Linda

  The police station held its breath in a way Linda recognised.

  Not calm. Just sterile.

  Heat trapped under strip lights. The smell of burnt coffee and old carpet, something faintly sour clinging beneath disinfectant no one bothered to notice anymore.

  Linda sat with her hands folded in her lap because if she didn’t give them a job, they shook.

  Her phone lay cold in her pocket. No messages. No missed calls. She checked it anyway, thumb brushing the screen like muscle memory, like the act itself might keep Skye tethered somewhere safe.

  Skye had left earlier that morning — left her — slipping out of the house with Alice and Simon while Linda hovered too close, tried too hard, clutched at normal like it was something fragile she might drop.

  I need you to...stay.

  The memory pressed hard behind Linda’s eyes. Every instinct she had screamed that letting go — even briefly — had been a mistake. Jamie had seen Skye outside the courthouse because the world hadn’t stopped when Linda needed it to.

  Beside her, Jolie sat angled in, knees close, posture loose but alert. Not hovering. Guarding. Jolie had a way of holding space that didn’t ask permission — like she’d quietly taken responsibility and wasn’t giving it back.

  Linda’s mouth tasted wrong. Metallic. Dry no matter how much she swallowed. She rubbed absently at the inside of her wrist, scratching at an itch that had no cause she could name.

  Behind the front desk, a radio murmured.

  “—ongoing reports of power instability across several European regions. Emergency services confirm multiple injuries related to extreme weather events—”

  Linda closed her eyes for half a second. Pressure again. Everywhere. She breathed through it and opened them before it could bloom into something worse.

  A chair scraped nearby.

  “Linda?”

  She looked up.

  Jack Hartley stood there, jacket off, sleeves rolled, the lines around his eyes pulled tight in a way she hadn’t seen since five years ago — the night questions stopped being gentle.

  “What are you doing here?” Linda asked, too fast. “Katherine said you were meant to be at the church. With Ben.”

  Jack’s mouth twitched. He didn’t correct her.

  “Something serious came up.”

  That was all. No elaboration. No reassurance.

  Another man stepped in beside him — plain suit, no tie, eyes tired in the way that came from never being allowed to miss details.

  “Detective Inspector Khan,” he said, offering a hand. “Apologies for the wait. Can we talk somewhere quieter?”

  The interview room was small and overheated. Jack poured coffee from a flask without asking — habit more than kindness — and slid two cups across the table.

  “Two sugars. Milk.”

  Linda’s fingers closed around it automatically. The familiarity stung more than it soothed.

  Jack lingered a moment too long, eyes flicking between Linda and Jolie, then stepped out, closing the door with deliberate softness.

  Khan didn’t open the folder straight away. He looked at Jolie instead.

  “And you are...?”

  “Jolie,” she said. Calm. No hesitation.

  “Relationship to Mrs Harper?”

  “I’m with her daughter.”

  A beat.

  “And you’re staying because...?”

  Jolie didn’t look at Linda.

  “Because she’s not safe alone tonight,” she said evenly. “And because I don’t leave people halfway through disasters.”

  Khan nodded once. He didn’t push.

  He opened the folder.

  The first photograph slid across the table — Jamie’s living room. Furniture Linda recognised before she recognised the body slumped sideways in the armchair.

  Her stomach lurched. Copper flooded her mouth, sharp enough that she had to swallow twice to keep it down.

  “His father,” Khan said quietly. “Single gunshot. Close range.”

  Another photograph. A body in the hallway, twisted wrong.

  “Mother. Likely killed before she could react.”

  Linda stared until the edges blurred. Her vision narrowed, a faint ringing beginning behind her ears. She focused on the grain of the table until it steadied.

  “The parole officer was found in the kitchen,” Khan continued. “Two wounds. Efficient.”

  Five years too late, Linda thought.

  Five years of being told it was random. Tragic. Finished.

  Khan slid another photograph across.

  A white wall. Black marker.

  SKYE MUST DIE

  Over and over, carved into plaster hard enough to gouge beneath the paint.

  Linda’s breath stopped completely.

  Jolie’s hand closed around her wrist — firm, anchoring, unmistakably present.

  “This wasn’t grief,” Khan said. “This wasn’t a breakdown. This was intent.”

  Linda laughed once — thin, wrong.

  “We told you.”

  Khan didn’t flinch. He looked tired, not defensive.

  “We don’t normally lay this much out in one sitting,” he said. “But tonight isn’t normal, and I don’t have the luxury of easing you into it.”

  More photographs followed. A hidden basement. Nazi memorabilia arranged with care. Empty hooks. Open safes. Furniture linings torn.

  “He cleared the house,” Khan said. “Cash, jewellery, gold. Anything portable. He didn’t take documents — he took means.”

  Linda’s fingers went numb around the cup. Her skin felt too tight, like it didn’t quite fit.

  “Our working theory,” Khan continued, “is that he discovered his great-grandfather’s involvement years ago. Likely before your daughter’s murder. It appears to have shaped his worldview rather than triggered it.”

  The room tilted slightly. Linda pressed her feet flat to the floor, grounding herself, willing the dizziness to pass.

  “He’s made contact with contractors,” Khan added. “Not amateurs.”

  Silence settled. Heavy. Immediate.

  “We need to place you under protection,” Khan said.

  “No.”

  The word came out before Linda could shape it.

  Khan studied her. “You don’t refuse that lightly.”

  “I’m not refusing,” Linda said, voice thinner than she intended. “I’m asking for time.”

  “For what?”

  “For this not to get bigger,” she said carefully. “For things not to draw attention they don’t need.”

  Khan leaned back slightly. “You’re avoiding something.”

  Linda met his gaze. Her heart thudded too hard, too fast, each beat loud in her ears.

  “I’m avoiding spectacle.”

  The radio outside crackled louder. someone behind the front desk turning it up as if volume could turn uncertainty into clarity.

  The door behind them opened again. Jack stepped back into the room, coffee refilled, expression unreadable — and this time, he didn’t excuse himself.

  “—French Embassy siege resolved earlier this evening. Authorities declining to release details beyond a brief statement—”

  Khan’s head turned toward the radio before the sentence finished. Not curiosity — calculation.

  A reporter cut in, breathless. “One child survivor spoke briefly—”

  The girl’s voice followed. Accented. Thin. Holding itself together by force.

  “He save me. He was... dead. And then he was there. He tell me to breathe.”

  The room went very still.

  Linda didn’t look up. She felt it instead — a sharp, cold line sliding straight down her spine, like recognition without permission. Her pulse jumped, then stuttered. For a second, her vision dimmed at the edges.

  Jolie’s hand tightened around her wrist immediately. Not a squeeze. A warning. Stay here.

  Khan didn’t comment on the miracle.

  He frowned at the implications.

  “That’s not going to stay contained,” he said quietly. “Stories like that don’t.”

  He glanced at the folder on the table — at SKYE MUST DIE — then back at them.

  “When people who already believe the world is broken hear something like that,” Khan continued, measured, “they don’t dismiss it. They attach meaning to it. Pattern. Proof.”

  Linda swallowed. Her mouth tasted faintly metallic.

  Jolie didn’t speak, but her posture shifted — closer, angled in, as if shielding Linda from a draft no one else could feel.

  “And meaning,” Khan finished, “makes people move faster.”

  He paused, then looked directly at Linda.

  “There’s something else. Courthouse CCTV earlier today. A girl seen with Alice Harper and your husband,Simon.”

  Linda’s blood went cold.

  “She resembles your daughter.”

  Jack went very still, gaze lifting to the CCTV mention like a hook catching.

  Khan watched Linda carefully. “Who is she?”

  Linda didn’t hesitate.

  “A cousin.”

  The lie slid out clean.

  Khan nodded slowly. “Jamie may have seen her. Given the phrasing on the wall, it suggests escalation. If he believes she’s connected—”

  “She isn’t,” Linda said too quickly, then steadied herself. “Not directly.”

  Khan leaned back. “Then she may still be a target.”

  Silence fell again. Different this time. Sharper.

  Jack didn’t speak. But Linda felt his attention sharpen, suspicious and restrained. He knew. He didn’t say it.

  “At least let us stay at the church,” Linda said, the words coming out too fast. “Just for one night. Father Mallory’s a friend—he’ll help keep us out of sight until you get that bas—”

  Linda stopped herself.

  “Ok we’ll move you tonight,” Khan said. “The church is acceptable—temporary. Officer Hartley will take you to pack essentials, then he’ll bring you straight back. Call your husband and your eldest. They meet you there.”

  “Your house,” Khan clarified. “Five minutes. In and out.”

  Relief and fear collided so hard Linda had to grip the edge of the chair. Her vision swam — just for a second — and she stayed seated longer than necessary.

  Jolie was already there, hand at her elbow, solid as a brace.

  Outside, sirens cut through the wet night. Somewhere nearby, lights flickered.

  Linda didn’t feel brave.

  She felt hunted.

  And this time, she was prepared to lie — carefully, repeatedly — if it kept her daughter alive.

  —————-

  Skye

  Mr Clarke had stolen a corner of the parish hall and tried to make it behave.

  Not like a church. Not like a crisis room. Like a place where a child could put a pencil on paper and not be asked to explain the impossible.

  The tables were the fold-out kind, scarred with old varnish and faint dents from decades of elbows and tea mugs. The chairs didn’t match. The overhead lights buzzed with that tired fluorescent insistence that made everyone’s skin look slightly wrong. Rain tapped the high windows in a thin, stubborn rhythm.

  Mr Clarke slid an exercise book toward Skye and angled it so the page sat square in front of her, not skewed toward him like a test. He didn’t loom. He didn’t perform gentleness. He just spoke the way he always spoke in assemblies, in classrooms, in corridors when a kid had done something stupid and needed a way back out.

  “Alright,” he said, tapping the page with the capped end of his pen. “We’ll do it properly. Slow.”

  Skye hunched over the book, tongue pressing faintly behind her teeth like it did when she was trying not to cry or bolt. On the page, the algebra sat there like an accusation made of numbers.

  Solve for x: 3(2x ? 5) + 4 = 2x + 7.

  She stared until the brackets started to feel like they were closing in.

  Alice sat close—close enough that Skye could feel warmth through her sleeve, not touching, not crowding. Just there. A constant edge to the world that didn’t move.

  Dad stood behind them with one hand braced on the back of Skye’s chair as if that small contact was the only thing keeping his own body from pacing holes into the carpet. His eyes kept flicking up—counting people, tracking movement, watching the doors in the way he did now because the last hour had taught him the town didn’t need permission to become sharp.

  It had been an hour since Skye had stepped into the corridor and said I’m here.

  Mallory had made them show their screens—hands up, cameras off—like a man who’d learned what rumours could do to a town.

  An hour since Father Mallory, voice steady in a way that hadn’t left room for argument, had laid down the rule that was holding the hall together by its fingernails:

  “No phones. No photos. No calls. Not in this building.”

  Most of them had obeyed. Some had left, white-faced and shaking, as if going home would reset reality. The ones who remained had formed uneasy little clusters—Katherine Hartley and Ben near the hatch, Mr and Mrs Clarke hovering close to Mr Clarke’s corner, Maureen sat too upright with her hands locked together like a prayer she didn’t believe in.

  Skye could still feel the afterimage of being looked at.

  Mr Clarke didn’t fill the silence. He waited until Skye’s eyes stopped darting.

  “What do brackets mean?” he asked.

  Skye swallowed. Rules were safer than people. “Inside first.”

  “Good,” he said, a quick nod like that was enough. “So we take the three and we...?”

  “Multiply.”

  “Go on.”

  Her pencil hovered. Her hand shook slightly and she hated herself for it. Alice’s thumb rubbed once over Skye’s knuckle, a tiny private anchor that didn’t demand anything.

  Skye wrote slowly: 6x ? 15 + 4 = 2x + 7.

  Mr Clarke nodded. “Now tidy.”

  “Minus eleven,” Skye murmured, and wrote: 6x ? 11 = 2x + 7.

  She glanced up, unsure.

  Mr Clarke’s eyes flicked briefly to Dad—no words, just a look that said, This. This is what she needs. Then back to Skye, calm again.

  “Perfect. Now get your x’s together.”

  Skye stared at the equal sign like it was a fence.

  Dad’s hand tightened on the chair back. He didn’t speak. He didn’t breathe properly either.

  Skye swallowed again. “Subtract two x from both sides.”

  “Yes.”

  She wrote: 4x ? 11 = 7.

  Then: 4x = 18.

  She stopped. The last step looked too easy. Easy was suspicious.

  Mr Clarke huffed a soft laugh. Not at her. At the shape of it. “Divide by four.”

  Skye did it.

  x = 4.5.

  She stared at the answer and waited for someone to tell her it was wrong. For the room to turn and point.

  Nothing happened.

  No sudden noise. No adult voice swinging like a door.

  Just ink on paper.

  Her throat tightened anyway, because the normality landed like grief.

  Alice leaned in a fraction. “You did it.”

  Skye’s mouth twitched. “It’s only one.”

  “One is how you start,” Mr Clarke said.

  Behind her, Dad exhaled through his nose—almost a laugh, almost a sob—and for a few minutes, the hall stayed quiet on purpose, but looked like it from a distance.

  Tea cups clinked. Someone shifted a chair. Father Mallory moved quietly between clusters, intercepting rising voices before they sharpened, a hand to a shoulder here, a murmured word there—doing the quiet, practiced work of keeping grief from turning feral.

  It didn’t hold.

  Maureen spoke without standing.

  Not shouting. Not even angry.

  Just loud enough to make sure the room heard her.

  “So what happens now?” she said. “Do we just... sit with it?”

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  A pause.

  Then, brittle, “Do we pretend this doesn’t rewrite everything we believe about how the world works?”

  The air tightened. Heads turned, slow and wary, like animals scenting blood.

  Dad’s spine went rigid. Mr Clarke’s pen stilled in his hand.

  Skye felt it—the shift. The moment before a room decided it was going to choose someone to hurt.

  Ben’s Mom, Katherine’s voice cut in, sharp. “Maureen. Don’t.”

  Maureen let out a short, humourless breath. “I’m not being cruel. I’m asking an honest question.”

  “Then ask it honestly,” Katherine said. “Stop circling.”

  Maureen’s mouth tightened. Her eyes flicked, just once, to Skye.

  “If this is real,” she said, voice shaking now, “then it means God—fate—whatever you want to call it—picked.”

  A murmur rippled.

  Picked.

  “I’ve buried three people in this church,” Maureen went on, words tumbling faster, like once she started she couldn’t stop. “My husband. My sister. A baby who never made it out of the NICU. And every time, people told me there was a reason. That it was God’s will. That there was a plan.”

  Her laugh cracked. “So tell me what the plan is now.”

  Katherine stood. “You don’t get to do this.”

  “Why not?” Maureen snapped. “We’ve all been swallowing it for an hour. If miracles are back on the table, then so are questions.”

  She gestured helplessly at Skye, at the hall, at the fact of her breathing body.

  “Why her?” she said again, quieter, but worse. “Why does she come back when—”

  Her voice caught.

  “When Lexi didn’t.”

  The name hit the room like something dropped and shattered.

  Skye’s stomach flipped.

  Lexi.

  The girl who bullied her .

  The girl who chased her.

  The girl who shoved her.

  The girl whose breath had been hot with shouting the night everything went wrong.

  Dead. Just as dead as Skye had been.

  Dad moved then—one step, small but absolute—placing himself between Skye and the line of sight.

  “She’s a child,” he said, low and dangerous. “You will not do this to her.”

  Maureen laughed again, tears streaking now. “I’m not doing anything to her. I’m asking why the universe saved one girl and left the other in the ground.”

  A man near the back—one of the regulars Skye recognised from Sunday mornings—muttered, “The Lord works in mysterious ways. You’ll drive yourself mad trying to make sense of it. Some things can’t be explained. They just have to be lived.”

  That broke something.

  Skye’s breath came too fast. Her hands clenched in her lap, nails biting into her palms.

  Father Mallory turned sharply. “That’s enough.”

  But it wasn’t.

  Another voice—older, trembling—said, “I saw my grandson die of leukaemia. I prayed every night. Every night. And he didn’t come back.”

  A murmur ran through the room—prayer-shaped words that didn’t know who they were trying to comfort.

  Ben had been standing so close to Skye that his sleeve brushed hers every time he shifted, like he’d positioned himself there without ever deciding to. When Maureen said Lexi’s name, he flinched as if he’d been struck. His hand came up—not touching Skye, not quite—but hovering at her elbow, ready to catch if she tipped.

  “Stop,” Ben said, and his voice cracked on the word. He hadn’t raised it, but it carried anyway, raw with something the room hadn’t heard yet. He looked around at the adults, eyes bright and furious and young. “You don’t get to talk about her like she’s a prize.”

  A breath. Shallow.

  “Do you know what it did to us?” he said, and now he wasn’t just talking to Maureen. He was talking to everyone. “When she died?”

  Silence answered him.

  Ben swallowed hard. “I was only eleven. I stopped sleeping. I stopped being a kid. Everyone kept telling me she was gone and that was it—like saying it enough times would make it normal. And it never did.” His voice shook. “It broke me. It broke our house. It broke her mum. So don’t stand there and ask why she lived like this is some kind of maths problem. We’ve already paid for it.”

  Skye’s breath stuttered.

  She hadn’t known he would say it out loud. Not like that. Not to them.

  Her chest tightened painfully, grief and guilt slamming together so hard it made spots bloom in her vision. Ben was shaking beside her, defending her with a truth that felt too big to hold, and all Skye could think was I did this to him.

  The room tilted.

  Skye’s chest burned. The room felt too close. Too many eyes. Too many explanations forming around her, never with her.

  “I told you before, I didn’t ask for this.”

  The words came out before she knew she was going to speak.

  The room froze.

  Skye pushed back her chair and stood, legs shaking so hard she nearly sat back down.

  “I didn’t ask to come back, I didn’t ask to die either,” she said, voice thin, too loud in her own ears. “I didn’t do anything special. I didn’t—”

  Her throat closed. She swallowed hard.

  “You think I don’t know Lexi’s dead?” she said, and now the words were spilling, messy and raw. “You think I don’t remember her face? Her voice?”

  Maureen’s mouth opened. Closed.

  “To me, it was yesterday where we fought each other, where she got suspended. Where she-”

  Skye shook her head violently. “I hate that it was just me.”

  The room went utterly still.

  “I hate it,” Skye said again, tears burning hot now. “I wish it had been both of us. I wish—” Her voice cracked so hard it nearly broke in two. “I wish she was here too.”

  Alice made a sound, small and broken.

  Skye pressed her hands to her chest, trying to breathe properly and failing. “I know she was horrible to me,” she sobbed. “She was. And I still— I still would bring her back if I could. I would. I would do it even if she never said sorry. Even if she still hated me.”

  Her breaths were coming too fast now. Shallow. Wrong.

  “I don’t want to be the one who lived,” Skye said, panic sharpening her words. “I don’t want to be the reason you’re all fighting. I don’t want—”

  She dragged in air that didn’t feel like air.

  “I don’t want to be picked, all I want is just school, having fun, going to the films with my family, I just...I want normal again.”

  The room rushed in on itself.

  Dad reached for her. “Skye—”

  She flinched hard, backing away. “Don’t—don’t touch me—please—”

  Her hands flew to her head, fingers digging into her hair as if she could physically hold herself together.

  “It’s too loud,” she gasped. “You’re all talking and I can’t— I can’t—”

  Her vision pulsed. The edges of the hall went too bright, too sharp, like someone had turned the world’s contrast up too high.

  “I can hear it,” Skye whimpered. “I can hear—”

  She staggered.

  Alice was suddenly there. “Skye. Look at me. Nightskye—look at me.”

  Skye tried.

  Her head buzzed.

  Not metaphorically. Physically. Like the fluorescent light had crawled into her skull and started vibrating against bone.

  The hum of the hall sharpened into a blade. The smell of wet coats and tea turned metallic. The edges of the room went too bright.

  The fluorescent lights surged—buzz turning needle-sharp—straight through her.

  The sound drilled straight through her.

  Skye gasped—and the world tilted.

  Skye blinked.

  Alice’s voice cut through close. “Skye?”

  Skye tried to answer and found her tongue didn’t remember how.

  Her fingers were still twisted in Ben’s sleeve when her body betrayed her.

  Not dramatic at first. Not a theatrical collapse. Just a sudden wrong tilt inside her head, like the floor had shifted half an inch and her brain couldn’t correct.

  Her shoulders jerked—hard—like a misfire.

  Alice saw it instantly. “Skye—please look at me.”

  Skye couldn’t land her eyes.

  Her knees buckled.

  Dad moved at the same time, catching her under the arms before her head could crack the table. His grip was careful and panicked in equal measure, like he’d learned too fast what fragile meant.

  “Down,” Katherine said, mum-voice snapping into action. “Get her down.”

  Chairs scraped back. Someone gasped. Father Mallory barked, “Space—give them space,” and his own voice startled him.

  Dad eased Skye onto the cheap carpet. Alice dropped with her, hands hovering at Skye’s face, terrified of touching wrong.

  Skye coughed—a wet, choking cough that tore out of her like smoke.

  “Skye, breathe,” Dad begged, close enough she felt his breath on her hair even if she couldn’t hear words properly.

  Ben knelt a step back, white-faced, hands hovering uselessly because he didn’t know what was allowed anymore.

  Skye’s chest hitched.

  The fluorescent buzz stayed in her ears even as the world began to peel away.

  Then the parish hall wasn’t the parish hall.

  Concrete pressed in.

  Low ceiling. Walls wet with condensation. Too many bodies in too little air. The smell hit first—sour breath, urine, fear—and beneath it something chemical that didn’t belong in a human place.

  Boots on stone. A voice in German, hard and casual, barking an order.

  A heavy door clanged and bolted.

  Panic surged through a body that wasn’t Skye’s. Broader shoulders. A teenager’s ribs sharp under skin.

  Her arms—his arms—wrapped around someone smaller. A girl, shorn hair, hollow cheeks, eyes too big, crying so quietly it sounded like she was trying not to exist.

  Skye tried to inhale.

  The air burned. Not cold-burn. Fire-burn. Like her lungs had been poured full of pepper and glass.

  The boy’s mouth—her mouth—shaped words she didn’t understand and understood anyway.

  “I’m here,” he rasped, and the sound came out of Skye in the hall too, hoarse and wrong. “I’m here. Look at me—look at me.”

  In the parish hall, Dad flinched at the words coming out of his child’s mouth in a stranger’s voice. Alice pressed both hands to Skye’s shoulders, shaking.

  The girl in the concrete room lifted her face with enormous effort, eyes trying to hold onto the boy’s like they were a rope.

  “Elias,” she sobbed.

  The name tore through Skye like a hook. She didn’t know it. She didn’t know why her mouth said it next.

  “Elias—” Skye choked in the hall, and people around her stiffened, confused.

  The hiss started. Thin. Steady. Easy to miss if you didn’t know what to listen for.

  Gas slid into the room invisible.

  For a second nothing happened—just confusion—and then one cough turned wet, and another answered it.

  The room filled with coughing and bodies turning desperate in the same instant, like a switch had been thrown.

  The boy tightened his arms around the girl, wrapping himself around her like a coat.

  “I won’t let go,” he gasped, forcing the words through burning lungs.

  Skye’s mouth said it too in the hall, broken and involuntary. “I won’t—let—go—”

  Alice sobbed with pure present terror, hands shaking against Skye’s shoulders. “Skye, stay with me—please—please.”

  The girl coughed once and it sounded like her chest cracked.

  “Elias!” she cried, louder now, the name shredded by panic. “Elias—!”

  Skye’s own throat tore around the sound. “Elias—!”

  Maureen stumbled back a step, hands half-raised like she didn’t know where to put them. Mrs Clarke made a small helpless noise, eyes wide with horror. Katherine’s face went grey; she stayed crouched, steadying herself with her palm on the floor because she had to be the adult.

  Dad held Skye like he could anchor her into her own skin. “Skye—love—look at me—”

  Skye couldn’t. She was inside someone else’s dying eyes.

  The boy’s voice cracked. “Look at me,” he begged, and the sentence came out of Skye in the hall too, thick with panic. “Look at me—please—”

  The girl’s fingers clawed weakly at his sleeve. Her eyes were huge, begging him to do something he couldn’t do.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered into her hair, and the words ripped through him like glass. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”

  Skye sobbed it out too, over and over, not understanding why. “I’m sorry—I’m sorry—”

  The girl’s coughing slowed.

  That was how Skye knew.

  Not because anyone told her. Because bodies had patterns, and she was trapped inside one.

  “No,” the boy choked. “No—Anna—Anna—”

  Skye screamed the name in the parish hall—raw, ragged, ripping out of her like it had been lodged there. “ANNA!”

  Everyone flinched. Not because they knew the name—because they didn’t. Because the sound was pure terror.

  Anna’s body went slack in the boy’s arms.

  The boy’s breath hitched, seized, failed. Darkness pushed in from the edges of his vision like a tide. He curled tighter around her anyway, as if holding was the only thing left that still meant anything.

  His chest burned once more, a reflex without air behind it. Then even that stopped.

  The world didn’t end. It simply... let go.

  Weight settled. Sound fell away.

  He was still kneeling, still wrapped around her, when his body finally understood there would be no next breath.

  He died like that — arms locked, forehead pressed to her hair — because even at the end, he would not loosen his grip

  In the parish hall, Skye’s body went rigid, arched once—then went suddenly heavy.

  Not limp like sleep.

  Heavy like the plug had been pulled.

  Dad made a sound that didn’t belong in a person. “Skye—no—Skye—”

  Alice’s face crumpled completely. She stayed pressed to Skye’s side, crying openly now, hands on Skye’s shoulders as if touch could keep her here.

  Ben hovered close, shaking, whispering her name like he could call her back by sheer stubbornness.

  Mr Clarke knelt and checked Skye with shaking precision, fingers at her neck. “Pulse,” he breathed, voice thick with relief and fear. “She’s got a pulse. Simon—she’s got a pulse.”

  Skye didn’t move.

  Her mouth was slack. Her lashes still. The hall’s fluorescent buzz filled the gap where her voice had been.

  Dad held her as if letting go would be an act of violence.

  And the only thing left of the concrete room was the echo of a girl’s sobbed name and a boy’s promise that hadn’t been enough.

  Skye lay unconscious on the carpet while the parish hall, for the first time all night, stopped arguing.

  Not because they’d found answers.

  Because a child had fallen out of herself in front of them, and none of them knew how to talk over that.

  ——————-

  [Elias]

  The motorway didn’t feel like escape.

  It felt like the world had tipped onto a steeper incline without warning—everything accelerating, everything demanding motion.

  It felt like momentum — the kind that carried things forward whether they were ready or not.

  Rain streaked sideways across the windscreen now, no longer falling so much as driven, hammering the glass with sudden violence. The wipers struggled to keep rhythm, juddering like they were arguing with the weather rather than clearing it. Gusts shoved at the car hard enough to make the suspension complain.

  Elias didn’t slow.

  The black response vehicle cut north through sheets of water, tyres carving certainty into the wet tarmac whether the night approved or not.

  Callum sat rigid in the passenger seat, helmet on the floor by his boots, hands clasped together because if he let them separate, they shook.

  London fell away behind them in a smear of sodium lights and unfinished consequences.

  Neither of them spoke.

  Not because there was nothing to say.

  Because the wrong words would have cracked something open too early.

  Elias broke it first.

  “You restored the power clean,” he said, eyes still on the road.

  Callum blinked. It took him a second to realise it wasn’t a criticism.

  “I—” He swallowed. “I followed the panel sequence. Old building. Backup looped wrong. It was... messy.”

  “It was fast,” Elias said. “And you didn’t panic.”

  Callum let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “I nearly did.”

  “But you didn’t and because of that, you helped me save the children, that matters,” Elias replied.

  That mattered more.

  Silence settled again — thinner now, stretched tight by the weather screaming across the bonnet.

  Callum glanced sideways despite himself.

  Up close, Elias looked wrong in ways that were hard to catalogue. Pale, yes — but not weak. His clothes were soaked dark with blood, stiff at the seams, dried in places where it had no right to be dry already. Yet there was no tear in the fabric where a wound should have been. No pressure dressing. No careful guarding of ribs.

  Callum’s chest tightened.

  “Sir,” he said, then hesitated. “Back there. They said you were... down.”

  Elias didn’t look at him.

  “They checked for a pulse,” Callum continued quietly. “I checked.”

  “I know,” Elias said.

  That was it.

  Callum frowned. “You weren’t breathing.”

  Elias exhaled slowly through his nose, like someone deciding how much truth was worth spending.

  “Chemical exposure,” he said. “Shock response. Looks dramatic if you don’t know what you’re looking at.”

  Callum stared at him.

  “That’s not—” He stopped himself. Not because Elias snapped — because something in Elias’s tone said this was as far as it went.

  “And the blood?” Callum asked instead.

  Elias glanced down at his sleeve like he’d forgotten it was there. “Mine.”

  Callum waited.

  “It’s not a problem,” Elias added flatly.

  That answer was wrong in a way Callum couldn’t articulate yet.

  He nodded anyway.

  Outside, the wind changed direction abruptly — not gradually, but all at once — slamming rain sideways so hard it rattled against the doors like thrown gravel.

  Elias’s jaw tightened.

  He adjusted the wiper speed again, irritated.

  They drove another mile before Callum spoke.

  “What happens to me now?”

  Elias didn’t answer immediately.

  “You crossed a line tonight,” he said at last. “On instinct. Not ego.”

  Callum gave a humourless huff. “That line was concrete and very well marked.”

  “Yes,” Elias agreed. “Which is why you’re sitting here instead of in a holding room explaining yourself to three different oversight committees who don’t agree on what you are.”

  Callum’s stomach dropped. “So this—” He gestured vaguely at the car, the road, the storm. “—isn’t CTSFO.”

  “No,” Elias said.

  “What is it, then?”

  Elias was quiet long enough that Callum thought he’d pushed too hard.

  Then: “We’re called Nightwatch.”

  Callum blinked. “That’s—”

  “A designation,” Elias cut in. “Not a badge. Not a unit you can Google.”

  Thunder cracked — too close, too sharp — rolling across the sky in a way that felt compressed, like the sound had nowhere to go.

  “We operate where jurisdiction collapses,” Elias continued. “Where states argue and children die while paperwork catches up. We don’t replace local forces. We don’t outrank them.”

  “Then how do you—”

  “We move first,” Elias said. “And disappear afterward.”

  Callum absorbed that in silence.

  “Why me?” he asked finally.

  Elias glanced at him then — not assessing, not testing. Remembering.

  “Because when the lights came back on,” Elias said, “you didn’t look for permission. You looked for exits.”

  Callum swallowed. That was... uncomfortably accurate.

  “And because,” Elias added, “you’re not pretending tonight didn’t cost you anything.”

  Callum’s hands tightened together. “It did.”

  “Yes,” Elias said. “Good.”

  They passed a sign — M11 NORTH / STANSTED — nearly torn sideways by wind.

  Callum frowned. “We’re not heading back to base.”

  “No.”

  “Then where?”

  Elias hesitated.

  Just a fraction too long.

  “There’s a situation developing in Suffolk,” he said. “Town called Stowmarket.”

  Callum’s brow furrowed. “What kind of situation?”

  Elias’s grip on the wheel tightened as another gust shoved the car half a lane sideways.

  “A child,” he said. “Who should not be alive.”

  The words landed like ice water.

  Callum turned fully toward him. “What.”

  “She was declared dead five years ago,” Elias continued. “Last night, she walked back into her family’s life.”

  Callum stared. “That’s not—”

  “I know,” Elias said. “That’s why we’re going.”

  The rain intensified again — suddenly torrential, visibility dropping in a way that felt personal, targeted. Not a storm rolling through, but one keeping pace with them.

  For a heartbeat, Elias wasn’t on the motorway anymore.

  He was standing barefoot on grass still warm from sun.

  A girl’s laughter cut through the air — high, breathless, delighted.

  “Skye, stop running!” a teenage voice shouted — exasperated, fond, close.

  Footsteps thudded. A shriek of joy. The girl darted past, small shoes scuffing soil, a blur of movement and life.

  Elias’s fingers tightened on the wheel until the leather creaked.

  The vision vanished.

  The motorway snapped back into place.

  Callum noticed only that Elias had gone very still.

  “You okay?” Callum asked.

  “Yes,” Elias said immediately.

  Too immediate.

  The wind howled harder, forcing Elias to ease into the left lane at last. The storm seemed to crowd the road, trees bending wrong, rain falling in violent sheets instead of arcs.

  Callum watched the wipers fight and lose ground, the way the rain kept changing its mind about where to fall.

  He hesitated, then asked carefully, “I’ve never seen the weather go this bad, the weather forecast never mentioned this?”

  Elias didn’t answer.

  Instead, he checked the mirrors and signalled toward an upcoming lay-by, indicator clicking calmly despite the chaos outside.

  “We’re switching vehicles,” Elias said.

  Callum blinked. “Here?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said this one was clean.”

  “It was,” Elias replied. “Now it’s predictable.”

  They slowed, pulling into the lay-by as rain battered the roof so hard it sounded like something trying to get in.

  “Fresh clothes,” Elias added. “Different plates. Different assumptions.”

  Callum nodded, pulse loud in his ears.

  As the car rolled to a stop, thunder cracked again — directly overhead this time — sharp enough to make Callum flinch.

  Elias shut off the engine.

  For a moment, neither of them moved.

  The storm raged around the car like it had an opinion.

  “Stay close,” Elias said.

  The rain kept falling.

  The storm didn’t ease when they stopped.

  It intensified — as if the decision to pull over had been noticed.

  Rain came down in hard, vertical sheets now, hammering the roof with concussive force. The lay-by was barely more than a widening in the tarmac, half-swallowed by trees bent at the wrong angles, branches thrashing like they were trying to claw their way free of the ground. Standing water crept across the road in thin, fast-moving veins, reflecting headlights into broken fragments.

  Silence followed — not quiet, but the loaded pause after impact.

  The wind shoved the car again, rocking it on its suspension.

  Callum swallowed.

  “You sure this is—” He stopped, recalibrated. “—secure?”

  Elias was already moving.

  “Enough,” he said.

  He stepped out into the rain like it was an inconvenience, not a threat, coat still stiff with dried blood that no longer matched the man wearing it. The moment his boots hit the tarmac, the lay-by changed — not visibly, not dramatically, but functionally.

  The world narrowed.

  The response vehicle’s headlights dimmed automatically, bleeding down to a low, unfocused glow. The road behind them lost detail, rain and darkness conspiring to erase depth perception. The air hummed — not a sound so much as a pressure, like standing too close to high-voltage equipment.

  Elias crossed the tarmac to a section of barrier that looked identical to the rest.

  Until it wasn’t.

  A seam revealed itself — impossibly fine — running horizontally through the steel. Elias pressed his palm against it, fingers splayed.

  The barrier slid apart without noise.

  Beneath it, the ground itself withdrew.

  Callum stared.

  From the darkness below, something rose — slow, deliberate, immune to the storm.

  Elias’s car surfaced like a controlled ascent from deep water.

  It was matte-black, angular, built without aesthetic compromise. No chrome. No unnecessary curve. Panels overlapped like armour plating, edges beveled to deflect rather than absorb. The tyres were wider than regulation, treaded for terrain that didn’t officially exist. The undercarriage was sealed, smooth, uninterrupted — nothing to snag, nothing to tear.

  The windshield wasn’t glass.

  It was something denser.

  Ports were embedded along the flanks — recessed, hidden until needed. Sensor clusters sat flush against the bodywork, dormant but unmistakably present. The rear wasn’t a boot so much as a modular bay — configurable, lockable, sealed.

  It wasn’t a car.

  It was a solution.

  Elias stood there for a moment, rain sluicing off his shoulders, and something shifted in him.

  Not caution.

  Pride.

  “She’s autonomous,” he said, almost conversational. “Independent power. Independent comms. Can run dark for weeks if needed. Hardened against EMP, gas, thermal, kinetic.”

  Callum stepped closer despite himself, rain soaking through his jacket. “You built this?”

  Elias shook his head. “I finished it.”

  That answer carried history.

  Callum let out a breath that was half awe, half disbelief. “This thing could roll into a warzone.”

  Elias’s mouth twitched. “It has.”

  The barrier sealed behind them. The lay-by returned to itself — empty, anonymous, forgettable.

  They moved fast.

  Elias stripped out of the ruined coat without ceremony, rain plastering his shirt to his frame. There was no wound beneath the blood. No bandage. No mark where damage should have been.

  Callum noticed — and looked away.

  Respect, not fear.

  “I’ll give you space,” Callum said, already stepping back. He turned toward the original vehicle, pulled his phone from his pocket with fingers that shook just enough to betray him.

  The call connected on the third ring.

  “Hey,” Callum said, voice softening in a way it hadn’t all night. “Yeah. I know it’s late.”

  A pause.

  He smiled — genuine, boyish, almost shy. “No, I’m okay. Just... work ran long.”

  Another pause.

  “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I’m still coming home. Just not tonight.”

  Rain streaked down his face, indistinguishable from the moisture already there.

  “I know,” he said. “I know. I’ll explain when I can.”

  His hand rested unconsciously against his stomach.

  “I’m looking forward to it,” he added, voice thick. “All of it.”

  He ended the call and stood there for a moment, breathing, anchoring himself to something solid and real.

  Behind him, Elias finished changing.

  Clean clothes. Dry. Functional. The blood stayed behind like a shed skin.

  When Elias opened the driver’s door and climbed in, the interior lit itself in muted bands — instrument panels alive but restrained, data flowing without drama.

  Callum slid into the other seat.

  The door sealed with a sound that suggested permanence.

  Elias sat still for half a beat too long.

  Pressure gathered behind his eyes—faint at first, then precise—like a hand testing a bruise. The instrument lights seemed to smear at their edges, not flicker, just... misbehave.

  He blinked hard, once.

  The feeling didn’t leave.

  The storm struck the vehicle like it meant to be offended.

  Elias reached for the ignition—

  —and the world split.

  Pain detonated behind his eyes, white-hot and absolute. His vision fractured, overlapping layers tearing free of linear time.

  Sunlight.

  Grass.

  A back garden.

  A girl’s laughter — bright, unguarded.

  “Skye!” a teenage voice shouted, chasing. “You’re cheating!”

  Small feet pounded earth. A triumphant squeal. The girl darted past, breathless, alive in a way that burned.

  The image shattered.

  Darkness.

  Roadside.

  Rain.

  A body on the ground — too still, jacket twisted wrong, glasses cracked beneath her cheek.

  Elias gasped, chest locking, breath skidding uselessly against ribs that refused to obey.

  “No—” The sound tore out of him.

  Another shift.

  Darkness without edges.

  Cold.

  A girl curled in on herself, crying — not screaming yet, but close. Her voice echoed too cleanly, too familiarly.

  “I want to go home,” she sobbed. “Please.”

  The sound folded in on itself—

  —becoming another voice.

  Older.

  Deeper.

  Worn thin by time.

  You should have left her alone.

  The words pressed into his skull like a verdict.

  Elias convulsed, fingers clawing at the console, lungs dragging in air that wouldn’t fill properly. His body knew how to fight pain — but this wasn’t pain. It was intrusion.

  Memory without permission.

  Callum was shouting his name.

  “Elias—Elias, look at me!”

  The world snapped back violently.

  The interior lights flared, then stabilised. Rain battered the shell of the vehicle, distant and contained.

  Elias folded forward, elbows braced on his knees, breathing hard and fast, eyes wet and unfocused.

  Callum had unbuckled, half out of his seat, panic breaking through his control. “What the hell was that? You just— you blanked—”

  Elias sucked in a breath, forced it slow.

  Again.

  Again.

  Then he straightened.

  His hands still shook — but his voice didn’t.

  “It means we need to hurry,” he said.

  Callum stared. “That was—”

  Elias dragged in another breath and forced it steady.

  Elias drew a slow breath, the kind taken to keep a system from cascading.

  “Something’s crossing wires,” he said quietly. “I don’t know why. I only know it’s not starting with her.”

  He paused, eyes fixed on the road, knuckles pale against the wheel.

  “It’s starting with me.”

  Callum shifted beside him, helmet still on the floor, rain-light flickering across his face. He didn’t interrupt — not because he understood, but because nothing about Elias’s voice invited questions.

  “If she’s seeing anything at all,” Elias continued, more carefully now, “then it’s not safe.”

  A fraction of a beat.

  “And it won’t stop just because we don’t understand it.”

  Callum frowned, clearly trying to follow a map that hadn’t been given to him.

  Elias didn’t look at him.

  “She woke up without context,” Elias said. “Without preparation. And I left her that way.”

  That was the closest he came to admission.

  His jaw tightened, breath measured again — control reasserted by habit, not comfort.

  “I owe her an explanation,” he added. “When this is stable enough to survive one.”

  Callum opened his mouth, then closed it. Whatever Elias was talking about sat far outside anything he’d been trained for. All he knew — all he’d been told — was that a girl had been dead for five years and now wasn’t.

  Elias reached for the console and keyed a secure channel.

  The call connected almost immediately.

  “Margaret,” he said.

  Her voice came back thin but steady. “I was wondering when you’d stop pretending you had time.”

  “I don’t,” Elias replied. No argument in it. Just fact.

  “I’m sending a medical team. They’ll collect you from the hospital and move you to the church.”

  A pause.

  “You don’t like doctors near this,” Margaret said gently.

  “I don’t,” Elias agreed. “But I need you conscious. And present.”

  Another pause — heavier.

  “She’s frightened,” Margaret said. Not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “And she doesn’t know why.”

  “No.”

  Margaret exhaled slowly. “Then bring her answers, Elias. Or at least don’t let her face the questions alone.”

  His throat tightened. He swallowed it down.

  “She won’t,” he said.

  “You’re running out of time,” Margaret added softly.

  “I know.”

  “And so is she.”

  “Yes.”

  Margaret didn’t press. She never did.

  “I’ll be ready,” she said. “Tell your doctors to be kind.”

  “I will.”

  The line went dead.

  Elias stayed still for a moment longer than necessary, listening to the storm battering the car like it was trying to force its way inside.

  Callum watched him from the corner of his eye, unsettled. Elias looked composed — but something had shifted underneath, like a fault line finally acknowledging pressure.

  Elias straightened, mask firmly back in place.

  “We need to move faster,” he said.

  Callum didn’t ask why.

  He already knew there wasn’t an answer meant for him.

  Callum swallowed hard. “You’re not fit to drive.”

  Elias nodded once. “Correct.”

  He turned, eyes sharp now despite the storm still raging in his chest.

  “I’m ordering you to take the wheel.”

  Callum blinked. “I—this isn’t CTSFO kit. If I put this into a barrier—”

  “I’ll guide you,” Elias said. “She’ll do most of the work. You listen, you commit, and you don’t second-guess yourself into a crash.”

  Another thunderclap detonated overhead, close enough to rattle the cabin.

  Callum hesitated — then nodded.

  “Okay,” he said. “Show me.”

  They switched seats.

  The car adjusted instantly — systems recalibrating, displays shifting to a configuration meant to teach.

  Elias leaned back, eyes closed for half a second longer than necessary.

  Then he opened them.

  “Go,” he said.

  And the vehicle moved — cutting through the storm like it had already decided how this night would end.