Location: Los Blancos California.
Date: August 14th 2022
Time: 7:34 PM
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Charlene "Charlee Tyre" McIntyre banked the sleek Eurocopter H160 hard to the left, the city lights below blurring into a kaleidoscope of color and motion. The wind tore through the open window, whipping her dark curls around her face, but she didn't care. She felt alive-adrenaline coursing through her veins like liquid fire. It was her twenty-fourth birthday, and she was celebrating it on her own terms.
The dashboard glowed in the dim cockpit, displaying the time in relentless precision:
5 hours, 26 minutes, 15 seconds, 50 nanoseconds to midnight.
Charlee's heart pounded in rhythm with the numbers. She couldn't stop thinking about the curse-the family curse that had haunted her since childhood. Her mother, Lorelei, had died on her own twenty-fourth birthday. Charlee was just two years old at the time. Then her sister Mia... her grandmother Penny... and her great-grandmother Philippa before that.
All lost on their twenty-fourth birthdays.
She gritted her teeth and tightened her grip on the controls, pushing the helicopter to its limits. Not her. Not tonight. She had too much to live for. With a net worth of eighty-seven billion dollars and a global reputation as a rap icon, Charlee Tyre was a force-brilliant, brazen, and untouchable.
Or so she hoped.
"Birthday" by Anne-Marie blared from the speakers, the beat thundering in her bones as she sang along, shouting the lyrics into the wind. Her voice cracked, raw and unfiltered. She didn't care. Tonight was hers. She wasn't going to let a ghost story dictate the terms of her life.
The city sparkled below, glittering like a dream. And yet, somewhere deep inside, fear twisted through her gut. Midnight was coming. Fast.
Would she break the curse-or become its next victim?
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The desert night stretched wide and endless, a velvet canvas scattered with starlight. The moon hung low-silver and sharp-casting an eerie glow across the dunes. Wind swept across the sand, carrying the crisp scent of creosote and mesquite through the darkness.
A hooded figure crouched behind a boulder, eyes glinting as she checked her Rolex.
Four minutes, thirty-six seconds, twenty nanoseconds. That's all the time she had left.
"Damn it," she muttered under her breath, adjusting the grip on her weapon.
The order had been clear: **secure and protect Charlee Tyre at all costs.
The irony wasn't lost on her.
Today was the day Charlee Tyre was destined to die.
The hooded woman crouched in the shadows, her breath shallow, her weapon steady in her gloved hands. Her eyes narrowed against the desert glare, scanning the dark sky for any sign of movement. She knew the timeline down to the nanosecond. She'd studied it, obsessed over it, trained for it.
She was out of time.
Her grip on the rifle tightened as she whispered into the wind, "Not on my watch."
This wasn't just another assignment. This was the fulcrum-the pivot point. If Charlee Tyre died tonight, the world would never recover. That wasn't poetic exaggeration. It was tactical reality. A twisted domino effect would spiral into something irreversible. Civil unrest. Collapse. An extinction-level ripple, all starting with one woman falling from the sky.
In the eyes of the world, Charlee Tyre was just a celebrity. A rapper. A tabloid regular. But the hooded woman knew better. Charlee was more than a headline-she was a keystone. A convergence point.
The hooded woman wasn't a hero. Not yet. But she was the only one standing between Charlee and oblivion.
The weight of that knowledge pressed heavy on her shoulders. But she didn't flinch. She didn't cower. She welcomed it. She thrived on it.
A sly smile curled beneath her mask as she thought of Hector-her smart-mouthed partner back at HQ-who'd bet her a silver Lamborghini Aventador that she wouldn't make it back in one piece.
She hadn't lost a mission. She didn't lose bets. And she didn't plan to start tonight.
---
Above, in the Eurocopter H160
The city below was a smear of light and shadow, a glittering dream collapsing into nightmare. The rotors shrieked as the chopper tilted, spiraling toward the earth.
Charlee Tyre gripped the controls, knuckles white, panic clawing at her throat.
This is it, she thought, her pulse a drumbeat of finality.
The last page of her story-The Life of Charlotte Leslie McIntyre.
She could already see the headlines: RAP LEGEND DEAD AT 24
The Curse Claims Another.
She would go out in flames, just like the rest of them. A spectacular crash. A beautiful tragedy. Her name immortalized beside legends like Michael Jackson and Amy Winehouse. Her record label would profit off her legacy-posthumous albums, tribute tours, holograms. A billion-dollar brand built on her absence.
But none of it mattered.
Because she wouldn't be around to see a cent.
And no one would mourn her-not really.
There was no family. No partner. No children. No one.
But I'm not ready.
Her heart thudded against her ribs. She didn't want to die.
She wanted to live.
To make music. To take the stage and hear the roar of the crowd. To wake up in a strange city, jet-lagged but alive. To fall in love. To finally-finally-be free of the weight of the curse.
But the ground was rising to meet her, and the chopper was moments from impact.
She clenched her teeth, her thoughts spiraling faster than the descent. She wasn't ready. Not like this. Not yet.
And then-
Boom.
The helicopter exploded on contact, a fireball erupting into the night. Metal screamed. Glass shattered. Debris rained across the sands.
For one impossible second, in the inferno of it all, a voice-silent but screaming-pierced the smoke and flame.
I wish to live.
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