The coffee shop was a world away from the cluttered warmth of Elias's antique store and the grimy danger of the industrial district. Here, the air was cool and smelled of dark roast and fresh-baked bread, a pleasant, normal scent in a life that was anything but. Lyra's presence, however, was anything but normal. She sat with an unsettling stillness, her silver eyes like twin magnets, and the complex, shifting pattern of her Catalyst was the most fascinating and terrifying thing Anakin had ever seen. It was not a flare or a pulse, but a living, breathing algorithm that processed and arranged data with an inhuman speed and clarity.
"You're thinking of running," she said, her voice a soft, knowing purr. "It's what you do. It's what you've always done. You've perfected the art of disappearing."
Anakin's stomach clenched. She hadn't just read his thoughts; she had analyzed his entire history, his whole character, in a single moment. "How?" he asked, the word a tight, strangled sound.
"I told you," she replied, a faint, amused smile on her lips. "My power is in knowing. When you walked into the range of my Catalyst, I felt a familiar kind of static. A ghost. A hole in the data. You leave no digital trail, no energy signature, nothing a normal Catalyst can detect. You are an error, a blank space in a world of information. But I am a living algorithm. I find the gaps. I see the ghosts." She leaned forward, the pattern of her Catalyst swirling into a mesmerizing, intricate spiral. "I can give you the tools to un-ghost yourself. I can make it so your Catalyst is a blank slate you can program, not a ticking time bomb you run from. But you have to trust me. And trust, for a ghost, is a very difficult thing."
Anakin looked down at his hands, his knuckles white against the dark wood of the table. Trust. He had trusted Elias, a leap of faith that had led him to an ancient woman who made flowers bloom from concrete and gave him a pouch of pliable material. It was a leap he had taken out of desperation. This was different. Lyra was not a kindly old man offering a safe place to sleep. She was a dealer, a broker, and her offer came with a price.
"What do I have to do?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper. The question felt like an irreversible step, a door closing on his old life forever.
"You have to become my hands," she repeated, her silver eyes glowing with an intense, captivating light. "I have information that no one else can see. Secrets the Wardens have buried. Whispers in the network that are too dangerous to repeat. But I'm not a fighter. My Catalyst is a processor, not a weapon. You are a weapon, Anakin. A silent one. An invisible one. Your power, once you learn to control it, is the perfect tool for a ghost like you. You can retrieve things, information, artifacts—things no one else can get to. You can be my ghost in the machine."
She pulled a small, silver sphere from her bag and set it on the table. It was no bigger than a marble, and it pulsed with a faint, steady light. "This is the first job. Elias is one of my oldest clients. The earthweaver is a new one. I can help them, and by helping them, I can help you. I have a feeling they have been waiting for someone like you for a very long time."
Anakin stared at the sphere. It was an object of pure information, and its silent hum felt like a challenge, an invitation to a world of danger and power he had only just begun to glimpse. The thought of stepping into that world, of being a pawn in a game he didn't understand, was terrifying. But the thought of running forever, of being a time bomb in a lonely, silent world, was even worse.
He reached for the sphere, his fingers trembling. His old life was a cage of memories, his new one a prison of fear. But Lyra was offering him a purpose, a reason to stop running. He took a deep breath, looked into her shimmering silver eyes, and in that moment, he felt a profound, almost reckless sense of belonging. The ghost was finally choosing to stop haunting himself.