I didn't sleep a wink all night.
I sat on the couch, my service pistol on the table and my eyes fixed on the door. Every noise in the hallway made me jump. My brain tried to find a logical explanation for yesterday: the weird man in the suit, the flickering lights, Ayla's strength.
Drugs, I told myself. It had to be a new drug. Or a cult.
When the sun came up and no one kicked the door down, I felt stupid. And exhausted.
I took a quick freezing shower to wake up. I had to go to work. If I missed another day, I'd get fired. And if I got fired, I couldn't keep an eye on my crazy neighbor.
I went out into the hallway at seven in the morning.
Ayla was there.
She was sitting on the floor, leaning against the wall outside my door. She looked like a guard dog waiting for its owner. When I came out, she lifted her head slowly. Her black eyes scanned me up and down.
"What are you doing there?" I asked, locking my door with two turns.
"Waiting," she said. Her voice was hoarse. She stood with a movement too fluid for someone who'd slept on the floor. "You smell like cheap soap and lack of sleep."
"Thanks for the compliment," I muttered, passing by her. "I'm going to work. You stay here."
I started down the stairs. She followed me.
"I'll go with you," she said.
"No," I stopped and turned. "I'm going to the precinct. You can't come. It's a place for cops, not for… whatever you are."
Ayla ignored me and kept going down.
"The territory is unsafe. I go with you."
I sighed. I didn't have the energy to argue.
"Do what you want. But walk two meters behind me. Don't make it look like we're together."
We stepped into the street. The morning was noisy, full of horns and people rushing. I walked fast, paranoid, looking everywhere. Ayla walked behind me, relaxed, but her eyes never stopped moving. She looked at people like moving pieces of meat.
We reached the intersection of Central Avenue. It was packed with people waiting for the light.
I stopped on the sidewalk. Ayla stood beside me.
Suddenly she wrinkled her nose.
"It smells like burning," she murmured.
"It's the city, Ayla. Everything smells like burning."
"No." She tensed. Her muscles tightened under her clothes. "Hot metal. Friction. Fear."
Before I could ask what the hell she meant, I heard it.
A high, tearing screech.
I looked down the slope of the street.
A huge cargo truck, loaded with construction beams, was barreling downhill. The driver was honking desperately.
The truck wasn't slowing.
"Watch out!" someone shouted.
The truck fishtailed. A front tire exploded with a bang like a gunshot. The metal beast lost control, spun, and headed straight for the sidewalk.
Straight toward us.
Time froze.
I saw the truck's rusty grille filling my vision. I saw a young girl beside me, frozen, headphones in, oblivious to the death coming for her.
I lunged.
"Move!"
I grabbed the girl by the waist and we threw ourselves to the ground, rolling across the pavement out of the truck's path.
I closed my eyes and waited for impact. I waited for the sound of bodies breaking.
BOOM!
The ground shook so hard my teeth chattered. The air filled with steam, dust and the smell of burnt rubber.
But there were no screams.
Only the hiss of steam.
I opened my eyes, coughing.
I got up and helped the trembling girl beside me.
"You okay?" I asked. She nodded, pale as paper.
I turned to the truck.
It should have smashed into the corner shop. It should have plowed through everything.
But it hadn't.
The truck was stopped in the middle of the sidewalk.
The cab was wrecked. The steel bumper was caved inward, bent into a "V."
And in the center of that "V," hidden by the smoke from the busted radiator, there was a small figure.
Ayla.
She stood there. Legs apart, planted on the ground. The asphalt under her boots was shredded, cracked from the pressure.
Her hands were extended, buried in the metal of the bumper.
She had stopped it. She had braked ten tons of steel with her bare hands.
I went numb. My brain refused to process the image. It couldn't be. It was impossible.
Ayla let go of the truck.
The metal groaned when she pulled her hands away. Deep imprints of her fingers remained in the steel.
She shook her hands as if brushing off dust. She looked at me through the smoke. Her expression wasn't effort — it was annoyance. Like a dog that had jumped on her and needed to be shooed off.
People began to snap out of shock.
"My God!" a man shouted. "She's alive! The truck hit her and she's alive!"
I reacted.
If they saw the handmarks… if they saw she had not a scratch…
I ran to her.
"Ayla!" I grabbed her shoulder. Her skin was burning. It was hot through her clothes. "Get down!"
"Why?" she asked, frowning. "I'm not hurt. The object is fragile."
"Shut up and drop to the ground!" I hissed. "Pretend you're hurt!"
Ayla looked at me, confused, but complied reluctantly. She dropped to her knees and put a hand to her head. She did it badly — like a cheap soap-opera actress — but the smoke helped.
"Back!" I shouted to the people crowding with their phones. "I'm a cop! Clear the area!"
"Hey, officer!" a construction worker said, eyes wide. "I saw it! She stopped it! She put her hands on it and it stopped dead!"
Panic rose in my throat.
"Don't say nonsense!" I barked. "The truck hit the curb and bounced! She was lucky! It was a miracle!"
"But—" the man insisted, pointing at the crushed bumper.
"Back!" I put myself between Ayla and the crowd, covering her. "There's gasoline on the ground! It's going to explode!"
The word "explode" worked like magic. People scattered.
I took advantage of the chaos.
"Get up," I whispered to Ayla. "We're leaving. Now."
I grabbed her arm and dragged her away from the wreck, into the first dirty alley I could find.
We walked fast, almost running, until the sound of sirens filled the main street.
I stopped and shoved her against the brick wall.
She was trembling. I was trembling. She wasn't. She was calm, wiping a smear of grease from her jacket.
"What the hell are you?" I asked. My voice broke. "That wasn't adrenaline. That wasn't karate. You stopped a truck, Ayla. A damn truck."
She looked up. Her eyes were dark, unfathomable.
"It was going to hit you," she said. Simple. Plain.
"I don't care!" I shouted, then lowered my voice. "You stopped it with your hands! You dented the steel! Are you a robot? An experiment? Tell me!"
Ayla stepped toward me. I flinched, bracing for a hit, but she only came close and sniffed at the back of my neck, like she always did.
"You smell like fear again," she whispered. "You shouldn't be afraid of me. I protect you. You're mine."
"Mine?" I repeated, feeling a shiver that was partly unpleasant and partly not. "Like property?"
"Like something I don't want to break," she said, looking into my eyes with an intensity that took my breath away. "That truck was going to break you. I stopped it. End of discussion."
She stepped away and continued down the alley as if nothing had happened.
"I'm hungry," she called over her shoulder. "That stunt cost me energy. I want food."
I stood there, watching her back.
I didn't know what she was.
But I knew my normal life had ended the moment I put her in my patrol car. And worst of all… a stupid, reckless part of me was glad she was there.
---
POV: Third Person
Half an hour later.
In the security room of a bank building across from the accident site.
Two security guards watched a monitor with mouths agape.
"I don't believe it," one said, a fat man with a coffee stain on his shirt. "Look at that, Beto. Look."
On the screen, the grainy footage of the crash was paused.
Smoke covered most of the frame. But there was one still — a single video frame just before the truck stopped.
You could see the girl.
Planted, steady.
And you could see her eyes.
"It's a reflection," Beto said nervously. "It has to be a traffic light reflection."
"The light was red, idiot. That's green. Bright green."
The guard zoomed in. The image pixelated, but the two points of light on the girl's face were unmistakable.
They weren't human eyes.
They were the eyes of a nocturnal animal. Eyes that glowed on their own.
And they looked straight at the camera.
"That old woman isn't human," the fat man whispered. "Do I delete the tape? I don't want trouble."
"No," said a deep voice from the door.
The two guards jumped.
Detective Vance stood leaning in the doorway. He wore a crumpled trench coat that smelled of cheap tobacco and a predatory smile on his face.
"Don't delete anything, gentlemen," Vance said, entering the room and fixing his hungry gaze on the screen. "Make a copy for me."
He stepped up to the monitor and touched the image of the girl with his finger.
"I've got you," he murmured to himself. "I knew there was something off with you, Estonia cousin."
Vance pulled out a cigarette, even though smoking was forbidden there.
"Now let's see how tough you are in an interrogation cell."