Day 33 – Hour 011"The Man Who Waits"
I moved without looking back.
The farther I got from France's shop, the more convinced I became that I'd made the right decision. A better phone wouldn't change the fact that the Club already had access. A stronger signal only meant stronger chains.
The heat hung low across the street, pressing into the back of my shirt like a hand that wouldn't lift. I walked fast but didn't rush. That's how you draw attention — moving like something's about to happen.
It already was.
Marco didn't live far, but reaching him still meant crossing through parts of the neighborhood I usually avoided. Not because they were dangerous — all of it was dangerous — but because they reminded me of older versions of myself. The kind of kid who still tried to scheme something into existence.
I hadn't seen Marco in nearly a year.
Back then, he was building out the corner of a failing hardware stall into a workshop that barely held together. He never told anyone what he planned to do with it, and no one asked. Not because we didn't care — but because Marco had a way of folding time around him. You walked past and thought you'd check in later. Then later never came.
The Club told me to see him.
That's all it took to bring the past forward again.
I didn't like that.
By the time I reached the edge of the stall-lined street, my shirt had soaked through at the back. I didn't stop to dry it. The marketplace, such as it was, buzzed with the usual orchestra of scraped metal, shouting vendors, and half-sung haggling matches.
It wasn't a true market, of course.
Just a section of misfit shopkeepers who'd mutually agreed to put their stalls close enough together to resemble one. A tight mess of kiosks, tarpaulins, welded carts, and hand-painted signs — most of them with letters missing or faded into nonsense.
I passed the blanket vendor, the knockoff electronics man, the two women who sold cleaning supplies in plastic bags. Past the corner where the boy sold stickers that didn't stick. Then cut right at the half-dead fig tree wrapped in yarn.
Marco's shop looked like it always had — like it was built out of regret and stubbornness.
The shutters were halfway up.
Inside, a thin strip of yellow light bled across the dust-covered floor.
I paused at the threshold.
Nothing about the place looked changed, but something in the air had shifted. As if the humidity itself knew I wasn't here by choice.
I raised a hand and knocked once on the metal side panel. It echoed too loudly.
A voice came from the dark: "You still knock, huh?"
Marco stepped into view from behind a stack of crates. Same mop of hair. Same dark shirt with holes in the sleeves. But he looked stronger — leaner in the arms, taut in the jaw.
The room fell silent for a second.
"You were expecting me," I said.
"I was told someone might show up," he replied. "Didn't know it'd be you."
I didn't ask who told him. We both already knew.
He nodded toward the back. "Come in."
I followed him through the narrow space between counters. The front room was a chaos of tools, coiled wire, broken furniture legs, rusted screws in jars with no lids. The smell was old wood and metal filings — familiar, almost comfortable.
The back room was cleaner. Not neat, but lived-in.
Marco gestured to a stool and sat across from me on an overturned bucket.
"So," he said, folding his arms. "You're in."
I didn't answer.
He didn't expect me to.
"The Club doesn't send people to me unless they've started. Which means you did something. And they weren't entirely disappointed."
"They told me to find you," I said. "That's all."
He nodded again. Slowly. Like he was listening to a song only he could hear.
"They always say that," he murmured.
Silence returned. Not hostile. Not even awkward. Just heavy with implication.
Marco picked up a screwdriver from the table beside him and turned it in his fingers.
"You'll be tested," he said. "More than once. Some of it will make sense. Some won't. But the point is never clarity. It's about pressure. They want to see what breaks."
He glanced at me.
"What already broke?"
I didn't respond.
Not out of pride — but because I didn't know how to answer that yet.
Everything felt intact. But that didn't mean anything.
Sometimes the cracks don't show until the water starts pouring in.
"They want me to teach you," he continued. "But not with words. With practice."
I raised an eyebrow.
"What kind of practice?"
Marco smiled.
Not kindly.
"Whatever you can't afford to fail at."
He stood and walked over to a drawer, pulling out a cloth-wrapped object. He set it gently on the table and unwrapped it: an old film camera. Manual. Heavy.
"This isn't for fun," he said. "This is so you learn to see properly. Not like a kid taking selfies. Like someone documenting evidence. Like someone who understands what stillness means."
I looked at the camera. It looked back, indifferent.
"You'll come every morning," he said. "Three weeks. You show up late once, I stop helping. You ask why too many times, I stop talking. You want to survive this thing you've joined, then start acting like it."
I nodded once.
No arguments.
As I stood to leave, Marco said one last thing:
"They're not just watching your results. They're watching how you carry the weight."
I didn't look back as I stepped out into the light.
I already knew I was being watched.