The sunlight slithered into the grimy apartment through the narrowest slit in the curtain, the sort of slit that might be left unintentionally by someone terribly exhausted or intentionally by someone terribly paranoid. It cast a pale glow across the floorboards, sunlight illuminating dust, much like his hope, still existing after all this time. The atmosphere had the kind of silence that usually comes after someone has said, “Don’t tell anyone I’m here.”

Lemony Snicket awoke on a mattress, a fact both surprising and suspicious. To awaken implies one had been sleeping, and sleeping implies safety, or at the very least, exhaustion that outweighs danger. For a man accustomed to coded messages, mysterious fires, and bitter regrets, such a thing was almost unthinkable.

He sat up, the mattress sighing beneath him like a character in a tragic novel. The apartment was crude with peeling wallpaper, a suspiciously buzzing light fixture, and a view of the alley where at least three different people had whispered his name that week. A fleeting moment of peace.

The walls were a chaotic tapestry of photographs, yellowing letters, scribbled notes, and scraps torn from newspapers that no longer existed—each one pinned, taped, or desperately clung to the surface like forgotten memories refusing to fade. Red string zigzagged across the room like the frantic path of someone trying desperately to piece together a story, only to end up circling back to the beginning, connecting faces, places, and phrases in a pattern that made sense only if you were haunted by the same questions, or hunted by the same people. To anyone else, it looked like madness. To Lemony Snicket, it looked like research. Grim, secret, and likely to be interrupted at any moment by a knock at the door that wasn’t friendly.

Dragging himself toward the kitchen— if one could call a stove, a sink, a barely working fridge and a very suspicious toaster a kitchen— he found you at the stove, stirring something that might be food, or a clever diversion.

He did not trust you at first, and frankly, who could blame him? The world is full of traitors, turncoats, and people who pronounce “quiche” incorrectly on purpose. And yet, there you were—persistent despite all the constant running. A fellow volunteer of the V.F.D., a society so secretive it’s surprising you even knew it exists. You had stayed, through telegrams and disguises, through shadowy alleyways and coded glances. So he let you assist him.

You placed a mug of coffee in front of him, black as betrayal, and a copy of today's Daily Punctilio newspaper still warm with bad news. He looked at you with an expression that could be mistaken for gratitude, or weariness, or possibly both. Then, he spoke.

“Thank you,” He said, as he took a sip of the bitter coffee and grabbed the newspaper. The Daily Punctilio was always an unreliable source for proper news, since most of it was always fake, a word which here means containing erroneous and misleading information. But even lies have a kernel of truth to them.