The locker room reeked of sweat mixed with the cheap vanilla body spray Tessa bought in bulk from the dollar store. I yanked my laces tight, the fluorescent tubes overhead flickering in their slow death rattle. Three days. Three days since Jackie’s hand had squeezed mine back home. Three days since I walked out of a place most people didn’t walk out of.

  Tessa bounced over and brushed her long brown hair off her face. “Girl, where have you been? You missed three practices. Three. Coach is ready to murder someone, and I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be you.”

  “Family emergency.” The lie tasted like peppermint toothpaste. Practiced.

  “Well, you better have your A-game ready, because we’re building pyramids today and if you can’t—” She grabbed my wrist to pull me up.

  I jerked away fast enough to make her stumble.

  Her fingers had landed right on the bite mark, the one that hadn’t faded, wouldn’t fade, couldn’t fade. The skin there burned different now. Hotter. Like touching a live wire with the insulation stripped off.

  “Sorry. Pulled a muscle doing… home workouts.”

  She studied me with those sharp brown eyes, the ones that could spot a crooked formation from across the gym. I waited for the interrogation, the rapid-fire questions she was famous for.

  She shrugged instead. “Okay, weirdo. But seriously, stretch better.”

  My stomach untied itself, but the guilt stayed as she bounced away.

  Practice was autopilot. Five, six, seven, eight. Jump, land, smile. The routine we’d drilled since summer camp last year. My body executed every move while my brain replayed highlights I didn’t want: the Kennel’s concrete walls. Moldark’s teeth when he smiled. Brick dying at the robot factory.

  “Nikki! You’re a full count behind!” Coach’s whistle split the air.

  I snapped the next sequence. Textbook form. Competition-ready precision. But it felt wrong. My uniform felt tight, itchy, like a costume that didn’t fit anymore.

  I went into the tuck jump. I landed. The floorboards groaned. I could have put my fist through them without raising my pulse.

  I hit the locker room after practice, checking my phone while the other girls laughed about some holo video drama. One message from Handy glowed on the screen: Quiet night. No movement. But the distribution patterns are shifting. We should discuss.

  Patterns. He’d been mapping Pandora shipments for days, trying to predict Moldark’s next play. The truce was theater. We’d both agreed on the script—I’d bought us breathing room, not a happily ever after. Moldark didn’t honor deals. He collected debts.

  Mine was growing interest.

  “Yo, smoothie run?” Cody approached my locker, doing his trademark lean against the metal. “Come on, I’m buying.”

  “Can’t. I’m picking up Jackie.”

  His face did the concerned-friend thing, eyebrows pulling together. “Is she doing better? Tessa said she was sick or something.”

  “Stomach bug. She’s good now.”

  Jackie remembered fragments—shadows with too many teeth, cold that burned, waking up at the police station, wondering how she got there. I’d told her only half the truth. A scary man took her, but I helped the police to find her. She was eight. Eight-year-olds deserved to believe monsters belonged to fictional stories.

  Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  I shouldered my bag and made for the exit. Tessa shouted something about Halloween costume planning, but I was already through the door, pretending the closing hinges had swallowed her voice.

  Distance was kinder. For them. For me.

  Jackie waited at the elementary school fence when I rolled up in dad’s hover car, her backpack massive enough to qualify as luggage. She threw herself into the passenger seat, already launching into a breathless monologue about her science fair project—something involving baking soda volcanoes and “realistic lava effects.”

  Normal. Boring. Safe.

  “Can we get ice cream?” She clicked her seatbelt with the determined air of someone who’d already won the argument.

  “It’s October. There’s frost warnings.”

  “Ice cream is a year-round food group, Nikki. Everyone knows this.”

  I couldn’t stop the grin. “One scoop.”

  She raised both fists in victory.

  Morrison Avenue had the robot-server place, the one with the AI that mangled orders in new and creative ways. Jackie scored her ice cream—two scoops, because she gave me the eyes, the ones that got her out of chores—while I grabbed the blackest coffee on the menu. She made a face at my cup like I’d ordered poison.

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Says the person willingly eating blue raspberry.”

  She kicked her sneakers against the booth, giggling. “You seem… I don’t know. Less tired? You were really tired before.”

  Before. When I’d been tracking Deathlok through streets that smelled like blood and oil. When I’d been mapping Pandora HQ with the single-minded focus of someone planning their own funeral. When the wolf had been closer to the surface than the girl, when I’d measured the distance between human and monster in heartbeats instead of miles.

  “Yeah, squirt. I’m better.”

  Not quite truth. Not quite lie. Somewhere in the gray space between.

  The drive home painted Chicago’s skyline in orange and purple, the sun bleeding out behind the skyscrapers. Jackie crashed in the passenger seat, blue smears on her chin. I hauled her inside like cargo, tucked her into bed, and stood there watching her chest rise and fall for longer than made sense.

  Safe. She was safe right now, in this moment, in this room.

  Midnight pulled me down to the Kennel.

  Handy threw a holographic map across the concrete, red markers blooming over the Midwest like a rash. Twelve Pandora facilities. Seven had gone silent since I infiltrated the tower.

  “Consolidation.” Handy zoomed in on the cluster. “Moving people, equipment, subjects. Moldark’s mobilizing for something major.”

  “Define major.”

  “Mass-produced supernatural bioweapons. Military contracts. A fundamental shift in the power structure of North American criminal enterprise.”

  I studied the glowing dots. “We can’t take twelve locations.”

  “We don’t need twelve. We need the nerve center. The primary facility. Eliminate the command structure, the rest collapses.”

  “Or they scatter. Go independent. Make the problem worse.”

  “Then we salt the earth. Make sure nothing grows back.”

  I raised an eyebrow at the screen. “You’ve been watching too many action movies.”

  “Impossible. I don’t watch. I run math on how to keep you alive.”

  The training dummy in the corner sagged on its chain, foam guts spilling from the tears I’d opened earlier. I didn’t need the full transformation anymore—weeks of trial and error had taught me the in-between state. How to let the wolf press against my bones without breaking through. Gold creeping into my irises. Claws instead of nails. Strength without losing the driver’s seat.

  I hit the dummy. Again. Again. Each impact a metronome. A meditation. A vow.

  I wasn’t the terrified girl bleeding on gym tiles anymore.

  I wasn’t the bag anymore. I was the hitter.

  Moldark wanted his perfect monster? Fine. I’d play the part. But not his version. Not the trained attack dog or the mindless weapon or the asset in a spreadsheet.

  The kind that studied the handler. Memorized the patterns. Waited for the leash to slip.

  I’d show up for cheer tomorrow. Laugh at Tessa’s jokes. Help Cody with his terrible calculus homework. Drive Jackie to school. Pretend the biggest problem in my life was whether we’d place at Regionals.

  And when Moldark made his move—not if, when—I’d be standing exactly where he didn’t expect me.

  Sharper. Faster. Ready.

  Let them come.