Night erased color and left everything honest. The late FM show poured out of taxis and kitchen radios, crooning old songs like they could glue the city back together if you sang along.
Fischer followed the melody like a smell. Axel prowled, whistling off-key. Vogro complained about the temperature at thirty-second intervals until even he got bored of it. Zima watched windows in case they watched back.
They found the sound at street level, then at shoulder height, then coming from a single cracked brick in an alley wall. Zima pressed it; a door-sized panel loosened and swung in on quiet hinges.
Inside: a loading bay to a warehouse that had no business being alive at this hour. The floor was painted with lines that meant nothing anymore. The walls were hung with black curtains that breathed. On the far end, a glow waited like a mouthful of teeth.
Fischer looked at Axel. "Remember what I said about not licking anything?"
Axel nodded, solemn as a priest. "I am model citizen."
They moved as a unit: Zima leading, silent; Fischer beside him, gaze drinking; Vogro and Axel at the rear, one fretting, one grinning. The glow resolved into a room made of glass, in front of them, around them, above them. A gallery. Clear walls turned the air into panes. Behind each, a "piece."
Bodies.
Not just arranged. Curated.
One man stood, arms out, wrists sleeved in metal cuffs attached to nothing at all. He looked like he was holding up the sky. A paper crane sat on his clavicle like a medal. Another lay on a chaise, head tilted, mouth sewn into a perfect oval; an old radio on a table beside him played that same syrup song. A third: hung upside down, toes tied together with silk cord, candles stuck to his shins dripping wax like winter.
Vogro whispered, "I think I'm going to faint." Axel caught him by the back of the coat and set him upright like repositioning furniture.
Zima's hand hovered near his sidearm. His eyes moved without moving. He counted exits, shadows, reflections. In the glass, he saw nothing of himself. That didn't comfort him.
Fischer, for a long time, said nothing. He walked the perimeter as if the pieces were arguing and he wanted to hear both sides.
"He's not stealing my art," he said finally. "He's stealing my confidence. He wants me unsure of the rules."
Vogro swallowed. "You… have rules?"
"Well, even some monsters have diets." Fischer said.
Axel tapped the glass. Hollow. He pressed his forehead to it and fogged a small circle with his breath. He drew a smiley face and then wiped it away quickly, guilty.
In the center of the room, on a pedestal, sat an empty glass case. It had a small placard at its base.
Fischer stepped up to read it.
TITLE: THE ARTIST
MEDIUM: PATIENCE
Zima's head lifted. "Footsteps."
They turned as a figure stepped between curtains at the far end. Not dramatic. Not timid. A man in a clean coat and work boots, hair combed with discipline, face so ordinary it felt like a disguise for something uglier. He carried his hands in front of him like a man about to pray.
"Hello," he said. His voice was carefully unremarkable. "You came."
Axel's grin bloomed. "We came to break your-"
Fischer put a hand out without looking and Axel stopped like he'd hit a wall.
"You're the collector," Fischer said. "You like your work more than your sleep."
The man smiled a fraction. "I like things to be in the right place."
"Name," Zima said.
The man tilted his head. "I've had many. I'll give you the one I deserve later."
Vogro, clutching the edges of his own nerves, managed. "Why the cranes?"
The collector glanced at the little paper birds like he'd forgotten them. "Luck," he said. "Or the shape luck wants to be when it grows up."
The radio drifted into a key change and went slightly out of tune. The collector's eye twitched, then smoothed.
"Masaru won't love this," Fischer said.
The collector's smile thinned. "Masaru loves perfection," he said. "I'm practicing."
Fischer's face didn't change, but everything about him sharpened. "You copy what you don't understand," he said. "You think detail is the same as intent."
"Isn't it?" the man asked. He spread his hands like a magician showing empty palms. "If a thing looks exactly like the thing you admire, isn't it the thing?" He took a step closer to the empty case. "And yet. It's unsatisfying. Because I know I didn't become you to make it. I only watched."
Axel whispered, "This guy need hug." Vogro elbowed him; Axel elbowed him back twice as hard and apologized after.
"You built a museum to failures," Fischer said. "You think if you arrange them right, they will applaud you. But even corpses are picky audiences."
The collector's eyes brightened. "Then show me," he said. "Show me what I'm doing wrong."
Zima shifted his weight. Careful.
Fischer nodded toward the empty case. "That space is for me," he said. "You wanted me to fill it, whether as a guest or a specimen. Which?"
The collector's gaze flicked...briefly...past Fischer to Zima and Axel and Vogro, measuring, composing. Something in his stance changed. He reached into his coat and brought out a little device the size of a matchbox.
Fischer sighed. "And there goes the conversation."
The man pressed the matchbox. The glass walls sang, high, bright, puckering the air. Vogro clapped his hands over his ears and screamed without sound. Axel bared his teeth, eyes watering. Zima took one step and his knees locked.
Fischer moved. He always did well with music.
He closed the distance faster than pride. The collector swung the device toward him and Fischer slapped his wrist, once, precise. The matchbox fell. Zima broke free enough to lunge and boot it under a display case. The tone cut off...the silence after it like the world had been dunked underwater and shaken.
The collector's other hand held a bone saw he must've been keeping in his shadow. He swung. Fischer ducked. The blade kissed a lock of his hair and took it. He felt the air move and laughed from his belly...too delighted by the sensation of almost dying.
Axel charged, then slipped on a curl of candle wax and careened into a glass wall, cracking it into a spiderweb that didn't quite fall. He roared happily as if he'd meant it.
The collector backed up, kept backing, bumped the pedestal. He caught the empty case with both palms before it toppled and set it back like it was a baby. Then he smiled a little too wide.
"Practice," he breathed, and hit a second switch in his sleeve.
The floor bucked.
Charges. Smaller than the storage unit. Close, mean, designed to panic. The glass boxes rattled like teeth in a jar. One toppled and exploded into fierce glitter. A body slid out, a man they had maybe known, spilling into an attitude he hadn't consented to.
Zima reached for the collector's throat. The man stepped back between curtains and vanished like he'd practiced that too. Zima followed, and ran head-first into a wall that had not been a wall one second earlier.
Fischer swore. He grabbed Axel by the collar and yanked; Axel grabbed Vogro by the coat and the three of them became a train that didn't want to be one.
They ran. The gallery tried to learn to be a trap and failed by inches. Glass fell and didn't quite cut them; shelves leaned and failed to pin. The collector wanted them to rush. Wanted them to break the wrong thing.
Zima burst through a curtain farther down, panting. He pointed the other way. Back exit.
They slammed out into night as the last of the charges hiccuped. The warehouse belched smoke and the old song wobbled and died.
Vogro bent over and heaved bile. Axel patted his back like you'd burp a baby. Zima checked his own hands for blood and found none. He looked almost disappointed.
Fischer stood very still and let the afterimage of the gallery burn onto the inside of his eyes so memory could chew on it later.
"He's not improvising," he said." He's rehearsing. He thinks if he builds the stage perfectly, the show can't fail."
Axel grinned, teeth bright in the streetlight. "Bad actor."
Fischer looked at the crack in the night where the collector had slipped away and imagined the man's face when applause did not come.
"Yes," he said. And we make him bow for no one.
He took something from his pocket and held it up. A paper crane, this one tucked behind the empty case.
He unfolded it carefully, expecting nothing, getting something: a smear of ink, a single phrase written in letters too neat to be sane.
"Perfection is obedience."
Vogro shivered. "That's… not a fan message."
Fischer folded the bird back up, smoother than it had been folded the first time, and set it on the curb. The night wind tipped it over. He left it there.
"Masaru loves perfection," he said. "Let's see how he feels about obedience."
Zima's hood tilted. "You think-"
"I think our little thief learned from someone who smiles when you bleed," Fischer said.
Axel's fingers flexed like he wanted something to break them.
"Where now?" Zima asked.
Fischer looked up at the radio tower blinking its slow red. The late show had switched to a host with a laugh like a cough.
"We go where perfection lives," he said. And we pull its teeth.
He started walking. The others followed. Behind them, the gallery settled. In the dark of the warehouse, the empty case stood waiting with its polite little plaque, and the ghosts practiced tripping in the quiet.