"Collect her."

As Sky was told, she obeyed the commands. Silas did not touch the tear that fell at his cheek.

"What?" The Woman's voice was frantic. "No! I won't be collected by the likes of you!"

In a scream that was carried into silence, Sky pulled the Woman's soul from her body, delivering it to her Collector, the hungering tentacles of black and Hell's Gate. The Woman's shell of a body left on the ground as an empty husk. 

The Woman was collected. Yet, from above there were another pair of eyes watching the Collector at work. On one of the bridge's twin towers, further above the going ons between hunter and prey, Rathanael was watching Silas. He’d seen the abilities of the Woman and silent Man who’d touched the chains. Something had happened, the chains elicited a reaction in Silas, Sky and the Man before they parted ways. Curious, Rathanael thought he would learn more. 

Rathanael's wings spread wide as he stepped off the ledge of the bridge's tower. In the still of the night, he followed the Man across the water towards the giant factory standing as a ziggurat in the dark.

From the bridge Silas saw it. The outline of the shape across the water. It crept out of the darkness as a gargantuan mesa of brick and concrete. An unused smoke stack speared the middle of the building's exterior, rising as a dead beacon in the night. 

Looking across the water, Sky couldn't help but shudder at the thought that Faust knowing they were there and knowing they were coming. The revelation of the meaning of the chains to someone other than the Collector left a bad feeling rising in the pit of her being. Silas' would continue to pursue and in the entirety of his career, he never once turned back. Now that it was the end, Silas was set on finishing what had been started. From the woman's body left behind and the flames she set, Silas and Sky walked with the chains in hand across the remainder of the empty bridge. Towards their calling fate. The Man was certain to be somewhere ahead, blocking their path to Faust. Besides being a mockery to Silas' identity, the Collector wondered what other annoyances he possessed.

The sky was becoming lighter at the turning of night towards dawn. Soon the countless crows would cross it on their journey to the Heaven and Hell beyond. To the bridge's opposite side they arrived and their destination grew in their vision. Hundreds of small square windows covered its exterior brick facade. They were lifeless in the dark.

"Are you certain?" Sky asked in a quiet mouse-like whisper. The closer they drew the more she felt someone could hear their every word. 

"This one is certain." 

It was as though Silas was being called by his prey. There was no denying the pull Faust had on him. Even if he were to escape across the world, Silas would be sure to follow. Determined to see it all to the end. Nothing would stand in his way. 

Ahead, Silas stopped to scan across a broken waterfront to their destination. 

"I visited this place once. A long time ago." Sky said. It was a memory of a distant life. Silas looked, hanging quietly on her thoughts for her to continue. "When I was a student, my architecture class did a project on this factory. Well, refinery, as it used to be a sugar refinery early in the 19th century but when demand for the product went down, the building fell into disrepair." 

Her knowledge was unknowingly helpful. 

"What more did my Sky learn?" 

Sky blinked at Silas. Embarrassed, she searched her memories of her living schooldays for anything useful. 

"There are several houses located on the grounds around the main building that hold boilers, pumps, tanks and silos for storage. There are several floors in the main building itself, filled with industrial equipment. The most noteworthy section of the main building is the building's warehouse and biggest open space, as it takes up a large portion of its insides." 

Silas surveyed the building as Sky spoke of what she could remember of her life before death. 

"An entrance?" 

"I can't remember for certain but I think most sides on the ground level have some form of entry. If you enter from the harbour side, you can access the main warehouse by staircase." 

The knowledge she had retained in most of her classes had grown blurred in her memory, yet that building remained. 

Silas bowed his head in acknowledgment of her recollection. It was useful. 

"This one could never do without his Sky." He said, turning his attention back to the building and despite only said in passing, its words resonated within the ghost. Even after all those years of the darkness consuming him, Silas remained forever benign to her. Forever grateful in his soulless existence that she was at his side. She had never considered herself anything special but to Silas she was and forever remained so. 

The harbour river and air were still. The outline of several boats belonging to the Others traversed the waters, quietly floating with what current took them. Motorized vehicles were a rare feature in that world. The surrounding grounds appeared lifeless. That Other Brooklyn was eerily silent. The great square structure of the refinery was a sleeping angular behemoth of brick and mortar, sitting in wait for the Soul Collector. Its soulless black windows staring outward as holes into the unknown.

Then the cawing of a crow returned. Its sound was a shrill knife in the air and its sound circled closer in the dark. From high above, beyond what the chains could reach, the bird flew. In a wide arced turn in the sky, it came closer to a landing on the ground of the waterfront ahead.  Trying to keep out of the distance of what the chains could reach was a safety measure. The ghost girl was proving to be a dangerous distraction.  

But the distance didn't deter Sky. 

The hair on the back of her neck stood on end and without Silas' command, Sky was after the bird. Shooting past the Collector, the ghost swam with all the speed she could in order to bring herself closer. With a surprised squawk at Sky's expected approach  unexpected speed, the bird flew further back. Its actions only lured them forward. It made several more looped turns in the air before descending again. With fluttering black down feathers, the crow disappeared into the surrounding derelict grounds of the refinery that housed a maze of towering holding tanks, storage facilities, and discarded industrial equipment. The chains were near erect in the air, Sky surveyed where the crow was flying and where it disappeared. Although still at a distance, she was now at half the height of the refinery and had a decent view of the area around them. 

Her birds-eye view was short lived for without warning she felt herself being reeled backwards through the open air, back towards Silas who's mental command was pulling the chains back to him. 

Back at his side, he said,

"This one thinks it best to remain at their side." 

Bringing the chains to circle his arms so he could carry them close, Silas would not again make the same mistake of leaving them unguarded to the likes of the Man. He walked with caution. Not directly towards where the crow had landed but in a careful path he set with the guidance of Sky's otherworldly sense of the presence of the souls around her.  

Ahead. She felt it. 

The crow, or Man, or whatever he pretended to be was somewhere ahead of them. Hiding amongst the debris littering the grounds. It's sharp grating coos calling out again. Around the corner of a broken storage shed, Silas and Sky closed in. The flap of wings and another caw as the Collector came slowly into view.

Unobstructed, the scene before them became clear and Sky's eyes widened in horror.

The crow was picking greedily at the exposed flesh of a large broken wing of white feather left torn to shreds in a splatter of blood across the ground. 

"That's-" Sky began but couldn't finish. Both ghost and Collector knew full well what it was. 

Blood led off in a messy trail from the scene. In a planned escape, the crow's form lifted easily into the air with several flaps of its wings. In a gliding leap, it disappeared over the next wall away from their approach. Her mouth gaped wide, Sky floated next to Silas, her disbelief and shock freezing her thoughts still. That was, until it was Silas took a slow step towards the mess and her thoughts began to race once more. Towards what was left of the feathery appendage on the ground, Silas black eyes scanned the mess.  

Wings were meant to be in pairs. He remained quiet and after a moment of observation and a long exhale, he stepped past the massacre at his feet. Following the trail of blood and the way the crow had gone. 

By now the sky was closer to its cold dawn and the timing of their arrival felt strangely impeccable. Around the next wall of rusting metal and breaking wood, following the trail set before them. Sky remained close at his side.

"He's here." Sky's voice was at his ear. 

The Collector stepped out from around the corner of the crumbling walls to see how the blood trail continued in a now open space. Across the mostly flat expanse before them, over broken metal beams and abandoned pallets, the blood and stray white feathers stretched all the way to the harbour facing entrance of the great refinery and beyond. Whatever or whoever it was had been dragged inside while what stood in their way was whom they expected.

The Silent Man. As he was, without a disguise and a smirk across his face. 

Releasing the chains from his arms, Silas knew the confrontation that was to come next but whether or not it would reveal something else entirely was to be seen.  Faust was expecting them. He was also expecting them to collect the Man before their meeting could take place. 

Sky swam around the back of her Collector, watchful of their prey. The chains' lengths were kept back from another attempted touch but the damage had already been done. The Man had seen what Silas hid in the chains and nothing could change that. 

"This one has been sent to collect you." Silas said, brandishing a marked palm. 

With those words, the man reciprocated the greeting with the wave of his hand across his features that changed to reveal the Man shifting into his form as the Collector' twin stranger.

And then he spoke,

"This one has been sent to collect you." 

Sky was near screaming in her hisses of revulsion. Apparently the Silent Man was not so silent. He could not only mimic the Collector's look, but his voice as well. Although Silas didn't appear to move, the distance between him and the Man shrank nonetheless. Until within feet he drew forward, the Man turned full circle for his features to change again. Tall, with a complexion without shadow, his grey eyes clear and piercing, the ghost and Collector found themselves facing Silas' twin once more. Yet this time, it was the Silas of before the Contract with Lucifer had taken place. The Silas that had a soul. 

And it wasn't only Silas the Man could copy.

With the simple motion of a limb the change was faster than the eye could follow and the reaction from the Collector was exactly what the Man had been aiming. From auburn hair to flaming red, the Man reached deep within Silas to pull from him a buried memory. 

"Silas, I've missed you." The Man spoke, but his voice had become someone else's. Someone very familiar. 

The Collector stopped. As close to shock as Silas could feel, he found himself staring down at a smiling Sky in the place his doppelgänger had been standing moments before. It was the living Sky. His Sky, before everything. Red hair of fire, pale freckled skin and green eyes. Caught in her stare, Silas didn't move. He couldn't. How could he?

"Imposter!" The real Sky was screaming, unable to hide her abhorrence at the lengths of the Man's ability. She was at her Collector's arm, pulling at his attention. "Don't believe these lies!"

Her hand to his cheek, Sky brought Silas' stare to her. She was his Sky. 

"It's not real." Sky said, shaking Silas free. Her gaze pleading. 

"Are you so sure?" The Man now as Sky's living twin continued to smile with mischievous question. When Sky looked over her shoulder from the black of the Soul Collector to the mocking mirrored image of her living self, she was quick to discover for herself the speed of their prey's costume changing abilities. "I've seen within both of you. These are your memories revealed. I've seen the good..."

The Man as Sky's twin gestured to herself but with another turn of her body and limbs, she changed once more, 

"...and the bad." 

The feeling in the pit of Sky's stomach sank at the twin stranger's words. It wasn't the persona the Man changed but Sky at a different time. As she was at the moment Silas signed his Contract with Lucifer. 

"No," She heard Silas whisper beneath his breath, while she herself could not hide the hurt in seeing the change her body had taken. 

The Collector took a step back to watch Sky's beauty die away. The fire in her hair lost all color and her eyes lost all life. Becoming a shell of her former self, Silas was forced to relive within a matter of moments the steps Sky had walked towards death. She had been a dying flower and Silas did the only thing he could to save her.

"Silas, if only there was a way we could stay together," Sky's twin spoke the words Sky had spoken from Silas. The words that had sent him feverishly searching for a miracle amidst a world of science and medicine telling him that there was no chance of survival. He searched but instead was found and the only thing he ever wanted was presented to him. 

For a price. 

The skeletal form of what Sky had become at the end of her human life became Silas once more at the end of his. The Man was playing the Collector's memories like a film of horrors running off its reel. 

Silas' doppelgänger lifted a clenched fist to the two. His hand opened to reveal the bloodied sigil of Lucifer freshly carved into palm. Grey to shadow, tears of ink began to fall from his eyes that were staining from white to black. He opened his mouth to speak but only the black appeared rising in a thin stream from his lips. The Corruption cursed him as his soul was taken by Lucifer and Sky watched how Silas became the Soul Collector that the Devil himself created. 

Each link of the chains had been forged from Silas' memories of what was sacrificed. Revealed to the Man with a touch. Silas had managed to keep it from the entire world for thirty four years until the nearly the end.

The twin Silas began to laugh through the ink that rose in his mouth. A dark and frightening laugh that sent chills through Sky as she held close to the true Silas. Sky had never seen the change. Had never seen what Silas had suffered in his choice with Lucifer. He had done it alone. For her. Her fists clenched shut, Sky's anger towards the Man's insult could not be held back. When Sky looked to Silas for his reaction, he was already in motion towards the ever changing Man.

Provoked as planned.