Mikhail pushed the trailer door open before Kat could speak again. Her face was tight, eyes fixed on Lars's laptop, but the pressure in the air choked him. He couldn't focus on more footage, not yet, not with the concrete still warm beneath their feet and the final pour barely finished.
"I'll be right back," he muttered, not waiting for a reply.
He stepped into the cold air. The sky was pale, the sun just clearing the rooftops to the east. The site around him was silent. Not still with fear, just quiet. The way a battlefield is quiet after the dust settles. Plastic tarps billowed gently over the curing slab, their edges weighted with bricks. The last of the steam from the heaters curled lazily into the dawn. Exhaustion pressed down on his shoulders, but something else pulled at his gut.
He walked slowly toward the edge of the foundation, stepping carefully around cables and drying mud. He stopped where the concrete met the dirt, where the slab's edge caught the light and glowed faintly gold.
For a moment, there was nothing.
And then he heard it.
"You've done well, Mikhail. Now stay the course."
He froze.
Not imagined. Not a memory. A voice. Clear, gentle, female. Familiar.
His heart skipped. He spun around, scanning the lot. No one. No movement. The crew was still inside. Only the wind moved, brushing past the fence and stirring the weeds along the slope.
"Trust your team."
His breath hitched.
It wasn't a hallucination. He wasn't dreaming. His feet were on solid earth, the cold seeping up through his boots. But the voice, it resonated not just in his ears, but somewhere behind his ribs.
Astrid.
Not as she had been in life, not exactly. But her cadence, the warmth behind it. The tone she'd used when they'd argued about timelines, about risk. The way she spoke when she believed in him.
Mikhail swallowed hard.
In his old life, he would have dismissed it. Chalked it up to stress or madness. But not now. Not after everything, the fire, the sabotage, the impossible way his instincts had guided them through storms and concrete and chaos.
He looked down at the slab. It was perfect. Solid. Enduring. Built not just by his hands, but by the trust he'd placed in the people around him.
Was that what she meant?
"You were always the architect," the voice said softly, almost a whisper in the wind. "But now you're building something that matters."
He closed his eyes.
A long, shuddering breath passed through him, and with it, the ache of years he hadn't realized he'd carried. Regret. Failure. Guilt. All of it shifted, like dust shaken loose from old steel.
He opened his eyes. The wind had stalled. The light had grown stronger. And something in him had settled.
She was gone. Or silent again. But the message remained.
He turned and started back toward the trailer.
Kat met him at the door, face pale. "You're going to want to sit for this," she said, pulling up the footage. Lars didn't speak, he just hit play.
On screen, the trees near the ridge swayed. Then a frame caught, paused.
A man. Watching. Face half-obscured by shadow.
Mikhail leaned in, his jaw tightening. "Zoom in."
Kat tapped the keyboard, dragging the cursor over the blurred figure in the corner of the screen. The grain sharpened slightly. The figure stood at the edge of the treeline, coat flapping in the breeze, just outside the chain-link fence that bordered the north slope. Mikhail stared. There, partially visible beneath the hood, was the sharp ridge of a nose, the line of a squared jaw.
He didn't recognize the face.
But the posture, that was what did it. Upright, surveying, still. Whoever this was, he hadn't come by accident.
Lars leaned in from behind. "I ran it through enhancement software, but it's not great. He never looked directly at the camera. No plates on the sedan either, he parked behind the trees."
"Pull earlier footage," Mikhail said without moving his eyes from the screen.
Kat nodded, scrubbing back through the timestamp. The man didn't move much, just shifted occasionally, arms folded, watching the slab from a distance. She paused at a frame where the clouds overhead parted slightly, casting pale light across the ridge. The man's coat was opened slightly at the front.
Mikhail narrowed his eyes. "Pause. There. Zoom."
A patch, stitched onto the inner lining.
Black thread against gray fabric. At first it looked like nothing. Then Lars tilted the screen slightly.
"Shit," Lars whispered. "That's not a manufacturer's logo."
Kat blinked. "What is it, then?"
Mikhail exhaled through his nose. "It's a mark. I've seen it before, years ago, on city reports that never made it to the records. Some of the old crew in my past life… they wore it when they were hired to enforce real estate seizures."
"You mean, like…" Kat hesitated, "intimidation tactics?"
"No," Mikhail said, his voice low and even. "I mean force. Quiet removal. Arson. Turn up the pressure until someone sells."
A silence fell in the trailer.
Kat sat back slowly. "He was casing us. Waiting."
"He already acted," Lars muttered. "The fire. The mixer. This guy's not alone."
Mikhail nodded. "He's testing how hard we'll push back."
Kat crossed her arms, brows furrowed. "So what do we do?"
"We show him we're not folding," Mikhail said. "But not loud. Quiet strength. We reinforce the slab, keep a night watch. Keep building."
Kat looked uncertain. "And if they hit again?"
"Then we hit back with permits, inspections, and the law, every inch of paper this city has." His jaw tightened. "I've done this dance before. They want to bleed us out through fear. We respond with visibility, confidence, and legal noise. No shadows."
Lars nodded slowly, already turning to his phone. "I'll start building redundancy for power and materials. If they shut one thing down, we'll have three more behind it."
Kat looked at Mikhail, voice quieter now. "And Astrid?"
He looked toward the window, where the morning sun lit the tarp-covered slab.
"She said stay the course."
Kat didn't ask more. She just handed him the phone.
On screen, another clip had loaded, a newer one, timestamped twenty minutes ago.
The black sedan was back.
Only this time, the figure stepped out. He placed something on the ground at the gate. Then he looked straight into the camera.
A small, deliberate wave.
And then he left.
Lars swore under his breath. "That's a message."
Kat was already moving. "I'll check the gate."
Mikhail stood, eyes locked on the monitor. "No. We will check it together."