Chapter 8 - "The Boy Who Listens"

One clock ticks too early. Another never stops. But one - just one - is waiting for the exact second.

Michael stood in the soft fog of a Bay Area morning, just outside the yellow tape. The house sagged slightly to the left, as if listening to one side of a secret for too long.

The body was gone, But the carving remained.

2:06 a.m. 

Again.

He traced the scene with his eyes - sidewalk, curb, porch, flowerbed trampled by first responders. 

Nobody looked twice at him. Just another man in a jacket.

But his mind was already sorting flaws.

Impostor's flaw #7: Repetition without understanding.

Each true mark is unique. A gear carved for that single soul’s stolen seconds. Precision is not a pattern - it is a language.

He adjusted the cuffs of his coat and walked away. 

The Master always revealed false gears in time.

-

Mrs. Keenan was two minutes late.

Her fingers trembled as they unlocked the classroom door.

Yesterday: no tremor.

Last week: strong voice.

Today: red-rimmed eyes, coffee spilled on her blouse.

He wondered if she was running out of time.

During spelling, he pressed a mechanical pencil to his wrist - not carving, just pressure. Just to imagine.

At night, he traced the same circle until the paper tore. 

Then he redrew it, this time with symbols instead of numbers. A clock only he could read.

His father- a former police officer- never noticed. Too busy with cable news reruns, drunk by seven. 

His mother rarely came home.

Once during a blackout, his father whispered:

“We did what we had to. Nobody died. Nobody died then.”

The boy remembered that.

And he wrote: Then.

That night, the attic creaked. Maybe the wind.

But he froze.

A moment ago, there had been ticking.

Steady. Confident.

Like someone winding a key behind the wall.

-

“She’s gone,” Brandt said. “Just like that.”

“Amelia Carr doesn’t vanish,” LeClair muttered, staring at a grainy CCTV still - Amelia entering into her apartment three nights ago. Not seen since.

Mail stacked. Toothbrush still wet.

Computer wiped clean.

LeClair pulled out a manila envelope, anonymous. Inside: a single page.

“She’s not a gear. She only filed the plans.”

Below it: a bent clock, drawn in ink.

“Someone thinks she was never part of the mechanism,” LeClair said.

“But now she’s missing.” Brandt replied.

“Worse,” LeClair said. “She might’ve known who filed the original blueprint.”

He flipped open a small folder recovered from her home office. Inside: a single sticky note, faded yellow, timestamped 2:01 a.m., scrawled in blue ink:

"Found page 12 again. Same handwriting."

LeClair stared at it.

"She knew something was coming."

Brandt didn't reply. but his eyes lingered on the handwriting. Something about the loop of the d-precise. Familiar. Like a signature without a name.

-

He wiped the blade against his shirt. The woman’s wrist had split wrong. Too much pressure. He’d panicked. She’d screamed. That wasn’t supposed to happen.

The others had gone quiet. The men. But she had cried. Said her name over and over. As if it mattered.

He replayed the moment in his head. Over and over. Trying to memorize it. Trying to erase it.

He placed her hand against the broken clock and whispered:

“Your time was taken. I give you back control.”

But he didn’t believe it anymore.

He’d started with purpose. Or so he’d thought.

Now, everything was just noise. Scratches, not carvings.

He wondered if the man in the long coat was real. 

The one who had stared at him from across the street.

Just once.

Then vanished.

He hadn’t seen him again.

But he felt something watching.

-

He struck at 2:06. Again.

But her time was not 2:06. She was not meant for that moment.

He assigns hours like numbers on a form.

He counts, but does not keep time.

The impostor is not the only threat.

A boy draws clocks with no instruction.

A woman vanishes into the gap between seconds.

And the gears begin to turn faster than they should.”

He closed the notebook.

Some clocks you watch. 

Others you wind.

And some… 

You stop.