Chapter 6: Dust and Triggers
The old flat was still standing.
Cara stared up at it from across the street, the wind tugging at her hoodie as twilight slid like oil over the sky.
It looked smaller now. Dirtier. Like time had squeezed the life out of it.
Three stories of flaking paint, blocked gutters, and satellite dishes clinging like ticks to the roof. The top-right window on the third floor was hers. Or had been.
The cold room.
The hearth with no fire.
She clenched her jaw.
Wren stood beside her in silence, dressed in black cargoes and a waterproof jacket, hood up, face half-hidden by his hair. His left hand hovered near the inside pocket of his coat—where a small stun baton rested, just in case.
Cara took a breath.
"There was a cupboard in the kitchen," she said. "A brown one. No doors—just a curtain across the front. He kept things behind it. Tools. Paperwork. Maybe the photo."
Wren signed: What if someone's home?
She shrugged. "Then we knock and ask for the ghost of the bastard who used to live here."
Wren's smile was faint. Dry. He signed again: No cameras. I already looped the traffic cams. We have fifteen minutes before someone notices.
She nodded.
"Let's go."
The door was locked. Wren had it open in eight seconds.
The stairs groaned beneath their feet as they climbed, slow and deliberate. Everything smelled like dust and chip fat. Somewhere below, a baby was crying.
Third floor.
She stopped in front of the door.
Flat 3B.
Her fingers hovered over the peeling gold numbers, remembering the sound of the key turning. The stink of whisky on his breath. The way her hands used to tremble when she knocked instead of entering.
She looked at Wren.
He nodded once.
She turned the knob.
Empty.
The flat was stripped bare. Floorboards exposed. Radiators cold. Layers of dust clung to every surface like ash.
Still… the walls remembered.
She stepped in slowly, eyes tracking every room, every corner. The kitchen was where she left it—units half-hung, fridge missing, rust marks on the tiles where it had stood too long.
But the cupboard…
She crossed to it in three strides and pulled back the curtain.
Still there.
Same frame. Same old bent screws in the corners. But now, just air.
No photos. No papers. No secrets.
Gone.
She growled under her breath. "No—no, no, no. They wouldn't have taken everything."
Wren joined her, scanning the walls, tapping for hollows. He knelt near the baseboard, pressing a gloved hand to the floor.
Tap. Tap. Thunk.
He looked up. Cara dropped beside him.
Together, they pried up the warped slat. Beneath it—a space just wide enough for a few folded items.
She reached in. An old biscuit tin. Hands shaking, she opened it.
Inside: water-damaged documents. A faded Army-issue field manual. A half-empty pistol mag. A photo…
She stopped breathing.
The photo.
The photo.
Intact.
Wider than the one Wren had found.
And now, in the full frame—clear as a sunrise—was a woman.
Dark hair. Pale skin. Holding a little girl in one arm. A man stood beside her, the same strong jaw, same eyes as Cara.
Her parents.
And behind them—barely visible, standing at a distance—was the man who raised her… Reeve.
Alive.
Watching.
[Legacy Memory Triggered: "Before the Fall" – 2/5]
+1 INT, +10 XP, Sub-Mission Updated: Trace the Photograph's Origin
New Objective Unlocked: Find the Photographer
Reward: Family Identity File
Cara sat back hard against the wall, the photo pressed to her chest.
"They were looking for me," she whispered. "And Reeve… he knew."
Wren signed, gently: Then we find him.
She looked up at him, eyes burning now—not with grief, but purpose.
"We find him. And we find who took me. And we end it."
The Man Behind the Lens
The photo lay flat across Wren's desk, carefully weighted at each corner beneath strips of anti-glare glass.
Cara hovered behind him, arms crossed, eyes locked on the faded edges of the image like it might vanish if she blinked.
Wren worked in silence, scanning it at ultra-high resolution. His fingers danced across the keyboard, feeding it into a custom recognition tool he'd coded himself. A forensic-grade algorithm broke down exposure, film grain, timestamp residue—anything that might give a clue.
Cara tapped her fingers against her arm.
"Doctored?"
He shook his head. Signed: Authentic. Film shot. Early 2000s.
She nodded, her voice tight. "So someone printed this and kept it. That means someone wanted it. Someone planned this."
Wren zoomed in on the lower right corner.
A faint scribble.
Numbers.
ILFORD XP2 / 06488.
Cara leaned in. "Is that… a batch code?"
Wren nodded. Tapped quickly. Windows opened, searched, closed. He pulled up an archive of analogue photo labs in operation between 1995–2005.
There weren't many left.
Even fewer who printed black and white film like XP2.
Three names came up.
One circled.
Silvergrain Studios – Hackney. Closed in 2007.
Wren kept digging.
The business had been sold to a camera repair shop in East London. Owner deceased. His son inherited the old negatives and equipment.
Address flagged: a studio-turned-lockup near Dalston Lane.
Cara was already moving. "Get your coat."
The building was easy to miss—wedged between a boarded-up café and a vape shop that looked like it had been abandoned mid-burglar alarm install.
No sign. Just a rusted metal shutter and a half-faded number spray-painted on brick.
Wren bypassed the lock in seconds.
They stepped inside.
Dust and darkness swallowed them.
The inside was cramped but neat. Wooden cabinets stacked with film canisters and filing boxes. Labelled years in black marker. A dusty enlarger stood like a forgotten monument in the back corner, draped in a tarp.
Cara moved quickly.
She found the index books—ledgers with handwritten job numbers.
"Ilford XP2. Batch 06488," she muttered, flipping pages. "Come on…"
Then—her breath caught.
"Here. 06488."
She scanned the row.
Date: August 2003.
Client: No name.
Pickup method: Personal hand-off.
Photographer: G. Wellings.
She tapped the name. "You know him?"
Wren nodded, already typing on his tablet.
Graham Wellings, freelance war photographer. Mostly conflict zones in the late 90s. Dropped off the radar around 2008. No official death certificate.
Cara frowned. "People who cross paths with me seem to vanish a lot."
Wren brought up a last known address—Southwark.
A hospice.
Registered under his real name: Graham Elliot Wellings, terminal pancreatic cancer. Checked in six months ago.
Status: Unknown.
Cara's stomach twisted.
"If he's alive, he's the last thread I've got."
Wren met her eyes. Signed:
Then we pull it. Now...
Burn the Negatives
The man known as Sage didn't knock.
He walked straight through the back of the vape shop in Dalston, stepped through a hidden door disguised behind shelves of bootleg hardware, and descended a narrow staircase into the lockup below.
His boots echoed across concrete.
He paused just inside the room—the same one Cara and Wren had visited just hours before. It was empty now. The dust unsettled. The lock tampered with.
Too late.
He clicked his tongue softly. Someone's been here. She survived and must be remembering he thought.
A second figure joined him—broad-shouldered, leather gloves, silent. Former military. Sage didn't need his name. Just his precision.
Sage approached the photo cabinet.
The ledger was gone. As expected.
But the boxes—he ran a gloved hand over them—still smelled like chemicals. Still held evidence.
Unacceptable.
He turned to the other man and nodded once.
The soldier pulled a canister of fluid from his pack. Another popped open a collapsible burner.
Within minutes, fire licked at the boxes. Negatives melted into curled black ash. The air stank of smoke and old ghosts.
Sage crouched in the centre of the flames, holding a single roll of undeveloped film up to the light.
It had no label.
But he recognized the exposure pattern.
He knew who was in the frame.
"I told them," he murmured, voice soft and accented, "the girl would come looking."
He let the film fall into the fire.
Watched it burn.
Then stood and turned to the man beside him.
"Contact the asset in Southwark. Wellings is the last piece. End it. Quietly."
The man nodded.
They left the fire to finish the job.
Behind them, the last fragments of Cara's erased past curled and blackened into smoke.