The diner's vinyl booths glistened faintly beneath the hum of amber lights. Conversations murmured like water through pipes, each table its own current, pulling stories quietly along. Mia sat hunched in a corner booth, a cup of untouched coffee cooling at her elbow.
She kept her head down, her cap angled low, while her ears reached across the room.
"…he said he found something," a voice muttered two booths over.
The voice was unmistakable.
Sarah's father.
"…letters. Not hers. Not handwriting I recognize. But she's hiding something."
Mia's stomach tightened.
She slid her hand under the table, fingers finding the edge of a napkin from the dispenser. Her pen emerged from her sleeve like second nature, the motion practiced, automatic. She wrote quickly.
Monday. 6PM. He's coming.
The napkin trembled slightly under her palm.
Her other hand cupped the side of her face, eyes fixed on the window where the rain had started to mist.
"…don't care if she's at school or the damn White House. If she's lying, I'll find out."
The words were calm. That made them worse.
Mia's breath faltered, then steadied. She folded the napkin and pressed it into her jacket pocket.
When she rose, the bell above the door jangled.
She didn't look back.
But her steps faltered when she caught sight of the waitress clearing a nearby table—short, dark bob, profile half-turned.
Her heart seized.
It was her.
It had to be.
No. The angle shifted. A stranger's face.
Mia's knees weakened for half a step before she regained pace, shoving the door open.
Wind slapped her cheeks.
"That face… it wasn't her," she whispered.
But doubt itched beneath her ribs.
Rain beaded on her sleeves.
She pulled the hood up, fingers tightening on her collar.
The napkin crinkled in her pocket.
She clutched it as she walked.
Half a block away, her hand brushed the pocket again.
Empty.
She stopped.
Turned.
The wind had picked up.
Paper danced across the sidewalk like something alive.
She ran.
She reached the curb just in time to see it skitter beneath the wheels of a passing bus. Tires blurred the ink. The corner tore.
Mia knelt, breath ragged.
She retrieved what was left—a triangle corner, soggy and frayed. Only the edge of her scrawl survived.
"Monday. 6…"
Her jaw locked.
She couldn't afford loss.
Not now.
She pulled her sleeve over her fingers and pressed the paper flat against the brick wall beside her. Her pen was already out again, tracing the message anew in her smallest, clearest handwriting.
Monday. 6PM. He's coming.
Then, beneath it:
Intercept route. Back entrance. Notify S only if necessary.
She folded the scrap into her notebook and sealed it under adhesive tape.
Back at her apartment, the lights stayed off. She moved by the glow of her phone, checking the window blinds twice before settling at her desk.
On the far wall, a map of the campus and surrounding blocks was already marked with colored pins and post-its. She added a new red marker to the diner's location, then drew a faint dotted line toward the school's southern gate.
She knew him well enough now.
He would circle. He would test the edges.
She returned to her journal. One entry opened automatically from muscle memory:
"Trigger phrases: 'don't care if,' 'find out,' voice tone stable. Not escalated—worse."
She added today's date.
The rain tapped against her window like impatient fingers.
And Mia wrote until the words inside her steadied.
She reviewed the surveillance log she'd started two weeks ago—time stamps, locations, phrases intercepted. Her handwriting varied slightly in each entry, a built-in fail-safe in case of breach. But the message stayed constant: watch, record, protect.
Across the room, her encrypted phone buzzed once.
She unlocked it, scanned the notification.
Query Alert: External Lookup: "Sarah Yuen + University ID."
Mia froze.
It had begun.
She typed one word into her terminal:
FLAG.
Below it, she appended a single sentence:
"If found circling admin records—contact Mia node direct."
She paused.
Then added a line beneath:
"This is not a test."
Outside, the rain intensified, blurring the world behind the glass.
Mia's breath fogged the window. She reached up and traced a circle in the mist, then a slash through it.
Her fingers remained steady.
She would not wait for the second strike.
Then, her gaze lifted toward the corner shelf—where Sarah's old student ID sat, tucked behind an innocuous book spine. Mia reached for it slowly, brushed her fingers along its worn edge. It was cracked at the corner, the photo slightly faded, but the name remained: SARAH YUEN.
She held it like an artifact. Or a shield.
Then she slid it into a reinforced envelope and labeled it: "Fallback Signal – 113."
Mia exhaled and leaned back, letting the silence of her apartment settle around her. But it wasn't peace. It was pressure building between seconds.
A quiet that waited to be broken.
And Mia, more alert than ever.
She scrolled through the latest keyword ping reports. A name that shouldn't have surfaced had reappeared in a state database trace. Mia ran a comparison. It matched an alias she knew he'd used before. The timing couldn't be coincidence.
She tapped her desk twice and slid open the bottom drawer. Her emergency kit sat ready: burner phone, printed photos, bus schedules, SIM cards—each labeled in code. She extracted the phone and checked the preloaded numbers.
Just in case.
A moment later, she set it aside and returned to the monitor.
Her reflection hovered in the screen—subtle, pale beneath the dim light—and in that silence, she whispered:
"Sarah doesn't need to see this coming."
And she wouldn't.
Because Mia would already be in motion.
And somewhere between the silence and the strike, she would intercept everything that threatened to break.
She leaned forward again, fingers poised over the keyboard.
A new notification blinked into existence—Proximity Ping: Target Node Detected – 5 Blocks Radius.
Mia's pulse quickened. Not fear. Precision.
She clicked open the interface, watching the red dot blink on the map overlay. Moving west. Too steady to be a civilian walk.
She clicked twice, activating background audio on the nearest microphone node. Nothing but wind.
Then—
Footsteps.
Measured. Deliberate.
She didn't need to see the face to know.
He was here.
She closed the laptop gently. Stood. Took her coat.
And left before the echo could settle.
The hallway light outside her apartment flickered as she passed. A whisper of movement from the neighboring stairwell made her pause.
She waited.
Nothing.
But she made note. Shadow. Right-hand corner. Height approximate.
Everything was a pattern.
Everything was information.
She stepped out into the alley behind her building. Rain misted her cheeks, but her focus remained unbroken. She crossed the street diagonally, slipping between passing headlights, and moved behind the awning of the old bookstore.
From there, she waited.
She saw him. Just a silhouette beneath the streetlamp two blocks away. Stationary.
Then a slow pivot.
Mia didn't blink.
The signal had come.
The game had shifted.