Chapter 7 - "The Minute That Shouldn't Be"

Imitation is noise. The Master knows which chimes were never struck.

He stood near the silo where the child's body had been found.

There was no elegance here. No symmetry, no balance. The wrist was jagged-a hack job. The second hand, barely marked, cut shallow like a tremble, not a choice.

Worse: the location was filthy. It reeked of chaos. Rusted tools, scattered trash, animal droppings. A place abandoned even by silence.

He stood still in the silence, eyes closed. Letting ambient noise bleed away until all he could hear was breath and time.

The Master never spoke in words.

He spoke in absence.

From his coat and placed a single white glove on the ground, five feet from where the child had been laid. A sign-not for others-but for him.

A vow.

He whispered like a prayer:

This was not your work.
This was not one of us.

I will find the fraud.

In the Law's words, the pretender was false metal.

Then he turned, coat folding like a blade behind him, and walked away without another glance.

-

Marcus tapped the dry-erase board with the butt of his marker.

“Four victims. All male. No apparent connection. But...”

Brandt flipped through the ME’s report. “They were all listed in a minor civil case from 2013. Lead paint poisoning. Settled quietly. They testified for the defense.”

Marcus frowned. “So… they helped the company dodge liability?”

Brandt nodded. “And now they’re all dead.”

“Time theft,” Marcus muttered.

Brandt's head turned. “What?”

“Nothing,” Marcus said shaking his head. “It’s just… someone thinks they didn’t pay for what they took.”

Brandt leaned back. “Retribution?”

“No. That’s emotional. This feels… mechanical.”

Brandt didn't respond. But the phrase-time theft-clung to him. Like something he'd once believed.

Or feared.

Marcus circled a name on the board:

Amelia Carr - former zoning commissioner in the lead paint case.

“Still alive?” Brandt asked.

“For now.”

-

He watched his teacher from the back of the classroom.

Her shoes made four distinct sounds each time she walked across the tile. Tap... scrape... pause... tap.

She wasted six seconds every time she left her desk and came back.

He had counted.

The journal said those who waste time invite correction. But he wasn’t ready.

Not yet. He didn’t know enough.

But he wanted to know.

He had started drawing his own clocks. Different designs. Some with extra hands. Some with no numbers at all.

He traced them under his desk with his finger whenever someone annoyed him.

He would never tell anyone what the notebook said on the last page.

“You don’t always need the blade.
You only need to listen long enough.

Time will show you who to carve.”

He had underlined carve and, in the corner, drawn a small pendulum. Between chimes, the blade waited.

-

They carve the hour, but not the meaning.

They mimic, but without purpose.

I feel their ticks like flaws in the gear - grit in the wheels.

Eloise bled her own seconds and called it worship.

This new one - this child killer - he doesn't even understand the pendulum.

He is false metal.

I am not dead.

I am between seconds, between chimes.

And the ones who hear me?

They are my gears, turning.

Michael listens.

The child waits.

The detectives knock, but do not yet hear the chime.

They will.

-

He’d tracked the pretender to a blog-sloppy, buried in tags and half-spoken poetry. Michael scrolled until a post caught his eye.

“Time bleeds for all. I just open the vein.”

Michael stared at it. Then took out his pen and underlined it:

Noise. Not Law.

Further down:

“There’s no master clock. Only decay. The ticks are just death getting louder.”

Michael circled the sentence and wrote beside it:

Rot. No Order. No Chime.

He wrote a second note: time theft disguised as worship.

He flipped to the back of his notebook where a short list lived-only names. The unworthy. The corrupt.

He added a sixth:

Unlearned. Pretender. Will be reset.

He shut the book.

The rhythm was broken.

He would leave at dawn

-

The voice online was louder now.

Not just whispers or podcasts-it had bled into culture. 

"Clockwatchers." 

YouTube dramatizations.

Even satire.

Comments weren't about who's dying. 

But who should.

-

The knock came just as Marcus was closing files.

An envelope. No return address.

Inside: a photo.

It was a fifth victim - posed again, a new location. 

But there was something different - a clock. Not carved.

A physical clock. Old. Shattered. Hands stuck at 2:06.

On the back:

You're still looking at the wrong seconds.

Marcus stared.

For the first time in weeks, he felt something behind his ribs.

Not fear.

Something colder.

Something that ticked.

The hands were stuck at 2:06 - a broken gear in plain sight.

Tick. Tock.