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Episode 33 — Rain and Reckoning
POV: Layla
The rain hit the quad like a deadline — hard, quick, and impossible to ignore. I ducked under the nearest awning and saw him: Ethan, the wet line of hair at his temple, shoulders set like he'd been carved from patience. He threaded his fingers with mine without a word; that single touch said more than three lectures on attachment theory ever could.
"Coffee?" he asked. His voice was the only sensible thing in the hush of water and students hustling past.
"Yes," I said. My throat felt too full to explain what was coiling at the edges: the note in my pocket, the way somebody kept trimming the edges of our day with anonymous cruelty. Today was supposed to be normal. That's what Marcus wanted — normal, then bait. But Marcus wasn't here; Ethan was. Normal didn't need explanation when his hands were warm.
We moved through the student center like a practiced pair: two bodies that knew the script for keeping calm. People watched us — students who liked to watch other students — but none of them mattered. I wanted the rain to scrub the campus clean of whatever had been sticking to us for weeks. I wanted to believe it could.
Inside the café, steam made small ghosts above our mugs. Ethan leaned in. "How are you doing, really?" he asked.
"Alive," I said, and that was true. "Nervous. Annoyed. A little sick of being careful."
He smiled, that tight smile that meant business. "Good," he said. "Then keep being alive and not reckless. Marcus is handling the rest."
"Marcus —" My lips opened and closed. I didn't want the details. I didn't want the list of times and feeds and IP hops. I wanted to keep my head simple: classes, a few readings, the roof at night. Ethan nodded like he heard the part I'd actually said. He tucked a damp strand behind my ear the way he did when he wanted to calm things. It worked.
Class was a blur of Dr. Holloway drawing diagrams about confirmation bias. I nodded at the right moments and wrote the right notes because there are places where concentration is mandatory, even if your life is quietly fraying at the seams. By lunch my phone buzzed with nothing important: a group chat about an assignment, a meme from Chloe that made me laugh even though the joke was terrible. I kept my messages tight; Marcus's instruction was simple and brutal: stay low.
At two Marcus pinged me — a single line: "Keep your evening." He didn't say why. He never did. That was how Marcus worked: he gave cover and held the wet end of trouble while everyone else kept living. I slid my jacket on more firmly and texted Chloe, who answered with three emojis and the word "watch." Chloe was always in motion; she could see the micro-details the rest of us missed.
By mid-afternoon the sky cleared like someone had ironed a sheet. Ethan suggested we walk the long way, past Adel's bookshop on the corner. "I need paper," he lied lightly.
Adel's bell jangled as we entered. The shop smelled of ink and rain, cheap cologne and old paper. Adel greeted us like he'd been waiting for us to be ordinary: "Back so soon, Mr. Marshall?"
Ethan smiled. "You know me. Impulse buyer."
Adel's gaze flicked to me, then to the back door where Juno worked the press. Juno looked up and gave a small nod; paint flecks dotted her sleeve like a constellation. Mia sat in the window, her sketchbook balanced on her knee, pencil moving in measured lines. Her face lit with the sort of concentration that made her interesting to watch — part scanner, part artist. She'd been the one sketching that mural angle Marcus had flagged; her drawings had been sharp enough to be evidence and gentle enough to be art.
Chloe stood near the door, bright and casual, checking a list on her phone. She was in charge of the ground observations; Marcus had made that clear, and she took it with the theatrical seriousness she used for club invites. We all had our small parts to play: Ethan, a calm center; Chloe, the eyes on the ground; Mia, the visual recorder; me — the person whose life the attacker seemed intent on rearranging.
A woman came in then, and everything tightened like a held breath. She was slight, wrapped in a coat trimmed with flecks of dried paint, and bore an umbrella that had the same dull smears you'd expect of someone who painted in the rain. She moved to the counter and asked for the back office terminal to collect a pre-paid order. Her voice was small, practical; she paid with cash. No one treated the request as odd. People asked for the terminal all the time.
Mia didn't look up from her sketch. But her pencil did a sharp little flourish. Chloe's fingers paused over her screen like a hawk about to dive.
I stayed near Ethan, more because proximity made me feel less like a marked thing and more like part of the safe. Ethan watched the woman in the way husbands watch doors — careful and a little tight. Adel hesitated: "Be right back, Ms. —?"
"She's Juno's friend," he said. "She'll be quick."
The woman stepped into the little office. Light narrowed there, a rectangle of wood and glass, keys and a terminal. I tried not to stare, but the pull of it was grotesque. There was a ritual to what the woman did: an almost ceremonial slide of paper, a folded pamphlet she smoothed with both hands, the slow motion of someone placing a token into a machine and stepping back like a practiced pilgrim.
Ethan's phone buzzed under the table. He looked at it, then at me, then gave the smallest of nods — the one that said: stay with me, keep to our script, trust me. I trusted him; the alternative was terrifying. I wanted to know everything, but Marcus had taught me a worse lesson: knowledge without context becomes a weapon against the people you love.
We watched the woman leave. She paused at the window, looked in — and for a second her eyes slid to where Mia sat sketching. She smiled, the kind of smile that is private and satisfied in the same breath, and walked away with her umbrella tucked like a secret. Chloe's hand found my elbow and squeezed. It said nothing; it didn't have to.
Outside, the rain began again in a soft, finishing drizzle. The woman's shoulders hunched against the wet as she moved down the street. That was the moment Marcus would like: a trace, a seal, a person moving through the same beat as the packet he'd been tracking. I felt it in the way the back of my neck prickled: a hint of exposure without words.
That evening, when Ethan put his jacket around me and we headed for the roof, my phone stayed quiet. Marcus knew how to move: the work happened in channels Layla didn't need to see. He preferred the quiet arithmetic of evidence. We weren't told the technicalities, just the fact that people were watching the right windows and the right doors. That was enough for me.
On the roof the lights of the campus blinked like a scattered constellation. Ethan sat close enough that I could feel his warmth through the jacket. "You okay?" he asked again, as if the word were a promise he wanted to back with action.
"Yes," I said. It was simpler and truer than it had been in the morning. "We saw someone."
"We did," he agreed. "It was a step. Marcus got something."
"Marcus got something," I repeated, tasting the phrase like an anchor. I knew Marcus's victories were never clean — they came in fragments: a header, a receipt, a sketch. Good enough to build on, not enough to end anything. But building is how things change.
Ethan reached for me and his hands said what words did not: steady, close, present. He kissed my temple then my mouth, careful and fierce at once. "We keep doing this," he promised into the space between us. "Quiet. Smart. Together."
"Together," I echoed, and it felt right to say it aloud. The roof gave us permission to be small and ordinary in the middle of the chaos: two people who refused to let a watcher script their days.
We sat there while the rain slowed to a hush, the city breathing out after a day full of small storms. I took Ethan's hand and kept it in mine until the night felt like something we owned for a little while. Evidence waits to be built; patience is how you make it hold. Tonight we had a line, a name in Mia's quick sketch, the woman's umbrella printed in my peripheral memory. It was enough to keep us moving forward.
When I slid my hand from his and headed back down, the world felt quieter by degrees — not safe, but manageable for tonight. Tomorrow would bring subpoenas, or more traces, or Marcus's steady lists of items to check. Tonight it brought him and the roof and a small map of steps we would take.
Outside the dorm, Chloe hugged me like a living thing. "Good work," she whispered, fierce and bright. Mia only offered a look that said she had seen what she needed to see; her page held a quick line-drawing of an umbrella and a folded pamphlet. I folded that small paper into my palm like a promise.
I slept thinking of small things: Mia's lines, Adel's nervous shrug, the way the woman had smiled. None of them solved everything. But the net was tightening in ways that mattered. When you fight with facts, you rarely get fireworks — you get small, stubborn evidence that eventually forces a confession.
That was enough for tonight.
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