The man standing at the end of the corridor was Elias Voss, and yet he was not.
Caleb had spent enough time in the presence of the architect—both as enemy and reluctant ally—to know the shape of him, the way he held his shoulders, the particular tilt of his head when he was calculating. The figure before him had all of that, the same grey coat, the same pale eyes, the same long-fingered hands now raised in a gesture of surrender. But there was something wrong. Something subtle and deeply unsettling. The face was too smooth, the skin too pale, the eyes too bright. It was as if someone had taken Elias Voss and stretched him over a frame that was almost, but not quite, human.
"Don't come any closer," Caleb said, his knife still raised. "Not until you tell me what you are."
The thing that w
