Before he knew it, Elias had spent the better part of the week acclimating to the monotonous and suffocating life of Adrian Kaelen. The coursework was trivial. His dorm room was nothing more than a tolerable prison cell. The System remained irritatingly silent as long as he didn't cross the line. But the university itself was beginning to become a nuisance, particularly the people who, for whatever reason, felt entitled to his time. Leo was the chief offender among them. They sat across from one another in the campus cafeteria, enveloped by the midday cacophony of overlapping conversations, scraping chairs, and the mechanical hum of vending machines. Elias held a paper cup of black coffee, his expression perfectly flat, while Leo absentmindedly picked at the remains of his lunch. "So," Leo said around a mouthful of fries, "what are your plans for this weekend?" "Something." Leo looked up, raising an eyebrow. "That sounds highly suspicious, like an answer specifically designed to

Chapter Thirteen — The Dead Tell No LiesMarcus had not forgotten him.Elias was almost certain of that now.The question was no longer whether Marcus remembered the erratic student who had confronted him outside the conference hall.He did.Elias had seen the recognition flash across Marcus's face during that brief, suspended moment when their eyes met at the beginning of the lecture. He had seen it again in the deliberate, calculating way Marcus had singled him out during the discussion.What Elias could not determine was what exactly Marcus remembered.Was Marcus looking at Adrian Kaelen—a strange undergraduate who had suddenly developed an unsettling interest in Elias Thorne's death?Or was he looking past the young man's face, searching for something far more impossible?A ghost.A dead pathologist.A man who should have been buried months ago.Neither of them could afford to make the first mistake.The lecture hall had nearly emptied when Marcus closed his leather-bound notes an

Elias barely slept.By morning, the laptop was still sitting exactly where he had left it, its dead, black screen reflecting the faint gray light leaking through the dormitory curtains. His phone remained face up on the desk beside it, displaying the same two messages that had kept him awake for most of the night.Stop looking for the man you used to be. He already failed once.Elias had read them so many times he no longer needed to look at the screen to remember every syllable.He picked up the phone again.He wasn't interested in the threat itself. He was interested in how it had been delivered.Elias opened the message details and examined everything the device would allow him to see. Sender information. Transmission data. Timestamps.Nothing useful.The number had been masked through a service that exposed almost no useful sender information. There was no recoverable carrier data, no obvious geographic origin, nothing that would allow him to simply point at a map and say, There.