Bryan's Arc

Chapter 19 of 21

Bryan stepped out of the archive door with the box pressed tight to his chest. The ugly miniature bumped his hip with every step. He thought the chase was over. Then he saw a side hallway he had never noticed before, its floor disks flickering a soft red. A new path was lighting up, pulling him away from the judges' hall. Bryan stopped. The box felt heavier. Whatever waited down that hall, it was something his mentor had left behind too. He followed the disks to a squat stone building with thick blue bars across the front. The lock hung open. Bryan pushed through and stepped inside. Shelves lined the walls, each one stacked with finished miniatures. He picked one up. It was not his work. The brushstrokes were someone else's, the colors strange. He picked up another. Different hands again. Tags hung from each base, every tag signed by his mentor. Bryan set the pieces down with shaking fingers. His mentor had not just copied him. He had copied painter after painter, for years. Bryan tucked one tagged miniature into his box on top of the rest. The judges would not just hear about him now. They would hear about all of them. At the back of the room, a large wooden easel stood under a single lamp. Two framed paintings sat side by side on the board. The left frame held soft flowers and pale sky. The right frame held the same scene, twisted into bright waves and a burning sun. The right one was signed by his mentor. The left one was signed by someone Bryan did not know. Bryan lifted the whole board off its legs. It was heavy, but he carried it. He walked out of the barred room with the box in one arm and the board in the other. He would set it all down at the judges' table. The theft was bigger than him now, and he was the one bringing it into the light. In the hall, a wide white board hung on the wall. Bryan stopped cold. Pinned across it were names and snapshots of painters at their desks, each photo taken from outside their windows. He saw his own face in the corner, hunched over red paint. He counted twelve other faces. Twelve other people watched the same way he had been watched. Bryan pulled the board off the wall and tucked it under the easel board. He walked fast now. He reached the judges' hall and laid everything down on the long table. The miniatures. The tagged copies. The two paintings. The board of stolen faces. A judge picked up the top tag and went still. Another judge reached for a phone. Bryan stepped back. He had come in chasing one thief. He was walking out as the witness for twelve.