The fundraiser was the kind of well-meaning chaos Lyra usually avoided. The school gym had been transformed into a "Winter Wonderland" that smelled faintly of pine-scented spray and anxiety. Paper snowflakes dangled from basketball hoops. A local band, made up of a teacher and two brave parents, was murdering classic rock songs in the corner. Kids milled around, pretending not to care, while parents clustered near the silent auction tables, holding cups of punch.
Lyra stood near the bleachers, a cup of that same punch in her hand. She wore a simple, navy blue dress her mom had bought for a cousin's wedding two years ago. It was a little tight across the shoulders now. It itched. She felt wildly, dangerously visible.
This was the "school event." Her mother's hopeful text blinked in her memory: It'll be good for you to be around people, honey. Just for an hour.
And then, three hours prior, Graham's voice through the earpiece, calm as ever: "A low-priority survey. Local asset. Civic Center parking garage, level B2. A green sedan, plates ending in 781. Confirm if it's present, note any markings, any occupants. In and out. Overlap it with your civilian cover. Call it… an exercise in environmental integration."
An exercise. A test. The Civic Center was four blocks from the school.
So now she was here, smiling stiffly at Mrs. Danvers from History, who asked if she was having fun, while a tiny, flesh-colored receiver was pressed deep into her ear canal. The gym's noise was a wall of laughter, shrieking kids, the struggling band....but beneath it, in her right ear only, was a crisp, digital silence, waiting for a status check.
Environmental integration. It meant being two people at once. It meant the seam between Lyra and Nyx wasn't a door you closed. It was a line you had to walk, in real time, in a scratchy dress.
"Lyra! There you are!"
Her mom materialized out of the crowd, her face flushed with the effort of cheerfulness. She'd baked six dozen cookies for this. "Are you mixing? You should mingle. Sarah Mendes is over by the raffle tickets, she's such a nice girl…"
"I'm mingling, Mom." Her voice sounded plastic, even to herself.
A chime, soft but distinct, sounded in her right ear. A single tone. The fifteen-minute warning.
"I'm just going to get some air," Lyra said, setting her punch down on the bleacher. "It's hot in here."
"Don't go far, sweetie! They're announcing the basket winners soon!"
She wove through the crowd, the dress catching on a folding chair. Outside, the cold night air was a shock, a relief. She turned left, away from the parents smoking near the entrance, and walked with purposeful, civilian haste. Just a girl taking a walk. Just getting some air.
The Civic Center garage was a concrete tomb. The sharp smell of cold exhaust and damp concrete replaced the gym's sugary smell. The cheerful noise vanished, swallowed by the low hum of ventilation and the distant drip of water. Her flats were silent on the stained floor.
Level B2.
The ramp down was steep. The lighting was a sickly yellow, creating pools of shadow between the pillars. Her heart, which had been a steady, subdued thing in the gym, began a low, persistent drum against her ribs. Not fear. Awareness. This was the shift. The dress felt absurd now. A liability.
She saw the green sedan. A decade-old compact, parked askew near a support column. Plates: LKT 781.
Lyra didn't stop walking. She altered her path slightly, angling to pass within ten feet of the driver's side window. Her pace didn't change. Her expression, bored, distractedly teenage. She was a girl cutting through a parking garage because it was a shortcut. That was all.
Her eyes, behind the taped glasses, scanned.
Vehicle: Present.
Markings: None visible. Dent on rear passenger side fender. Significant.
Occupants: One. Male. Caucasian. 40s. Sitting in driver's seat, not looking at phone. Just… sitting.
The man turned his head. Looked directly at her.
Their eyes met for a fraction of a second through the dirty glass. His face was unremarkable. Tired. But his eyes weren't. They were watchful. Still.
Lyra's gaze slid away, uninterested. She yawned, covering her mouth with a hand, a gesture of pure, bored adolescence. She kept walking, around the next pillar, out of his direct line of sight.
Only then did she let her breath out, a shallow stream in the cold air. Her fingers were trembling. She curled them into fists.
A soft, two-toned chime in her ear. The signal to report.
She ducked behind a massive concrete pillar, putting solid bulk between her and the sedan. She pressed a finger to her earlobe, activating the mic. Her voice, when she whispered, was Nyx's. Flat. Clear.
"Asset confirmed. Green sedan, plates LKT 781. Located B2, grid sector Echo. Single occupant, male, 40s. Vehicle bears a significant dent, rear passenger side. No visible packages. No visible surveillance. Occupant is stationary. Awake and alert."
A pause. Then Graham's voice, tinny and perfect in her ear. "Acknowledged. Return to your cover. Well within the window."
The connection died.
Return to your cover. The gym. The punch. The band.
She moved quickly now, back up the ramp, her soft soles slapping quietly. The transition back felt jagged. The cold operative focus bled into the anxious teenage girl, creating a jittery, disjointed feeling. She could still see the man's watchful eyes. She could still hear her mother's voice, pleading for normalcy.
She pushed back into the gym. The wall of sound and heat hit her like a physical force. She blinked, disoriented.
"Lyra! Where'd you run off to?"
Jax. He was leaning against the trophy case, a cup of punch in his hand. He wasn't with his usual group. He was alone. His eyes were on her, sharp, taking in her slightly quicker breath, the way her eyes were wider than they should be.
"Air," she managed, the word clipped.
"Find any?" he asked, his smile easy. But his eyes weren't smiling. They were cataloging. The slight flush on her neck from the cold garage. The absence of a coat. "You look like you saw a ghost."
He's just fishing, she told herself. He doesn't know.
But the overlap felt sickening. The watchful man in the car. The watchful boy in the gym. Two different kinds of threat, converging in the same choked hour.
"Just cold," she said, and walked past him, toward the baking table, toward her mother's hopeful smile.
For the rest of the night, she felt split. One part of her was here, nodding as her mom chatted with the PTA president. The other part was still in the yellow gloom of B2, feeling the weight of that man's gaze, hearing the echo of her own whispered report in the concrete stillness.