2.

  Stella of the Sea

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  Our eyes locked, and I did not let her go.

  Iris—Legacy operative, probable field rank mid-tier, based on posture and shoe wear—stood with her weight balanced, but her pulse fluttered in her throat. She hid it well, as most adults did. She didn't respond to her name as I had anticipated, so I had no choice but to continue observing her. I stared, peeking from behind my mother's figure now, who had silently slid over my position and stuck her body in between the perceived danger.

  I felt no fear—it was just noise; I waited calmly.

  “Confirm your identity, Miss Alice.” Oliver, my mother’s work colleague, demanded. “Aris gave me words, but I need a truth my hands can hold.” He inclined his head in the direction of my area of the room.

  “Anne? Your assessment, please.”

  My existence—and even my name—was meant to remain a secret from everyone. However, Oliver had demonstrated reliability and trustworthiness, making him a suitable individual to be granted access to such sensitive information. I slid from the sofa, let the blanket whisper to the floor and walked past my mother. I counted three steps per second, regulating my pace so my approach would not elevate anyone’s heart rate further. Outside average arm reach.

  “The woman in front of us is a female, late twenties. Height: one hundred seventy-one point two centimetres and fifty-one kilograms.” I started noting the obvious first. “But her hair is the wrong colour. It doesn’t absorb light as it should; it rejects it. The colour at her roots doesn't match the tips, which implies she has a wig on, which was put on hastily.”

  Her eyes widened a fraction.

  “The skin texture is also uneven,” I said, looking at her hands. “Her knuckles appear pale, showing a faint capillary redness. The jawline is tanned and unnaturally smooth.” I touched my own cheek to demonstrate. “The transition suggests spirit gum and a thin silicone applied to reshape her bone profile.”

  While her facial expression remained impeccably neutral, her eyes conveyed a different message. I investigated them, past the professional alarm, into the history buried beneath.

  “She’s something of a Matryoshka doll,” I remarked in a measured tone. “Layers of false identities, wrapped to protect the real one. To protect Mark and George—safe, shielded away from danger and the truth.”

  As I spoke the names of those dearest to her, I fixed my eyes on her to confirm at last that the information was correct, and so witness a strong reaction from her.

  She let out a gasp, struggling to breathe.

  Her partner and son’s names, spoken aloud in this sterile room, struck like a bullet she hadn’t braced for.

  Perfect response.

  “She visits him every six months,” I continued, my voice dropping to a whisper. “Her last visit was one hour ago at Brunswick Square Gardens, Coram’s Fields playground. Repetition of unannounced visits indicates a high probability of a tracker being placed on the child.” I added. Tears welled but did not fall.

  Grief stayed contained, like everything else in her. Interesting. Oliver nodded once

  “Take off the props, Miss. Let us see you.”

  For a long moment, she did not move. She looked at me with evident dissatisfaction. Then, with a shuddering breath dragged from somewhere deep, her shoulders fell. The fight drained out of her. Her hands rose—tender, almost reverent—and found the edge of the silicone along her jaw. A faint, tacky peel as it came free, revealing the sharper, exhausted line of her cheekbone. Then, she took off her wig and placed it down in a way that showed she was done with it. Beneath it all, she had short, practical brown hair, damp with sweat. She stood unmasked. Not Alice, the nurse, but just a woman—raw, weary, her eyes glistening with pain she could no longer contain.

  “She’s confused,” I said, diagnosing her. “Unsure about the situation—and me.” She snapped at me, astonished at my precision.

  “I'm…not,” she said, but everyone saw through the lie.

  “A name, Annie. I need to hear you say it.” Oliver requested. I shifted my gaze from his expectant expression to the woman, who appeared to be holding her breath.

  “I confirm this is Iris Sharp,” I said. “She was born Iris Lena Kowalski in Gdansk. Daughter of Tomasz Kowalski, a shipyard electrician and Katarzyna Kowalski, who teaches literature. Little sister of Agnieszka, a doctor in Warsaw, big sister of Mateusz, a historian in the same city. They are unaware of her connection to the Legacy; however, they know about her stalled divorce and the child left behind.”

  With every relative I named, she seemed to shrink slightly, as if I were physically unpacking the heavy cargo of her past and laying it bare on the hospital floor.

  I met her gaze openly. “You’re not Alice Baker.”

  “…And you’re not just a child.” She snapped back.

  “Is that true, Miss Kowalski?” Oliver interjected as tensions mounted.

  “Yes,” she admitted. “Please just call me Sharp.” She added, slightly irritated now. A tear finally escaped, tracing a clean path through the spirit gum residue on her cheek. She brushed it off swiftly.

  “Thank you, Annie.” Oliver nodded, a slow, sad descent of his chin. “Stand down.” He ordered the agents, and they lowered their pistols.

  The immediate tension dissolved, but the greater one remained, now centred solely on the space between Iris Sharp and me. Her reaction—the quickened pulse, the faint twitch under her eye—was a pattern I knew because it was the same fear I had seen in my parents years ago.

  With just a blink, the memory resurfaced once more.

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  -– Flashback —

  I remember the sun high and bright, a circle in the sky. The old oak tree right at the edge of the garden, next to the garden fence, towered with its lush leaves and branches over everyone. The air was full of giddy children, a celebration of some sort, where I was the protagonist. Later, I understood that it was my birthday.

  I remember the carpet of grass under my feet, my hands diving into a cake in front of me, confetti of all colours exploding and swirling as they fell around me. Garlands, flags, banners and balloons framed the garden at the back of our two-story house, immense from my sight back then.

  A sound broke the atmosphere then.

  It was not loud, but it was wrong. A thwack, cutting through the music and chatter. My father, who had been laughing with his head thrown back, froze. His smile shattered, and his head turned toward the old oak tree at the edge of our garden. My mother, who was adjusting my paper crown, gasped and her hands clammed up. Her fingers, soft on my hair, started trembling. A large branch, thick and heavy, lay on the grass. It had fallen exactly where my father had been standing moments before, taking a picture. The air, once full of music, was now full of a ringing silence.

  Everyone else laughed it off. “Whoa! Good timing, Alex!” a friend shouted. “The old girl's dropping her gifts!”

  But my parents didn't laugh; instead, they looked at each other over my head, and a message passed between them that I couldn't decipher. It was a look of pure, unguarded shock. My father’s face was pale, while my mother’s eyes were wide, scanning the tree, the rooftops beyond the fence to find logical reasons behind such an accident. It was the first time I saw their terrified expressions, resembling those of two people standing on a ledge.

  That was the first “almost,” which multiplied over time, and it became the new rhythm of our lives.

  At the supermarket: A pallet of canned goods tipped from a high shelf, crashing down just as my mother jerked my stroller backwards with a terrified shout. Her grip on the handle was so tight her knuckles were bone-white. She didn't yell at the stock boy, but she stared at the space where we had been, her breath coming in short, sharp puffs. Then the “almost” with the car: The squeal of brakes on our quiet street. A car that had “slipped” its parking brake, rolling across the road to nudge our front gate just as we were about to walk through it. My father did not shout at the driver at first, but he swept me into his arms and backed away, his eyes on the car, then he let out his anger at the driver for his reckless driving.

  At first, their fear was a live wire. They jumped at noises, mumbling, “What is going on?” each time an accident occurred; however, as time passed by, they became less susceptible yet still frustrated because of their powerlessness. Their voices, when they thought I was asleep, were low and urgent whispers in the dark.

  “It can't be a coincidence, Elodie. Not every time.”

  Another day, I was in the kitchen, strapped into a high chair with a bowl of soft yellow food in front of me. My father was at the sink, back turned, humming as he rinsed a cup. Then—a sharp sound. A high-pitched ping. The window above the sink was splattered in spiderwebbed glass, a single, perfect hole at its centre. Father did not gasp; he did not even look. The humming simply stopped. In the same motion, he dropped flat, one hand snapping to the high chair. He yanked us both beneath the counter’s edge. His chest pressed against my face, heart pounding like a frantic drum. The kitchen was silent now, thick and airless, except for that hammering beat beneath his ribs.

  “Shhh, my little star,” he whispered, but his voice was tight. “Daddy just… dropped a spoon.” Was the excuse he used.

  My mother changed tactics that day at the park.

  I was on a swing, pumping hard, trying to reach the clouds. Her hands pressed against my back, steady, pushing. Then—gone. Not a gentle release. A snatch. The world flipped: blue sky and green grass traded places in a sickening whirl. I slammed into the rough wool of her coat, breath ripped from my chest.

  Behind me, the swing’s metal frame shrieked, a deafening groan. A heavy branch had snapped from the tree above, crashing onto the seat where my head had been. The splintered wood jutted raw and white.

  My mother crushed me against her, her body trembling. Her eyes weren’t on the branch but the rooftops across the street—scanning, calculating. Her face was pale, set, a mask of hard vigilance.

  “It's alright, Annie,” she breathed, her voice a low, robotic monotone. “The wind is just very strong today.” She said as if reading from a script.

  The fear transformed into anxiety and paranoia towards the foreboding near misses; thus, the locks on the doors multiplied, and the compulsive habits replaced the normal ones. They moved through our home like architects fortifying a castle against an invisible enemy, learning steps to a dance they never wanted to know. The warm light in their eyes changed into constant, watchful tension. I didn't understand “why.” I only observed the “what.” The system of my family had been recalibrated. The inputs were the same—love, food, stories—but the outputs were now always tinged with vigilance. I could see it in the bags under their eyes, the exhaustion getting to them, as the police help was not operating as fast and efficiently as they should have been.

  The change that really gave them hope came with the visit from a man with kind eyes and a tired smile—Dr. Aris. He came as a friend of a friend, Oliver, but his knowledge gave a name to the storm in our lives.

  I watched from the top of the stairs as he sat with my parents in the living room. Their postures, usually so defensive, were leaning forward, hungry. He spoke in a low, steady tone. I heard the words not as meanings, but as sounds:

  "...not accidents..."

  "...a group called The Foundation..."

  "...they see her as a threat...",

  "...I can offer you safety."

  My mother cried as she was finally free from the fog of confusion. My father had his arm around her, his face a map of grim relief. They weren't scared anymore because the unknown enemy finally had a name. The random chaos had a reason, and the kind-eyed man held the key to our safety. He gave them a path out of fear, a security web of agents that would have watched over us, until I reached the optimal age to protect them myself.

  His eyes, as I saw for the last time, had such confidence and faith in my future abilities, I felt the first spark of a new, unknown variable ignite within me—purpose. For the first time, the weight of their protection felt less like a burden they carried, and more like a promise I wanted to keep.

  Safe at all costs.

  — End —

  And so I did, 6 months ago.

  Now, in the sterile hospital room, facing the final living piece of my plan—Iris Sharp—I understood. The woman before me was proof that the plan worked. The device I’ve built, among others, succeeded in hijacking the signal of the Foundation by redirecting it to multiple unlinked locations. The silence that followed was charged with Iris’s confusion and the lingering echo of my assessment. Her eyes, wide and searching, darted from my face to Oliver’s, seeking an explanation that would make sense of the chaos.

  I did not give her any on purpose.

  “She is not mocking you, Iris,” Oliver began, his sightless eyes seeming to hold her perfectly in their gaze. “She is stating a fact that Aris knew would be the only thing that could truly protect her.”

  Iris’s jaw was tight. “What fact? That this was all some… some game?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Oliver corrected softly. “The Foundation’s greatest weapon is anonymity, and the only way to fight a ghost is with mirrors.”

  He shifted in his bed, the sheets whispering. “Aris knew they would never stop. He knew he could hide the family a hundred times in a hundred different locations, and The Foundation would find a hundred and one ways to find them. He needed to change the game; he needed to make them chase a reflection.”

  Oliver’s head turned slowly toward me, a gesture of profound respect.

  “Anne is the mind that will design our future, but she is just a child at the end of the day. She requires stability to thrive, not a life of endless flight. That’s why Aris created a loop—a brilliant, self-sustaining deception that feeds The Foundation just enough truth to keep them chasing their own tails, while the real prize remains hidden in plain sight.”

  He looked back at Iris. “That’s where you were needed, Iris.”

  Iris stared at him, the pieces beginning to click into a horrifying, magnificent picture. “My mission was not to find her.”

  “Your mission was the bait,” Oliver said, kindly. “Aris knew they would be monitoring his communications. He knew your loyalty, your guilt, would make you the perfect, believable agent. Your entire journey here—the pursuit, the near misses, the deaths—it was all planned. A story written by Aris and fed to them, with you as the compelling protagonist.” He let that sink in.

  “Aris knew the pain from the separation of your family would make you the perfect shield because it is real. He trusted you more than anyone to make the enemy look directly at you, so they would never think to look right behind you.”

  I watched the truth break over Iris Sharp like a wave.

  One moment, she was a woman, raw and seen; the next moment, she was a statue, frozen by Oliver’s words. Her story was being rewritten right in front of her, and she was losing her part in it. I saw the phases she went through. First the confusion, then a flash of hot, silent anger that made the air feel thin and finally, a deep, quiet hurt that seemed to hollow her out from the inside. She looked at me, and for a second, I wasn't a child to protect; I was proof that her greatest sacrifice had been someone else's plan all along. Knowing the basis of human psychology, it should have been messy, it should have been loud, but it didn’t. Instead, I saw her pull all the broken pieces of herself back together and lock away her heart for a later time.

  “So, the mission parameters have changed.”

  She wasn’t asking; she was stating as a fact. She didn’t seem to accept the reality yet, but pretended to do so. I guessed she had decided to choose the only thing she had left, the job. It was the most logical outcome.

  Oliver opened his mouth to respond, but the words never came, because a sharp click echoed from the door. The sound of the lock disengaging.

  Someone was trying to get in.

  The effect was instantaneous: Iris’s hand went to a weapon on the inside of her jacket. Fox and Delta snapped their pistols up, aiming at the door in perfect, silent unison. My father flinched, his body angling instinctively toward me while my mother became a statue of pure vigilance.

  The door handle began to turn.

  The world shrank to that slow, deliberate movement. We were trapped. No escape route. No cover. Iris’s eyes met Fox’s, a silent command passing between them. I calculated the vectors: 98% probability of engagement, 2% probability of…

  A familiar voice reached through the door before the intruder could step inside. It was the senior nurse from earlier.

  “Not that one, Shaun! It’s on quarantine protocol. Deep clean isn’t until 14:00. Use the supply closet in the west wing.”

  This Shaun person, apologised, and the handle snapped back into place. The person’s footsteps retreated.

  The silence left behind felt heavier than anything I’ve experienced. We stood frozen for 10 full seconds, fifteen overall, listening to his steps fading away until no sound was left, but our breathing. The only louder sound was Oliver’s ragged, shallow breathing.

  “As I was saying,” he continued, as if there had been no interruption, but the lesson was now seared in by fear, “The most critical part of the plan is the wait. We must remain perfectly still and silent for a precise window of thirty-two minutes to allow the false data to fully saturate and misdirect their entire apparatus.” He let that sink in, the recent scare making his words terrifyingly tangible. "Any movement before then would be like shouting in a library."

  Slowly, carefully, Iris lowered her gun. The agents, at her slight nod, lowered their weapons too. In their silent communication and obliviousness, I realised, I should have told her the truth about the plan, that I was the one who orchestrated everything since the day I met Dr Aris, but…I needed her to believe Oliver’s words now more than ever, for the safety of my parent's safety and I.

  “What’s next then besides protecting the child?” She asked, her words creating distance.

  “The next move is to move her, one last time." Oliver said, his voice warm against the chill of hers. “To the Legacy’s secondary base.”

  He gestured vaguely sideways, toward the window and the city beyond.

  “It's a place hidden in plain sight, where everyone walks past every day, in the heart of the city. It’s called The Mountain, a code name for its size.” He revealed and motioned to my mother to continue for him, as his throat felt the toll of speaking too long.

  A faint, dry smile touched my mother’s lips, and then she cleared her throat.

  “The Mountain is a decommissioned government continuity-of-operations facility,” she clarified, her voice echoing in the quiet room. “Buried deep beneath the metro lines and sewer systems, reinforced during the paranoia of a past era. The Foundation would never dare a direct assault here; the collateral damage would be catastrophic for them, for their greatest weakness, as you know, is their need to remain in the shadows.”

  “That is our destination,” Oliver continued. “Your primary objective is to ensure Anne and her parents reach it. Once there, behind three-foot-thick concrete and blast doors, she will be free at last. Free to think, to design, to invent and build the future without looking over her shoulder.”

  Iris acknowledged them with a slight, professional nod, her eyes already scanning back to me, the core asset. Her first question was not about the plan, but about the present state.

  “Is this room currently secure?” she asked, a direct request from the source she had just learned was the most accurate.

  “The probability of a direct assault within the next thirty-two minutes is 3%,” I stated. “The Foundation’s methodology favours digital infiltration before physical engagement. They are currently running algorithms on the hospital's staff roster and patient admissions logs; we still have a window.”

  A flicker of surprise crossed her features. She was not used to threat assessments being delivered in a child’s precise monotone. “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I am running the counter-algorithm,” I explained.

  “Since when?”

  “A month ago.” I reached into the pocket of my dress and retrieved a device. It was a sleek, custom-built prism of black graphite and copper wire, about the size of a chocolate bar, with a small, dormant screen. I held it out on my palm for her inspection.

  “This is it?”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  “Yes,” I confirmed. “It hijacks the hospital's public Wi-Fi signal and redirects their search queries into a loop of my own design. It intercepts their queries for ‘anomalies’ and feeds them benign, pre-recorded data from the hospital’s own servers. To their systems, we are a glitch that has already been corrected.”

  Iris stared at the device, then back at me. I could see that a fragile thread of professional trust bloomed in her.

  “That’s useful, but I’m gonna need a clear debrief about the escape plan.” Iris conceded for a moment.

  “I’ll take it from here.” My mother said, I looked at her, leaving Oliver's side and inviting me to sit back down on the sofa. I did as she wanted.

  “This might come off as unnecessary and unsafe to a professional, but my husband and I have agreed to be involved in all of this because Anne is our only child.”

  “I understand that," Iris said, her tone pragmatic. “I’m not here to debate—” She moved to shift the focus back to the concrete plan, but my father’s voice, usually so gentle, cut over hers with a surprising firmness.

  “It’s not a debate,” he said. He stepped slightly forward, aligning himself with my mother. “We are not cargo to be transported, we are part of the system within the legacy. That was the condition. You are the expert in evasion, Iris, but we are the experts in Anne because her safety is not just a physical metric to us. We will not have her treated like a package. You will work with us, not around us, and that is how this will work.”

  Iris looked between them, a united front forged in the face of adversity and rules. So she simply gave a single, sharp nod.

  “You should know our names then.” Mother relaxed a little. “My name is Elodie Koné Maris, and this is my husband, Alessandro Maris.”

  “Just Alex,” My father said, his voice warmer as an attempt to build a bridge over the chasm of tension. He even offered a small smile.

  “And this is our little star, Anne Stella Maris.” He let her know and patted my head, smiling. “We... appreciate you being here.” The social script was greatly contrasted by the presence of the armed agents and the pistols.

  “Elodie. Alex,” Iris acknowledged, her voice neutral.

  “Okay then. Firstly, the parameters have changed, but the objective is now active,” My mother continued after the brief, awkward exchange. “We are not running from the city, we are using it. The escape will form three-stages.” She held up a hand, ticking off the points on her fingers with mechanical efficiency. “First stage: A specific NHS laundry van will arrive for collection in thirty-two minutes in the underground parking of the hospital. It will take us past a service bay. Second stage: The van will terminate its route near the maintenance entrance of a specific Tube station during a shift change. The passcode for the door is 73490, changed daily at 0600 and 1800. We have a three-minute window to get in. Phase Three: The maintenance tunnels will lead us to a service elevator in a new building site, which will go down into the deep-level tunnels forgotten by the public.”

  She painted a picture of intricate, interlocking systems. Iris listened, her head giving slight, professional nods as she began to map the route in her mind, her focus a tangible force in the room. Just as she opened her mouth to ask a question—likely about contingencies—Oliver interjected, his voice a frail but sharp rasp.

  “The route is sound, but the ‘when’ is more critical than the ‘how’.” He laid his sightless eyes on her. “This room, Anne's assessment… it was not just authentication, it was a trigger.”

  Iris went perfectly still. “A trigger for what?”

  “A protocol designed by Aris,” Oliver explained, a note of grim admiration in his voice. “The moment Anne confirmed your identity and your… history, the system initiated the counter-measured trap. Right now, the Foundation believes the extraction failed. They believe their agents have succeeded in getting their hands on the child, but were met with heavy resistance from Legacy operatives—you—and that the team is now fractured, panicked, and fleeing west out of the city in a convoy of stolen vehicles. Satellite imagery, traffic camera feeds, even intercepted police communications are all being subtly altered to support this illusion.”

  I knew who the child was, and I knew his death would not have been the first body I would have to use as a shield. A cruelty inevitable to my survival, but to others, like Iris, I knew was stomach-turning.

  Though, I did not feel anything then.

  “Therefore,” Oliver continued, his voice weakening, “We must remain perfectly still and silent for a precise window of thirty-two minutes. We allow the false data to fully saturate and misdirect their entire apparatus. Any movement before then would extremely counter productive.”

  As this revelation of my- Aris's manipulative genius hung in the air, a strange event occurred just then.

  The fluorescent lights in the room flickered. Not a power cut, but a deep, dissonant hum that vibrated in my teeth. For a single, heart-stopping second, the digital readouts on Oliver’s medical monitors glazed over with a shimmering, displaying non-repeating fractal pattern of impossible complexity.

  Then, it was gone.

  The lights stabilised, and the monitors resumed their steady, rhythmic beeping as if nothing had happened.

  My mother frowned, her eyes darting to the monitors. “A power surge? The hospital’s grid is supposed to be isolated,” she muttered, her mind already on alert mode, while my father, Alex, stared in wonder, not fear.

  “It was… strangely mesmerising,” he whispered, as if he’d witnessed a rare astronomical event.

  I created a new file in my brain: 'Event 0. Anomalous energy signature/data corruption. Origin: Unknown. Threat potential: Unquantifiable.' The probability of it being a simple power surge was 4.2%. I would need to monitor for future recurrence to analyse, but my eyes remained fixated on the spot where the pattern had been, while Iris dismissed it with a slight shake of her head. A power glitch was irrelevant in her mind, but a seed of something inexplicable had been planted in the room.

  We just didn't know what.

  Finally, Oliver, with a trembling hand, gestured to Agent Fox, who produced a small, metallic case. From it, Oliver retrieved a single, cold data chip, no larger than a fingernail. He held it out toward Iris.

  “This is The Burden, as he called it,” he said, referring to Aris, his voice heavy with finality. “Aris’s life’s work. The original codes, the genetic libraries, the cultural archives—the core of ‘The Legacy.’ Your duty is no longer just to protect Anne. It is to ensure she completes her work. You are to carry the last hope for humanity towards a better future.”

  Her fingers closed around it, with her knuckles white, and seemed to weigh on her shoulders more than ever.

  “A thirty-two-minute hold in a compromised location is an eternity. All it takes is one janitor, one curious nurse whose routine we didn't account for.” She insisted.

  “We have accounted for that as well,” my mother replied, a hint of steel in her voice. “This room is scheduled for deep cleaning following a 'quarantine scare' that was logged three hours ago. Staff are actively avoiding this wing.”

  Iris nodded, understanding. My father placed a calming hand on my mother's arm, but his eyes were on Iris. Iris's eyes flickered to the data chip she still held, The Burden Oliver had given her.

  “Then we use the time,” she stated. She looked at Agent Fox. “Give me the full inventory. What are we working with?”

  Fox moved to a large medical cabinet, which, when opened, revealed not bedpans and gauze, but a compact arsenal and field gear. “Two SIG Sauer P226S, four extra magazines. Three comms units, encrypted. One medical kit, tactical. Two flashbangs. Civilian clothing packages for three adults, one child.” He glanced at me. “The asset's package includes a sedation injector, protocol-dictated for high-stress extractions.”

  “No!” The word came from both my mother and father in unison, their voices fused into a single, immovable object.

  “It's a standard protocol—” Iris looked at them, confused.

  “She is not standard,” My mother stated fiercely. “She does not panic, she will not scream. Sedating her makes her an unresponsive burden.”

  “Our daughter is not an 'asset,” Alex added, though his tone was more painful than angry. “She is our little girl. Her mind is her greatest tool. Clouding it is the most dangerous thing you could do.”

  I watched Iris process this. She looked at me, really looked, perhaps for the first time. Not at the genetic marvel or the intellectual prize, but at the person. I was calm, observant. She saw the device I had built, still in my hand.

  “How long did it take you to build it?” she asked, pointing to the prism of black graphite and copper.

  “10 minutes,” I said directly. “ After receiving the necessary components from Oliver's network.”

  “And when did you think of it?”

  “When I was two,” I revealed. My parents’ postures shifted almost imperceptibly; they knew fragments of the process. “To be precise, I thought of it the day the branch from the old oak tree fell near me, the day of my birthday. I wondered why most human creations did not have shields of any sort, even for mundane chores, though most accidents occurred in the houses and vehicles.”

  My father had an apologetic expression on his face. “Oh, Annie.”

  I continued unperturbed. “The correlation was clear: the environment I was born into was severely unpredictable. A shield for every physical object was an illogical, inefficient solution.” I tapped the dormant screen of the device. “Dr Aris's appearance helped me understand the falling branch, the slipping car, the ‘accidents’—they were not random. Physical shields wouldn’t be enough to protect us from the foundation, and so I decided to build the easiest shield of all: one that operates in their medium. Not to stop a bullet, but to corrupt the aim.”

  “Oh my dear Annie.” My father instinctively held me tight in an embrace.

  “It was the only way.” I muffled his chest, looking both at him and my mother.

  “I know, honey, I know…” He accepted with a sad smile.

  When I looked back at Iris, a flicker of something—not respect, not yet, but a dawning recognition—passed behind her eyes. She did not ask anything more after that.

  The waiting time seemed to bring an eeriness of dread to everyone’s gaze. Iris and the agents performed a silent, perpetual threat assessment, their eyes scanning the door, the vents, the single window every ninety seconds. My father, now attending Oliver’s bed, tried to engage in a quiet conversation about the geological stability of the deep-level tunnels under London with him, a desperate attempt to cling to normalcy. I sat on the sofa, my legs tucked under me, my device in my lap. The screen scrolled with endless lines of code, a silent war being fought in the hospital's Wi-Fi channels.

  After the third full sweep of the room, Iris’s gaze settled on me. The intense, operational focus softened by a fraction. She moved from her post by the door and sat on the opposite end of the sofa, maintaining a careful, professional distance.

  “Seventy-four minutes to go,” she stated, her voice low enough not to carry.

  I nodded, my eyes still on my screen. “Seventy-three minutes and forty-two seconds.”

  “Your focus is intense,” she said. Her voice was flat, giving me nothing to work with.

  “It has to be,” I replied, my eyes still on the screen. “The code needs my full attention. Anything less is inefficient.”

  No smile, no warmth. Just observation. “The code. You see it all at once?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not, one by one?”

  “No.”

  “At all times?”

  “No.” I remained unaffected by the rapid questions. “The code arranges itself into patterns, architectures. I fix an anomaly only when a misplaced character causes a structural flaw in the architecture, like a crack in a foundation. It is immediately apparent.”

  “You don’t read it line by line.” She confirmed, nodding.

  “That would be inefficient. It is a whole, complete system, even while it is being written.”

  She was silent for a moment, absorbing this. I could feel her analytical gaze on me, profiling me. “Aris talked about what you can do, but I need to know what’s hard for you.” She stated, getting straight to the point.

  She wasn't asking to be rude, but she was prying. She was doing so to detect and make a list of my weaknesses so she could plan around them. It was a practical, if cold, thing to do. I looked up then.

  “Everything comes in at once,” I explained, trying to find the right, comprehensible words. “The buzz of the lights, the sound of a jacket rustling, the way someone breathes. It's all just... there. All the time. I have to choose what to listen to and what to ignore, and that takes effort. I’m capable of multitasking, as a sudden loud noise is just background noise to me, but a stranger touching me without warning or consent is something…my body would reject instantly. It whites out my brain function, which takes me a minute to refocus.”

  She nodded, filing that away in her mind for later. “Anything else?” she continued, her gaze unwavering.

  “Do you think there’s more?”

  “Definitely.” She stated with confidence. She leaned forward slightly, her gaze sharpening. “You favour your right eye. The left one drifts just a fraction when you're focused on complex data. Is that a visual impairment?”

  Before I could formulate a response, my mother’s voice cut through the quiet atmosphere, defensive.

  “She’s wearing contacts,” She said, “The heterochromia was too distinctive. One brown eye, one blue. Aris considered it an unnecessary risk factor. A memorable feature for anyone who got too close.” Iris’s eyes flicked to my mother, then returned to me, reassessing.

  “What do you make of metaphors and the likes?” She asked; a very telling question.

  “I've memorised many common metaphors, but if you use a new one or are being sarcastic, I would process the facts you state, not the feeling you are trying to convey. I'd get the words, but I might miss the music.” I admitted plainly.

  “What about lies?” She paused, her grey eyes holding mine. The next question was delivered with a new, sharper intensity.

  “What about them?” I replied.

  “ Are you capable of telling one?” She asked bluntly. “Not misunderstandings, but deliberate, calculated falsehoods.”

  I understood the importance of the question the first time she asked, but I purposely stalled for time. Her entire world was built on lies—identities, covers, stories. She needed to know if her primary asset could function in that world.

  “Lying is a complex algorithm,” I said, my voice even. “It requires constructing a parallel, false reality and maintaining its consistency across all future interactions. It carries a high risk of catastrophic failure if a single detail contradicts. I am capable of it if the parameters are clearly defined and the objective is logical, but it is not my default state. It is a tool I must consciously choose to use.”

  She was silent for a long moment, her grey eyes taking me in. “Have you used this tool today?”

  The question was a logical trap of exquisite design. It probed the very foundation of the trust she was forced to extend, and I felt the eyes of everyone in the room shift to me—my mother’s protective glare, my father’s worried gaze, Oliver’s blind but keen attention. To answer ‘no’ would be to claim a purity I had just admitted I was capable of violating. To answer ‘yes’ would imply that everything I had just told her—my assessment of her, my explanation of my limits—could be part of the constructed falsehood. I had to answer in a way that was both truthful and strategically sound.

  “I have not lied to you,” I stated, the words precise. “The plan was to come here and wait for your arrival, then leave together. I do not need to fabricate easily debunkable lies to have your cooperation.” I watched her carefully, ensuring she understood the distinction.

  I saw the minute relaxation in her shoulders, the almost imperceptible nod. It was the answer she needed. I passed the test.

  For now.

  In the final minute, the air in the room grew thick and heavy. Iris did not speak further; she stood instead, and Agent Fox and Agent Delta mirrored her, their bodies becoming extensions of her will. My mother headed to the medical cabinet. She offered a comms unit to Iris, who took it and fixed it into her ear with a practised flick of her wrist.

  “Channel 4. Squelch protocol 2,” my mother said.

  “Confirmed,” Iris replied, her voice flat in the device. She issued swift, quiet orders to the agents, designating them as the sacrificial rear guard.

  Then her gaze landed on me. “Anne, you are with me. You will hold my hand. You will match my pace exactly. Do not process the environment; I will process it for you. Your focus is your own stability. Acknowledge.”

  A cold wave of dissonance washed through my body. “Acknowledged on all points except one. I cannot hold your hand,” I stated, the words feeling like stones dropped into a still pool. “Unsolicited touch from a stranger will be counterproductive for both of us. It will degrade the performance of the plan by a projected 37%.”

  “It is the most efficient method to ensure you remain within my protective radius. My hand is a tether, not a social gesture.” She justified.

  “It’s illogical because the input will disrupt my focus,” I replied, trying to use the most basic level of language she would not misunderstand. “My heart rate has increased by 12 BPM.”

  Before Iris could counter, my father stepped forward, his voice a warm, anxious buffer.

  “Iris, perhaps… Could she hold my hand? Or Elodie’s? She’s accustomed to our touch. It doesn’t cause the same… disruption.”

  Iris’s eyes flicked to him, then back to me.

  “The point of the tether is that my hands must remain free to respond to threats. My reaction time is 0.8 seconds. Yours is not. The risk is unacceptable.” Her tone was final, the operative reasserting command.

  “Forcing the issue creates its own risk.” Mother interjected. “A distracted Anne is a vulnerable Anne. Your assessment of the physical threat is correct, but you are creating a point of failure.”

  “The point of failure is a child who cannot follow a basic safety instruction,” Iris countered, her voice now rising.

  “Iris.” Uncle Oliver’s frail voice smoothed the tension.

  Everyone turned.

  “The objective is to move a unique and powerful mind from point A to point B,” He paused, letting the logic settle. “A good agent adapts to the asset, not the other way around. Let her hold her mother’s hand. Elodie will be your shadow. The tether will simply be one step removed, but the system’s integrity will be maintained.”

  Iris looked from Oliver’s weary face to my mother’s defiant posture. The muscle in her jaw tightened as she had been overruled on her own terms.

  “Fine,” she bit out, the word a concession that cost her. She looked at my mother. “Stay glued to her. Your pace is my pace. Your stops are my stops. You are a single unit. Understood?”

  “Understood,” my mother said, her victory contained and professional.

  She moved to my side and offered her hand. I grabbed it right away. My heart rate began to descend toward its baseline.

  Iris moved to the door, her ear pressed against the wood. Her posture was rigid with suppressed frustration. After a moment of listening, she nodded once. My mother’s hand went to the light switch, and she flicked it off. The room plunged into a darkness so complete it had texture. In the sudden void, I felt the secure, familiar grip of my mother’s hand.

  “Clear,” Iris breathed into the blackness.

  She moved. We moved with her, a single, multi-bodied organism.

  My father fell in behind us. We flowed into the bright hallway. The system was stable, and we were escaping. The hallway was a tunnel of perceived threats. Every closed door was a potential ambush point. Every nurse’s station was an observation post, but Iris’s navigation was a master guide. She used the natural cover of a meds cart, the auditory cover of a loudly beeping IV pump, and the temporal cover of a shift change happening two corridors over. She did not hide; she moved through the blind spots of the system’s own routine.

  We reached a service elevator. Iris extracted a key from the medical kit and inserted it into a hidden panel below the button console. The doors slid open instantly, revealing a large, utilitarian space smelling of bleach and stale linen.

  “In,” she commanded.

  We filed inside. The doors closed, and Iris pressed the ‘B2’ button, but then held down a combination of other buttons—7, 3, 4, 9, 0. The elevator gave a soft chime and began to descend, bypassing its programmed floors, then it settled with a gentle shudder, and the doors opened not onto another hallway but onto a concrete landing. The air was cold and damp, carrying the low, subterranean rumble of the Tube and the faint, iron tang of old water. Before us, parked with its rear doors open, was a large, white NHS laundry van. The driver, a man with a tired face and a cap pulled low, gave a single, curt nod to Iris.

  This was phase two. Mother’s grip on my hand tightened fractionally, a single, binary pulse of confirmation. The door was dull, marked only with the universal symbol for stairs. Iris paused, her hand hovering over the push-bar, her entire body a coiled spring of listening intent. She looked back and gave a single, sharp nod. The plan was in motion, and the door swung open. We split into the concrete stairwell, and the door shut behind us.

  “Down,” Iris's command was a soft whip-crack, absorbed by the bare walls.

  We descended. Our footsteps were not the crisp clicks of professionals; they were a frantic, discordant rhythm. The stairwell brought us into the city's gut. The only light was a sickly yellow glow from wire-caged bulbs, casting long, leaping shadows that felt like pursuing ghosts. I focused on the back of my mother's coat, a fixed point in the swirling vertigo. Her pulse, felt through her palm, was a rapid but steady rhythm. Controlled. Then, a sound from above, distant, a door being thrown open too fast shrieked above us, followed by the thunder of boots on the stairs. Too many boots. Iris didn't flinch, but she accelerated.

  “Fox, Delta. Hold them at three,” she breathed into her comms, her voice devoid of panic, a flat line of pure instruction.

  Acknowledgement clicks echoed in our ears. The two agents stopped their descent. They turned, drawing their weapons, and we did not look back. The sound of their first, concussive gunshots hit the stairwell like a physical blow, a deafening roar that swallowed all other sound. We had to keep moving despite it all. The world narrowed to the next step, and the next. The air grew colder, damper. We passed a sign marked 'B2 - Maintenance'. Iris blew straight past it.

  “Where—?” my father began, his voice tight with oxygen and alarm.

  “Protocol,” Iris cut him off, her breath even. “They’ll expect B2. We're not going to B2.”

  We hit the landing for Sub-basement 3. The door here was different—older, heavier, painted a grimy industrial green. She braced herself, placed her shoulder against it, and shoved. It opened with a reluctant, groaning shriek, revealing not another hallway, but darkness. The smell that rolled out was a complex algorithm of its own: grease, stale laundry detergent, cold concrete, and the faint, sweet-rot smell of forgotten things. Iris swept her torch beam across the space. We were on a high gantry overlooking a vast, cavernous room. Below, in the gloom, were the hulking, silent forms of industrial washing machines and dryers, like sleeping beasts. This was the hospital's laundry heart, silent in the dead of night.

  “Here,” Iris whispered, guiding us to the side of the gantry, into the deep shadow cast by a massive ventilation duct. “Now we wait. Don't move. Don't speak.”

  We pressed into the darkness, becoming part of the machinery. The cold from the metal railing seeped through my clothes. Above us, the distant war in the stairwell continued, a muffled, percussive nightmare. Each gunshot was a spike of corrupted data in my stream of consciousness, a variable of violent chaos I could not process. Then, a new sound. A low, diesel grumble, growing steadily louder. Headlight beams swept through the grime-caked windows of a large rolling garage door at the far end of the laundry bay. The door began to rumble upward, and a boxy, white NHS laundry van reversed slowly into the bay, its reverse alarm emitting a monotonous beep-beep-beep that was absurdly mundane against the backdrop of gunfire.

  It stopped. The driver, a man with a face etched with permanent fatigue, killed the engine. The sudden silence was louder than the noise had been. He didn’t get out. He simply looked at his watch, then directly up at our shadowy perch on the gantry. He gave one slow, almost imperceptible nod.

  Iris’s grip on my mother’s arm tightened. “Go. Now. Straight into the back and don't look at him. Don't speak to him.”

  We moved.

  Down a metal staircase that trembled under our weight, across the concrete floor still damp from the day’s cycles. Iris yanked open the van's rear doors. The interior was a cave of canvas laundry bags, smelling faintly of bleach and human sweat. My father climbed in first, turning to help me up. My mother followed, and then Iris, pulling the doors shut behind us, plunging us into an absolute, suffocating blackness. The darkness was complete. It was a void, a sensory deprivation chamber in which I could hear my own heart, my parents' breathing, the frantic, animal fear in the sound. The van lurched as the driver put it into gear, and then we were moving, turning, leaving the echoing cavern behind.

  We were cargo now, hidden, smuggled, in the rocking, pitch-black silence.

  Iris had successfully executed the transfer; furthermore, the probability of our detection had just dropped by 68.4%. The final phase was a descent into primordial silence. The van delivered us to a decommissioned service elevator, which plunged us even deeper into the city's forgotten geological strata. I could feel the pressure change in my inner ears, a dull pop that was the physical confirmation of our vanishing. The doors slid open with a soft sigh, revealing Phase Three. We were met by a silence so profound it felt like a physical substance. The air was no longer the recycled, antiseptic chill of the hospital; it was ancient, cool, and damp, carrying the mineral scent of wet stone and the distant, subterranean rumble of a Tube train—a sound felt more in the bones than heard by the ears. Before us stretched a tunnel, its arched ceiling lost in shadows beyond the reach of the elevator’s weak light. The walls were rough-hewn brick, weeping a dark, viscous dampness. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness with a slow, metronomic plink… plink… plink… marking a time that belonged to no clock above.

  Iris stepped out first. She didn’t speak. She held up a closed fist, the universal signal for halt. My breathing was controlled, a soft, steady rhythm against the oppressive quiet. My father stood behind us, a warm, solid presence. I could feel his wonder warring with fear.

  “Clear,” Iris finally whispered, the word absorbed by the tunnel’s hungry darkness. She gestured forward. “This is it. Single file. Stay within the beam.”

  She produced a compact, high-lumen torch from her kit. Its beam was a solid, white sword that sliced through the black, illuminating a path of worn stone and rusted iron rails that had not felt the weight of a train in a century.

  The tunnel was a living entity. It breathed its cold, damp breath on us. Our light carved out fleeting islands of reality: a colony of pale, ghostly fungi thriving on a damp wall; the skeletal remains of a rodent; ancient, frayed cables snaking along the ceiling like sleeping serpents. Iris moved with a predator’s grace, her light constantly sweeping ahead, behind, the ceiling, the gaps between the rails. After what felt like both an eternity and a single heartbeat, the tunnel began to change. The rough brick gave way to smooth, poured concrete. The air lost its ancient dampness, becoming drier, cooler, and filtered. Ahead, the tunnel terminated at a door. It was a massive, slab-like thing of brushed steel, set flush into the concrete. There was no visible handle, no keyhole. Only a single, dark glass panel set into the wall beside it. It looked less like an entrance and more like a vault door.

  Iris stopped us ten feet away. She turned to my mother, her face illuminated from below by the torchlight, making her features stark and severe. “Elodie. It’s your turn.”

  My mother released my hand. The absence of her touch was a sudden chill. She stepped forward, approached the dark panel and placed her palm flat against the glass.

  For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a soft, internal light glowed within the panel, scanning the unique topography of her hand. A series of soft, choral chimes echoed in the tunnel, each one a note of authentication. A hidden seam appeared in the massive steel slab, with a deep, resonant thrum that vibrated through the soles of my shoes. The door began to retreat inward, then slide sideways into the wall.

  The air that washed over us was clinically clean, scrubbed of all scent, humming with the quiet, powerful energy of hidden generators. Iris turned to look back the way we came, down the pitch-black throat of the tunnel, her expression unreadable. Then she turned to face the light, her body automatically squaring up to the new environment, ready to secure the endpoint.

  But she froze.

  The subtle, constant micro-motions of her body ceased entirely. Her pupils constricted in the light, then dilated again in response to the shock. Standing in the centre of the antechamber was a woman. She was dressed for efficiency, not combat, and her posture somewhat welcoming, but not completely. Her hands were clasped neatly in front of her, and she took in our group with a single, sweeping glance. Her eyes moved from Mother’s defiant pride to Father’s awestruck anxiety, to me.

  “Welcome to the mountains,” she said with manufactured warmth in her tone, but polite nonetheless. The cold felt like a new equation with too many unknown variables.

  The most pressing one being the woman in front of us.

  Lira.