The apartment didn't just feel empty. It felt emptied.
Lyra's key turned in two deadbolts and a mechanical latch that slid home with a sound like a vault sealing. The air inside was still and cool, always 68 degrees. The hum of the air purifier was the only breath it took. No photos on the fridge. No shoes kicked off by the door. The gray sofa faced a blank wall, not a television. A single floor lamp stood in the corner like a sentinel that had given up its post.
It was safe. It was a cell.
She dropped her backpack by the door, the sound too loud in the silence. The tape on her glasses pinched. She took them off, and the world went soft, the sharp edges of nothingness blurring into a kinder nothing. She placed them on the small, clean console table—the only piece of furniture in the entryway.
She moved through the routine. Fill the electric kettle. One scoop of green tea. Wait for the click. Pour. The ceramic mug was warm, a small anchor of heat in her hand. She stood at the kitchen counter, not sitting, and looked out the window. The view was of another brick wall, five feet away. A narrow canyon of air and fading light.
This was the quiet part. The part between the end of the school day and the beginning of everything else. The part where she was just Lyra, and being just Lyra was the most exhausting job of all.
The console by the door was not for keys. It looked like a simple slab of dark walnut, but the far right corner was ever so slightly warmer to the touch. A hairline seam was visible if you knew to look. As she sipped her tea, a soft, amber pulse glowed from within that seam. Once. Twice. A third time.
Not a sound. A light. A summons.
Every muscle in her body tightened, then went very, very still. The tea taste turned bitter in her mouth. She set the mug down carefully, the click of ceramic on quartz another offense against the quiet.
She walked to the console. Placed her thumb over the warm spot. A nearly invisible scanner read her print, her pulse, her tension. The seam disappeared as a small, black screen tilted up to meet her. Words formed in minimalist, green type.
Asset: NYX
Status: ACTIVE
Channel: CICADA
Message: Package requires retrieval. Locus is hot. Sunset window. Full quiet protocol.
Coordinates followed.
A string of numbers. A map reference. No please. No thank you. No explanation of what 'hot' meant tonight. Just a time, a place, a command.
Lyra read it once. Her eyes, unfocused without the glasses, skimmed the words. She didn't need to read it twice. The information wasn't stored on the screen; it was etched directly onto her mind. Cold. Clear.
She exhaled, a long, slow breath she hadn't known she was holding. And with it, something… settled. The quiet anxiety of being Lyra, the girl with the taped glasses, the one who calculated losses in hallways—it condensed. It hardened into a dense, cold pellet in her gut. Useful weight.
The transition wasn't dramatic. It was surgical.
She walked to the bedroom. Not really a bedroom. A room with a mattress on a platform and a closet. She opened the closet door. On the left: three gray sweaters, two pairs of jeans, dull and functional. Lyra's clothes.
On the right, hanging in a garment bag that looked like it might hold a funeral dress, was a different uniform.
She unzipped the bag. The fabric inside was matte, a black so deep it seemed to drink the light from the room. Not leather, not cotton. Something technical, engineered. She pulled it out. A long-sleeved top, high-necked. Trousers with reinforced knees. No labels. No seams in the usual places.
She undressed, folding Lyra's clothes—the soft jeans, the sweater that smelled vaguely of school and peanut butter—and placed them neatly on the platform bed. She stepped into the trousers. They were cool against her skin, sliding on with a whisper. The top followed. It fit like a second skin, snug but not restrictive, compressing her ribs just enough to remind her they were there. A hidden zip at the wrist sealed everything in.
From a shelf in the closet, she took a box. Plain, black. Inside, nestled in gray foam, were the tools.
First, the earpiece. A curved sliver of dark plastic and metal. She fitted it into her right ear. It clicked softly, nesting deep in the canal. A low hum, then silence. It was active. Listening, waiting.
Next, the thin gloves. They stretched over her fingers, webbing at the knuckles for grip. They connected to a port at her wrist. A tiny status light glowed green on the back of her hand, then faded.
Finally, the hood. Attached to the collar of the top. She pulled it up. It framed her face, tight and close. In the mirror on the back of the door, a stranger looked back. A pale oval of face, all sharp angles and hollows in the shadow of the hood. Eyes that looked older. The taped glasses sat on the console in the other room, a relic from a different life.
She was not Lyra anymore.
The name came to her not as a thought, but as a fact. A designator. Nyx.
It carried no emotion. It was a key that fit a specific lock. It opened the door to a world of shadows, of silent movement, of retrieving packages from 'hot' loci. It was a tool, and she was the hand that wielded it.
She went back to the console. With a gloved finger, she acknowledged the message. The green text vanished. The screen went dark, sealing the seam once more. The apartment was just an apartment again, empty and still.
She didn't look back. She went to the front door, disengaged the three locks from the inside, and stepped out into the hallway. She pulled the apartment door shut behind her. The mechanical latch slid home with that same, final thud.
In the sterile, silent dark of the entryway, on the clean console table, a pair of taped glasses sat waiting for a girl who had, for now, quietly ceased to exist. Downstairs, the night air was cool. The sunset window had begun. Nyx turned up the collar of a plain, black wool coat she'd taken from the closet—Lyra would never wear it .....and melted into the flow of people heading home, invisible, a ghost with a purpose, walking toward the grid coordinates burning in her mind.