ANMELDENDiane called back four hours later.Yuna was sitting on the floor of her dorm room, back against the bed, phone in her lap, when it finally lit up. She answered before the first ring finished."Diane.""I'm still here," Diane said. Her voice sounded tired, but steadier than it had on Sable's line. "She left about an hour ago. I don't know where she went. She just said she'd be in touch, like we'd agreed to something, even though I never said yes to anything.""Are you safe.""I'm in my apartment. Neruda's sitting on my lap judging me for the last four hours of my life." A small, exhausted laugh. "I'm safe. I'm just not sure I'm okay."Yuna waited, giving her the room to say whatever she needed to say."I meant what I said," Diane continued after a moment. "About being scared of what happens if something happens to you. I've thought about it before, honestly. I just never said it out loud, because it felt selfish, worrying about my own security when you're the one actually in danger."
"Who is this," Yuna said, though some part of her already knew, the certainty settling into her chest like cold water."You know who this is," the woman said. "You've spent the last two days finding out."Yuna put the phone on speaker with a shaking hand, and the whole room leaned in around it, Andrew already reaching for a second phone to start a trace, Noah standing so close his shoulder pressed against hers."Where's Diane," Yuna said."Safe," Sable said. "For now. We're having a conversation. She's a very thoughtful woman, your Diane. She listens carefully.""If you've hurt her—""I haven't touched her," Sable said, and there was something almost offended in her tone, like the accusation itself was beneath her. "I don't need to hurt people to move them, Yuna. That's the difference between what I'm building and what Richard has spent fifty years failing to build. Fear is inefficient. Understanding lasts longer.""What did you tell her," Yuna asked."The truth," Sable said. "That th
"Tell me everything you remember about her," Margaret said, once they were all seated in Andrew's study again, the photograph propped against a stack of books on the desk where everyone could see it.James rubbed his hands together, "There isn't much," he said. "The adoption file had her name, Iris Walker, and a note that said the birth was arranged through a private facilitator rather than an agency. No address. No family contact listed. Just a single line that said the birth mother requested no future contact, for the child's safety." He looked at Margaret. "I always thought that line meant she didn't want me. Now I'm wondering if it meant something else.""It meant exactly what it said," Margaret told him. "For the child's safety. She wasn't rejecting you. She was protecting you from whatever she believed was coming for people like her.""Like the purge," Andrew said quietly."The purge happened before Iris disappeared," Margaret said, thinking it through out loud. "But the years
"That's my mother," James said. "My birth mother. I never knew her. I was given up when I was six weeks old.""You were adopted," Yuna said."By a family in Ohio. Good people. They raised me as James Reyes, which is the name on every school record, every piece of paper that exists about me anywhere official." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Walker was her name. My birth mother's. I found it three years ago when I finally got access to my adoption file, and I started using it unofficially. Socially. It felt like the only piece of her I got to keep."Noah, standing slightly behind Yuna, spoke carefully. "So your university records under Reyes would show everything normal.""They would," James said. "I never changed it legally. I just introduce myself as Walker because it's easier than explaining why a stranger should care about my adoption story." He looked at Camille. "I should have told you sooner. I didn't think it mattered. I didn't think anyone would go digging into my transcripts
"You can't go alone," Yuna said the next morning, standing in the doorway while Camille pulled on her coat with hands that would not quite stop shaking."I'm not going alone," Camille said. "You'll all be three streets away. That's not alone. That's careful." She looked at herself in the small mirror by the door, smoothing her hair, trying to look like a person who had slept the night before. "If I bring you with me and he really is innocent, I'll never know if he was being honest with me or performing for an audience he could see. I need this to be just us."Noah stood by the window, arms crossed, clearly unhappy but not arguing anymore. He'd said everything he was going to say the night before, about Julia and about how someone deciding to face something alone was exactly the kind of decision that got people hurt. Camille had listened to all of it and made the same choice anyway."Two hours," Yuna said. "The Bradbury Building. If you're not out and texting me by then, we're coming i
Yuna told her everything.She told her about the gap in the university records, the real James Walker living quietly in Ohio with a beard and a construction job and no idea his name had been borrowed. She told her about the photograph, the silver haired woman standing outside an airfield like she owned the ground beneath her. She told her what Margaret had confessed, thirty years old and still sharp enough to cut, about a woman named Vivienne who had wanted the Binding for herself and died trying to take it. She told her about the name on Julia's old list, circled twice, tied to Richard Caine.Camille sat very still through all of it, her knees pulled up to her chest, her face unreadable in the lamp light."Sable," she said, when Yuna finally finished. "That's her name. The one who might be behind all of this.""If she's really Vivienne's daughter," Yuna said. "We don't know that for certain yet. We only know the name was on Julia's list, and that Julia flagged her as someone connecte
"You cannot be serious right now."Camille stood in the middle of their dorm room, hands on her hips, staring at Yuna like she had grown a second head. Which, given recent events, wasn't entirely impossible."I'm telling you the truth," Yuna said, sitting on her bed with her knees pulled to her che
"This is completely unacceptable!"A woman's shrill voice cut through the murmur of the crowd as Noah and Yuna approached the main field. Students were packed together in tight rows, teachers positioned at the edges like sentries. On a raised platform at the front stood Mr. Jack Peterson, the schoo
"Everyone get inside! Now!"Coach Sullivan's voice boomed across the campus as students scattered in every direction. The emergency bell was ringing, a piercing wail that sent everyone into a panic."What is that thing?" someone screamed."Did you see it? It was huge!"Noah stood frozen near the gy
"Ready for failure, loser?"Yuna slammed her locker shut and turned to find Megan Wright standing behind her, arms crossed, a smug smile on her face. Her friends flanked her on either side, all wearing matching expressions of superiority.The girls' locker room smelled like cheap perfume and sweat.







