POV: Evan
The alarm didn't go off.
I opened one eye and the clock on the nightstand mocked me: 7:48.
Shift start: 8:00.
Distance to the precinct: twenty minutes if I drive like a maniac.
Today called for driving like a maniac.
"Shit, fuck!" I jumped out of bed, tangling in the sheets and almost cracking my head on the nightstand.
I dressed in jumps, hunting for the clean shirt that, of course, was wrinkled on the floor. I shoved my boots on without lacing them and slid into the hallway on my socks.
The crunch under my feet stopped me.
Glass. The ceiling bulb was still shattered, scattered like glass confetti. Last night's memory slapped me: the darkness, Ayla's black eyes, the slam that nearly knocked the building down.
I looked at door 3B. Closed. Dead silence.
My instinct said: check if she's still there. My clock said: you're fired.
The clock won.
I ran down the stairs, two at a time. Just as I passed her door, it opened. Without a sound.
Ayla was there. Impeccable. Same black clothes, hair as straight as ink, that microscope stare.
"Your cortisol levels are skyrocketing," she said. Straight to the autopsy.
"I'm going to be late, Ayla!" I bellowed without stopping. "Sergeant Kowalski is going to kill me! He's going to rip my head off and use it as an ashtray!"
I paused for a second on the landing, fastening my duty belt.
She leaned over the railing. Tilted her head, a quick, birdlike motion.
"Specify threat?" Her voice dropped a tone, sounding like metal scraping.
"My boss! He's an ogre!" I shouted, desperate, keeping up my run. "If I don't get there in ten minutes I'm a dead man. Don't leave the floor!"
I burst into the cold air, threw myself into the patrol car and started it. The engine sputtered before roaring. I peeled out.
I didn't look back. I was in too much of a hurry.
If I had checked the rearview, I would have seen that Ayla didn't stay on the floor. I would have seen her leap over the third-floor railing, land on the asphalt without a sound and start running after my car.
---
POV: Ayla
Running is inefficient. Human anatomy wastes energy on vertical movement. Still, my synthetic muscles compensate for the design flaw.
I match Evan's combustion-vehicle pace from the shadows. I leap fences, cross low rooftops. I do not tire.
I process the information:
Subject: Evan.
Threat: Sergeant Kowalski.
Declared intention: decapitation of subject Evan.
Assessment: unacceptable.
Evan is my camouflage. He is my shelter provider and source of the black stimulant. Last night, when my mind collapsed under the memory of the Hive and I almost killed him, he stayed.
There is a debt. If his "Boss" takes him out, I lose my primary asset.
The vehicle skids in front of a gray-brick building. Precinct. The air reeks of stale gunpowder, stressed male sweat and sugar.
Evan runs in, tripping over his feet. I follow.
I activate Mimicry.
I walk slowly. Chin down. Hands in pockets because my nails are growing, searching for flesh. I relax my shoulders.
Now I am an innocuous human female. A "civilian."
I enter the lobby. There's chaos, phones, armed humans. No one looks at me; my suit absorbs the light. I'm a blind spot in their peripheral vision.
A roar makes the glass vibrate. It comes from a glass fish tank at the back.
"Evan!" a deep voice bellows. "Get your ass over here right now!"
I see Evan. He shrinks. His posture is total submission: slumped shoulders, exposed neck.
A large human male, his face red and about to explode, rises from behind a desk.
"You're twenty minutes late!" The male slams the desk. Crack! "I told you if you failed me again I'd kill you! I'm going to rip your fucking head off!"
Confirmation.
The code is literal. The sentence has been handed down.
Time stops. My two hearts synchronize. Thump-thump.
Adrenaline floods my veins.
No one sees me move. I vault the reception counter. I land without a sound. I cross the room in three strides no human eye registers.
The male "Kowalski" raises a hand toward Evan. It's an attack.
I step in.
---
POV: Evan
"Sergeant, I'm sorry, the alarm… traffic…"
"I don't give a shit about traffic!" Kowalski was red. The vein on his forehead looked like a living worm. "You're a mess, Evan! I'm going to—!"
A gust of air hit my face.
Something black landed on Kowalski's desk.
BAM!
Papers, pens and the coffee mug went flying.
I blinked, dazed.
Ayla was there. Crouched on Kowalski's desk like a gargoyle, her face five centimeters from Kowalski's nose. Her boots had crushed my evaluation report.
Silence in the precinct was absolute.
Kowalski froze, his index finger still raised, pointing at nobody.
Ayla growled.
It was not a human scream. It was a low vibration I felt in my molars.
Her right hand shot out and grabbed the sergeant's tie knot. She pulled upward with brute force, forcing Kowalski to stand on tiptoe to avoid choking.
"Decapitation of subject Evan is unacceptable," she hissed.
Her eyes. God, her eyes.
They were tar pits. There was no white. Only darkness.
"If you try to separate his skull from his torso," she said in an eerily calm voice, "I will pull your spine out through your mouth."
Kowalski went purple.
"Ghhh... ghh...?" he tried to speak, grabbing Ayla's wrist. But she didn't even flinch. It was like trying to bend a steel bar.
My brain took three seconds to reboot.
Shit! What I'd said on the stairs!
She took it literally.
"Ayla! No!" I screamed, finally reacting. "Let him go!"
I lunged at her, grabbing her by the waist. It was like trying to push a building.
"It's a metaphor!" I wailed hysterically. "It's a figure of speech! Nobody's going to rip my head off! Please, don't pull out his spine! I need to pay the rent!"
Ayla blinked. The inhuman tension in her shoulders dropped a millimeter.
She looked at Kowalski, who was gasping like a fish. Then she looked at me.
"Metaphor?" she asked, genuinely confused. "No summary execution?"
"No! Just yelling. Work yelling. It's… human resources."
Ayla let go of the tie with a snap. Kowalski fell backward into his chair, coughing and rubbing his neck.
She stepped down from the desk with a fluid motion, smoothed her clothes and snapped back into her "normal neighbor" posture in the blink of an eye.
"Understood," she said, expressionless. "Cultural translation error. Threat canceled."
I turned to the room. Thirty cops were staring at us, some with their hands on their holsters.
Kowalski caught his breath. He stood up, red with fury and fear.
"Evan!" he roared in a broken voice. "What the hell is this!? Who is this crazy woman!?"
Cold sweat ran down my back. Think fast, Evan.
"She's… my cousin," I blurted.
Ayla opened her mouth.
"Negative. Not shar—"
"She's my distant cousin!" I shouted, cutting her off. "From… uh… Estonia. From the mountains. Doesn't speak the language well. Takes everything literally. And she's… a Krav Maga champion. Very protective of family. Anger issues."
Kowalski looked at Ayla. Ayla looked at Kowalski as if calculating the calories in his liver.
Kowalski swallowed. He'd seen death in those black eyes.
"Get your… cousin out of here," he growled, avoiding her gaze. "And go on patrol. If I see you in the next hour, I'll arrest you and the ninja."
"Yes, sir!"
I grabbed Ayla by the arm. She was hard as a rock.
"Let's go. Now."
I dragged her toward the exit. She walked calm, scanning the officers' weapons.
"Her threat level is insignificant," she whispered as we left. "It's all noise. Inefficient."
"Shut up," I begged quietly. "Just walk. And leave people's spines where they belong."
---
POV: Third Person
The chaos in the precinct dissipated little by little. Normality is a shield people raise quickly when they see something they don't understand.
But in a corner, Detective Vance did not take his eyes off the door.
Vance was an old dog from the vice squad. He had seen everything. But he'd never seen anyone move like that.
It wasn't fast. It was instantaneous.
Vance walked slowly to the sergeant's desk, taking advantage of the fact that Kowalski had gone to the bathroom to splash water on his face.
He looked at the desk surface. Solid oak.
Where the girl had planted her left hand to push off, there were four marks.
They weren't scratches. They were deep impressions. The wood was dented, compressed by several tons of pressure concentrated on a single point.
Vance took out his notebook. He wet the tip of his pen and wrote slowly:
Incident: Evan.
Unknown woman. Possible name: Ayla.
Anomalous strength. Impossible pressure impressions.
Investigate.
He closed the notebook and smiled crookedly, like someone smelling blood in the water.
"Estonian cousin, huh?" he murmured. "We'll see, Evan. We'll see."