Vincent leaned back in his chair and let his eyes close for a second.

“He can still surprise. I was sure he didn’t have a family.”

Lesley noticed Anna go even paler than usual. That professional narrowing of the eyes that clicks on when something’s off.

“Are you sure she should be hearing this at all?” she said, hard, looking at Vincent. “And why isn’t she in hospital or at home?”

“Long story. We’ve done the hospital,” he said. “Home isn’t an option yet. She’ll stay with me.”

Lesley tilted her head and looked at him, trying to read the things he hadn’t said aloud. Then, dryly, she dropped a note about Cathy — the unavoidable problem he kept studiously ignoring.

Vincent tightened. His face darkened by a shade, as if a cloud had passed over it.

Anna pounced on that at once, like an excuse to bite. She folded her arms, snorted, and asked who this Cathy was. Vincent gave her a brief, surprised look; he’d almost forgotten the person in front of him had no past. Then, levelly, he explained: his daughter. Two years younger than Anna. At a girls’ boarding school.

She blinked, taking it in.

“Aaah,” she drawled, remembering the pink curtains and the toys. Then put on a theatrically understanding face. “Right. So that’s your daughter’s room. I thought you were gay or…” she gave a crooked smirk, “a pervert.”

Lesley went taut as a wire, staring at her. Vincent’s frown snapped down.

“Get out the wrong side of bed?” he shot back.

“I’d love to smack that mouth…” Lesley grated through her teeth.

Anna turned her head lazily and smirked, like a cat that’s just knocked a glass off the table and is now watching you try not to swear.

“Go on, then, Rusty,” she said, calm as you like.

Lesley blinked, as if someone had dashed cold water in her face. Then she turned to Vincent. Her look said everything: ‘Did you hear that? Is this normal? I’m about to commit a small, entirely justified murder.’

She swung her gaze back to Anna, squinting.

“Absolutely ill-mannered little madam.”

Instead of taking offence, Anna’s smile grew more self-satisfied. Someone had just pinned the ‘First-Class Cheek’ medal to her chest.

“And who exactly are you?” she asked, poison-sweet. “What do you know about my upbringing?”

Lesley drew a deep breath, clearly holding herself in.

“I don’t need to know,” she said, cold as ice. “You’re demonstrating it right now.”

“Want me to give you the full demonstration?” Anna asked, evenly.

The spat could have gone on, but Vincent raised a hand like a teacher in class. He cut them off, short and hard, without the usual ‘let’s all calm down’. Vincent didn’t have that setting. In so many words, he hung a sign on Anna that read ‘careful — dog’s in a mood today’ and asked Lesley not to take it to heart. Lesley didn’t know she’d lost her memory, and Vincent chose not to say. He blamed stress and a rotten day.

Lesley shifted her gaze to him, then back to Anna. She took a beat, arms tightening across her chest.

Anna gave a lazy shrug.

“Bin-sent’s right, Rusty, cool off.”

Right then her stomach let out a loud, treacherous grumble. Anna winced and put a hand to her belly.

“There you go,” she said, stone-faced. “Your wittering’s made me hungry.”

Lesley drew a long breath. Closed her eyes. Pressed her lips into a thin line. She held herself the way people do when they know how not to hit, but can picture exactly how they would.

“That’s it, I’m going,” she said, turning for the door. “Before I say something I’ll regret.”

Vincent watched her go in silence. He didn’t soften it. Didn’t explain. Just took the consequences as part of the day.

When the door banged shut, Anna reached, thoughtful, for the next line:

“Touchy. PMS or what?”

“Shut up and sit at the table,” Vincent cut in, weary.

Anna lifted an eyebrow. That familiar glint — come on, what are you going to do about it?

He only looked at her. A warning. Long, unblinking.

Anna lasted a couple of seconds, then snorted, looked away and sat down at the table.

***

The bus rocked steady and patient, trying to lull everything inside it to sleep. Beyond the windows slid the same façades, grey boxes, shop signs, wet brick. An ordinary London evening: noisy and dirty. But in Lesley’s head everything sounded muted.

She sat by the window with her shoulder against the glass. The chill soaked through her skin. The off-screen noise of the street — engine hum, voices — faded behind her own thoughts: “And this is Gerald Lord’s daughter?” flickered across her mind.

She clenched her hands.

“What is wrong with her, full stop? And I went and behaved like a child… Vincent will think I’m unprofessional. Idiot.”

The way home was long. The bus rocked like a cradle and her eyes slipped shut. The tiredness of the last few days washed over her. Lesley stopped picking herself apart and fell asleep.

When she opened her eyes again, the bus was suspiciously quiet. She looked round. The carriage was almost empty and the lights were out. Not a single passenger. No reflections in the windows but the ghost of her own.

Outside the glass — a formless mist, the glow of distant headlights, but no buildings, no stop she could place.

Only then did she notice the girl. She sat a little way off. Small, about ten. Head down, dark hair covering her face. On the floor by her feet — a little pool of blood. A red blotch on the dirty aisle.

Lesley froze.

A small child’s whisper came, very soft:

“Lesley.”

Her heart picked up. She stood slowly, never taking her eyes off the girl.

“Excuse me. Do we know each other?” she asked, taking a step forward.

When only a couple of paces separated them, the girl moved a fraction. Her head stayed bowed.

Lesley’s gaze dropped and she stopped dead.

No hands. No feet. The girl sat on the seat like a broken doll. Naked, wrists hacked off, legs ending above the ankles. Blood drifted to the floor in thin streams. Her face turned towards Lesley. Nora Mason. A girl she had once known very well. She died thirteen years ago.

Lesley lurched towards the driver, then saw the bus was driving itself.

“Oh God…” she breathed.

Nora lifted her head slowly. The face was far too pale, the eyes filmed over with grey.

“Help me,” she said gently.

Ice ran along Lesley’s spine. She flung herself at the doors, hit them with her whole body, and hammered her fists against the glass.

“Please!” she shouted. “Open the doors!”

No response. Only her own voice in the trapped space.

She struck again, harder.

“Let me out!”

Behind her came the same voice, now cold, cutting, reciting numbers Lesley didn’t recognise:

“Thirty. Twenty-four. Thirteen. Eight. Six.”

Against her will, Lesley turned. The girl was no longer sitting. She hung in the air as if by an invisible string. The stumps of her hands and feet swayed gently.

“Thirty. Twenty-four. Thirteen. Eight. Six. Wake up.”

Lesley screamed and jerked awake at once.

The bus was ordinary again: packed with people, someone flicking through a paper, someone jabbing at a phone, someone dozing. Outside, the same houses. The doors swung open at a stop and new passengers got on. She was breathing hard, feeling her hands shake. She ran a palm over her face, wiping away sweat.

Just a dream, she told herself. Only a dream.

***

Anna sat at the table, gripping a sandwich in both hands. She took bites that were too big, almost aggressive, like a hungry wolf. She chewed fast, without savouring.

Vincent stood by the hob, fussing with the kettle. The kitchen smelt of bread, butter, and a tired man who’d eaten on autopilot for years and was only now remembering that the living have rituals you shouldn’t ignore.

He set a mug in front of her. Warm steam lifted and thinned at once.

“We’ll go to another hospital tomorrow,” Vincent muttered. “After that we’ll decide what to do next. If your health checks out, I’ll transfer you to another school and you’ll carry on  it’s your final year, after all.”

Anna raised her eyes; there was more weariness in them than curiosity.

He went on, reading out the instructions: she couldn’t go back to her old school. The reporters would find her quickly. And it was better to keep the amnesia quiet. Don’t spread it about. Keep your mouth shut.

“Why? Is this because of the ‘Faceless’?” she asked, swallowing a lump in her throat. “The news said he’d been caught.”

Vincent pressed his lips together; his face set harder. He sat opposite, put his elbows on the table and laced his fingers.

A pause fell heavy between them. In the quiet, somewhere through the wall, a neighbour turned on a tap. An ordinary sound, from a normal life. Which somehow made it feel worse — the world flaunting its indifferent everydayness.

Vincent began a sentence and broke it off halfway.

***

Ayden sat on the sofa in an expensive hotel room, one leg crossed over the other, slowly lighting a cigarette. The lighter’s flame picked out his profile for a heartbeat, threw a shadow along his cheekbone, then vanished, leaving a thin thread of smoke that climbed and bled into the warm light.

The television played in front of him. He didn’t look at the screen the way people do. He watched the way a predator watches movement in grass: without emotion, with attention. The television wasn’t entertainment; it was a source of data.

His mobile vibrated on the sofa beside him. The screen flashed: “Vincent.”

He glanced at it and let one corner of his mouth lift. He didn’t answer. A thread of ash fell softly onto the saucer.

From the television speakers a segment was running: the Mayor of London, Thomas Livingston, stood before the microphones, ringed by reporters, speaking in his measured, even voice:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We all know London is going through hard times. We see crimes that defy explanation; we see a darkness spreading through the streets of our city. And I understand this not as a politician, but as a man who has lost a friend. As someone who has watched a single nightmare destroy an entire family…”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Gerald Lord was my friend. A man who fought for the truth. But the Faceless took him… took him through his daughter. Through Anna. She was a child when that monster reached her. She survived the encounter, and yesterday she died.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***

In a dingy trailer a battered man lounged. He had the face of someone you don’t ask extra questions. A gangster’s face, abrupt as a spinning backfist. Deep, dark eyes, a close crop, careless stubble. A tarantula tattoo on his neck, off to the side. His name was Noah.

He sat in front of an old, squat TV, a bulbous CRT with a jittering picture, and watched the screen.

The same segment again. A loop the city was running to nausea until it became background. Noah’s face was taut, and the TV’s light cut along his cheekbones, making them sharper still. In that cold flicker he didn’t look tired but dangerous, like an animal lying there and pretending to be calm.

A dog lay across his legs. A pit bull. Heavy body, broad chest; no scars visible, though they were surely there. She lifted her head, pricked her ears, as if she’d heard something through the wall or inside the TV’s very sound.

Noah’s hand moved over her fur by habit. Almost gentle, but without warmth. He didn’t take his eyes off the screen.

The image flickered, hissed, breathed white electric static. And in that shimmer, in that cheap light, Noah looked like part of the very story the television kept forcing on repeat. Only in his version the ending was usually dirtier.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“But I can tell you this: Anna died long before her lifeless body was found,” Livingston said. “She died the moment the Faceless reached her and Joseph. He broke her mind, erased her identity, turned her into his shadow…”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The voice-over reminded viewers of the fire at the Lords’ house, of how Anna, “in a psychotic state”, set her own home alight, of the court’s decision, of Blackthorn. The clichés came one after another: “a danger to herself and others”, “a high-security psychiatric hospital”.

In the trailer with Noah sat two more. A man named Mark, tall and on the lean side, with that rare “defect” that sticks in the mind more than any temperament: heterochromia. The right eye black, the left grey. It made his gaze look permanently split, as if he both believed and disbelieved everything at once.

Beside him sprawled a young woman, nursing a beer and cracking peanuts. Esther. The same one Vincent had seen outside Makkeller when she’d been at her boyfriend’s throat. She looked calmer now, but the calm had the feel of a lull before the next storm.

Esther commented, lazy as a yawn, eyes on the screen and aimed at Noah:

“Your old man’s pissing in our ear, proper.”

Noah, the dog across his knees, snorted. Not in outrage. More from hearing out loud what he’d been thinking and hadn’t wanted to say. He didn’t argue.

The television carried on turning Anna into a label, Blackthorn into a bogeyman, the fire into a story you could play on an endless loop.