The room was a storm with walls.
Lyn stood behind Michael's shoulder, heart rattling hard enough to shake the charm in her fist. The hooded figure had slipped into her bedroom like a rumor made bones. Ethan's gun never wavered. Kai's posture became geometry angles you did not pass unless you wished to be subtracted. Daren hovered, breath held, as if even oxygen might startle the moment into blood.
Michael's hand started to rise then stopped, arrested by a sentence that felt like a switch thrown in his chest.
"Because if you do, she'll never know what you took from her."
Silence changed temperature.
Lyn found her voice first. "What… he said—Michael—what did you take from me?"
Michael didn't answer. His profile was all iron: jaw locked, cheekbone rigid, a storm front trying to stay sky.
The hooded figure rolled their shoulders like someone settling into an old ache. "Choices," they said softly. "He took your choices. He kept some alive. He killed others. He calls that protection. He's wrong."
"Enough," Ethan warned, gun steady, eyes iced glass. "One more step and—"
"I haven't moved," the figure replied mildly, spreading gloved hands. "You just don't like the air reshaping."
"Michael," Lyn tried again, voice sharper, scared. "Tell me."
He didn't. He turned instead—spoke without looking at her. "Ethan, remove him."
The figure tipped their head in a polite little bow. "Try."
Ethan shifted—fast, silent—closing sideways like a door. Kai mirrored, cutting off the window. For a heartbeat Lyn thought she was watching a quiet arrest. Then the hooded figure flicked their wrist and something snapped against the ceiling—a small disc Lyn hadn't seen. The lights stuttered; darkness gulped the room; night returned like a cat through an open door.
"EMP?" Daren yelped. "My drone!"
"Unit Three," Kai corrected automatically, even as his body moved on muscle memory alone.
The dark wasn't complete; moonlight drew silver spines on furniture. In that breath of black, the room became a choreography of sound—footsteps, a fabric whisper, a brief grunt as Ethan's shoulder met emptiness where a body had been.
"Stay with me," Michael said, and Lyn could tell he was facing outward, shielding her with everything he was.
"I'm here," she said, even as her fingers found the nightstand and the locket both, as if metal could be prayer.
The lights coughed back to life, a wavering flicker that steadied into yellow. The hooded figure hadn't moved far. They had simply shifted the map—now perched near the vanity, close enough to the envelope they'd left yesterday to make a point.
"You don't get to vanish tonight," Lyn said, surprising herself with the authority in her voice. "You came into my room. You answer."
"Or what?" The figure's smile was audible. "You'll prosecute me with kale?"
"Or I'll decide you don't deserve to speak to me again," Lyn said, steady now, meeting shadow with steel. "And I think that matters to you."
A pause. The figure didn't laugh. "It does," they admitted.
"Then listen," she said, stepping out from behind Michael before her courage cooled. His hand lifted—then hovered, letting her pass. "Here are the terms. No more riddles. You'll give me one straight answer for every straight answer he gives me." She threw a look up at Michael she hoped said, Help me or I will make a mess you can't fix. "Both of you. Now."
"Lyn—" Michael began.
"Terms," she repeated, and the word hit the air like a gavel.
Ethan's eyes darted to Michael—permission?—but Michael was looking only at Lyn, tension cutting him into careful portions. Finally, he nodded once. "Ask."
Lyn swallowed. The questions pressed, a crowd at a door. She picked one that felt like a spine.
"Did you take anything from me?" she asked Michael. "Memory. Documents. Names. Jobs. Anything."
He didn't flinch. "I took nothing from you," he said. "And I took everything around you."
She stared. "What does that mean."
"I silenced things," he said, the words flat as ledgers. "I paid gossip to eat itself. I purchased debts that would have strangled employers who hesitated to hire an alias with your code on it. I erased three applications of yours because the companies were unsafe. I rerouted a scholarship to you. I destroyed a rival's server because they copied your repository and replaced your name." He paused. "I kept your misfortune from becoming someone else's weapon."
Heat rose under Lyn's skin—anger and something that wasn't gratitude and wasn't not. "You interfered."
"I intervened," he corrected softly. "Because I could. Because you were drowning in a world that hates girls who are better."
"Without asking me."
"You didn't know I existed," he said. "Not as I am now."
She could taste rust. "That's the same as taking my choices."
"It is not the same," he said, voice lower. "It is the cost of keeping you alive long enough to have choices."
The room pressed in. Lyn turned to the hooded figure. "Your turn. Straight answer. Who are you—in my first world."
Silence gathered, thoughtful. The figure's head tilted, hood a black parenthesis around a face they still refused to show. When they spoke, a name threaded between the vowels though they didn't fully give it.
"…I was the person who sat two rows behind you in algorithms," they said at last. "Who corrected the professor under their breath. Who left comments on your code that you argued with at 3 a.m. Who took the night bus with you twice and never asked why you cried. Who liked the exact same vending-machine noodles." A breath. "You called me a friend the week you forgot all your other words."
The floor shifted under Lyn. She knew the shape of that absence. That bus. That quiet.
"Ar—" The name fell apart in her mouth. Arun? The shy classmate? The one with careful hands and a laugh that hid? The height wasn't right. The posture was different. But necessity changes spines, a part of her thought that sounded like the hooded figure's own voice. She pressed a palm to her temple.
"My turn," Michael said, and there was a scrape in it, a hurt he didn't put down. "Why the river."
The figure answered without theater. "Because the seam is there," they said. "Between worlds. A tide that opens when other tides are wrong. I didn't push her. I missed the timing. My hands closed on water."
"And the smile," Lyn whispered, the worst shard. "I saw it."
The figure's voice thinned. "You saw it after. When you breathed again." Then, almost gently, "You confuse beginnings and endings when you drown."
Ethan lowered the gun a fraction, listening despite himself. Kai didn't move. Daren, eyes wide, was motionless in a way that required athleticism.
Lyn plugged a trembling laugh into the air, a spark in a cold room. "Okay. Next. The promise." She looked at Michael. "Say it. The second part. I want your mouth to hold it."
He met her eyes, and Lyn saw it happen: the exact moment a man decided to let a knife in because not letting it would be worse.
"If you forgot me," he said, every syllable an oath breaking and remaking, "I would remind you. And if you asked me to let you go, I would."
The room slowed. The words hung, hazard bright and holy.
"Will you?" she asked.
"If you ask," he said.
"When it's safe," Ethan added, unable to stop himself.
"When it's safe," Michael repeated, eyes never leaving Lyn's. "Not before."
The hooded figure's laugh was a breeze across broken glass. "So he edits even his surrender."
"Safety is not tyranny," Michael said without looking at them. "It is dignity."
"Safety is what rich men call cages when they're lined with silk," the figure replied.
"Enough," Lyn said, and to her surprise both men stopped as if someone had tugged opposite leashes. "Just—enough."
She breathed, palms open, cheeks hot. "I can't do this if you keep arguing definitions over my head. So here are my terms." She counted them off on trembling fingers. "One: no one comes into my room again without me asking. Not at midnight. Not with guns. Not with envelopes. Two: no more messages from a dozen numbers. One number. You bring it to me with your face." She stared at the hood. "Or you stop."
A beat.
"Three," she went on, more quietly, scared and brave together. "I choose when to remember. You both get out of the way unless I ask. If I decide I don't want to know—if I decide I want noodles and basil and stupid jokes for a while—then you let me have them. If I decide I want to know everything, then you tell me everything, even if it hurts you more than me."
Michael's throat worked. "Agreed," he said immediately.
The hooded figure took longer. "I will show my face," they said, "if he isn't in the room."
Michael's head turned. Winter returned to his eyes. "No."
"Then no face," the figure said, almost apologetic. "I won't put a throat under his hand."
Lyn looked between them, nausea flipping. "Compromise," she said, because she had learned something about how storms were navigated: you offered land. "Kai's with me. Ethan stands with you," she told the hood, because fairness was a weird religion and she was a believer suddenly. "Neutral witnesses. Daren brings snacks."
Daren startled. "I—yes. Absolutely. Morale."
Kai's eyebrow moved one millimeter. Agreement.
Ethan nodded once—he didn't like it, but the logic stacked.
Michael's jaw eased a fraction. "I will be outside the door," he said, and it wasn't permission so much as a vow.
The hooded figure inclined their head. "Then I will come as a person."
The room breathed again, like a chest that had been waiting to remember how.
Sirens sang faintly in the city distance—someone else's emergency, someone else's ruined day. The wind chime beyond the balcony offered a note and wavered, off-key but trying.
"Good," Lyn said, and nearly sat down from the sudden weakness that followed making rules. "Then we're done for tonight."
"No," Michael said, and the word didn't contradict; it cared. "We escort him out."
"Of course," the figure said lightly. "I brought my own exit."
"Not this time," Ethan replied. "Not after entering the principal's room at midnight."
"My metaphors are better," Daren muttered, but he had a pair of soft restraints in his pocket because he was occasionally, beautifully prepared.
The figure stared at them—and did something Lyn hadn't expected.
They lifted their hands. "Fine."
"What angle," Michael murmured to Ethan.
"Compliance," Ethan said, surprised. "I'll take it."
"Not you," Lyn said quickly, stepping in, some impulse refusing to be quiet. "Kai."
Kai blinked, stepped forward, and moved with careful economy. He didn't touch the hood first; he checked wrists, forearms, the line of coat seams—a professional's search done with dignity. When he fastened the restraints, it was gentle, not generous.
"Comfortable?" Daren asked, earnestly concerned.
"Strangely," the figure said, lips crooked.
Michael gestured. "We go out the east service corridor—no cameras."
Rosa appeared at the doorway then, hair immaculate, expression not. She took in the tableau—gun, hood, Lyn upright and furious, Michael composed and dangerous—and said, very evenly, "I beg to reschedule whatever this is to an hour when mascara is legal."
"Rosa," Michael said.
She raised her hands. "Noted. I saw nothing. Except the need for a mop and, likely, a lawyer." She pointed a pen at the hood. "You. If you traumatize my scheduling app again, I will cry in a way that ruins nations."
The figure's shoulders shook once. "Understood."
They moved as a unit, a quiet procession through the lime-washed corridor where portraits of ancestors pretended not to stare. Lyn kept pace at Michael's side. Twice she felt his hand lift toward her—twice he dropped it before it touched. Restraint was a muscle he had to tear to grow.
At the service door, the night waited. Kai stepped out first, scanned. Ethan followed, angle perfect. Daren held the door, an anxious usher at a very violent wedding.
Michael turned to Lyn. "Stay inside," he said.
She nodded—then put the fountain charm into his palm. "Hold this," she said. "Just for tonight."
His fingers closed around the dent she'd learned. He didn't look at it, but something unarmed itself in his face.
They led the figure out into the dark.
Lyn watched until the corridor was empty and the quiet came down like a blanket. She didn't realize she was shaking until Rosa's hand—cool, precise—closed around her elbow.
"Tea?" Rosa said.
"I hate tea," Lyn said. "Yes."
They sat at the small table by the window while the house remembered how to be a house. Rosa poured, not looking up. "Rules," she said, "are how we love people who scare us."
"I gave too many," Lyn whispered.
"You gave exactly enough," Rosa replied. "Now keep them."
Lyn stared at the steam. "Do you think he'll really let me go if I ask?"
Rosa's mouth curved, something complicated and almost kind slipping through the cracks. "He will let you stand where you want," she said. "And he will redraw continents so that the ground under your feet is not a sinkhole."
"That's not letting go."
"It's how he knows how to love," Rosa said simply. "We do not ask birds to swim."
They drank in tired silence until footsteps returned down the hall. Michael entered alone, no storm, just weather exhausted by its own power. He set the charm on the table in front of Lyn—careful, like fragile wasn't an insult.
"Done?" Lyn asked, seeking blood and finding she didn't want it.
"For tonight," he said.
"Where is he?" Rosa asked, already knowing she'd get the edited version.
"In a room with no chimes," Michael said. "With Kai outside and Ethan watching the locks." He paused. "Daren is naming the door."
Rosa pinched the bridge of her nose. "Of course he is."
Lyn reached for the charm, then left it on the table, an agreement in small metal. She lifted her locket instead, thumb rubbing the engraving until the letters were warm. For the day you forget, I'll remind you.
"Michael," she said.
He straightened slightly, as if bracing for a verdict.
"I'm not asking to leave," she said, steady, choosing the narrow bridge over the river. "I'm asking for… mornings. For breakfast in the kitchen without a battle plan. For walks that don't require a map. For the right to be stupid sometimes and not have you purchase the ocean to make it safer. For time."
He listened like it was the first competent language he'd ever heard. "I can give you time," he said, and for once there was no steel in it. Just a man.
"And you," she added, surprising herself, "get basil."
His mouth twitched. "I will protect it with my life."
"Good," she said, and felt something unclench.
Rosa stood, gathering her papers. "I will draft a schedule with 'mornings' added as a resource." At Lyn's look, she sighed. "Fine. I will not schedule mornings. I will only observe them. Quietly. From a respectful distance. With binoculars."
"Rosa," Michael said.
"Going," she replied, already leaving.
They were alone then, the window making silver out of dark. Michael didn't reach for her. She didn't reach for him. It felt like an agreement adult enough to sign.
"Tomorrow," he said, "you set the agenda."
"Tomorrow," she countered, "we do nothing important."
"Impossible," he murmured.
"Try," she said.
He nodded—one of those small nods that meant an empire would move by morning.
She picked up the charm and slid it into her pocket. "One more thing."
"Yes."
"When he shows me his face," she said, pulse ticking faster, "you will not be in the room."
He shut his eyes for one beat. Opened them. "I will be outside the door," he repeated, accepting the hunger his bones hated.
"Thank you," she said, and meant it as more than gratitude; meant it as a test he'd passed.
He turned to go, then paused. "Lyn."
"Mm?"
"I didn't take you from your world," he said. Not a defense—just a fact he needed in the air between them. "But if I find who did, I will take everything from them."
She surprised them both by smiling—small, fierce. "Get in line," she said softly.
He left on that. She slept on it.
And outside, in a room with no chimes and too much quiet, the hooded figure sat with their hands cuffed, back straight, eyes on the door that would open when she called.
They did not hate the restraint. It meant, for once, they would be made to wait.
They smiled—crooked, not cruel—and hummed the wind chime's wrong note until it felt right.
Because some songs you learned by living them. Some promises you kept by losing.
And some victories you won by surrendering on purpose, to the right person, on the right night.