Content Warnings:

  SpoilerSignificant body horror (especially in retion to the eye).Child endangerment and implied death.Discussions of past trauma and abuse.Mild transphobia.

  [colpse] AnnouncementI always include a Content Warning at the top of each chapter, but I want to draw specific attention to it for this one. This is, by far, the darkest chapter so far and includes some graphic, disturbing imagery at times. If that is something that may impact you, please read the warning above.V. Missing BairnsIt is inhumane to expect me to wake up at 6am on a Sunday, but there I am - sat on my bed, groggy as hell, waiting for a text from Sadie Cross, of all people. I rub at my temple, silently resenting the fact I can’t just shift my brain into alertness the way I can shift everything else. The events of yesterday are still fresh in my mind, swimming in my skull like they haven’t finished rearranging themselves, and I still don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to process all of it.

  Lexi went on a date with Tommy - Tommy - and somehow, he was sweet to her. So sweet, in fact, that he tracked me down to ask for advice. The whole thing makes me nauseous, because I don’t trust Tommy in the slightest. He is the physical embodiment of toxic masculinity, and I can’t stop imagining the moment it all curdles - when he’s forced out of his little gymbro comfort zone and Lexi’s the one who pays for it.

  Despite the warning I gave him, I don’t believe for a second that he’ll be gentle when that moment comes. And the worst part? I can’t do anything to stop it. I can’t tell Lexi I know him. I can’t interfere. I just have to sit back and trust her judgement - and to be completely honest, I don’t. Not after Ava. Not after all of the others. My beautiful disaster, with the worst taste on Earth. I’m terrified that one day it’ll get her killed.

  And then there’s Jamie. God. I think I’ve really fucked that one up. If I isote yesterday to just my coffee date with him - Niamh’s coffee date - then there was positive movement. He was a little scrambled, sure, but there was progress. He started so far back with his "beta male" bullshit, but by the end, I saw him leaning toward the light. He was vulnerable. On the verge of cracking - until Cassie fucked everything up.

  I can’t stop repying that moment from The Duck in my head. Me mistaking his softness for danger. Eleanor dragging him out like a threat. Like a toxic male. He thought I saw a monster.

  And that made him text Niamh, asking if he’s a bad person.

  I did that. I made a poor, kind maybe-not-a-boy feel like a fucking predator. Good work, Cass.

  Dr M sent me some more information about tomorrow’s meeting. That’s the other major thing going on right now - Holly Barton is infiltrating a crank feminist group to suss out if any of them are supernatural serial killers. Funnily enough, that’s the thing I’m the least worried about, because I haven’t had a chance to fuck that one up yet.

  But still, every text from Dr M makes my chest feel tighter, like something cold and sharp has been pced just below my skin. There’s something about them (I’m assuming they’re a woman, but can’t be certain) that unnerves me. A control to her words that makes me feel like I’m being slowly pulled into her orbit. I don’t know if she’s a vampire, but she’s dangerous.

  But all of that is pushed to the back of my mind, because today’s been snatched away from me by Sadie. We’re going up to Stirling to check the RED equipment there, to make sure it isn’t just an error causing the weird daily blip on the graphs. If we can prove it’s not a malfunction, we’ve got leverage to convince George to send proper field agents.

  The job itself won’t take long. An hour, max. The issue is the three-hour drive each way - six hours trapped in a car with my work rival. That might be my personal hell. I’d take six hours with Dr M over her any day of the week.

  Yet here I am - now climbing into the passenger seat of her white Fiat 500 (no comment) with a box of equipment. She looks different. Less razor-wound than usual. Her hair’s down, and she’s wearing sungsses that catch the little morning light, throwing it across my p, like a warning.

  Ironically, I look the same as I always do. I look like Maisie. I thought about showing up as someone else, just to amuse myself, but Sadie’s not fun like that. Picking a new face would just cause an argument. And I don’t have the energy to fight today. So: pathetic little Maisie it is.

  She gnces over at me - who, might I remind you, is already in the car - and gives a forced smile. "Get in loser, we’re going to save some babies."

  It doesn’t really work, but I’m still impressed. I honestly didn’t think she was capable of humour.

  The first hour.

  "Do you always have the radio on when you drive?"

  Sadie doesn’t turn to me - her eyes stay fixed on the road, her hands steady on the wheel as we slip out of the city and onto the northbound route.

  "No," she says, ftly. "But I know that you don’t want to listen to my music."

  I choke on a ugh, remembering all the times her tinny headphones had bled unholy noise across the office. "Yeah, you’re right. Sorry."

  She nods, and that’s that. I stare out the window, watching the grey blur of motorway fsh past, but I refuse to settle into silence. Not for three hours.

  "You must have some guilty pop pleasures though."

  "I’m not pying this game, MH."

  Maisie. I don’t say anything - I just roll my eyes and pretend it didn’t happen.

  "That means I’m right! Come on - who are you screaming along to when nobody’s around?"

  "I’m serious," she says, almost ughing. "Some things are for taking to the grave."

  "Boring," I say - though I’m oddly delighted. All the potential secrets she might be hiding race around my head. Is there a reality where she’s a secret Swiftie and we spend the car ride home screaming along to the ten-minute version of All Too Well? No, because that would mean there’s a reality where Sadie is actually cool.

  "Besides," she says, adjusting her sungsses, "it’s nice to have the radio on so that we can hear if there are any updates about the train situation." She pauses. "You’ve got no idea what a fucking disaster that’s been. Journalists are the worst."

  I nod, imagining a handshake meme between trans people and the logistics team at a covert supernatural organisation. "Yeah, they are."

  There’s a fizzy synth-pop song pying low in the background - too quiet to make out the lyrics. But I can tell it’s something soulless from the charts, completely at odds with the tension in the vehicle. This is probably the most human interaction we’ve ever had. And it’s still way off-kilter.

  "So," I say, emboldened by the silence, "what did you do before all of this? Before The Coalition?"

  "Police," she says.

  My entire body stiffens, but I force myself not to react.

  "I was the youngest chief sergeant in the country," she continues, not noticing. "At just 23. They came to me two years ter and asked if I would be willing to help my country in a different way."

  The confidence in her voice makes it clear how proud she is - both of her record-setting police role and her newfound career at The Coalition. It unsettles me. But still, she told me something real. That’s new.

  "Do you regret it?"

  She turns to look at me for the first time, one hand still effortlessly on the wheel. Her sungsses hide the look in her eyes, but not the twitch in her lips.

  "No. The Coalition isn’t perfect, but we’re making a real difference."

  I shrug, staring out at the blur of ndscape beyond the window. "Are we?"

  "MH, we’re spending our day off travelling across the country because we have a hunch that children might be getting hurt."

  Maisie. Say my name.

  "Against The Coalition’s wishes," I say.

  "It doesn’t matter," she says, a notch louder. "They gave us the skills to handle this, even if they aren’t giving us the resources. I’ll always be grateful for that."

  I bite down on my tongue. I have too much to say. I’ve lost more than Sadie Cross will ever be able to understand.

  "Forgive me if I don’t feel the same way," I say, my voice tight.

  She doesn’t respond at first. The road winds forward. She’s still calm, with eyes ahead. One hand on the wheel like nothing happened. I’m convinced we might not speak again - until she dares to have the audacity.

  "MH, what happened to Wendy was-"

  "My name is fucking Maisie."

  It explodes out of me before I even know it’s happening. The words strike the space between us like a bde. I half-lunge forward in my seat, anger dragging me with it. She flinches a tad - but the car remains straight. Because Sadie - annoyingly - doesn’t make mistakes.

  I fall back into my seat, jaw tight, blood roaring in my ears. There’s a prideful feeling inside me. But I also feel stupid. Stupid for thinking that she might care. And stupid for thinking that a conversation with her would be better than silence.

  Because the silence that follows is nice.

  The second hour.

  The only sound in the car is the humming of the tyres on the road, and the quiet brush of the ocean to our right. The BBC presenter is almost muted, their words indistinguishable - but loud enough to fill the suffocating void. White noise fills the air where our conversation was supposed to be.

  We haven’t exchanged a word since I yelled at her. Sadie’s gripping the steering wheel tightly - I’m worried it might snap in half - her knuckles pale and stiff. I just look out the window, letting the shifting greenery blur past, the curve of the coast keeping me from feeling completely caged in. The water to our right calms me. The silence does not.

  I know she’s waiting for me to say something - to break the tension, to smooth it over, to make it easy for her. But I’m not doing that. Not after what she invoked.

  I don’t feel bad. I shouldn’t feel bad. She deserved that, and worse.

  But I also know Sadie. She’ll dig her heels in and wait me out, just to prove she doesn’t care. Even now, her mouth is tight - unreadable - pretending as if she’s already filed our conversation away as irrelevant.

  My phone buzzes softly in my p.

  Jamie: Hey, I know it’s short notice - but do you want to come round tonight?

  I stare at the message. He doesn’t know that he’s texting the girl who got him kicked out of The Duck st night. I can’t help but wonder if he’d be texting Cassie instead, if he had her number.

  Niamh: sorry, going to be busy tonight?Jamie: No worries. Tomorrow night?

  Tomorrow is TERF night. That won’t do.

  Niamh: meeting some old friends on monday. how’s tuesday??Jamie: Good with me!

  A sharp exhale fres from Sadie’s nose, sudden and cutting. I gnce up to see her eyes flick to my screen, her sungsses pushed up onto her head now, her gaze sharp and suspicious.

  "Who are you texting?"

  I meet her gaze, defiant with pettiness. "Oh, we’re talking now, are we?"

  The car goes quiet again, but it’s not the same genre of silence as before. This one vibrates. The st one felt like it could’ve sted forever. This one feels like it’s seconds away from detonation.

  Sadie rolls her eyes, and lights the fuse.

  "Honestly, Maisie, you’re exhausting. I’m trying to be nice to you, and you just seem determined to act as if you’re treated like shit."

  I scoff, and it’s not a cute little noise - it’s a ugh full of teeth. All the anger that had settled in the pit of my stomach begins to churn again. Rising like bile.

  "Act as if I’m treated like shit? Sadie, they kept me locked in the basement for years. I don’t know where the only woman I’ve ever loved is. Half of the staff, including you, refer to me as if I’m a science experiment that learned to speak. I don’t have a victim complex, Sadie. I’m a fucking victim."

  The words come out loud and clean, as if I’ve been rehearsing them for weeks. Perhaps, subconsciously, I have.

  Sadie takes a breath - the performative kind. I’m already bracing for her to check out again, to drop the conversation and retreat back into her head. But this time, she surprises me.

  "Okay," she says carefully. "Bad choice of words. The Coalition has treated you like shit, and I’m sorry. But... things are getting better, aren’t they? You’re pretty much free now. Soon, Graham might-"

  "You know as well as I do that Graham’s on his way out," I cut in. The bitterness hasn’t left my voice - it’s growing stronger, thicker with every word. "And that when Moreau is sworn in as Director, my days of freedom are numbered."

  "You don’t know that."

  "Really? Because she’s been pretty fucking clear about how she wants to treat people like me."

  "She doesn’t mean you, MH - Maisie," she stumbles, but corrects herself. "She means the bad ones. You’re an asset to The Coalition. Any Director worth their salt sees that."

  When I reflect on these words ter, I might realise that Sadie Cross just paid me a rare compliment. But in the moment, the words sting worse than anything she’s said so far.

  I give a bitter ugh and turn to stare out of the window. The trees blur past in green streaks. They’re easier to look at than her.

  "Should it matter if I’m an asset?" I say, softer. Not quieter, just lower. "Most people out there aren’t assets, Sadie. And they get to live free and happy lives. It’s not fair."

  All of these feelings have been bubbling inside of me for so long, and I haven’t had an outburst like this to anyone. Not Margaret. Not Jordan. Not George. Yet, here I am, pouring out my heart to Sadie. Of all people.

  "I know," she says eventually, her voice tight with frustration. "It isn’t fair, and I’m sorry. I’m doing what I can to fix things, and one day, I’m going to be the Director, and then-"

  "Sadie, I don’t care," I say, gncing at her just in time to see the flicker of pain across her face. She curls inward slightly, like she’s been physically pushed.

  "That’s nice and all," I continue, "but what I really want from you is to just respect me enough to use my name. That’s literally all that I’m asking for."

  "What’s the big deal with it?"

  I turn away, making a huffing sound that sounds more like a warning than a reply.

  "No, I’m not meaning that in a bitchy way. I just mean, why does it matter to you what you’re called? I’m just trying to understand," she says, some rare desperation in her voice.

  I gnce back at her. She’s not being cruel - not in this moment. She’s not challenging me. She actually wants to know.

  I groan, my voice already thick with the pressure behind my chest, and stare down at the immacute floor of the Fiat - because I don’t trust myself to look at her. "Have you ever been called something that’s wrong?" I say. "And it’s completely, objectively wrong. But it doesn’t matter. People still call you it. And you hate it, and you try to fight them on it, but eventually - they call you it so much, that even you start to believe it. You start to wonder if maybe they’re right, and you were wrong the whole time."

  Sadie doesn’t answer, but I wouldn’t expect her to. Her silence gives me the space I need to keep unravelling myself.

  "My whole life, people have been treating me as if I’m a monster. As if I’m dangerous or a threat. That I need to be contained, and studied." My voice is shaking now, but I don’t care. I’m committed. "And I’ve spent my whole life trying to prove to them that I’m not. That I’m just like them. That I’m normal. But it didn’t help - The Coalition still treated me as if I were completely alien."

  My throat tightens, and I can feel the weight of those years pressing against me. "And every night, I have nightmares that those scientists were right. That I am dangerous, and that I will hurt somebody. And I wake up and tell myself it’s not true, that I would never do something like that - but, can everybody else really be wrong?"

  I finally look up, and even now - even after all this - I know she’s listening. "People like you and Tommy clearly think they’re right, as you refuse to call me anything but my b designation. So, yes - it matters a lot to me."

  There’s no response for a while, just the white noise of the tyres and the rustling movement of a woman trying to make herself smaller in her seat. Eventually, though - she exhales. More real, this time.

  "I’ve never thought that you were a monster," she says. "I can’t speak for Tommy, but I just... never thought it mattered. But I can see that I was wrong."

  I blink. For a second, I wonder if I’ve misheard her. But no - Sadie Cross has just admitted to being wrong. Not an apology, but a start.

  "Thank you," I say quietly. "That means a lot."

  The third hour.

  "You never answered. Who were you texting?"

  I shrug my shoulders. "Just some boy. Does it matter?"

  "I’m just making conversation!" she says - her tone defensive. She’s been a little on-edge ever since our fight, even after we’d tiptoed back to safer topics.

  "Is he like a boyfriend?"

  "Absolutely not," I say, maybe a little too fast. "I don’t really think it’s possible for me to date."

  It’s the truth. My body isn’t even my own - it belongs to The Coalition. How can I share it with somebody when it doesn’t belong to me?

  "Well, if it makes you feel any better," Sadie says, "I can’t think of anybody inside The Coalition who’s actually in a happy retionship, so maybe it’s for the best."

  I let out a wounded ugh. "Well, Tommy’s just started dating my best friend."

  "God help her..."

  Her timing is perfect - I snort out a ugh before I can stop myself, then instantly sp a hand over my mouth. "Fuck, I wasn’t supposed to tell you that. Please don’t tell Tommy that I said anything."

  Another Sadie shrug. That same unreadable calm. "I won’t. Though, now I’m intrigued as to why it’s such a secret."

  In for a penny. "She’s trans."

  "Ah," Sadie nods. "That expins it." A pause. "Amongst other things."

  "Such as?" I ask, wary.

  "Your investigation," she says. We’re driving through the Edinburgh Bypass and she’s paying more attention to the road than me. "The trans people getting killed. I was wondering why you were so personally invested."

  "I guess that’s part of it, yeah," I say, trying to sound breezy - but my voice comes out a little too soft. "But it’s less about Lexi specifically and more about the wider community. I don’t know, you’ll probably think this is stupid - but I kind of feel like it’s my community."

  I don’t know why I say that st part. It slips out too naturally, like I’ve forgotten who I’m speaking to. My shing out earlier seems to have torn at something, and now everything inside me is just spilling out.

  I watch the words whizz into her mind, and swirl around in her weak little cis brain, causing all sorts of facial contortions. I’m just about to write this one off as flying too close to the sun, when she nods.

  "I suppose that makes sense. You present yourself as female, but you’re not really, are you?"

  My fists clench, instinctively, my whole body preparing for an attack. But when I gnce over, I don’t see malice in her face - just a strange sort of curiosity, like she’s poking at a spot that she doesn’t realise is sore.

  "What do you mean by that?" I say, more confrontational than I intended.

  "I just mean that, like, biologically - you don’t really have a gender, do you?" she says, shrugging and speaking as if she’s saying the most casual thing imaginable. "You kind of just decided that you were going to be a woman. Like how trans women go from being men to women, you’ve essentially gone from nothing to woman, right?"

  I should snap at her. I want to snap at her. But instead her words hang in front of me like a key I didn’t realise I was looking for. I’ve always felt that my retionship with the trans community was more of a neighbour than a resident. But what else do you call somebody who chose womanhood, rather than had it forced upon them? Who continues to reinforce womanhood every single day, as a conscious effort?

  All of the faces that I use on the regur are women, and while I can turn into a man - and have done so - it’s never an identity that I would willingly choose for myself long-term. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels exactly like how Jamie described his mental anguish yesterday, trying to perform a role that you resent.

  And, though I hate the fact it was Sadie who opened my eyes to this, I can’t help but smile.

  "Yeah," I say, after a moment of reflection. "That... surprisingly makes a lot of sense."

  I catch a flicker of a smile from her, a smug crack of self-satisfaction. Has Sadie Cross just cracked my egg?

  "Still, I’m surprised to hear that about Tommy," she says. "He’s always struck me as a bit... close-minded."

  "Yeah, I’m worried," I say. "He came to me st night, begging for advice on how not to fuck it up - and I believe he means it, but I just don’t trust him not to get uncomfortable and sh out at her."

  Sadie nods, looking back to the road. "I think that’s a valid concern. If it’s any consotion, Tommy is an idiot - and he can be quite brutal with words - but he was never violent."

  Hello, interesting use of the past tense. "You know this from experience, don’t you?"

  Her frown deepens, carved sharply against her cheek. "We dated briefly. It was never going to work."

  I let out a disbelieving ugh. "I never knew that."

  She shrugs, eyes locked forward. "You don’t know a lot of things about me, Maisie."

  I turn back towards the window, but I’m not really looking outside anymore. I’m looking at the reflection of Sadie in the gss. It doesn’t sound like a dismissal. It sounds like an invitation.

  My biggest pet peeve at The Coalition isn’t the fact that they kept me locked up for years, or all of the casual bigotry that goes on around the lunch table - it’s when people use the term "RED Detector". As I’ve said before, RED stands for Residual Energy Detection. So when somebody says "Residual Energy Detection Detector", I want to jump out of my seat and throttle them. The only exception would be if you’re using a tool to detect one of our RED devices. Like I’m doing right now.

  The actual RED is north of Stirling, technically in Dunbne. It’s an inconspicuous wooden pilr standing like a forgotten relic in the middle of an empty field, a rusted metal box bolted to one side. Locals probably assume it’s part of the National Grid. It technically is, I suppose, but it’s also so much more. The contents of the box are a lot more advanced than anything our electricity supply uses. Incredibly more valuable too. We’re lucky they don’t get stolen more often.

  It’s overcast. The sky is a ft sheet of grey and the air bites against any exposed skin. Sadie parks on a dirt pull-in beside a barbed wire fence, and we climb out into the chill. A handful of cows are lying in the field, zily chewing, half-curious as we cross their territory. They don’t move - they just stare.

  The trees on the far edge of the field are dense and too still, hunched under the colourless sky like they’re waiting for something.

  Sadie unpacks one of the portable RED scanners, while I cmber up the side of the pilr using the small metal footholds bolted into the wood. I can already smell the rust as I near the box - old metal and damp wood. My fingers sting from the cold. This is dull work - routine diagnostics, checking wiring pcements, and making sure nothing’s been chewed through by rats or gremlins or whatever. Boring nerd stuff.

  "It’s spiking!" Sadie yells.

  She’s standing below me, watching the detector - waiting to see if any of the changes I make cause an unexpected spike. There’s just one problem...

  I blink down at her. "I haven’t even opened the box yet."

  That’s when I see it. A faint fsh of purple light, low to the ground, at the edge of the treeline. It isn’t bright - barely more than a shimmer - but it’s real. It pulses, then fades. I gnce down and see Sadie frozen, her hand hovering near the scanner. Her head jerks up to look at me.

  Our eyes lock. Mutual panic. And something else - solidarity. Neither of us needs to say it. We’re going over there.

  And then-

  And then-

  I’m in the forest.

  The air is still. Too still. A dull cold clings to my skin that wasn’t there before. I’m leaning back against a tree, my chest rising and falling like I’ve just been sprinting, breath fogging in front of me. There are cuts all over my arms and shoulders - shallow but stinging - and when I shift my weight, pain shoots through my thigh like something’s been driven into it.

  Across from me, Sadie lies on her back in the moss and dirt, her bck coat smeared with dried mud and old leaves. Her eyes are closed. Her face looks scraped.

  What the hell just happened?

  One second, we were seeing purple light in the distant trees. The next... we’re here. Panic surges through me before I even realise I’m moving. My legs buckle as I get up, and I let out a sharp gasp - feeling the deep gash in my knee. I press a hand to it and feel my cells knit themselves back together like zipping up a jacket.

  Sadie stirs and I drop to my knees beside her, scanning her face - ripe with small, bloody cuts. I can heal myself, but if she’s seriously hurt - there’s not much I can do. She’s breathing, though. Shallow but steady. Her eyelids flutter before they open fully, squinting up at me, dazed.

  "What happened?" she says.

  "I was going to ask you the same thing," I say, gncing around. The forest is quiet, but it feels watched. Like the trees remember exactly what went down here. "I just remember seeing the purple light, and then we were here."

  She winces as she sits up. "Fuck. That’s all I remember too. I remember thinking that we should go and investigate it, and then... I was on the ground."

  My phone buzzes in my pocket as I check the time. 1pm. If that’s correct - it’s been just over two hours since we parked the car. That’s two hours lost - no memory and no trace of what we were doing.

  I scan the ground, suddenly desperate for some evidence of our presence - mud churned by boot prints, broken twigs, anything. There are marks in the soil. Barely anything. Potentially a sign of a struggle, or maybe soil just looks like that.

  "We need to call for backup," Sadie says, already switching back to professional mode, though her voice is still shaky. "I know you have somewhere to be, but we’ve been drugged. Somebody needs to check that out..."

  "No," I say, standing up a little too fast. "We haven’t."

  She narrows her eyes at me. "You just said that you didn’t remember anything."

  "I can feel every single cell inside my body, Sadie." I don’t mean to snap, but I do. "I’d know if there was something foreign inside me."

  She stares at me. Not doubting, but processing. Maybe for the first time she’s realising how far beyond human I am.

  "Okay," she says quietly. "Well, that’s reassuring. But still, we have no idea what’s going on here. This has the markings of a major incident."

  I groan softly, tilting my head back to stare at the sky. The clouds haven’t moved. She’s right. Of course she’s right. Something happened here. Something took us - or worse, something used us. And the idea that I wasn’t in control of my body for two hours fills me with more dread than I’ve ever felt working for The Coalition.

  "I’ll call George," she says, pulling out her phone. "He’ll hopefully be able to wrangle us a few members of the team who know what they’re doing."

  Good - because the two support girls are horrendously out of their depth.

  As she steps away, I pull out my own phone. My hands are still shaky, grounding themselves only by touch - screen, case, fingertips tapping gss. I freeze when I open my messages with Lexi. I’ve texted her already, apparently. An hour ago.

  Cassie: Sorry Lex, I’m going to be te - something’s come up?Lexi: Eleanor’s going to kill youuuuuu~?Cassie: I know, but it’s really important?Cassie: Tell you everything ter

  What the fuck does "tell you everything ter" mean, Cassie-from-the-past? Did you have a cover story cooked up in your head already? Or were you just dumping this on me to figure out? Bitch.

  I shake my head, lips curling in wry disbelief. We didn’t lose time - we were functional. I’ve sent messages and replied like everything was fine. We weren’t unconscious. We just... weren’t ourselves. Or, at the very least, have no memory of being ourselves.

  Still. Circumstances have changed. We’re stranded here until backup arrives, which won’t be quick. Three hours there, three hours back. Seven at the earliest. Face the music, Cass - you’re not making a 2pm shift.

  Cassie: Lexiiiiiii I’m sorry, I won’t be coming in at all?Cassie: I promise it’s serious?Cassie: Tell Eleanor that I’m sorry?Cassie: and if she’s still mad, tell her about my egg boy - that’ll satisfy her?Lexi: Bitch, you haven’t even told me that much about your egg boy?Cassie: Just make something up!!!?Lexi: Fine, but you owe me?Cassie: Love you xxxxx?Lexi: Love you too bestie xx

  Her teasing tone radiates through the screen, even in text. It’s just a silly game to her, but I still feel guilty. Because she’s willing to cover for me so easily. Meanwhile, I haven’t told her about Tommy. Or about myself. She’s giving me everything and I’m giving her nothing back.

  I sigh and lift my head - just in time to see Sadie approaching, her face back in that perfect no-nonsense mask, every step crisp and efficient. She might as well be a different person from the one in the car an hour ago. The one who said my name and meant it. The one I almost trusted.

  "George is on the way," she says. "He’s wrangled Tommy along too."

  My stomach tightens. "Are we going to be expected to help?"

  The words come out too fast, too soft. It sounds like fear. It is fear. I don’t do combat boots and field trauma. I do graphs. I do numbers. I do theory.

  "I don’t know," she says, still scanning the treeline. "I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens when they arrive."

  The first hour... again.

  It’s a daunting feeling, realising that I’m once again stuck with Sadie for at least another three hours, while we wait for back-up to arrive. Arguably, we came out of our first stretch stronger than ever - though there were moments where we were a second away from ripping each other apart. Now, as we climb back into the Fiat and sm the doors shut, the interior feels colder than before. Not just from the outside air, but from what’s happened to us. The seats feel damp. The windows look fogged up. I shift in my seat, my body aching from bruises that I don’t remember earning. We can’t do this again.

  "I sent texts an hour ago," I say, pulling the door to make sure it’s shut. "Which suggests that we were functional. We just have no memory of what we actually did."

  Sadie nods slowly, her jaw tight. "That makes sense. I don’t suppose you left any clues for yourself?"

  I shake my head. I did not - which means either I had no idea this was a possibility, or I was too cocky to care.

  She sighs. "It feels so invasive. We could’ve done anything. Said anything to each other. Seen anything. And we just have no recollection of it. I feel gross."

  I nod, my gaze fixed on the windscreen. She’s right. That’s what makes this so much worse. Half an hour ago, I could’ve been spilling my darkest secrets to Sadie. Or she could’ve said something that destroyed me. And we’ll never know. Those moments have been scrubbed away, along with the people that we temporarily were.

  "I don’t suppose you can..." she starts to say, but trails off.

  I look at her. "Can what?"

  "You can’t, like... feel your memories or something, can you?"

  It takes me a second to understand what she means, and when I do, my stomach sinks. She wants me to check my brain for memories in the same way that I checked my blood for foreign substances. The scary answer is I don’t know. Because I’ve never tried it.

  I take a long breath and look down at my hands. "I’ve never touched my brain," I say. "I’m pretty sure I can, but... I don’t want to. It’s not like moving a muscle - it’s one wrong move and I could accidentally damage myself to a point that I can’t come back from."

  And that’s really only half of it. Because, yes, I could break my brain to the extent that I lose the capability to shift - that is a real possibility. But it’s also possible that I change my brain in a way that changes me fundamentally. Could I trust myself not to remove all of the horrific memories? Would I paper over my negative emotions in the same way that I instantly heal my physical injuries? If I start meddling with the brain, then I will never stop - and that road is paved only with destruction.

  "Okay, so not a good idea. Got it," Sadie says, visibly cringing - a full-body wince that comes from picturing something viscerally wrong. I don’t bme her, it is an unsettling thought.

  "Do you have any ideas what could’ve done this?" I ask, moving around in my seat. "You study the archives a lot more than I do. Any known creatures with the ability to mess with memory?"

  She shakes her head, brushing a few strands of hair from her face. "The only thing that comes to mind is a giant angler fish that was caught off the Gold Coast by our Australian team. The light emitted apparently caused people to forget that they’d ever seen the fish. But I don’t think this is quite the habitat."

  "No," I say, lips twitching. "And I can’t imagine an angler fish managed to beat us both up. I know we’re not field agents, but we can take a fish!"

  That gets a smile out of her - small, but real. Her eyes meet mine for half a second, and I feel the tension between us soften.

  "No," she agrees. "I think this is something new. Possibly a distant ancestor - because a light wouldn’t leave any trace in your system, would it?"

  I shake my head. "No, not in the same way that drugs would. Do you think that was what the purple light was?"

  "I don’t know," she says, deep in thought. "We saw that two hours ago - but didn’t forget until recently."

  "Great," I say, groaning and pressing the heel of my hand against my temple. "So, we’re dealing with potentially two unknown, magical lights?"

  "Seems that way."

  "I could really do with some of your screaming music right now," I mutter, half-smiling.

  "Yeah," she says, softly. "Me too."

  The second hour... again.

  Sadie has not converted me to her music taste, but I can see the appeal. Filling a car with nothing but loud noises is a great way to forget (oops) about everything that’s happened, and a great excuse not to talk to each other. Surprisingly, though, it’s not an excuse that she’s tched onto. Before each song, she gives me a passionate introduction - offering context on the artist, the meaning behind the lyrics, and the techniques involved. It’s helpful and also... really endearing.

  I’ve never seen Sadie like this. Her usual cold, distant demeanour melts completely in the face of bst beats and aggressive vocals. She comes alive. And watching her light up like that, fidgeting slightly in her seat and practically vibrating as she expins the difference between clean vocals and screams - I don’t know, it makes her feel real. Like a person. Not the gritted-jaw, tight-ced Coalition girlboss I’ve known until now.

  "So, this next one’s from Spiritbox - have you heard of them? No, obviously not. Whatever. The woman singing is Courtney LaPnte, who is the best vocalist in metal today. Massively underrated, though. People don’t understand how hard it is to go from clean vocals to guttural screaming in a single breath - like do you understand the amount of control that takes? No, you don’t. Also, no talking in the breakdown. Or else."

  And I enjoy it, honestly. Not necessarily the music - though the vocal switch-ups are hypnotic - but watching her. Her excitement when the transition hits, how she mouths along to every word, but doesn’t dare actually sing.

  When the song finishes, I ask the question that’s been forming in my head for the st half hour. "You seem to know a lot about the techniques."

  She doesn’t answer. Her face flushes slightly, and she suddenly becomes very interested in her rear-view mirror.

  Clocked you, bitch.

  "Are you in a metal band, Sadie?"

  Her head whips around. "If you tell anyone, I swear..."

  "Don’t worry," I say, raising a hand defensively. "I think it’s cool. It’s nice knowing that other people at the office have their own double lives."

  She gives me a concerned look, but doesn’t say anything. Internally, she’s probably plotting how to get her hands on one of those memory lights and erase this entire conversation. But the threat is half-hearted. Pyful. It’s strange. The car feels warmer.

  "Do you have songs on streaming?" I ask, teasing.

  "Maisie, I will put you under this car," she says - but her voice is soft with ughter.

  And I ugh. It’s crazy to think that just a few hours ago, I hated this woman more than anything else in the world, and now we’re sitting here-

  And now I’m standing here, in the hallway of a white-lit corridor, gasping for air. Fuck, not again. There wasn’t any purple light this time, the shift just happened mid-conversation. My chest tightens with fear, but it’s quieter this time - like an old friend who’s overstayed their welcome. I brace myself, take stock of my body. I’m exhausted, out of breath like I’ve been running again, but I’m not hurt. No blood, no gashes. It’s almost disappointing how familiar this is becoming.

  The corridor around us is sterile - painfully so. Polished white walls, ceiling tiles humming faintly with fluorescent light, and a sterile tang in the air that makes my skin itch. It’s cold, in that particur medical way where everything feels distant and dead. Even the silence is clinical, like it was designed. We’re somewhere inside a hospital, that much is obvious - but where, or why, remains a mystery.

  Behind me, I hear others panting. I turn, and it’s not just Sadie this time. George is hunched over, one hand clutching his side like he’s got a stitch, and Tommy’s there too, standing straighter, looking less winded than the rest of us but clearly shaken. They’re all fine - no injuries, no bruises - just confusion writ across their faces.

  "What the hell?" Tommy says, eyes darting. "Did we teleport or some shit? Where’s my car?"

  "Rex," Sadie answers, already shifting back into mission mode. Her voice is steady again, authoritative. She looks more herself now, but the sudden return to calm makes me uneasy. "You probably parked your car an hour ago and met up with us then. We then came here, for some reason, and something wiped our memory."

  "Good luck remembering where you parked, though," I mutter, trying to soften the edge. He gres, but doesn’t bite. He’s more shaken than he looks.

  "Does anybody remember anything?" George asks.

  He’s met with a chorus of head shaking and mumbles of no. And then I remember to check - did past Maisie learn her lesson? With bated breath, I open the Notes app on my phone with trembling fingers and almost tear up with relief.

  Future Maisie,I hope you’re proud of me for thinking ahead!We’re going to the hospital to investigate the maternity wards. We think something is taking babies and erasing the memories of the mothers and staff involved.Not much of a clue beyond that. No idea how they’re doing it.?Love you!?Past Maisie.?P.S. I’m really sorry for getting my memory wiped again.?P.S.S. I hope you haven’t forgotten about the metal band.

  I feel a pang of affection for past Maisie - for past me - but also something like embarrassment. The others are reading over my shoulder, and I feel sheepish. It’s vulnerable, sharing a part of myself I don’t even remember being. But I don’t really have a choice.

  Sadie exhales sharply and brings us back to focus, back to the mission. "The theory seems accurate," she says, scanning the walls like she’s expecting the threat to materialise. "It would expin the mismatch between the maternity ward data and the actual birth statistics. Babies are being born, but nobody remembers. That’s so unbelievably fucked up."

  I nod, stomach sinking. It’s worse than we thought. We’re standing in the aftermath of something deliberate and terrifying.

  There’s an unease on George’s face, his shoulders stiffening like he’s bracing for an argument. "You girls really shouldn’t have come here. You’re not trained for this kind of encounter, especially not on a weekend when you don’t have access to the proper support."

  I tense immediately. Are you kidding me?

  "We wouldn’t have had to come on a weekend if somebody had just listened to me," Sadie snaps, her voice sharp as gss. She’s not backing down - and I don’t bme her.

  But we’re wasting time.

  "Guys, please," I say, trying to py mediator. "I don’t remember anything - but you’ve obviously had this argument before. We can’t waste time rehashing it. Whoever won it, we all ended up standing in this corridor together, so clearly we got over it, okay?"

  Sadie and George gnce at each other, the air thick with unspoken things. Whatever heat existed between them earlier - frustration, mistrust, something more - has now curdled into professional resentment. But neither of them pushes further. They both seem to accept that a corridor in a Scottish hospital is not the right pce to relitigate a fight they’ve both already forgotten.

  "What do we do now?" Tommy says, looking to George for leadership.

  "We need to retreat," George says. "We have no defence against whatever memory weapon they’re using, and we’re just going to get stuck in a constant loop of forgetting if we don’t come back prepared."

  It sounds reasonable to me, but Sadie’s not having it. She shakes her head. "To hell with that. If the fucker was in this hospital ward, then that means they probably just took a baby. I’m not about to leave with the blood of an innocent newborn on my hands. And I know Maisie isn’t either."

  I blink. She’s invoking me. In front of everyone. I wasn’t expecting that - but something in her voice hits me in the chest. "Too right."

  George turns to me next, his eyes softer - pleading. Not angry, not dismissive. Just scared for us. It makes me pause. He’s not just being a bureaucrat. He’s thinking about our safety. He’s just... wrong. A child is in danger and we can’t ignore that.

  "We don’t even know where they’ve gone, or what we’re dealing with," George says, desperation clinging to every word. "Sadie, I respect your tenacity, and we can review the processes that led to this being overlooked on our end - but we can’t go charging in without a pn."

  "I think I know where they’ve gone," I say, stepping forward, cutting through the doubt. His expression drops into a sigh. "I don’t know if I figured this out just now, or before - but that purple light... The persistent peak in the RED data. I think they’re opening some form of rift. A manual breach in the Interstice, and I think they’re doing it in that woodnd."

  "That makes sense," Sadie says, without hesitation. "And I think I might have a pn on how to deal with the light." She turns to me fully, and I catch something in her expression I can’t quite pce - uncertainty, maybe, but also embarrassment. There’s shame dripping from her next question.

  "Um, Maisie, if you’re up for it?"

  "What do you need?"

  She hesitates for just a second. "Can you, um, make yourself blind?"

  It’s easy to make myself go blind. I just need to sever a few of the connections to my eyeballs - like unplugging a cable. It doesn’t hurt, not really. But it feels wrong. A humming emptiness takes the pce of my sight.

  They say that when you lose one sense, the others sharpen. That might be true, but I don’t leave it to chance. I reshape the folds of my ears until the ridges funnel sound with unnatural precision. Every breath, every rustle of fabric, every distant footstep becomes crisp. I can hear George breathing - the occasional uneven drag of air into his lungs.

  I extend the nerve endings in my fingers and soles of my feet, letting them drown in vibration. If someone runs towards me, I’ll feel it long before I would see it. I expand the olfactory receptors in my nose, letting in more of the world than I’m used to. A concoction of every chemical in the hospital tickles me in return.

  Somebody grabs my hand. Their skin is firm and dry, not much in the way of hair follicles. Sadie. She’s careful, steady. The contact is oddly comforting, considering the shit we threw at each other earlier. The day’s been jagged, but somehow, I trust her to guide me through the rest. We move slowly at first, her leading me with a cautious step. But I’m adjusting fast. When we approach a wall, I hear the sound shift - footsteps more compact, a change in the echo. The density of the floor alters underfoot, ever so slightly. I can’t read the signs to find the exit, but I can read the world in other ways.

  When we step outside, the ground softens and the wind rushes against my face, sharper than usual. Sadie tightens her grip on me - neither of us entirely confident that I could dodge a moving car should I wander aimlessly across the car park.

  "You doing okay? Think you can do this?" she says, her voice quieter than usual. Almost gentle.

  "Honestly," I say. "It depends what we’re dealing with. We weren’t that hurt the first time, and if that’s all they’ve got - I should be okay."

  I’m bracing for a fight. I don’t know what’s out there in the woods. But whatever it is, I don’t intend to go down without remembering it.

  "Maisie," I hear George’s voice from behind us. "You really don’t have to do this. Margaret can make gsses that block out the light, and we can have somebody back here by Friday."

  "I have to do this, George," I say, not sure if I’m looking at him or Tommy - their footsteps sound simir. "How many babies do you think will disappear between now and Friday?"

  "How many more will suffer if we all get killed, and it takes months for The Coalition to get back in this position?" George asks, in return.

  It’s a reasonable question. But the fw in his logic is simple: we’re not going to lose.

  I don’t answer him. I just follow the grip of Sadie’s hand as she guides me carefully into what I assume is her car. The soft sink of the passenger seat confirms it. My limbs ache slightly as I fold into the seat - residual pain from earlier, though nothing I can’t handle. I feel off-bance, nerves crawling over my arms like static. I’m completely blind, and still I feel the shape of everything around me. We’re not joined by George or Tommy. It’s just us again.

  "Thank you for doing this," she says. There’s something warm in her voice that almost startles me. It’s faint, and it might just be the new ears, but it’s certainly new. "You’re absolutely certain that you can’t see?"

  "Not a thing," I say.

  There’s a shuffle of movement. Then her ugh cuts through the air, short and sharp.

  "Okay, I believe you."

  "What? What did you do?"

  She snickers. "Don’t worry about it."

  "You can’t bully the blind girl, Sadie."

  Another half-ugh - lighter this time - but she keeps her secret. I lean my head back and smile despite myself. We were at each other’s throats hours ago, and now she’s making dumb jokes and trusting me to fight a monster blind. That doesn’t mean I trust her. Not fully. But it’s something. A flicker of closeness, banced precariously on the edge of a knife.

  The car rumbles to life. I can feel every detail: the subtle clunk of the gear shift, the purr of the engine as we begin to move, the gentle hiss as she presses the pedal. The air is cooler in here than outside, and every bump in the road vibrates up through my seat and into my spine. I can hear the tyres roll against the tarmac, each turn of the wheel distinct.

  "We’ve been driving a while," I say, surprised. "Where are we?"

  "Closest maternity ward was in Larbert, about twenty minutes from Dunbne. We’re about halfway there now."

  "So, we have ten minutes?"

  "Excellent maths skills, Maisie, yes."

  Ten minutes. That’s long enough to dwell on how easily this could all go wrong again. Alternatively, it’s a chance to do something exciting. Something that hadn’t occurred to me as a possibility until now, but suddenly seems like fate.

  "Ten minutes, huh? Pass me that AUX, Sadie. I’m about to have a spiritual experience."

  "Are you guys okay?" George says, as Sadie guides me out of the car at our new destination. I feel gravel beneath my feet and can picture the same side road as before. "You both look like you’ve been crying."

  I was fully aware of my own tears - feeling the dried trails on my cheeks - but I turn towards Sadie in shock, trying to express as much exaggerated surprise as I can in my unseeing eyes. "You were crying too!?"

  "I just reted to it, okay," Sadie mutters, her voice gravelly. "I thought she just wrote about her boyfriends, I didn’t know she had songs like that."

  I want to beg her to write that in her notes, so that if her memory gets wiped - she doesn’t forget. Listening to that masterpiece with these ears was a transformative experience. That song hit different this time. The new shape let me hear things I’d never noticed before - sharp breaths, teeth gritted behind the words, yers and yers of grief ced through every line. It was like I was hearing music in a new nguage. Something ancient and aching. Even if I lose everything again, even if whatever force is doing this comes back and steals my memory - I don’t think I could forget that. I’ll still remember it all too well.

  But something darker is brewing at the back of my brain. A thought I’m not ready to look at directly. My hand rests on the phone in my pocket, my fingers tracing its edge like it’s a trigger I’m not yet willing to pull. There’s a wildcard I can py. A nuclear option that I don’t think I can come back from. I don’t want to use it. But it’s there if I need it.

  No one’s said a word about a pn, but we’re moving forward anyway. I turn inward, focusing on my muscles, amplifying the fibres until they hum with strength. I reroute blood supply, reinforcing bone and tendon. The shift makes me feel capable. But I also think about how hard somebody like Jordan has to work to get her body performing at this level. And that thought makes me feel... wrong.

  Gravel fades to grass, then to dirt. The forest swallows us whole, and the canopy above muffles the sky.

  "I think you need to let go now, Sadie," I say, steeling myself. "If I can’t navigate the forest on my own, then I stand no chance in a fight."

  I feel her pause - feel it in the dey between her breath and the loosening of her grip. When she finally lets go, it’s with the kind of reluctance that makes my chest ache. Without her hand, the world immediately feels colder. Less tethered. Every footstep becomes a gamble.

  The ground here is uneven, unpredictable. Small dips and rises reveal themselves a second too te for me to adjust, and I stumble forward - hard. My foot catches something, and I pitch downward, my hands outstretched in instinct.

  A pair of arms catch me before I hit the ground - firm, solid, careful. There’s warmth in the hands that steady me. No roughness, no urgency. Just presence.

  "This is a stupid idea," George says, his voice thick with tension. He doesn’t try to stop us, though, and his footfalls match mine a beat ter.

  "I’m fine," I say, pushing the words out like armour. "I just need to get used to it. It’s a big change."

  Tommy’s silence finally registers - he hasn’t spoken once since we left the car. If I couldn’t hear the heavy, self-conscious rhythm of his boots, I might’ve thought he’d vanished entirely. Then it clicks. He’s not silent out of strategy - he’s embarrassed. Nervous. He thinks I’m going to tell the others about him and Lexi. Because that would be the most shameful thing for a guy like him. To have others know that he’s dating a trans woman. I’ve just got to hope Sadie keeps her mouth shut.

  I walk into an arm - intentional, solid, and not Sadie’s. Too lean to be Tommy. George. He’s blocking us, and everyone halts.

  "There’s something ahead," Sadie whispers into my ear, her voice far too loud with my new hearing. I flinch instinctively.

  I freeze, crouching as a hand presses gently to my shoulder. I tune into the ground beneath us, straining to listen beyond the silence. There - faint grunts, high-pitched chitters. I stiffen. It almost sounds human. But wrong. Squeakier. Hungrier.

  "Six Trowkin," Sadie says - loud enough for all of us. She’s shifted fully into logistics mode now, the clinical rhythm of her voice slicing clean through the fear. I find it reassuring - but I don’t like how quickly she flipped into this version of herself. This Sadie is calcuted, clipped, efficient. I liked the one from the car more. "At least, they look like Trowkin from this angle. They’re fucking morons, but they’re quite stabby. It makes sense - they feed off young creatures."

  A quiet, strangled squeak escapes me, and I sm a hand over my mouth. They’re eating the babies. Scotnd’s fertility rate has declined because they’re eating the babies. My fists curl tight enough to pop. That quiet tension in the trees? That still air around us? It’s grief.

  "Trowkin don’t have the ability to wipe memories, from what I recall," George says. I don’t need to see Sadie’s face to feel the gre she throws his way.

  "They don’t," she says, clipped. "But clearly, they’ve found a way. Just like they’ve found a way to open a breach."

  "But why?" I whisper. "Why are they opening a breach?"

  Sadie exhales sharply - frustrated, but not at me. "I don’t know. That’s why we’re going to watch and figure it out."

  Tommy scoffs, low in his throat. "I could shoot two of them now, before the others even have a chance to react."

  "They have a baby, you idiot," I hiss, then flush. "I mean - they do have a baby, right?"

  The idea that George and Tommy brought guns both comforts and unsettles me. Nobody offered me one, and maybe that’s fair given my current state.

  "They do," Sadie confirms, her voice back in full mission mode. "So, we can’t do anything stupid."

  A part of me wants to ignore that and walk down the hill to talk to them. To try and understand what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. To attempt to reach some sort of peaceful negotiation. As monstrous as their crimes are, I don’t want blood spilled. But another part of me warns that we’ve come face-to-face with these little shits twice already - and that I’ve probably already tried peace. And then tried it again. Does it count as giving somebody a chance if you aren’t certain that you actually did it?

  We stand and wait for a while longer - my colleagues watching the Trowkin, and me standing in the dark. My muscles are tight, clenched, every part of me on edge. When the crackling sound hits, followed by a sudden whoosh of air and warmth brushing across my cheeks, my body jolts instinctively. It doesn’t feel like heat from a fire - it feels wrong. Otherworldly. Like I’ve been touched by something that shouldn’t exist.

  "Shit, they’ve opened the breach. Whatever they’re doing, we need to get down there and stop them," Sadie says, grabbing my arm

  A storm of footsteps thunders past me as everyone charges the hill. I stumble after them, barely managing to keep up - feet struggling to find traction on the loose dirt. It’s all uneven and unpredictable, and every step is dangerous. I can’t see the breach, and that terrifies me. All I know is that it’s getting warmer, hotter, but I can’t tell if I’m metres away from the edge or right on top of it. For all I know, one bad step and I’m spending the rest of my Sunday falling through the Interstice.

  A gunshot cracks to my right, sharp and startling, followed by a squeal, the ctter of something breaking apart, and rapid, skittering footsteps. I don’t have time to mourn whatever just died.

  "These wankers again!?" a squeaky voice says - comical in pitch, if not for the fact that I know they’re literal baby killers.

  Another shot. Another squeal. And then - snap. Sadie stops dead, and I sm forward, face-first into the cold dirt. Gravelly soil scrapes across my cheek as pain blooms in my ribs. My phone slips from my pocket. Somewhere behind me, something heavy thuds to the ground.

  I feel the approach before I hear it. Light feet - small, fast - padding toward me from all directions. The others must’ve been fshed again, wiped. I’m the only one still standing. Alone and blind. Fuck. What a moronic pn.

  If Tommy hit both his shots then that means what? Four on one? And the one is blind? Yeah. I think I’m going to need to resort to Pn B.

  My hands fil across the ground, fingers curling around twigs, mud, leaves - until I finally grab hold of my phone. A lifeline in cold pstic. And just in time, because tiny hands tch onto my leg. A bde tears through my calf with terrifying ease. It’s sharp and cold, a burning icicle carving through tendon, and I scream, loud and ugly. I sh out, foot snapping upward, catching something hard - maybe a jaw - knocking it off me. No more stabbing, for now.

  "How come the light didn’t work on her, bro?" one of the voices says - a little deeper and dumber-sounding than the rest of them.

  For the record, what I’m about to do might kill me.

  "I dunno, bro, maybe she’s immune?"

  I’ve been Maisie...

  "We’ll have to finish her off the old-fashioned way, ay?"

  ...and you’ve been great.

  I press the phone against my face with both hands, smming it into my cheekbones so hard I feel something in the casing crack. My focus snaps inward, pinpointed on the writhing bundle of nerve that lives in my eye socket. My optic nerve. I’ve never touched it before, never dared. Now I shove it forward like a leash. Like a hungry dog chasing a squirrel.

  I shove the phone closer, feeling the backbone of the casing rip into spikes that shred open my irises, before it gets close enough for the dog to feast.

  Blood spills down my nose and lips, hot and steady. Then the nerve connects, and everything in my skull lights up. It’s like being electrocuted from the inside. A burning wire ripples through my brain. I scream and convulse, but I don’t let go. I concentrate, trying to make sense of the new input, the jagged flickers of vision spooling into the bck as I shuffle the cells in my optic nerve, trying to find a version compatible with these new signals.

  They haven’t attacked me again, which means they’re probably watching in horror at the scene in front of them. Watching as the smallest girl of the bunch drives a phone into her eye sockets for seemingly no reason.

  And then, I see.

  Not with my eyes - those are even more useless - but through the grainy lens of my phone’s rear camera. There’s a crack down the middle of the screen, and blood is pooling at the top and streaming in rivers along the edge, tinting everything pink and red. The video feed gs slightly, like a cursed livestream, but it works.

  I see four of them, clustered around me. Hip-height monsters with teal skin, sunken faces, and ears that jut out like knives. They all wear round, bck-lensed spectacles - like sad little goth goblins. If I weren’t bleeding out, I’d ugh at the sight.

  Three of them hold knives - two each. The fourth has dropped theirs entirely and is bent over, emptying the contents of its tiny stomach. Whatever they’re seeing... I must look like a nightmare. A blind girl, blood cascading down her chin, shoving a broken phone into her face like it’s part of a ritual. The pain is nothing compared to the triumph that I feel. They might have their little light tricks, but right now?

  They’re my bitches.

  In the periphery of the image, I can see shadows frozen in pce. George. Sadie. Tommy. Statues mid-thought, mid-movement - caught in whatever flicker has stolen two more hours from them. I’m the only one still awake.

  One of them, the rgest and most competent-looking of the bunch, raises a stubby metal stick and floods me in a cold white light. I don’t even blink. Through my phone camera, I watch him flinch when I don’t fall - his smug certainty slipping into something closer to fear. The cruel smile curling on my lips feels earned.

  My gamble paid off. That whatever mechanism the light uses to remove memories doesn’t survive the compression of a shitty phone camera.

  "Old-fashioned way, right?" I say, rising to my feet.

  God, I wish I had an iPhone. eyeOS was right there.

  The smallest, roundest one charges me like a cannonball, knives fshing in each hand. I brace my phone with one hand and raise the other, swatting him out of the air like a softball. He hits the mud with a high-pitched oof and lies there twitching.

  To my surprise, the remaining three are smarter - or at least more cowardly. When I turn to face them, they’ve already dropped their weapons. Tiny knives scatter across the dirt. Hands shoot into the air. The tallest one, their apparent leader, steps forward, nodding solemnly.

  "We surrender," he says, voice high but level. "Please don’t kill us, scary dy. We’re sorry."

  I check behind me - Trowkin #4 still lies face-down in the mud. My colleagues are upright, dazed, but standing. And there, resting eerily still atop a tree stump, is the baby. A tiny, bundled form. Breathing. Alive. The warmth on my skin vanishes as the breach closes itself.

  I look back at the Trowkin, my voice ft. "I’m not going to kill you." I don’t know if I believe myself yet. "Talk. Tell me what you’ve been doing."

  They exchange a look. The speaker lowers his eyes to the dirt, voice trembling.

  "I fear you will not believe us, madam, but our home world is in ruin. Our communities are starving and... we were given a gift. Something took us here."

  "A breach," I say, gaze flicking to the base of the stump where a mess of metal equipment sits. I don’t dare turn my back on them, but even at a gnce, I can tell - it’s cobbled together from high-grade tech. Well beyond their capabilities.

  The Trowkin nods. "Yes. And though I do not expect you to understand, we must feast to live - and the Lord cursed us with a taste for the young and fresh."

  I haven’t read much on Trowkin, but The Coalition has definitely encountered them before. My understanding is that the younger something is, the more satiating it is to them. A bizarre and sickening trait.

  I clench my fists, heat rising in my throat. "So you broke into hospitals and ate our babies."

  A whimper escapes the smallest one, but the leader holds firm. "We do not eat them. We live off what we can. But our families... our kin back home... they’re starving."

  I watch him closely, trying to parse the emotion behind his sunken, pathetic eyes. The damp, mossy stench of the creatures curls in the air, oddly sad. A mix of guilt and desperation.

  They didn’t eat the babies themselves - they just sent them to be eaten elsewhere. Is that any better? Killing babies for a selfless cause? And my skin whitens when I realise that it doesn’t actually add up.

  "And you thought the breach would take the babies to your world?" I say, voice brittle. "Did any of you ever check where it led?"

  They shake their heads.

  "Who told you that it would go back home?"

  "The man who sold us the rift equipment," he says, eyes wide, fingers twitching at his sides. "Along with these light thingies."

  The man. Great. A future nightmare I’ll probably have to deal with ter. But right now? Horror is blooming in my chest. I take a breath, and my voice falters for a second.

  "The rifts don’t work that way," I say quietly. "It’s random. It’s completely random. I’m... I’m really sorry, but none of your... care packages made it back to your people."

  The words hit like a meteor. The diplomat slumps forward, holding his head in his tiny hands. The others go still.

  "She’s lying!" one of the smaller ones shrieks, eyes gssy. "She’s trying to trick us, bro!"

  It lunges, knife raised, but the diplomat snaps out a hand and halts him mid-stride. Then he looks up at me, pupils trembling.

  "You are not from this world either, are you?"

  I hesitate. Then shake my head. "No."

  "And you are telling the truth?"

  "I’m sorry."

  He crumples. There’s no dramatic scream, no fury. Just a soft, defeated sound as his knees hit the dirt and the hopelessness takes hold. "That is... quite upsetting."

  I’m feeling a very mixed array of emotions right now, and I hope you will not judge me for that. Let’s be clear - these guys are responsible for the deaths of a significant number of newborn babies. They knew what they were doing. They knew the hurt it would cause, and they didn’t care.

  It’s not a word that I like to use, but these Trowkin are objectively monsters.

  And yet... They were doing it for what they believed was a good cause. They weren’t fighting for themselves. They were fighting for their families, for their entire world. Can I honestly say I wouldn’t begrudgingly kill the young of a different species if it meant saving my own?

  I can’t answer that question, because I don’t have a species. But the longing I feel for one suggests I might.

  "So, just to be clear," I say, trying to shake the fog of silence bnketing the group, "you were taking babies from the local hospital, and then using your lights to clear the memory of the mother. For what, the st year?"

  The diplomat nods. "And the medical staff. The father too, if we could find him."

  Quietly adding heteronormativity to a list of Trowkin sins.

  I don’t know if that makes the situation better or worse. On one hand, it means a family doesn’t have to mourn their child. On the other, I know what it’s like now to have my memory taken. Even losing four hours felt invasive. To wake up missing a year would destroy me. It would feel like mourning something you never knew existed - like a phantom limb you can’t even locate. Knowing that something huge was taken from you, but having no recollection of what.

  A sudden patter of feet behind me - and I whirl just in time to hear it. Trowkin #4, charging again. Knife drawn.

  I’m not in danger, not really, but I still flinch. The crack of a taser explodes through the air and wires bury into his back. He drops like a sack of meat, nding in the dirt with a thwomp that echoes through the woods.

  My co-workers are back. Tommy’s voice is sharp with authority as he raises a gun.

  "Not a muscle!" he yells, sweeping the weapon between the surrendering Trowkin with a rigid, militaristic rhythm. "MH, get their weapons."

  The name still stings. Now’s not the time to argue, but I still scowl at it. It feels like a leash he’s refusing to unclip. Even after st night’s confrontation.

  I collect the light sticks, now inert in my bloodied hands, and watch as George circles the creatures - dropping small red orbs in a tight pattern around them. When the st one hits the mossy dirt, a red ring snaps up from the ground, locking them in a vertical halo of containment. They’re physically frozen in pce, able to move within the space, but unable to escape.

  "Jesus, what happened to your face?" Sadie says, suddenly at my side, grimacing into the mess of blood and cracked casing where my phone is still pressed against my eye socket.

  With the lights secured, I feel safe enough to release my grip. I let the optical nerve unhook itself from the phone, letting the device drop - shattered and warm with blood. My fingers are sticky with it. I focus, letting my inner tissue pull the nerves back together, fusing the jagged remains of my eyeball back into working order. A few painful blinks. A light sting. And then I can see again. Properly.

  The phone isn’t so lucky. It somehow still works, but it’s almost painful to hold - edges splintered, casing soaked in blood and tiny pieces of shredded flesh.

  "iSight," I say, with a smirk, resurrecting the joke from earlier. It’s only after I say it that I realise it works much better in written form than spoken aloud.

  Sadie scowls and shakes her head. From her perspective, we were probably just listening to Spiritbox in the car moments ago. George and Tommy probably still think we were an hour away. The memory gap leaves them disoriented. That’s the dominant feeling here now - confusion.

  Confusion, and the sharp tang of blood in the air. Mine and the two Trowkin corpses still lying in the clearing, pooling dark red onto the moss. The baby still rests silently, unaware that it has been spared, but will never live a real life. That its mother will have no recollection of it existing.

  I expin everything to them - how we were in the hospital, how we found the Trowkin, and how I made myself blind to face them. If Sadie hadn’t already seen the phone-eyes, I might’ve left that part out, but I say it anyway. It nds exactly how I feared it would. Horrified looks. Like they’re seeing me through a new filter - something cold, unrecognisable. Other.

  "Well, excellent work, Maisie," George says. "It seems that-"

  He doesn’t get to finish, because something small and round sms into the side of my head.

  I flinch, pain fring behind my temple. I reach up, and my fingers close around the rough edge of a rock. What the-

  Charging down the hill, shrieking with rage, is the smallest Trowkin I’ve seen yet - barely up to my knee. Its skin is paler, almost ashen, and a bright red ribbon is tied around one ear. There’s a feral look in its eyes, all clenched fists and wild fury.

  "Esmeralda, no!" the Trowkin leader shouts, voice cracking with panic. It stretches out a hand - like it thinks it can catch her from here. It can’t move beyond the circle.

  Tommy raises his gun. Without thinking, I step between them. My arms wrap around the child mid-lunge. She kicks and thrashes, every inch of her bristling with rage. Her body is solid and hot with adrenaline, but not strong enough to break my grip.

  "Please," the caged Trowkin begs. "She has no part in this. She’s just a child. Don’t hurt her."

  And I believe it. Gods help me, I believe it. There’s something in its voice - the kind of desperation that can’t be faked. I look to the others, expecting... something. Understanding, maybe. But what I get is fury. An insatiable desire for revenge.

  "Just a child?" Sadie says, spitting onto the dirt. "Are you seriously going to py that card after what you’ve all done?"

  Tommy doesn’t even pretend to hide his thoughts. "Just shoot the fuckers now, I say."

  "They all need to come with us, Maisie," George says, voice ft, the only one who realises that I need to be convinced.

  The Trowkin girl writhes in my grip, cwing at me, trying to reach the others. She doesn’t understand what they are, what they’ll do. But I do.

  I remember the scientist who once ughed and told me that I used youth as a costume - to avoid the more painful experiments. I think of the child from the train, the one that Jordan mourns over. The Coalition doesn’t care if you’re just a kid. It doesn’t care if you’re innocent. They’ll find a way to rationalise it and they’ll hurt you anyway.

  And in my arms is a solution. Something clean and fast, before this tips over. I don’t argue - there’s no time. Both parties want to escate and we’re seconds away from gunshots firing. Arguing wouldn’t work anyway.

  "Forgive me," I whisper.

  I raise one of the retrieved light stick. It clicks in my hand with a sound that feels far too satisfying. The fsh erupts.

  Sadie. George. Tommy.

  Gone. Bnk stares where fury had just been.

  My heart is beating in my chest, and the trees feel like they’re holding their breath. I’ve returned my senses to normal, but everything still feels heightened - too sharp, too alive. I’ve just betrayed The Coalition. I’ve committed an act that could get me locked back up forever, and I don’t regret it. Not as I watch a father and daughter hold each other through an invisible prison wall, saying goodbye for the st time.

  Gill, the Trowkin I’ve been speaking to, assured me that my comrades would be out of action for about ten minutes. He’s used every second of it. Not to beg for release - he hasn’t even asked. Just to hold his daughter, and give her advice he knows she won’t be old enough to follow. He’s never once pleaded with me for either himself or his brethren. And I don’t know whether it’s because he thinks it would be useless... or because he believes he deserves what’s coming.

  As Esmeralda turns and runs - small feet thumping against the forest floor - I feel a flicker of relief. She’s gone. She’s alive. But it’s quickly smothered by something colder. Fear, maybe. Fear that she’ll grow up in the shadows. That she’ll hurt people. That I’ll have created another monster. I shove that thought away, lock it down. I did what I had to do. I can’t come back from it, but I’d do it all over again.

  Gill looks at me with teary eyes. "I will never be able to repay you for what you have just done, and yet... I must ask a favour."

  I nod, already knowing. "You want me to come back and make sure that she’s okay?"

  He gives a weary smile. "Precisely. She is capable, as all young Trowkin are, but she will be miserable on her own. I just want to know that somebody is looking out for her. Especially after..."

  He pauses, looking over to the two corpses on the ground in the clearing. Two more of his children? Or just two friends? Either way, they’re dead. The unlucky ones who were sughtered before they had a chance to surrender.

  The quiet around us feels heavy now, as if the forest itself is holding its breath. "I’ll do what I can, Gill," I say. "I’m sorry for how this all worked out."

  He shakes his head. "No, don’t be. We were fools."

  And maybe they were. Maybe they were worse. But I look at him, and I see something closer to human than monster. And I know that’s dangerous.

  There’s a collective gasp of air behind me, sharp and synchronised, and we both go stiff. My teammates are waking up. Scanning the scene: Maisie, standing beside four encased Trowkin.

  "What the hell?" Sadie says, her voice tight. "Did we get fucking wiped again? For the second time?"

  I ugh, a little too quickly. "Something like that. I’ll tell you guys all about it."

  I don’t tell them about the phone this time. I can’t stand to see Sadie’s reaction to it again. And I definitely don’t tell them what I just did.

  The first hour... for the st time.

  I ride back with Sadie.

  I didn’t expect it to be dark by the time we left, but so much time spent weaving in and out of remembering makes the hours blur. The woods feel further away now - like a dream that’s been packed up and filed away.

  George is still in Dunbne, calling every senior agent on his contact list to sort the logistics of moving four mostly-cooperative Trowkin and one newborn that barely exists on paper.

  "I just realised," I say, softly, "you won’t remember our ride back from the hospital."

  She frowns. "Why? What happened?"

  My heart stings a little. I know she won’t believe me. I also don’t know what she did when I was blind - whatever test she ran to make sure I couldn’t see - and now neither of us will ever know.

  "We listened to Taylor Swift and we both cried."

  A scoff. "Yeah, of all the things that did not happen..."

  "Sadie," I say, and my voice must be more serious than I realise because she flinches slightly, her hands tightening on the wheel. "You are possibly the only person in the world granted the honour of listening to All Too Well for the first time, twice. I beg that you do not waste it."

  She rolls her eyes. "Fine. You can show me some other time. But I’m really not in the mood now. Today has... well, it’s been an experience."

  "Yeah," I say, exhaling. "It has."

  There’s a beat. Just long enough to lull me into a false sense of calm.

  "So," she says, carefully, "are you going to tell me why you wiped our memories?"

  My stomach drops like a trapdoor opening beneath me. I whip my head to her, though I don’t know what I expect to see - her eyes are on the road, hands perfectly still on the wheel.

  "What?" I say, too fast.

  Her expression doesn’t change, but her voice hardens. "Maisie, you can safely assume those two idiots won’t notice anything weird, but your story? It made zero sense. If George already had the Trowkin contained, then how did he get wiped again?"

  I open my mouth. My skin prickles.

  "One of them still had a light," I say, too defensively. It’s flimsy, and we both know it.

  "No," she says ftly. "They didn’t. Nobody would’ve let that happen. Which means something wiped our memory after the situation was already under control. And given that you’re the one writing the timeline, I have to assume it was you."

  The silence that follows is thick and charged. I feel her waiting - not with rage, not even with disappointment exactly, but something slower. Something that might turn into either. I much prefer having Sadie’s nose on my side, rather than working against me.

  I nod. "Yes. It was me."

  The words leave my mouth like a spark hurled at a gas leak. I picture white coats and reinforced doors. My basement door locked shut again. The threat has always lived in my bone marrow, but today - it’s buzzing.

  Her jaw tenses. The quiet is louder than yelling.

  "Why?" she asks eventually. Quiet. Not kind. Just calm.

  I sigh. "I can’t tell you, Sadie. I’m sorry. I only took a few minutes, but... trust me, I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t necessary."

  I watch her think - really think. I can practically see the gears grinding behind her eyes as she weighs up what I’ve done, what it might mean, and what kind of person I am. I’m bracing for the worst. For shouting. For protocol. For restraints. My fingers twitch at the thought of iron bars and needles.

  But instead, she nods. "Fine. I trust you. And I’ll forever be grateful that you came up here with me. We saved countless lives, and if a secret is the cost of that, so be it."

  She pauses - just long enough to make my breath catch.

  "But if you ever fuck around with my brain again, Maisie," she says, calm and cold, "I will not be as forgiving the second time. Do you understand?"

  I nod quickly, shrinking into my seat like a child being scolded. "I understand. I’m sorry. It was the only way."

  The car hums along the dark road, quiet but for the purr of the engine and the occasional whip of wind through the trees. It’s warmer in here than it was before - somehow. Not just physically, but in the air between us. Not friendly, exactly. But softer. Peaceful. Like we’re both too tired to fight anymore.

  We drive in silence for a few miles. Then:

  "George gave me the lights to take back to the office," she says. "Do you think if we commit to fshing ourselves as soon as we get home, it’ll be like we teleported?"

  I blink at her, then ugh. A short, startled sound. "I don’t think so? We’d still have to live through it. But I guess it’d be like teleporting to your future self. A sort of... deyed gratification."

  "Let’s do it," she says, as casually as if she’s proposing we stop for snacks. "Because it makes the next two hours exciting."

  "How so?"

  "We can say anything to each other. Zero consequences."

  "That is... so fucked up."

  She grins, and I can hear it in her voice. "Are you saying you don’t want to do it?"

  It feels like a bizarre thing for her to suggest so quickly after chastising me over pying with her memory. But she seems more enthusiastic about the idea than I would expect. Like it means something more than just getting home quickly. Besides, it does sound kind of fun. In a sick and twisted way.

  "No, I’m in. Does this mean you’re going to tell me your guilty pleasure?"

  She stiffens at the wheel. "Don’t push it."

  I lean in, teasing. "Come on. One secret for another."

  She exhales slowly, hands tight on the steering wheel. "Fine. It’s Ed Sh-"

  I’m standing in my room, holding one of the metal rods tightly. I timed it well - left myself just enough memory to recall the beginning of our stupid little game, and exactly enough sylbles to know that Sadie Cross should feel deeply ashamed of her guilty pleasure. I pray she doesn’t remember telling me, just so I can casually drop Ed Sheeran lyrics into conversation and watch her squirm. I throw myself back onto the bed, unaware of how wide I’m smiling.

  My phone’s still wrecked, but I’ve gone numb to it. I open the Notes app - empty. Past Maisie kept her promise. No Sadie secrets, no cheeky confessions saved. I should feel proud. Responsible, even.

  But as I swipe to lock the screen, I drag my palm against a jagged edge of the shattered casing. "Shit," I hiss, dropping it - along with a single bead of blood - onto the floor. The phone hits hard and slides a little, and when I crouch to pick it up, I realise it’s opened itself into the photos app.

  My heart stops dead in its tracks as I stare at the most recently taken photo. I am not being metaphorical, reader, I’m dead. This is the end of the book - my heart stopped functioning, and I dropped dead on my bedroom floor. They found me a few days ter, and held a lovely ceremony for me. Everybody came. And they never found out the reason, because my phone had automatically locked and nobody knew my password. Some idiot tried using my facial ID, but I don’t have that set-up for obvious reasons.

  And if they had somehow managed to unlock my phone, they would’ve died too - because the picture staring back at them would be so vomit-inducing, so disgusting, so evil that it would make anybody want to stop existing. Religions would form around the photo, groups fighting to make sure that others don’t see it.

  The whole world would come crashing down over it. The most recent image on my screen is a still taken from the front-facing camera, phone resting in my p. The quality is awful, with a crack running through it. But it’s still clear. Sadie Cross is kissing me on the lips. And we’re both smiling.

  For a long moment, I can’t move. My skin crawls with heat. I want to cw the memory out of my body, but it’s not even mine to cw. I don’t have it.

  Sadie’s face looks so tender. Soft in a way I’ve never seen before. There’s no smirk, no smugness. And my face? I’m not flinching. I’m not panicking. I’m leaning in.

  I sm the phone onto the bed, screen down, like that might make it less real. But it’s burned into my brain now - the sliver of lip contact, the way her hand is cupping my cheek, how natural it all looks. It feels... impossible. Like we’re different people entirely.

  What the hell did I say? What did she say?

  Who started it?

  Who do I want to have started it?

  I don’t know what’s worse. That it happened, that I’ll never remember it, or that I look like I wanted it.

  And now, no matter what happens - no matter what this is - it’s already been erased. Just another phantom limb in the long, long list.

  I roll over, burying my face into the pillow, heart hammering so loud it could register on a RED graph. There’s a deep, endless thrum in my head that won’t go away.

  What the fuck happened in that car?

  LilAgarwal