The phone buzzed on the counter before I even saw the screen. I sat at the edge of the small table, drying the blade's edge with practiced motions, and let the vibration become a metronome for what came next.
"Specter," the voice said when I answered, clipped and neutral. No greeting. No small talk — efficient, like everything else.
"Pierce," I said. Two names, two lives. The line was steady. I kept my hands where they were.
"You left a message in their channels," the voice said. "They noticed. The faction's reaction is... uneven. You expected that."
"I expected consequence," I replied. "I minimized noise. The extraction was clean."
There was a pause long enough to register thought. "Clean doesn't mean unseen. They're moving men. We'll need to shuffle assets. Lay low for—"
"How long?" I interrupted, because vague timelines are worse than useless.
"Until we hear otherwise. Don't go near any known meeting points. If you're visible, you're a liability. Stay off campus lines for now." The voice became an outline of orders and an edge of warning. "And Pierce... control the local attention. You've been… noticed."
I put the phone down, silence filling the small apartment like a held breath. Noticed. The word sat differently than anything else. Not a mistake, not a failure. A condition. I cataloged possibilities: increased foot traffic near school, curious operatives, scapegoats looking for answers.
I texted Ryan and Claire something bland: Pizza later? They replied with emojis and nicknames. Normality, like a blanket.
School smelled the same — dust and chlorine and cafeteria food. But beneath the surface, whispers moved faster now. A messenger text from someone I didn't recognize pinged across my phone: You did what you had to. No signature. No context. Nothing but a tremor of implication.
I met Ryan by the lockers. He grinned, then stopped. "You look like you want to murder someone." He said it the way you tell a joke and don't expect a real answer.
"Later," I said. Conversation is often a test of how much silence you can hold without cracking.
Claire caught up, breathless. "You okay? You look like the sort of person who eats stress for breakfast." She bumped me lightly with her shoulder. "Also, tell me if you plan to go full emo on prom because you'll need a stylist. I can help."
I allowed a small half-smile. "Not emo."
"Good. Because I like you with color." She winked. "And also, what's with the secret texts? Who's harassing you now?"
"Just misplaced admirers," I said. Vague, dismissive. They were used to that.
Ryan folded his arms. "If anyone's being weird, I'll break their kneecaps. Not metaphorically." He meant it. He always meant extreme gestures without calculating logistics.
"You do not," I said mildly. "You will call your mom and she will insist you eat. Then you will calm down."
He scowled. "You're such a little tyrant."
"We in the mood for tyrant banter today?" Claire asked. She sat on a bench and forced her legs into a sort of theatrical pose. "Tell us how the 'mysterious admirer' thing is going. Or is it someone we know? Is it Aria? Spill."
I kept my eyes steady. "It's nothing."
"Your face is malfunctioning," Claire said. "Spill. Or I'll write a sonnet about your emotional restraint and read it at lunch."
Ryan pretended to be horrified. "Nooooo, anything but the sonnet."
I let a laugh slip. They laughed with me, light and easy. It was a small victory — the kind of social currency that pays for decades of pretended normalcy.
Later, I met the handler in a parking garage that smelled like oil and old coffee. Concrete pillars made tunnels of shadow. He stepped out of his car as if stepping into a stage light.
"You drew their attention," he said bluntly. No preamble. "You set a retribution cycle."
"Informant eliminated," I said. "By the book."
"By the book," the handler repeated, and there was a slight edge where approval might have been. "But people talk. Blowback is real. They'll try to pressure local ops. You need to be careful."
"Understood." I watched him, measuring how he shifted his weight, where his eyes darted — professionals never leave home without an inventory of their own micro-movements. Conversations had more to say than the words.
He sighed. "You can't be spectral all the time, Pierce. People notice patterns. They'll put two and two together if you keep making them. Keep a low profile."
"I seldom keep high profiles." The sentence was true and useless. He looked at me long enough to be sure I was promising compliance and then nodded once.
"And the students?" he asked. "Any exposure there?"
"No." I lied with the kind of ease that comes from practice. It was a calculated omission: true in the literal sense, dangerous in the potential implications. "School routines remain the same."
He let that pass. "Good. Stay off contact lists. If you're seen, the agency will not pick up your tab forever. Understood?"
"Understood."
He tapped his cigarette against the concrete and crushed it out with the heel of his shoe, then walked away without another word. I watched his retreating back until his car disappeared down the ramp. The silence left the space heavy.
At dinner, Ryan wouldn't stop asking the same questions in different forms. "So, did your mystery man text again?" he asked. "Are we talking creepy stalker or just weird fan club?"
"Neither," I said. "It's operational noise."
"What does that even mean?" Claire demanded. "It sounds like you're in a thriller and forgot to invite us."
"You're in a drama," I said. "Same thing." It dissolved into laughter, and for a while, conversation covered the edges of something more dangerous.
"Oh, come on, Pierce," Claire said, webbing her fingers in front of me like a theatrical seer. "You can tell us if you want to. We'll be supportive. We might make a scrapbook."
Ryan groaned. "Please do not make a scrapbook."
I watched their faces. The corners of Claire's mouth lifted when she flirted; Ryan's eyes shone with ridiculous loyalty. I collected those details as if they were small tokens. Their lives were warm and jagged, and they kept pulling me in despite every sensible reason not to be pulled.
"You two would be terrible at my other job," I said. "You underestimate the cost."
"You're saying we're not worth the collateral damage?" Claire asked, half-smile. "Harsh."
"You're priceless," I said, and the truth landed differently than any of us expected. She caught it. She smiled, slow and almost private, like a secret handed over in a crowded room.
Near midnight, a message came through my burner: Someone is asking questions about the informant. A cleanup is being planned. Standby. No signature. The words were small, surgical.
I stared at the message until it blurred, then deleted it. Standing by doesn't mean being idle. It means preparing windows to slip through and exits to use. I went to the map drawer and traced lines until sleep blurred ink.
The next morning, Claire teased me about my dark circles and insisted I eat something more substantial than coffee. Ryan drove me to the edge of campus in a burst of protectiveness and idiotic optimism. Their concern was absurd and perfect. It made the rest of the world tolerable.
"You good?" Claire asked as we sat in the bleachers and watched late practices empty the field.
"Yes," I said. Not a lie, not exactly. Order existed — I kept reinforcing it.
She scooted closer. "Because you're weirdly adorable when you're stressed. That's your superpower."
"Cute," I said, and meant it only as a data point: she thinks my tension is adorable. Noted.
She leaned back, inhaled, and for once stopped talking. The silence was a conversation of its own, a measured interval—two people sharing air without words.
Ryan's phone buzzed. He checked, face changing the way weather changes in a storm forecast. "Guys," he said. "Some guy's asking where that informant disappeared to. Online. People are talking."
I let the sense of mild inconvenience wash over me. "They will talk."
"It's ugly," Ryan said. "They're speculating all kinds of crap. If it escalates, it's not just rumor — it becomes danger."
We sat for a long moment with the field lights warming the air. My world — blades and angles, classrooms and laughter — had slipped a small fraction into visibility. The numbers changed. Calculations adjusted.
"You're with me," Ryan said suddenly, voice thinner than his usual bravado. "Whatever happens, I'm with you."
Claire's hand found mine before I could think. "Ditto, emo tyrant." She wiggled her fingers. "You're stuck with us."
Those words carried more weight than they would have at any other time. I didn't answer with a promise. I didn't need to. Their conviction was a variable I hadn't quite accounted for: loyalty.
I watched them, and something that resembled warmth — not bright, not effusive, just a slow increase in background temperature — appeared at the edge of my calculations. It was inconvenient. It was notable. It mattered.
The world was louder now. Men in suits would shift their pieces, gossip would become strategy, and my life would require adjustments. But for the moment, the three of us sat under the same sky and pretended everything could be paused by pizza and bad jokes.
That pretense is its own kind of armor.