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Chapter 3 – "The Names in the Notebook"
Part 4: The Trap on Melrose
Ethan didn't sleep that night.
He spent the hours between midnight and sunrise cross-referencing everything Gauss had told him, using burner laptops from a Koreatown pawn shop and public Wi-Fi outside a closed deli. His hands were trembling—not from caffeine, but from something deeper. Something colder.
Yasmine Choi.
The name clanged around his head like a loose screw in an engine. She was listed in the notebook with a triangle next to her name—different from all the others. And unlike most of the other names, she wasn't crossed out.
Still alive. Still a piece on the board.
He needed to find her.
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The address—81 Melrose Boulevard—sat on the edge of Williamsburg, where the gentrified hipster cafes bled into crumbling brick tenements and rusted fire escapes. The building was four stories tall, half-covered in scaffolding. A busted intercom at the door greeted him with the usual New York rudeness: BZZZRT —nothing.
Ethan didn't buzz.
He waited.
Across the street was a laundromat with mirrored glass. He ducked inside and used the reflection to watch the building. A man in a gray hoodie had been lingering near a streetlamp. He lit two cigarettes in ten minutes but never smoked them.
Surveillance.
Ethan watched for another twenty minutes before making his move. He exited the laundromat, circled the block, and entered the building from the rear through a half-jammed basement door. The hallway inside smelled like copper and mold. The elevator was broken, of course.
Fourth floor.
He climbed in silence, one hand on the small folding knife he kept tucked inside his waistband.
Apartment 4C.
He knocked twice.
Nothing.
Again—two short raps.
A third try.
The door opened a crack.
A young woman peeked out. Korean-American. Late twenties, early thirties. Messy black ponytail, oversized hoodie, eyes wide and calculating.
"…Who are you?"
"I'm here about Miles Cole."
The door shut.
Ethan barely had time to flinch before a click sounded on the other side.
Then the door opened fully.
Yasmine Choi stood aside. "Come in. Now."
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The apartment was cluttered but alive. Scattered textbooks. Whiteboards full of equations. Half-assembled electronics. She closed the door and bolted three locks behind them.
"How do you know that name?"
Ethan pulled the notebook from his coat and handed it to her.
She flipped through it rapidly, face paling with every page.
"…So it's true."
"You knew my dad?"
"We worked together once. Long time ago. Before Halrick tried to burn everything down."
Ethan's breath caught.
"So he is alive?"
Yasmine nodded. "He disappeared in '03. Everyone assumed he was dead. But a few of us got messages. Threats. Telling us to stay silent. Then someone started hunting down names. The ones in this book."
She closed the notebook.
"I moved cities. Changed my name. Went off-grid."
"And now?"
She sighed. "If you found me, they can too."
Ethan stepped closer. "What do you have?"
"A third of the original formula. The dormant structure. It's useless without the other pieces. Your father split the compound's synthesis data into three non-overlapping fragments. Halrick had one. I have another. And…"
Ethan didn't answer.
Yasmine stared at him. "You have the third, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Not fully. Just… fragments. And my father's annotations."
"That's enough."
A sudden knock made them both freeze.
Three soft raps.
Yasmine's eyes went wide.
"That's not good."
She turned off the lights and pulled Ethan into the back room. It was a narrow study with no windows, just filing cabinets and a second locked door.
"Panic room?" Ethan whispered.
"Not quite."
She yanked open a filing cabinet drawer, revealing a hollowed-out chute. "Laundry shaft. Goes to the basement."
He hesitated. "You're kidding."
She pushed him. "Go!"
He slid in. The fall wasn't long—but filthy. He landed hard on a bed of dirty clothes in a laundry cart.
Above him, a loud CRACK echoed.
Gunfire.
Someone had kicked down the apartment door.
Yasmine was screaming.
Ethan vaulted out of the cart and dashed through the basement toward the alley. By the time he reached the street, a black van was peeling away from the curb, tires screeching.
She was gone.
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Twenty minutes later, Ethan sat on a bench beneath the Williamsburg Bridge, hands bloodied from the chute, mind racing.
He looked at the notebook.
Yasmine's name was no longer just a target.
She was a hostage.
Whoever took her knew exactly what she carried.
And that meant they also knew Ethan had the final piece.
He flipped to the next uncrossed name in the book.
This time, there was no triangle. Just two letters.
M.W.
No address. Just a quote: "He lives in the silence between sirens."
Who the hell was M.W.?
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To be continued in Chapter 4 – "The Man Between Sirens", where Ethan begins hunting for the elusive third figure—and the first real assassin is sent to tie off all loose ends.