Dani's boots made no sound as she moved toward the cracked window overlooking the street outside the safe house. Her eyes narrowed as she crouched, pulling a thin scroll from her coat—something that looked like a strip of parchment but shimmered faintly with shifting ink.
"Perimeter glyphs," she muttered, voice low but sharp. "Cheap insurance against whatever's stalking us."
She began rolling the strip across the window frame, murmuring a string of words under her breath. The air shimmered—like heat rising on asphalt—but cold, unnatural. Lance watched from the corner, still gripping Dario, who sensed the tension and stayed close.
"Gonna need more than those if this keeps up," Lance said quietly, eyes flickering to the door.
Dani shot him a look, half smirk, half warning."Yeah, well, hope isn't part of the kit."
Her fingers danced across the lunchbox's compartments, extracting a tiny glass jar sealed with a cork. Inside floated something pale and twitching—a parasite, or maybe a parasite's parasite.
She shook it gently, whispering, "Reality eater. Feed it noise, starve the breach."
But as her eyes lifted to the warped glass of the window, the distortion made her pulse falter. For a moment, the reflection wasn't the street outside. It was—
..An apartment?
In her memory, it smelled faintly of smoke and old books. Stacks of files leaned like broken teeth along the counter, and a guitar nobody ever played sat propped against the wall. He was there—always there—scribbling notes in his uneven, too-sure handwriting, humming a tune like the world was background music just for him.
Dani wasn't watching the papers. Or the files. Or even the lazy arc of his hand across the page. She was watching him. The cut of his shoulders through a plain shirt, the relaxed precision in his movements, the way even silence seemed to bend around him.
"My love," she blurted, the words too quick, too eager. Heat burned up her neck, but she didn't take it back. Couldn't.
His head tilted, just slightly, a shadow breaking across his jaw. A smile tugged there, lazy, unearned, and absolutely lethal. "You always say that like you don't believe it."
"It does surprise me," Dani shot back, curling into the couch, chin on her knees. The words tried to sound sharp, but her grin betrayed her. "How did I fall for the smooth-talker archetype? They're everywhere. But somehow… you're different."
"Different," he echoed, pushing the pen aside with two fingers. He didn't come immediately. He let the pause stretch, savoring it, then strolled over, leaning one hip against the couch arm. The overhead lamp never touched his eyes—just carved the sharp line of his mouth into the dim.
"You make it sound like a trick," he murmured.
"Maybe it is," Dani teased, though her chest was too tight. "You vanish for hours, leave me on read, then show up with that smile and that voice and expect me not to fold? It's criminal."
A low hum of amusement. Then: "About last night."
Her ears pricked.
"I was with Dallas," he said, offhand, like tossing a scrap into the air. "Nothing you need to worry about."
Her stomach dipped. The name was sour, heavy. She knew enough to know wrongness clung to it. Her lips parted, but before the protest could escape, his hand tilted her chin toward him, gentle but firm.
"You trust me, don't you?"
Her breath caught. "…Of course I do, but—"
"No buts." His thumb brushed just beneath her jaw, feather-light, disarming. That smile—half charm, half scalpel—hooked into her and held fast. "If I say it's nothing, then it's nothing. You're letting your mind run again."
The words sank sharp and soft all at once. That was what she did, wasn't it? Spinning wheels, doubting shadows, looking for cracks in places where there weren't any. He'd said it before. He'd kissed her after.
"But Dallas—"
"Dallas is just Dallas." His chuckle wrapped the words like a joke. Like she was silly for even bringing it up. "You know how he gets. Loud. Reckless. Not your burden. Not your problem. Let me worry about him."
Her chest knotted. But the certainty in his tone smoothed it down, pressed it flat. He always made her doubts feel like flaws he could mend with a smile and a steady hand.
Dani leaned toward him before she realized she was doing it. Helpless. Pathetic, really. She knew. Some corner of her knew. But when his hand slid to the back of her neck, when his breath brushed warm against her temple, the knowing drowned.
"You make me insane," she whispered, almost ashamed.
"Good," he said, lips at her hairline. "It means you're alive."
She wanted to stay there forever. Let him talk her in circles until the rest of the world blurred.
But she puffed out a breath, tried to wrestle back a shred of footing, and jabbed a finger against his chest. "Also," she said, grin breaking, "I'll get you back for leaving me on read last night!"
His laugh was low, rich, infuriatingly calm. "I'll hold you to that."
The memory snapped away like a curtain tearing.
Dani's hand was still on the strip. The shimmer still burned faint against the glass. Her throat was dry, her pulse sharp in her ears.
She almost didn't notice the weight of his stare.
Lance. Still hunched in the corner, arms around Dario like a drowning man around driftwood. His eyes tracked her—not in awe, not in trust, but suspicion. He had seen something. The way her focus slipped, her silence stretched.
"You good?" His voice was sandpaper. "For a second there, you looked… gone."
Dani forced a smirk, pulled her hand back from the ward like it hadn't been shaking. "Just checking the seal. Still holds."
But his eyes stayed on her, narrow, restless. He knew better.
Dani turned away too fast, fussing with her kit, hiding her face in the clatter of glass jars. Her chest was tight with the weight of a voice she couldn't scrub out.
"Hold up," she said, voice dropping to a whisper.
A figure stood half-hidden in the gloom just beyond the streetlight's reach. Tall. Thin. Wrapped in a long coat that fluttered unnaturally, like fabric caught between realities. The face was obscured—just a suggestion of features, as if erased by a trick of the light.
Lance's heart slammed.
She tapped the side of her head, pulling a tiny earpiece from her collar.
"Eyes on target," she said into the mic. "Subject approaching. No ID. No comms."
The figure shifted—slow, deliberate steps that made no sound.
Dani's hands moved fast. From her lunchbox she pulled a briefcase-like device and flipped it open.
"Containment protocol might need a new chapter tonight," she muttered, loading a clip of adhesive sigils into a shotgun barrel.
Lance hugged Dario tighter, breath shallow.
The thing outside smiled—or something close to it. A twitch at the corner of where a mouth might be.
Not human.
Not quite.
But watching.
Waiting.
Dani glanced back at Lance, eyes sharp but tired.
"This just got more complicated."
The figure still hadn't moved.
It just stood there—across the cracked asphalt and flickering light, wrapped in that long, coat-like thing that flapped even when there was no wind. Like it wanted to be seen. Like it knew it was being watched.
Lance stayed near the floor, half-covered by a fold-out cot and the wall. He had Dario in a half-hug, eyes locked on the window, lips pressed into a thin line. He hadn't said a word in five minutes. The implications of him being like.. them still ring in his mind.
Dani, on the other hand, was moving again—glancing at her glyphpad, checking readings, rotating her briefcase weapon like it was a Rubik's cube made for monster-hunting tax agents.
She pulled out a sigil shell the size of a hockey puck, kissed it like a superstition, and slammed it into the barrel.
Lance didn't respond. His knuckles were pale around Dario's collar.
Dani noticed.
Of course she did.
She didn't say anything, though. Not yet.
Instead, she turned toward the window and raised the scope of her briefcase rifle. It extended like a slide rule, clicking open into a scythe-sharp shape covered in engraved metal and something pulsing faintly blue.
Through the scope, the figure's face—or absence of it—wavered.
Still no features.
Still smiling.
"What's it doing?" Lance finally whispered.
"Being ominous," Dani replied. "Just standing there. Probably rehearsing some cryptic line like, 'We've been watching you since the milk was chilled.'"
Lance's mouth twitched, barely.
He didn't look at her. Didn't make eye contact.
Dani lowered the scope and exhaled.
"You're mad," she said plainly.
Lance didn't answer.
"Because of the subject thing."
Still nothing.
She sighed and paced. "You know I don't do pet names. Subject's just shorter than 'guy caught between milk-based spatial anomalies and a cow that shouldn't exist.'"
Lance finally turned. His voice was low.
"You didn't deny it."
"Deny what?"
"That you're watching me."
Dani stopped moving.
Then: "You're leaking something that bends space. You think I'm not supposed to watch that?"
His gaze dropped.
"Right. Yeah. Of course."
A pause.
Then: "You want a different label?" she asked, turning the briefcase in her hands. "Fine. Milk Host Prime? Captain Pasteur? Dairy King?"
Lance gave her a look. Dario blinked.
Dani grinned like a cat chewing on a wire.
"Nothing? Wow. Tough crowd."
Lance opened his mouth. Closed it. Rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm.
Outside, the figure stepped forward.
Dani dropped the smile in a flash. "There it is. Here we go."
The light outside cracked—not broke, cracked, like glass catching frost. Shadows bent wrong. The figure moved between frames of reality like flipping pages in a book.
It got closer.
Lance tensed. Dario growled, low and sharp.
Dani lowered her voice. "Stay with the dog. If I go out, don't follow unless the walls start melting."
"Cool. Casual instructions," Lance said, more to himself than her.
She moved toward the door, flicking her wrist to activate another sigil on her belt—this one humming with copper light.
Just before she opened it, she turned.
Not serious. Not stern.
But warm.
"Hey."
Lance looked up.
"You're still Lance," she said. "Not a subject. Not a ghost. Just some guy who bought milk on the wrong Tuesday."
Lance blinked, squinting at the ceiling like it might give him the answer. Wrong Tuesday? Was it even Tuesday? Or had he skipped a few days somewhere between reality bending and the twitch? Maybe it was Thursday. Or Milkday. Who kept track anymore?
And then, she was gone—vanishing through the side exit with her briefcase weapon, a detonator charm in her teeth, and muttered curses about "void creeps with dramatic timing."
Lance sat there.
Still quiet. Still hurting.
But the corner of his mouth lifted—just a little.
And then outside—
Something screamed.
Not a voice. Not even a sound.
But a bend, like air tearing open.
Dario stood.
So did Lance.
He didn't say anything.
He just picked up the recorder Dani gave him... and held it.
Not pressing play.
Not yet.
Just holding it like it might become something else.
The scream — or whatever passed for one — never repeated.
Lance waited, stiff and silent, listening for the sounds Dani might make if she were suddenly turned inside out.
None came.
Only wind.
And the click of boots.
She returned through the side door a minute later, breath steady, weapon folded and strapped to her back. A smear of ash marred her cheek.
"It's gone," she said simply. "Or it wasn't here to begin with. Projection, maybe. Partial tether."
She met Lance's eyes—still opaque, still quietly wrong—and said nothing else. Just nodded toward the door.
"We're moving."
The world outside the safehouse felt too wide. The sky was too blue. Birds chirped overhead like nothing had happened, and the cracked sidewalks stretched out under a slanting early morning sun.
Lance squinted, adjusting to the light. Dario walked just ahead, tail upright, sniffing the wind with slow interest. The air smelled like rust and cut grass.
Suburban sprawl. Dead quiet.
Too quiet.
They passed a crooked mailbox with a hand-painted smiley face on it. A child's bike lay on its side in a yard, wheels spinning slightly, though there was no breeze.
The houses looked lived-in... but hollow. No movement behind the blinds. No hum of conversation or background noise. Just the occasional flicker of something inside—a light turning off when it should've turned on.
They walked five more minutes in silence.
Then Dani broke it.
"Pack up," she said simply. "Whatever that thing was, it blinked out instead of advancing. That means two things—one, it's not anchored here. Two, something worse is coming behind it."
Lance, still gripping the recorder, nodded once and slowly stood. His legs ached. Dario gave a soft grunt and stretched before settling near the door, ready.
Dani grabbed her lunchbox, slammed it shut with a hiss of vapor, and strapped it back to her side.
"Where are we going?" Lance asked quietly.
She hesitated. "Somewhere marginally less cursed."
Then: "We'll try Kenton."
"Kenton?"
"Old contact. Scumbag. Reliable."
Lance blinked. "Cool. Love that. Can't wait."