The man closes the distance fast. Too fast. Wrong energy.
I move.
No warning. No announcement.
I catch him mid-reach and slam him into the wall hard enough to rattle teeth. He gasps, hands flying up in reflex.
“Run,” I tell Lark.
She freezes.
Our eyes meet for the first time.
Wide. Intelligent. Shocked—but not screaming.
Good.
I repeat myself. “Now.”
She runs.
The man struggles once.
That’s all he gets.
When I release him, he collapses to the pavement, unconscious and irrelevant.
I turn back toward Lark—already moving after her, heart hammering with a realization that lands like a warning shot:
She wasn’t collateral.
She was chosen.
And whatever’s coming next?
I’m already too close to walk away.
2
Lark
Location: Lisbon, Portugal
Idon’t run screaming.
Not because I’m brave.
Because my body still doesn’t believe what just happened.
My feet move fast—too fast—down a narrow street that smells like damp stone and espresso, my lungs burning as if I’ve been sprinting for miles instead of seconds. The city keeps breathing around me. A couple laughs near a café table. Someone argues softly in Portuguese. A tram bell clangs in the distance, like an everyday life is still possible.
Behind me, there’s a thud.
A body. A wall. Something ending.
I glance back without thinking—stupid, instinctive, man—and I see him.
The man who told me to run.
