The apartment still smelled the same. Bergamot candles Mom bought in bulk from that shop on Milwaukee Avenue, Dad’s coffee burned to sludge in the ancient Mr. Coffee he refused to replace despite the thing being older than me, and something vaguely floral from the air freshener plugged into the hallway outlet. The scent combination used to mean home. Safety. Normal teenage problems like algebra tests and whether my hair cooperated for game day.

  Now, those smells fought a losing battle against the sharp tang of ozone and fear.

  I stood in the doorway, my hand gripping the frame until the wood bit into my skin.

  Cop cars lined the street—four of them, maybe five. Red and blue lights sliced through the living room windows, turning the beige walls a violent, strobing red. I counted three uniforms in our living room before I forced myself to move. One stood by the bookshelf Mom had organized by color last spring. Another hovered near the kitchen entrance. The third scribbled in a notepad by the stairs.

  Mom saw me first. She made this sound—halfway between a sob and Jackie’s name—and crossed the room in seconds. Her arms wrapped around me, holding on like I was a life raft in a hurricane. She smelled like the lavender soap she’d used since I was a kid, the one she ordered from some small company in Oregon because she swore it was the only thing keeping her sane during tax season.

  “Nikki.” Her voice cracked. “They said—the school said you weren’t answering your phone, and with Jackie—”

  “I’m okay.” The lie tasted like ash on my tongue. I squeezed her back, trying to ground her, trying to stop the tremors running through her slight frame. “I’m so sorry.”

  Dad stood by the fireplace, talking to a detective whose expression screamed I’ve seen twenty of these cases and they never end well. Dad’s face was grey. Not pale. Grey. Like someone had drained every ounce of color from his skin and left behind a wax figure wearing his old Northwestern sweatshirt—the one with the coffee stain on the sleeve he’d gotten during his sophomore year and refused to throw out on principle.

  He caught my eye. Nodded once. The gesture carried more weight than any speech he could’ve given. It was a look of utter defeat.

  The detective turned. Mid-fifties, tired eyes, a notepad covered in scribbles I couldn’t read from across the room. His tie loosened at the collar. Wedding ring caught the light when he moved. “Miss Nova. I’m Detective Gomez. I need to ask you a few questions about—”

  “I don’t know anything.” The words came out too fast. “I wasn’t home when—when they took her.”

  Gomez lowered his digital tablet. The silence stretched, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and someone’s radio crackling static outside. “How did you know someone took her?”

  Shit.

  My brain scrambled. The wolf in my chest growled, unhelpful. “The police cars.” I gestured toward the window. “And Mom’s—” I stopped. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper, forcing the tears back.

  Gomez studied me for three long seconds. His gaze moved from my face to my hands to my shoes, cataloging details I couldn’t guess. Decided I wasn’t worth the interrogation. Not yet. “If you remember anything, use my contact.” He handed me a call card with crisp corners and a number I’d never enter on my computer. The silicon was still warm from his pocket.

  “I will.”

  He left. Took two uniforms with him. The third stayed, positioned by the front door like a piece of furniture nobody wanted but couldn’t throw out. Young guy—couldn’t be over twenty-five. He had the face cheerleaders would giggle about at practice. Under different circumstances, I might’ve cared.

  Mom guided me to the couch. Her hands shook when she poured tea from the pot she’d probably made hours ago. Cold now. I drank it anyway, the bitter liquid coating my tongue. Chamomile. She’d made chamomile because she read somewhere it helped with stress.

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  “They have to find her,” Mom said, her voice thin as wire. She wasn’t looking at me; she was staring at the steam rising from her own cup, her eyes wide and unblinking. “They said forty-eight hours. It hasn’t been forty-eight hours. The statistics say—if it’s before forty-eight hours—”

  She was reciting facts like a prayer. It was terrifying.

  “Mom,” I started, but I didn’t know how to finish.

  I wanted to tell her the truth. Wanted to explain about Pandora Corp and the trap laid with surgical precision using my baby sister as bait. Wanted to warn her Deathlok might already track me, might bring this whole mess crashing through our front door in a spray of plasma fire and chrome. Wanted to explain I was the reason our living room was currently a crime scene staging area.

  But looking at her—shattering into pieces right in front of me—I knew I couldn’t. The truth wouldn’t save them. It would just break them faster.

  Dad moved to the window. Stared out at the street below like the answer might be spray-painted on the sidewalk. “We should sue the Olympia Real Estate. If they built better security systems, our little girl—”

  “Don’t,” Mom snapped, the word sharp. “This isn’t—we couldn’t have—”

  “They should have done something before we rented this section. That is all I can say.” His reflection hovered in the glass, thin and washed out by the streetlights.

  The guilt in his voice hit the wolf like a challenge. It snarled in my chest, demanding I fix this, demanding I hunt. I shoved it down. Locked it away behind mental doors that were feeling flimsy.

  I couldn’t stay here. The air in the room was too heavy, thick with their panic and my suffocating secrets.

  “I think I’m going to be sick,” I said, standing up abruptly. It wasn’t entirely a lie.

  Mom reached for me, her eyes wild. “Nikki—”

  “I just need to lie down,” I said, backing away. “Please. I just need a minute.”

  I fled before they could stop me. The movement felt mechanical. Disconnected.

  My bedroom looked exactly how I’d left it. Unmade bed with the purple comforter Jackie had helped me pick out at Target. Cheerleading trophy from regionals gathering dust on the dresser beside my collection of lip glosses I’d stopped wearing weeks ago. Physics homework I’d never finish scattered across my desk—problem sets on momentum and force that felt cosmically ironic given my current situation. Someone—probably Mom—had opened the curtains. Moonlight spilled across the floor in silver bars, highlighting the pile of dirty clothes I’d meant to wash last weekend.

  The photo sat on my nightstand in the frame Jackie had decorated with glitter glue and stickers. Me and Jackie at Navy Pier last summer, both of us grinning at the camera with matching ice cream cones. She’d insisted on getting the biggest size despite my warnings. Ended up wearing half of it when the scoop fell off. I’d laughed until my stomach hurt and she’d thrown napkins at me, which only made me laugh harder.

  I picked up the frame. Traced the edge with one finger. A piece of glitter came off on my skin, catching the moonlight.

  “I’ll save you.” My voice sounded foreign. Too steady. Too cold. “I promise.”

  The girl in the photo—the one with the calm smile and zero monsters in her life—stared back. She felt like a stranger. A casualty.

  I set the frame down face up. Pulled my go-bag from under the bed and double-checked the contents. Spare clothes—jeans, t-shirt, hoodie. Cash I’d been saving from odd jobs, three hundred dollars in wrinkled twenties. Handy’s charging cable. The photo of uncle I’d swiped from his lab, creased from being folded in my pocket before I’d added it to the bag. Protein bars that tasted like cardboard. The burner phone I’d picked up at a bodega three weeks ago, still in its plastic packaging.

  “Nikki?” Mom’s voice drifted up the stairs. Strained.

  “I’m trying to sleep,” I called back. My voice didn’t shake.

  I shoved the bag behind my hamper. Took one last scan of the room. My cheerleading uniform hung in the closet, the red and gold catching the moonlight. I’d worn it to dozens of games. Hundreds of practices. Felt invincible in those colors. Like I could flip through the air and stick the landing every single time.

  Different uniform now. Different game. No judges holding up scorecards. No teammates to catch me if I fell.

  I turned off the light and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the digital clock on the nightstand.

  23:15.

  The house went quiet around midnight, but it wasn’t a peaceful quiet. It was the silence of people holding their breath. Dad wasn’t snoring. I heard him pacing the living room floorboards, a slow, rhythmic creak that matched the pounding of my heart. Mom was crying in the kitchen—soft, muffled sounds that hurt worse than screaming.

  Tomorrow night, the execution will begin.