I let her in and said nothing. She walked into the room like she always did, unguarded, unbothered, as if she didn’t know the weight I carried or the folder I’d locked away. She perched on the edge of the table and looked at me."You’re being quiet.""I’m thinking.""That’s never a good sign."Her t
RichardThe envelope was unmarked, which was typical for Liora. She never labeled anything sensitive, never gave anything away with the exterior. She handed it to me without ceremony, her mouth set in a line and her knuckles white around the folder until I pried it from her fingers."Don’t read it h
“There’s too much we still don’t understand. The signal mapping isn’t complete. We don’t know how many targets have been conditioned. If we release it without context, all we do is spread fear.”She crossed her arms. “Fear they already have. You think not talking about it makes it go away?”I steppe
RichardThe tower was supposed to be secure. After everything, the filters, the sabotage, the vanishing clerks, the cathedral collapse, and the shifting council loyalties, we were supposed to have locked it all down. We had reinforced checkpoints, rotated patrol schedules, restricted elevator access
The lines on the page started to blur. My fingers trembled. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t slept. I wasn’t even pretending anymore.That was where Richard found me.I didn’t turn when he entered. I felt him. The scrape of his boots on stone, the shift in the room. He paused halfway down the aisle.“You ne
I should have gone to Simon. The longer I avoided it, the worse it got. I wasn’t even making up new excuses anymore. I just sidestepped hallways, stayed conveniently busy, and smiled with a steadiness that didn’t quite meet my eyes.It wasn’t about fear, not exactly. It was about control. If I didn’