They’d deal with it.
She had the hours. Years of unused leave stacked from missed holidays and double shifts taken without complaint. She’d covered for people when they disappeared for births, funerals, divorces, breakdowns. She’d stepped in without asking questions.
Someone owed her. A lot of people owed her.
By morning, the case would be reassigned. Another detective would pick it up, read her notes, follow the thin leads as far as they would go. That was how it worked. The job didn’t pause just because you stepped away.
She accepted that.
Her sister’s voice stayed with her instead.
Hoarse. Careful. Thin.
Serafina tightened her grip on the wheel as the road curved, headlights cutting through the dark. She’d told herself for months that the goitre was stable. That insurance would come through eventually. That waiting was irritating but manageable.
She knew better now.
Breathing wasn’t negotiable. Time wasn’t flexible. And systems—insurance, departments, governments—moved too slowly when the margin got thin.
She checked the clock again, calculating distance without thinking. How soon she’d get there. How soon she could see it for herself.
Whatever was happening beyond Earth, whatever truths the world was adjusting to, could wait.
What mattered was San Diego. A dorm room. A swollen throat. A narrowing window.
Serafina pressed the accelerator a fraction harder and kept driving.
CHAPTER 5
The floor light outside Aria's dorm room hummed softly, casting a narrow stripe across the carpet.
Serafina paused there longer than she meant to, listening. Inside, something shifted—slow, uneven—the sound of someone forcing herself upright. She knocked once, already braced.
The door opened partway.
Aria stood barefoot in the doorway, wrapped in an oversized hoodie that swallowed her frame. Her hair was pulled into a loose knot that had slipped loose on one side, dark strands clinging to her temples. Her eyes were rimmed red, unfocused with exhaustion, and when she spoke, her voice came out thin and rough, scraped raw.
"You didn't have to come so fast."
Serafina didn't answer immediately. She just looked at her.
The swelling at Aria's throat was unmistakable now. No longer subtle. No longer something you could miss unless you were actively refusing to see it. It pressed visibly against the fabric of the hoodie, the shape wrong—aggressive in a way it hadn't been the last time Serafina had seen her.
"You sound terrible," Serafina said.
"I'm fine," Aria said automatically, then swallowed and winced. "I just?—"
Serafina stepped forward and nudged the door open with her shoulder. "Move."
Aria didn't argue.
The room was small but private, the kind of single dorm room you paid extra for. Normally, Aria kept it immaculate—notes color-coded, desk cleared every night, everything aligned the way her mind liked it.
Tonight, it looked abandoned.
Textbooks lay open on the desk, pages dog-eared and untouched. Handwritten notes were scattered across the surface, half-finished. A mug sat cold beside the bed, tea long gone. Laundry spilled over the chair instead of being folded away.
Serafina closed the door behind them.
