Chapter 18- "The Unwinding"

Every end has an echo. And somewhere, new gears are beginning to turn.

"Police have officially confirmed the death of Eloise Danner, a suspected accomplice in the ongoing Timepiece case that has shocked the Bay Area and beyond. Authorities intercepted Danner in what appeared to be an elaborate trap set to capture or kill her mentor, the killer behind at least even connected murders..."

"Detectives Mason Cole and Luis Vega were on scene at the time of the confrontation. No officers were harmed. However, the primary suspect remains at large..."

"A strange phrase found carved near the scene-'The Law of Precision'-has become the latest clue in the hunt..."

Tick.

She hadn't slept.

Not after the report. Not after the press conference. And definitely not after reviewing the footage.
Eloise was dead. But it didn't feel like a win.

It felt like they'd slammed the brakes-just in time to watch something worse pass by.

She stared at the gear on her desk. Still cold. Still clean. Still deliberate.

Vega sat across from her, silent, reviewing timelines.

"She wasn't just his shadow," he said finally.

"No. She was his echo," Mason muttered.

They both knew it.

He had allowed them to find her.

A demonstration,

They thought back to the journals, the phrases, and the language used.

"Her gears were rusted," Vega said. " She started spinning too loudly. Too fast."

"She was disrupting the machine," Mason finished.

Tick.

The girl they brought in couldn’t have been older than twenty-two.

Public college. Art student. No record. No history.
But her notebook…

Full of clock sketches. Diagrams. Passages copied directly from the writing recovered from the mentor’s old journal. Phrases lifted from crime scenes.

"Time must be earned."
"You can't keep what you never understood."
"Remove the broken hands or the whole clock fails."

Mason closed the folder.

"How did you even find this?"

The girl smiled.

"It was all online. Not posted, but...traceable. If you know what to look for."

Vega leaned forward. "You ever meet him?"

She shook her head, then paused.

"I don't think anyone meets him. You're chosen. Or you're corrected."

Tick.

He watched the clip again.

The girl's interview.

She was young. Sloppy. Curious. But there was potential. Not a replacement. Not yet. But a listener.

A gear.

He would watch her. Watch all of them.

They thought it ended with Eloise.

But that was the sound of rust being scraped away.

The Law had only just begun to be understood.

Time, after all, is meant to move forward.

One correction at a time.

Tick.