Two weeks later, Dallas sits alone in a Far Harbor diner booth, black coffee gone lukewarm beside his hand. The place is nearly empty, all chrome, rain-streaked glass, and tired neon buzzing over old menus.

His fingers find a heavy envelope tucked inside the overcoat pocket. Wax-sealed. Not his. The paper is damp at the edges, as if it has traveled through steam tunnels or worse.

Inside are photographs of the same maintenance passages he chased before, but now the walls are marked in fresh grease pencil, arrows, numbers, and one ugly symbol repeated at every turn. A route. A map. A warning.

One photo shows Professor Dayton's study access scribbled into the chain of tunnels, with a second note, deliver the professor at bell toll. The handwriting matches the marked route. Whoever sent this knows where Dayton is kept, and who is coming for him.

Across the diner, a man in a knit cap leaves a folded receipt on the counter and walks out without looking back. On the back of the receipt is a Pier Nine service time and a number Dallas recognizes from the coven's paper trail.

Dallas slips out into the rain without hurrying, coat collar up, eyes fixed on the knit cap threading through the curbside steam.

The man does not head for the waterfront. He cuts behind the diner, past a service alley tagged with fresh grease pencil, then stops under a buzzing wall light.

A second man steps from the shadows, Harbor Unit badge flashing once before he palms it away. "You were seen at Dayton's place," he says. "Now tell me who else is on you."

Dallas stays hidden behind a dented dumpster as the knit cap man slides a folded receipt across his knuckles. The paper bears Pier Nine, a maintenance panel code, and the same red grease mark from the tunnel photos.

The badge man glances toward the diner window, then toward the alley mouth, as if checking whether Dallas is still inside. Rain hisses on the pavement, and the trail now clearly leads to whoever is watching the route, not just walking it.

Dallas glides out from the dumpster shadow, keeping to the rain-slick wall as the badge man drifts toward the alley mouth.

For three steps, he stays invisible. Then a puddle flashes under his shoe, and the badge man’s head snaps back.

He cuts across the alley instead of running, one hand dropping to his coat where a folded duplicate manifest bundle peeks out, damp at the edge.

The knit-cap man freezes under the wall light, bargain gone thin in the rain. The Harbor Unit badge flashes once as the man turns it toward the diner window, like he expects a watcher there too.

The badge man reaches the alley corner and glances back, not at the diner, but straight toward Dallas’s hiding place, as if he has already mapped the distance between them.

Identify the Harbor Unit badge man

Dallas slips off the wall and takes the badge man’s line, moving with the rain instead of against it.

The Harbor Unit badge flashes under the alley light as the man angles past the diner window, and Dallas catches the shape of a folded manifest bundle tucked inside his coat.

Dallas tails him through the spill of neon and wet brick, close enough to read the tension in his shoulders, far enough to stay unseen.

The badge man slows at the corner, glances into a dark storefront reflection, and scans the street like he knows Dallas’s last three turns.

By the time he reaches the curb, Dallas has his answer, someone with Harbor Unit access is watching his movements, and the cost is the scrape of a loose sign bracket against his coat.