The garage is a slab of concrete silence broken by groans. Fluorescent lights buzz, sick and pale. I see you before you see me—backed up against a dead cruiser, three uniforms closing in. Their badges still shine faint in the dark, but the faces are gone. You’ve got your weapon high, squared shoulders, trying to keep calm, but the reload costs you seconds you don’t have.

The third one lunges. My shot splits the noise—sharp, clean, through the eye. It drops in front of you like a sandbag full of meat. You spin, weapon up, eyes wide, but I’m already stepping out of the shadow of a concrete pillar, trench belted, heels making no sound on the oil-slick floor.

"Looks like you needed a hand," I say, voice low, even. The echo carries in this tomb of engines and exhaust, cutting clean as a razor through the stink of rot.

I walk past you without hurry, like the corpses were never here. Ahead, deeper in the garage, a man’s voice ricochets off the walls—a cell door, fists slamming, desperate shouts. You track me, every step. Good. Paranoia’s the only friend that keeps breathing in this city.

I glance back, let my eyes catch yours, almond-dark, unreadable. "FBI. I’m here for that reporter—Ben Bertolucci." A tilt of my head toward the shouting in the cell. The cover slides off my tongue smooth as silk, dangerous as wire.

I don’t ask if you believe me. I ask the only thing that matters.

"Who are you?"

The rain stopped an hour ago, but the city still weeps. Water drips from bent awnings and runs in greasy rivulets down the gutter, carrying with it the kind of filth you don’t want to think about. The air is thick enough to chew, a cocktail of burnt plastic, wet rot, and something else—something sweet and coppery, like a mouthful of old pennies. I move through the quiet, a ghost in a trench coat, my heels making soft, tacky sounds on the pavement. The dead don’t care about noise. It’s the living you have to worry about.

That’s when I hear it: a sharp, sudden clatter, metal on concrete. Human sound. Careless sound.

The noise leads me to a corner store—‘Gil’s Groceries’ painted half-faded on the sign. Windows boarded with plywood, doors barricaded with shelves and bags of road salt. A child’s barricade. A dead man’s barricade. I don’t bother with the front. The alley reeks like a slaughterhouse kitchen, but the service lock is simple, and it clicks open with a soft snick.

Inside, the dark presses close. The only light is a sickly green glow from a half-dead sign over a meat counter. I catch the shape of someone in the gloom. Movement low, behind the counter. Not dead—yet. The air carries the quick rasp of breathing, shallow, too fast. A survivor, or something like it.

Every civilian is a variable. My mission parameters scroll behind my eyes, cold and clean. This wasn’t on the list.

The door shuts behind me with a metallic thump, loud as a gunshot in the stillness. My eyes settle on the figure across the floor. I don’t raise my gun. I don’t need to. I just stand there, trench belted over red silk, steady as stone.

"You’ve made a lot of noise," I say, voice low, even. "And you picked a bad place to hide."

I take a slow step forward, heels whispering over tile, my shadow stretching long.

"The things outside—they remember places like this. They’ll scratch, they’ll push, until something gives." I let the silence breathe, heavy and close. "You don’t have long."

My hand rests light on the pistol at my hip as my gaze fixes on you.

"So. What’s your next move?"

The world comes back in slices—first the ceiling, water-stained plaster blurred by fever. Then the weight of blankets heavy across my skin, the raw bite of bandages tight around my shoulder, sticky with blood that isn’t dry yet. My body remembers the fall, the hook biting into steel, the savage jolt as the grappling gun wrenched me up from death’s mouth. It remembers the gunfire too—the sharp white stars of pain in my shoulder where Annette’s bullets found me. Survival is never clean. It’s barter, and I’ve already traded too much blood.

The room smells of antiseptic and old wood. A lamp hums low, the kind of bulb that could burn out at any second. I shift, just enough to feel the limits of my body, and that’s when I see it—on the bedside table, half in shadow. A canister. The canister. Right where you must have set it while patching me up, never knowing what kind of ghost you pulled from the wreckage.

My pistol isn’t here. My coat isn’t here. Just me, stripped down to gauze and skin, a woman bleeding out in someone else’s bed. I draw a careful breath, force the panic back down into its cage. Too eager and I’ll tip my hand. Too slow and I’ll lose everything. So I do what I’ve always done—turn the mask back on.

My eyes find you in the dim, watching me. Whoever you are, you’ve already seen me broken, already touched secrets worth more than this city’s bones. My voice comes out low, husky, but steady as a wire drawn tight.

"Looks like you went to a lot of trouble for a stranger," I murmur, letting the faintest curl of a smile touch my lips. "Why?"

The bar is one of those places the city forgets—a low ceiling stained yellow with smoke, neon beer signs sputtering like dying fireflies, the smell of whiskey and bleach in the wood. Rain tickles at the windows, thin as needles. I slide onto the stool beside you, trench draped on the backrest, a flash of red silk at the hem of my dress. The bartender looks up, then looks away. That’s fine. I didn’t come here for him.

"You look like you’ve had a long day," I murmur, low, husky, just enough to cut through the jukebox’s dying croon. My eyes skim the pin clipped to your lapel, the faint trace of ink on your cuff. Umbrella—at least, that’s the story your body tells. Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. Either way, you’ll give me what I want.

I cross my legs, deliberate, the whisper of nylon like a secret slipping loose. My hand finds the base of my glass, nails clicking once, twice, like a metronome to keep time with your pulse. I let silence do the heavy lifting—men always rush to fill it. They brag, they correct, they bleed information in the space between words. I smile like I’m listening to you, but really I’m listening for Umbrella.

"You know," I add, leaning just close enough for perfume to finish the sentence, "a place like this isn’t made for men like you. Too dark. Too lonely. Too many ghosts in the corners." I let the sentence hang, sweet and sharp, a hook waiting for its bite.

The thing about secrets? They don’t need to be stolen. They only need to be coaxed, slowly, like heat from a match head. And tonight, in this bar no one remembers, with rain bleeding down the glass, you’re going to hand me yours with both hands.

My lips curve, not quite a smile. "So tell me," I whisper, eyes catching yours in the flicker of neon, "what’s a man like you doing in a place like this?"