.”

“And we stay away from the voice,” Lira said, “because that’s the bait.”

“Right,” Ezra said. “We don’t follow the sound. We watch the space between sounds. That’s where the real doorway hides.”

Callen’s eyes narrowed. “Be careful. The wrong breath is worse than the wrong voice.”

Lira’s mouth went dry. “Got it.”

Ezra tapped three points on the map. “First spot: right here at the gazebo. Second: the railway bend, where we found the hoodie. Third: the industrial lot. After all three, we meet at the bakery—noisy place, lots of people.”

“Noise is honest,” Callen said.

Ezra nodded. “And the bell hates honest noise.”

He stayed at the gazebo to record. Lira took the path toward the railway bend, Callen beside her.

The fog had thinned, leaving tufts of frost in the shade. The air smelled of metal and wet leaves. Above them, the bell tower stood against the sky, its black mouth unreadable.

They reached the fence near the railway. Lira placed the dictaphone on a wooden post. A small red light blinked on—the kind of red that feels like a warning.

She pressed record.

The machine began collecting everything: the wind in the reeds, the faint hum of wires, the hush between sounds.

Lira didn’t know what to do with her hands, so she shoved them into her pockets. She tried to listen the way Ezra would want—not for danger, not for voices, but for rhythm. For what should be there.

Callen stood perfectly still beside the fence. So still he could’ve been part of it. The only sign he was alive was the slow rise of his chest.

But… there was no fog when he breathed.

“You’re not breathing,” Lira said before she could stop herself.

“I’m breathing,” Callen replied.

“Then why—”

“It doesn’t show,” he said. “Not often.”

“Is that… a cost?”

He thought for a moment. “It’s a sign.”

“A sign of what?”

“That I’m still paying.”

Lira stared at the blinking red light of the recorder, trying to keep the conversation from becoming something she wasn’t ready to hold. “Last night you said you want me to live.”

“Yes,” Callen said.

“Because you need an anchor.”

“I didn’t say need,” he answered. “But yes.”

There was something honest in how he said it—honest, and dangerous.

“That sounds like using,” she said quietly.

“It sounds like staying,” he said.

She didn’t answer. She wasn’t ready to.

The two minutes ended with a soft beep. She grabbed the recorder quickly, almost grateful for the excuse.

They took the long way to the industrial lot—the path with the cracked wall and the slope of dark trees. When they arrived, the plastic bag they’d seen earlier was gone. In its place was nothing.

Somehow, that felt worse.

Ezra was already there, hunched over his phone. “I ran the gazebo audio through a sound-analyzer app,” he said, eyes flicking between screens. “The gaps were uneven—normal. Real places are full of imperfections.”

Callen stepped six feet away and stood still. “Here,” he said. “Record from here.”

Ezra looked up. “Why there?”

Callen pointed to a crack in the asphalt—one that curved around a pebble before continuing straight. “Because when I stand where the ground is wrong, I feel less of it. The world deletes mistakes where the pocket is thin.”

Lira set the recorder down beside the crack.

She watched a leaf land on a storm drain, only to slide off like something exhaled beneath it.

Ezra’s voice cut through her thoughts. “Two minutes. Starting now.”

They listened to nothing together—an almost loud kind of nothing. Somewhere, a generator thumped irregularly. The wind changed direction without reason.

The green light blinked: 0:21… 0:22… 0:23.

At 2:00, Ezra snatched the recorder. He compared the new track to the first one. His expression tightened. He swore softly.

Lira felt her stomach drop. Ezra didn’t waste curses.

“What is it?” she asked.

“The industrial lot’s quiet,” he said. “But not natural quiet. The breath-gaps are too smooth. This is it—one corner of a pocket.”

He tapped the map. “If we get two more points…”

Lira finished for him. “We can find the center.”