The classroom had settled into an uneasy quiet by the time we stepped back inside.
Students were returning to their desks in hesitant waves — some laughing nervously, others whispering, already twisting the fire alarm into a joke. A prank, the teachers said. A glitch, someone else offered. But I didn't buy it. Karina didn't either. She hadn't said it out loud, but I could read it in the way her eyes skimmed the room.
She was scanning too — quietly, efficiently — the way I was taught to.
She took her seat by the window, dropping her bag with a casualness that felt rehearsed. I stood near the door like always, pretending not to exist, but watching everyone. Every movement. Every breath.
The teacher cleared her throat and clapped her hands. "Let's settle down. There's no need to panic — it was just a false alarm."
A few students groaned and slumped into their seats. Some pulled out their notebooks, others their phones.
But Karina... she didn't move.
She stared down at her open notebook, pen resting between her fingers. She wasn't writing. Just... holding it. The tip hovered just above the page. Frozen. Still.
It wasn't the first time I'd seen someone freeze like that — body still, mind spiraling fast. Her breathing was fine. But her eyes... her eyes had gone blank.
I shifted slightly closer.
Still just watching.
I couldn't do more than that. Her father made it clear: "Only intervene when necessary."
I still didn't know what his version of "necessary" meant.
A student near the front asked a question. The teacher started to answer, her voice muffled in my ears. My focus was locked on Karina.
She blinked twice. Then adjusted her posture just enough to look normal again. She started writing — not fast, just slow enough to look busy.
Smart girl.
She was pretending to be fine.
But I knew better.
My gaze drifted to the far side of the room — where the new students usually sat. Viktor was there, arms crossed, looking bored. Raia — or whatever her real name was — scribbled something down in a notebook. Arnie looked half asleep.
But two desks were still empty.
Nadya and Lev.
They hadn't returned.
And I noticed.
They weren't outside during the alarm. I made a mental note earlier. I remember faces. Movement. Position. They hadn't been in the crowd.
I scanned the room again. Double-checked. Triple-checked.
Still gone.
I didn't move. I didn't alert anyone. But my fingers twitched slightly near the strap of my watch — where I kept the silent alert button.
Just in case.
Something didn't sit right.
Karina moved her pen again, but she wasn't writing anymore.
She was watching.
Her eyes flicked to the corner of the room, then to the window. Subtle. Practiced. Like she'd done this before — looking without being obvious. But I saw it. I always saw it.
She tapped her pen once, then again — the kind of nervous tick someone wants you to think is just fidgeting. I'd worked with enough trained people to recognize it.
Her head tilted just slightly, like something outside caught her attention. A shadow? A movement?
I followed her line of sight out the window.
There was nothing.
At least… nothing visible now.
Her fingers tightened around her pen. She blinked a little too slowly. I knew that look. She wasn't just watching. She was calculating.
Then her eyes shifted.
Back to the desks. Specifically the empty two.
She noticed.
A flicker of recognition crossed her face. She knew who was gone. She didn't say anything — didn't look at me, didn't speak — but her posture changed. Straighter. Focused.
It was almost imperceptible, but not to me.
She was connecting dots. She didn't have the full picture, but she had enough. More than I wanted her to have.
And I didn't have enough to give her answers. Not real ones.
Her father didn't say anything about the others. About new students. About who to watch beyond her. I wasn't told anything about Russian-speaking classmates, or why half her file was redacted like a government black-op.
But I had to keep her safe.
And right now, she wasn't safe — not from danger, and not from her own thoughts.
She was spiraling again. Quietly. Internally. The calm-before-the-storm kind of spiral.
I saw her chest rise a little more sharply. Like she had to remind herself to breathe.
I took a single step closer, slow and quiet. She didn't flinch. Didn't even look. But I knew she noticed.
I was the one person who always noticed.
And she was the one person who never asked for help.
The bell rang, finally.
Students began packing up. The shuffle of bags, scraping chairs, a sea of movement.
But Karina didn't move right away.
Just sat there. Eyes on the door. Or the window. Or both.
I stayed by her desk, not saying anything.
I didn't need to.
She'd speak first — she always did.
And this time, I knew whatever came out of her mouth wouldn't be casual.
She saw too much.
And now, I needed to find out what she saw… before she buried it like everything else.