Chapter 4: Digging Up Detective Voss

　　Nothing brings the Greyport Police Department to your doorstep faster than blowing up the Police Chief’s family plot with military-grade blasting gelatin. In my first six loops, I had wasted the morning hours sneaking around crime scenes, trying to clear my name before Detective Sera Voss could put a bullet in my chest. On Loop Eight, I cashed two hundred thousand pounds out of Dead Judge Hall’s secret highland account at eight in the morning, bought an armored steam-wagon, and parked it straight across Row 13 of the West Cemetery.

　　KA-BOOM!

　　Chunks of carved white marble and wet cemetery turf rained down across the iron railings.

　　I sat comfortably on the hood of the idling steam-wagon, sipping coffee from a silver thermos while the smoke cleared from Plot 04. Against my ribs, my cheap brass pocket watch ticked away, the seven razor-thin cracks of silver frost gleaming across its gray-blue lens. My skin still held the phantom, blistering heat of burning sulfur from last night’s auction fire, and my lungs still ached with Vane’s dying breath—a neurological souvenir that no reset could ever wash clean.

　　Down in the freshly blasted crater, the heavy mahogany lid of a twelve-year-old coffin lay cracked straight down the middle.

　　Sirens wailed up the cliffside road, tearing through the thick morning fog. Two minutes later, three black police cruisers smashed through the cemetery’s wrought-iron gates, tires screaming as they fishtailed to a halt on the gravel path.

　　Detective Sera Voss kicked her door open before her vehicle even stopped moving.

　　She was back in her dark police trench coat, the silver badge gleaming on her lapel, completely oblivious to the fact that nine hours ago she had been on her knees in a burning freight elevator, screaming my name in a backless silk dress. Her modified service pistol was already drawn in her dominant left hand, aimed dead at my forehead as eight uniformed officers fanned out behind her with carbines raised.

　　"Drop the thermos and get off the wagon, lunatic!" Sera barked, her voice slicing through the cemetery mist. "You’re under arrest for felony desecration, illegal possession of mining explosives, and—" She squinted through the drifting cordite smoke, recognizing my face from the municipal mugshots. "Noel Venn? The third-grade drain inspector wanted for Chief Justice Hall’s murder?"

　　"Morning, Detective," I called out cheerfully, screwing the lid back onto my thermos with my scarred left hand while my right hand rested casually on the handle of a sixteen-pound sledgehammer. "You skipped breakfast again. And before you order your boys to shoot me, you might want to tell them to turn around and go guard the gate. What’s inside this hole is strictly a family matter."

　　"My family plot is the only reason you aren't already bleeding out on the gravel!" Sera snarled, advancing three paces, her left-handed grip rock-steady. "Step away from my sister’s grave, Venn, or I swear to God I’ll put a round through your kneecap myself!"

　　"Your sister?" I tilted my head, offering her a cold, crooked smile. "Is that what Chief Lucius Voss told you was buried under this marble when they resurfaced the stone five years ago?"

　　"Hands on your head! Now!"

　　"Tell your uniforms to back off fifty yards, Sera," I said, dropping the humor from my voice so fast it made her flinch. "Or I start shouting out the exact serial numbers of the six sealed coroner files currently pinned inside the false back of your cedar wardrobe on North Highland Avenue."

　　Sera froze mid-step.

　　Beneath the collar of her dark coat, the pulse in her throat jumped violently. Her dark eyes widened a fraction, darting from my face down to the blasted crater at my boots.

　　"Officer Gavin," she said, her voice tight and dangerously low as she raised her free right hand without taking her eyes off me. "Take the squad back to the main archway. Perimeter lockdown. Nobody comes within fifty yards of Row 13 until I give the word."

　　"But Detective, he’s got blasting charges—" young Gavin protested, alive and whole again in this fresh timeline.

　　"Do it, Gavin!" she snapped.

　　Reluctantly, the uniforms backed away into the heavy fog. The second their boots faded down the gravel path, Sera closed the distance between us in three lethal strides. As I hopped down from the hood of the wagon, she jammed the muzzle of her service pistol straight against my sternum, right over the old burn scar from my watch.

　　"You have ten seconds to explain how a South Bank sewer rat knows about my wardrobe," she whispered fiercely, "and why you just blew up a grave in the Voss family plot."

　　"Because the dynamite only blew off the newer marble faceplate your adoptive father glued over the original headstone," I said calmly.

　　Using my dominant right arm, I swung the heavy sledgehammer up onto my shoulder and pointed down into the mud with my left hand, making sure the three-inch iron-hook scar on my wrist was in plain view. "Take a look at the granite underneath, Detective. Then tell me who’s actually lying in that box."

　　Sera’s jaw tightened. Keeping her gun pressed to my chest, she risked a downward glance at the shattered monument at the edge of the crater.

　　The outer shell of white marble had sheared away in the blast, exposing the older, soot-stained gray granite slab concealed inside it. Carved deeply into the stone were words that had never been meant to see the daylight again:

　　BELOVED DAUGHTER — SERA VOSS. DIED NIGHT OF THE BELL FESTIVAL, TWELVE YEARS AGO. AGED 13.

　　The silence in the cemetery became suffocating.

　　Sera stopped breathing. Her eyes stayed locked on the carved letters, reading them once, twice, three times, as if her razor-sharp mind were refusing to process the syntax.

　　"That’s... that’s a forgery," she whispered, though the color had drained completely from her face. "I was thirteen during the Bell Festival fire. I was pulled out of the Old Harbor maintenance ducts with a concussion. Lucius—my father—he had the hospital records—"

　　"Your father had a dead thirteen-year-old daughter who suffocated when the shelter doors were sealed, and he had a terribly guilty conscience," I said softly, stepping closer so the barrel of her wavering gun pressed harder against my ribs. "When he opened that forbidden maintenance pipe twelve years ago and found another thirteen-year-old girl half-dead from smoke inhalation, he didn't take her to the municipal morgue. He erased her name, buried his real daughter in secret, and put the survivor in his dead girl’s bedroom so he could pretend he hadn't murdered forty-one innocent people."

　　I reached up slowly with two fingers and tapped the silver detective badge pinned to her lapel.

　　"Surprise, Eileen Alden," I murmured, watching her whole world shatter behind her eyes. "You haven't just been hunting your parents' killers from inside Lucius Voss’s house. You’ve been wearing his dead daughter’s skin for twelve years."

　　Sera staggered back half a step, her boot slipping on the upturned mud. For the first time in eight loops, the sharpest, deadliest woman in Greyport looked completely unmoored.

　　"How..." Her voice cracked, raw and unrecognizable. Her left hand trembled around the grip of her pistol. "Even if that stone is real—how could you possibly know my real name? Nobody knows I’m Arthur and Clara Alden’s daughter. I burned the orphanage ledger myself!"

　　"Because the dead don't keep secrets from me, Eileen."

　　I didn't wait for her to recover. I jumped down into the four-foot crater, braced my right boot against the mud, and wrenched the splintered mahogany lid off the coffin with my right arm.

　　Inside, resting atop the skeletal remains of the real thirteen-year-old Sera Voss, lay a heavy lead-lined dispatch box that the Cleaner had been sent here to destroy before dawn.

　　"Get down here," I called up to her, prying the lead box open with the claw of my hammer. "Your adoptive father and Councilman Davian Heth used this coffin as their dead-drop vault twelve years ago because they knew no magistrate would ever sign an exhumation order for the Police Chief’s family plot."

　　Sera slid down into the trench beside me, her movements mechanical, her eyes wide with horror as she stared at the small skull resting in the rotted velvet—the girl whose name she had answered to every day of her adult life.

　　From the lead box, I pulled out a scorched brass logbook from the North Tower control room—and half of a child’s white dress sash, its edges blackened by fire, embroidered in faded red thread with the initials E.A..

　　Sera’s free hand flew to her mouth. When she reached out and touched the scorched fabric, a violent shudder ran through her entire frame. "This was mine," she breathed, tears of pure, incandescent rage finally spilling over her lashes. "My mother tied this around my waist the morning of the Bell Festival... before the shelter doors closed."

　　"And the other half is currently locked inside Lucius Voss’s private safe at his estate, right next to his handwritten confession," I said, slapping the heavy brass logbook into her hand. "Open to page thirteen. Look at the original clock tower telemetry."

　　Sera flipped the heavy brass-bound pages with trembling fingers. "The official report says everyone inside the Old Harbor shelter died at 11:47 PM when the thermal pipes ruptured. It was ruled a tragic rescue failure."

　　"Read the raw telegraph timestamps at the bottom," I instructed coldly.

　　"12:00 AM," she whispered, her voice dropping into a chasm of disbelief. "SOS knocking detected on the inner bulkhead. Secondary air-lock still functional. Awaiting Council authorization to open." Her fingers dug so hard into the paper it tore. "Thirteen minutes. They were still alive for thirteen minutes after the official time of death!"

　　"Your mother and forty other people weren't killed by the fire, Eileen," I said, stepping close behind her in the narrow grave so she could feel the solid heat of my chest against her back. "Councilman Davian Heth ordered the doors kept shut for thirteen extra minutes because opening them meant rescue workers would see the illegal time-regression engine hidden inside the shelter. And your adoptive father stood outside, listened to your mother pounding on the steel until her knuckles broke, and enforced the order."

　　Sera didn't cry. The tear tracks dried on her cheeks as if burned away by the sheer heat of her fury.

　　When she turned her head to look up at me, the lost girl was gone, replaced by an avenging angel with a badge and a loaded revolver.

　　"How do you know all this, Noel?" she whispered, her dark eyes locking onto mine with terrifying intensity. "Who the hell are you?"

　　"I’m the guy who’s going to help you burn their empire to the ground before midnight," I said softly. "Right after I ask you one question: do you want to hear what your mother saw in the last ninety seconds of her life—or do you want to shoot the men who killed her?"

　　Before Sera could answer, the heavy wrought-iron gates at the cemetery entrance slammed shut with a deafening metallic CLANG.

　　Out in the fog beyond Row 13, two sharp, silenced gunshots rang out, followed by the heavy thud of young Officer Gavin hitting the gravel unconscious.

　　Then, the morning mist vanished—burned away as thirty blinding white military floodlights roared to life along the cemetery walls, surrounding our crater in a cage of harsh, inescapable light. The heavy rumble of armored tactical carriers shook the headstones.

　　Up on the raised mausoleum ridge overlooking Row 13 stood two men flanked by twenty black-armored private commandos with laser-sighted rifles.

　　On the left stood Councilman Davian Heth, immaculate in his fur-trimmed uptown overcoat, looking down at us with gentle, paternal regret. And on the right stood Police Chief Lucius Voss, his grey hair damp with mist, holding a heavy bullhorn in one hand and his service revolver in the other.

　　Twenty red targeting lasers danced across my chest and Sera’s forehead.

　　"Sera," Chief Voss’s voice boomed across the graveyard through the megaphone, heavy with sorrow and iron authority. "Step out of the trench and put your weapon on the ground. That man has poisoned your mind with forged documents."

　　"He’s got the Cleaner’s strike team with him," I murmured out of the corner of my mouth, my eyes locking onto the sniper crouched atop the angel statue a hundred yards out—the exact spot where the Cleaner’s best marksman had blown my head off in an earlier loop. "If you walk up those steps, Eileen, Heth’s men will shoot us both and tell the papers you died heroically trying to stop a grave-robbing terrorist."

　　Sera didn't lower her gun. Instead, she reached beneath the slit of her dark trench coat with her right hand, unclipped the snub-nosed backup revolver from her thigh holster, and slapped the cold steel grip straight into my dominant right palm.

　　"I stopped answering to 'Sera' thirty seconds ago," she said, a lethal, unhinged smile curving her lips as she cocked her primary pistol in her left hand.

　　Up on the ridge, Councilman Heth sighed, patted Chief Voss sympathetically on the shoulder, and leaned toward the bullhorn.

　　"She’s seen the telemetry log, Lucius," Heth said, his voice carrying clearly over the loudspeakers. "The quarantine is compromised. Commander—execute them both and fill in the hole."