Only then do I slow.
Only then do I let myself look at her fully.
Her face is pale, but her eyes are bright with adrenaline and something else.
Not helplessness.
Rage.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
She swallows. “No.”
Fair.
Her fingers lift, trembling, and she presses them to her pendant like it’s the only anchor she has left.
I reach over and catch her wrist gently but firmly.
“Don’t,” I say again, quieter now.
She stares at my hand on her skin like she’s startled by the contact.
Then she meets my eyes.
“I’ve worn this for years,” she whispers. “It was my mother’s.”
“Then it’s a perfect place to hide something,” I say.
Her throat tightens. “You really think it’s tracking me.”
“I think the enemy doesn’t need luck,” I answer. “They need precision. And they have it.”
A beat.
Then she says, voice breaking on the edge of truth, “I might know why.”
The words hit like a weapon.
I go still. “Say it.”
Her gaze drops to her bag.
To the weight she’s been carrying like it’s ordinary.
“There’s a drive,” she whispers. “In my archive kit. It’s not official. It’s… something I kept.”
My blood turns cold. “Kept from who?”
“Everyone,” she says. “Because if I turned it in, it would disappear.”
I stare at her, the way you stare at a door you didn’t realize was locked from the outside.
“Lark,” I say carefully, “what’s on it?”
She looks up, and in her eyes I see the moment her life split in two.
“A list,” she says. “Routes. Transfers. Names that don’t belong in the system.”
