That alone tells me how much tonight has changed her.
I open her door and offer a hand without thinking about it. She hesitates, then takes it. Her fingers are cold. Not shock—control. She’s clamping down on everything at once.
I lead her up one flight to the apartment level. The place is forgettable by design: clean lines, neutral walls, no art, no photos. A couch that’s never been loved. A kitchen stocked with exactly what a human needs to survive and nothing that would make them stay.
I lock the door. Then I lock it again.
Then I engage the secondary.
Only then do I turn to her.
“Sit,” I say—not a command, not a request. An anchor.
She perches on the edge of the couch like she expects the floor to give way.
I move to the counter and set my phone down, bring up the internal channel.
“Lena,” I say quietly. “We’re inside.”
“Roger that, Aaron. Systems are live. You’re blind to the street for ninety seconds while I reroute.”
“Ninety is fine.”
Ronan’s voice cuts in. “Status?”
“Contained,” I answer. “But compromised.”
A pause. Not surprise. Assessment.
“Understood,” Ronan says. “We’ll hold perimeter soft. No uniforms. No signatures.”
“Good.”
I end the call and turn back to Lark.
She’s watching me like she’s memorizing how I move.
That makes sense.
She’s an archivist.
She maintains and oversees the archives.
Lark
I don’t trust stillness anymore.
Stillness is what happens right before someone disappears.
The apartment smells faintly like lemon cleaner and nothing else. No warmth. No history. No proof anyone has ever lived here long enough to leave something behind.
Safe doesn’t mean kind.
Aaron moves like the space belongs to him, but his eyes never stop scanning. Even when he looks at me, part of him is listening elsewhere, measuring distances I can’t see.
I wrap my arms around myself and try to breathe like a normal person.
“I didn’t plan this,” I say, because the silence is starting to feel accusatory.
