The door to Stage 12 stood open on a darkness deeper than the corridor’s. Mara kept her back to the projected image and watched the far end of the passage instead.
Nothing moved there. The old figure had left without a footfall, or had never been there at all. The projector continued to chatter behind the walls, throwing June’s ring against the vault door in a pale, repeating square.
Mara took the key from her sleeve. The metal had warmed against her wrist.
She crossed the threshold.
Stage 12 had been built for night scenes and left to weather. The soundstage beyond the control room smelled of dust, wet timber, and the mineral tang of the sea pressing through the western wall. A row of dead set lamps hung above a street that had once belonged to a picture about a drowned town. Painted shopfronts leaned under their own weight. A false church steeple had lost its cross.
The control booth sat above the set behind a wall of glass. Mara climbed the narrow stairs, one hand skimming the rail. At the top, a projector turned by itself. Its beam passed through the booth and struck the rear screen, where the same image waited: a woman’s hand, June’s ring, the reel labelled NIGHT OF THE FINAL CALL.
There was no reel on the projector.
Mara opened the machine’s side panel. The drive belt shivered. A thin strip of film moved through the gate, clear and empty, its perforations clicking over the sprocket. The image came from a second projector concealed somewhere below the stage.
A legacy loop. A lure with a maintenance problem.
She reached for the stop lever.
“Don’t.”
Rowan’s voice came from the stairwell.
Mara withdrew her hand. He came up without hurry, shoulders filling the narrow opening, his dark shirt marked with pale dust along one sleeve. He looked first at her, then at the projector, then through the booth glass toward the empty soundstage.
“Were you following me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“At least you’re improving.”
“I found a door propped open.”
“You found me.”
“That too.”
He stepped beside her. The booth was small enough that his arm brushed the back of her coat. He did not apologise. Instead, he leaned toward the projector and put two fingers against its casing.
“Warm,” he said. “Someone ran it recently.”
Mara watched his hand. The knuckles were scarred, the nails cut short. He touched equipment as if it might break from being accused.
“Your employers know you’re here?”
“Celeste knows everything she pays to know.”
“Then she knows about the key.”
“Probably.”
“Dorian?”
“Dorian knows the cost of a key and thinks that’s the same as knowing what it opens.”
The projector clicked. The image on the screen changed by one frame. June’s hand blurred, and for an instant the ring became a dark oval in the centre of the light.
Rowan saw it. His head turned toward her.
“Your mother’s?”
Mara looked at the image, not at him. “It resembles one she owns.”
“That’s a smaller truth.”
“It is the one available.”
He studied her for a beat. Then he reached past her and pulled the main breaker.
The booth went black.
The hidden projector below continued to run. Light leaked through the floorboards in a thin white bar, and the mechanism under the stage kept advancing, catching, advancing.
Rowan crouched. “There’s power on a separate circuit.”
“Stage 12 was decommissioned.”
“Decommissioned isn’t dead.”
He took a compact torch from his pocket, clamped it between his teeth, and began removing the floor grate. The screws had rusted into their threads. He braced one boot against the wall and worked the driver until the first screw gave with a sharp metallic snap.
Mara knelt opposite him. “You carry tools now?”
“I carry the things people forget until they’re trapped.”
“Useful.”
“That’s the job.”
He freed the grate and reached into the cavity. His fingers came out black with grease. Beneath the booth, a projector had been mounted on a timber shelf, its lens pointed through a narrow slit toward the screen below. It was an old carbon-arc machine, its housing patched with strips of silver tape.
On the floor beside it sat a reel can.
The lid bore a handwritten label.
NIGHT OF THE FINAL CALL.
Mara’s breath stopped in the practical, inconvenient way of a body interrupting its own work.
Rowan lifted the can and tested its weight. “Could be empty.”
“Then someone went to trouble for an empty can.”
“People do that.”
“Not with nitrate.”
He looked at her. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
She said it too quickly. His gaze stayed on her face, measuring the distance between a clerk’s certainty and an expert’s.
Mara held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
He did not.
“Rowan.”
“If it’s nitrate, we don’t open it here.”
“The vault is locked.”
“Good.”
“Someone has already projected it.”
“Projection doesn’t mean safe handling.”
He set the can on the floor, removed his overshirt, and wrapped it around the metal. His movements were unhurried. He lifted the reel against his chest, shielding it from the bare lamp in the booth.
Mara noticed the care before she could stop herself. He had been trained to catch falling bodies, to move people away from fire, to put his own back between danger and whatever had not yet been destroyed. It was not tenderness. It was habit with a pulse.
“You can stop looking at me like that,” he said.
“I’m not looking at you.”
“You are.”
“Your shirt is filthy.”
“That’s what you saw?”
“It was the obvious damage.”
His mouth shifted, not quite a smile. “You notice damage before anything else?”
“Damage is honest.”
He carried the reel up the stairs and across the stage. Mara followed, keeping two steps behind. The abandoned street swallowed their footfalls. Above them, rigging cables swung faintly in the draft, tapping against the steel beams like a distant typewriter.
At the centre of the set stood a kitchen built for a scene no one had finished. A table, two chairs, a dead telephone. Rowan placed the can in the shadow beneath the table.
“Now what?” he asked.
“Now we find out who left it.”
“By opening it?”
“By finding the camera.”
He looked up at the catwalks. “There was one.”
“You saw it?”
“Lens reflection. Back wall.”
Mara followed his line of sight. High above the painted houses, behind a torn strip of black muslin, a camera housing sat on a platform. Its red standby light was on.
Rowan moved before she did. He crossed to a stack of scenery flats, dragged one beneath the platform, and climbed. The flat groaned under his weight.
“Don’t,” Mara said.
He reached for the ladder. “You said find the camera.”
“I meant inspect it.”
“Those are different words.”
The ladder had been folded against the wall. He opened it, tested each hinge, and climbed. Mara stood below with one hand on the rail, watching the ladder flex beneath him.
At the platform, he disappeared behind the muslin. A moment later, metal struck wood.
“Rowan?”
“Camera’s live.”
“Is the recording light on?”
“No.”
A pause.
“Now it is.”
The red light appeared through the muslin.
Mara stepped back.
Rowan came down faster than he had gone up. He landed badly, caught the side of the scenery flat, and held still until the pain passed through his leg. Then he reached behind the false wall and tore loose a cable.
The projector beneath the stage stopped.
The screen went grey.
“Someone can see us,” Mara said.
“Could.”
“Past tense?”
“Camera’s old. Feed was local.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know where the wire runs.”
He pulled a small black box from behind the flat. A red diode blinked on its face. He turned it over. A strip of white tape had been fixed to the underside, marked in block capitals.
MARA ROOK — DAY 10 REVIEW.
She took one step toward it.
Rowan read the label. His fingers closed around the box.
The soundstage doors opened below them.
Celeste Vey entered in a cream coat untouched by the damp. Dorian Pike followed, speaking into a phone and carrying two folders under one arm. Behind them came Iris Bell, her grey hair pinned badly and her expression sharpened by the hour.
Celeste looked up at the catwalk.
“There you are,” she called. “I was beginning to think Stage 12 had swallowed you.”
Mara descended first. Rowan stayed close behind, holding the black box at his side.
Celeste’s gaze dropped to it. “That belongs to the studio.”
“So does the stage,” Mara said. “You still brought witnesses.”
Dorian ended his call. “This is no longer a private employment dispute. Payroll has a discrepancy, the archive has an unauthorised access event, and a legacy system has identified a continuity review with a witness requirement. We are converting the review to a recorded hearing.”
Iris gave a dry laugh. “Converting. That’s a nice word for putting a woman in a chair while three lawyers cut her into strips.”
“Four,” Dorian said. “The trust counsel is joining remotely.”
Celeste’s attention remained on Mara. “Your mother has been contacted.”
Mara’s hand tightened around the key hidden in her sleeve. “Why?”
“Because the system requires a witness.”
“An employee witness.”
“An adult witness capable of confirming your identity and your conduct on the ninth and tenth payroll days.” Celeste smiled. “June Rook is available.”
The studio doors opened again.
June came in carrying a canvas bag and wearing the same brown coat she used for bad weather. Her hair was silver at the temples. Rain darkened one shoulder. She looked at Mara first, then at Rowan, then at the black box in his hand.
“You shouldn’t have come,” Mara said.
June set the bag down. “They sent a car.”
“I didn’t ask you to be a witness.”
“No.” June unbuttoned her coat. “You asked me not to come near the lot.”
Celeste’s smile thinned. “We all make exceptions when the paperwork requires them.”
June looked at her. “Paperwork doesn’t require a person to lie.”
Dorian opened one of the folders. “The hearing begins in twenty minutes. Ms Rook will be questioned regarding her access code, her relationship to the archive, and the origin of the reel found in this stage.”
Iris moved toward the table beneath the kitchen set. Her eyes had settled on the wrapped can. “Found where?”
“Under the control booth,” Rowan said.
“By whom?”
He glanced at Mara. “Both of us.”
Celeste extended a gloved hand toward the black box. “And that?”
Rowan did not give it to her. “Camera control.”
“Mr Saye.”
“Evidence.”
Dorian’s expression changed by a fraction. “You are employed by Celeste.”
“I know.”
“Then you understand the difference between protecting evidence and withholding property.”
“I understand the difference between a request and an order.”
Celeste turned her head slightly. The movement was elegant enough to be mistaken for patience. “Bring the box to the hearing.”
Rowan’s hand closed around it.
Mara saw the decision arrive in his body before he spoke: the set of his feet, the squared shoulder, the way his thumb covered the blinking diode.
“I’ll bring it,” he said.
Celeste nodded as if he had obeyed.
June came to Mara while the others argued over the room. She did not touch her. She only reached into the canvas bag and took out a folded scarf, placing it over Mara’s wet sleeve where the corridor damp had marked the fabric.
“You’re cold,” June said.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
Mara looked at the scarf. “Did you know the reel was here?”
June’s fingers paused on the fold.
Across the stage, Rowan looked up.
June did not answer. She took Mara’s wrist, turned it palm-up, and pressed the old brass key back into her hand.
“Keep this hidden,” she said. “If they ask what opens Stage 12, say you don’t know.”
Mara closed her fingers around the key. “What does it open?”
June looked toward the wrapped can beneath the table.
“The room where your father made his last call.”
The projector below the stage clicked once.
Though Rowan had cut its power, the screen behind them filled with light. A new frame appeared: Alden Vey seated at the kitchen table, one hand beside the dead telephone, his face turned toward someone standing just outside the shot.
June’s ring flashed as she reached into frame.
Then Alden lifted his eyes and said, “Bring me the child.”