The fan creaked, lazily spinning against the oppressive heat that turned her tiny apartment into an oven. Elena lay sprawled on her bed, her tank top clinging to her damp skin. The curtains were pulled shut, but the room still glowed faintly amber, suffused with the sun’s unrelenting glare.The faint musk of smoke lingered in the room, heavy and cloying, a reminder of last night’s slow unraveling. On the nightstand, an overfilled ashtray perched precariously near the edge, its contents threatening to spill with each vibration from the fan.
By now, the streets outside would be empty, the city holding its breath through the worst hours of the day. No one moved. No one spoke. The silence wasn’t imposed; it simply settled, as natural as the rising heat and the suffocating stillness. The kind of quiet that carried a warning without needing words.
She shifted slightly, pressing her face into the pillow, though even that effort felt monumental. The fan clicked again. A lone, dry bark from a dog echoed faintly outside, quickly swallowed by the heat.
Sleep came in fits and starts, hovering just out of reach as the rhythm of her breath slowed to match the lazy churn of the fan. Bit by bit, her body gave in, sinking deeper into the mattress. The air hung heavy and still, the smoke mingling with the haze of dreams as she finally drifted off.
The room felt different when she woke, though she couldn’t immediately place why. The air seemed thicker, weighted, as though it had pressed in while she slept. Somewhere nearby, a voice carried through the muffled haze, bright and too cheerful, like it didn’t belong in a place so still.
Her eyelids fluttered, reluctant to open. The effort of moving felt monumental. She groaned softly, rolling to one side as the voice continued, light and relentless.
“Ladies and gentlemen! You’re just in time for today’s live event! I’m your host, Felix Marquez, and today we have an exclusive guest!”
Her arm stretched out, fumbling across the nightstand for her phone. The screen’s glow was almost blinding, and her fingers knocked it loose before she could silence the noise. The device clattered to the floor, landing just out of reach.
From below, Felix Marquez’s voice pressed on, smooth and assured, filling the room with its unwelcome presence. “Joining us is none other than the enigmatic bodyguard of the most mysterious man of our times. Who is he protecting? And why does he remain so secretive? Stay tuned—”
Before the answer could come, the phone rang, cutting through the air with sharp insistence. For a moment, Elena didn’t move, her mind sluggish and unwilling. Then, slowly, she slid an arm over the side of the bed, groping for the phone.
The screen flashed: Mamá.
She groaned, pulling the phone to her ear. Her voice cracked as she answered, barely above a whisper. “Mamá?”
“Elena,” her mother said, brisk and impatient. “¿Estás ahí? You sound like you’ve just woken up.”
“I—yeah,” she muttered, her thoughts still sluggish, the words catching in her throat. “I’m here, Mamá.”
“Good,” her mother replied sharply. “Because I need you to listen. Something’s happened.”
As her mother’s words took on a sharper tone, the voice of Felix Marquez still lingered faintly in her ears, the words replaying like an echo. Mysterious man. Bodyguard. Stay tuned.
“Elena, are you listening?” her mother pressed, her tone cutting through the fog like a blade.
Elena swung her legs over the side of the bed, rubbing her temple as the sharpness of her mother’s voice pressed against her lingering grogginess. The room seemed hotter than before, the air hanging thick and heavy, and the faint smell of burned-out electronics drifted in from somewhere down the block. It was nothing unusual—power surges were as common as the heat these days—but it added to the sense of unease creeping through her.
“I’m listening,” she said finally, her voice still hoarse.
Her mother spoke quickly, words tumbling over each other like she couldn’t get them out fast enough. Elena caught fragments—trouble near the center, something about a curfew extension. Her brow furrowed as she tried to focus, dragging a hand down her face.
“Mamá, slow down,” she interrupted. “What are you talking about?”
There was a sharp exhale on the other end. “You haven’t seen the news?”
“No, I just woke up.” She glanced at the phone, where Felix Marquez’s live stream still played faintly in the background. The glow of the screen pulsed rhythmically, like a distant heartbeat.
Her mother’s voice dropped lower, almost a whisper now. “There was another incident. Something about a breach at one of the corp hubs. They’re locking down zones. Drones everywhere.”
Elena’s stomach tightened. The word “incident” carried weight here, a quiet euphemism for events no one wanted to say aloud—riots, strikes, attacks. They happened often enough, always somewhere else, always followed by reassurances that the megacorps had it under control. But lockdowns didn’t happen for no reason.
“I’ll be fine,” she said, trying to sound dismissive.
“You need to get ready for work soon, no?” her mother pressed. “You shouldn’t be out late.”
Elena rolled her eyes, glancing toward the clock on her phone. There were still hours before she needed to leave, though the thought of heading out into the stifling night air—past the drones and checkpoints and the quiet, watchful streets—already felt exhausting.
“I’ll be careful,” she said, leaning back against the wall. The paint was peeling there, and a faint streak of grime clung to her tank top as she shifted. Her mother’s worry was misplaced, Elena thought. It was easier to get by unnoticed when you didn’t make waves, and she’d spent her entire adult life learning to do just that.
Her mother hesitated, then said, “Okay. But call me if—”
A sharp crack outside made Elena flinch. Her head snapped toward the window, heart thudding in her chest. The dog barked again, louder this time, followed by the faint, mechanical hum of a drone overhead. The sound passed quickly, fading into the suffocating stillness, but it left her on edge.
“Mamá, I’ll call you later,” she said, cutting the conversation short.
Her mother protested, but Elena ended the call, letting the phone drop onto the mattress beside her. She exhaled slowly, running a hand through her hair. Outside, the city felt like it was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.
The live stream on her phone was still playing, the voice of Felix Marquez drawing her attention back. “Who is this bodyguard?” he was saying, his tone dripping with intrigue. “And more importantly, who is this mysterious man pulling all the strings behind the curtain? Stay tuned.”
Elena stared at the screen for a long moment, a strange unease settling in her chest. The apartment seemed smaller now, the walls closer, the air even hotter. The fan clicked again, endlessly turning, but it did nothing to break the weight pressing down on her.
02
By the time Elena stepped back into the main room, the light had shifted again, thinning and cooling as it slipped toward evening. The worst hours of the day were over, and the city would soon begin to stir, cautiously at first, like an animal testing whether it was safe to move. She pulled on her clothes without much thought, ate standing by the counter, fed the puppy while it circled her legs impatiently, then opened the window and let the night air in, though it did little more than stir the heat already trapped inside the apartment.
A few messages waited on her phone. Tomorrow, Aitana wrote. Same place? Others confirmed. Mateo lingered longer than necessary in the chat, offering weed, offering rides, offering himself in ways that were familiar enough to be easy to ignore. Elena answered briefly, just enough to remain present, then locked the phone and slipped it into her bag.
Outside, the street greeted her with noise and movement that felt heavier than usual. Food carts hissed and spat oil into shallow pans, neon signs flickered weakly above them, and people stood in clusters that didn’t seem to have much purpose beyond standing there. The smell of cheap food, sweat, and old concrete clung to everything. A few men looked at her as she passed, some openly, others pretending not to, their attention brushing against her without quite landing. She didn’t react. She rarely did. This was a language she had learned early, and speaking it required no effort anymore.
What unsettled her wasn’t the attention, but the way people spoke in lowered voices, pausing mid-sentence when patrol drones drifted past overhead. There were more of them than usual, hovering low, scanning faces, lingering a little too long before moving on. More people were out as well, despite the warnings, drawn into the streets by something Elena hadn’t heard about yet. Whatever it was, it hadn’t reached her circle. Not through messages, not through the filtered feeds she trusted enough to check.
She kept walking.
The closer she got to the metro, the dirtier the streets became, the lights dimming until they barely did their job at all. Down here, the very bottom couldn’t afford to ride underground, and that knowledge offered a strange comfort. Fewer passengers meant fewer eyes. Even if the atmosphere pressed down on her chest, the absence of certain kinds of attention made it easier to breathe.
She adjusted her posture as she walked, letting her shoulders slump just enough to dull the edges of herself. Neutral was still noticeable. Worn was safer. She would fix herself later, once she crossed into the part of the city where looking tired was considered suspicious.
Near the entrance to the station, she noticed him again. The thin guy.
He stood a little apart from the flow of people, head tilted slightly as if listening to something just out of reach. She had seen him several times over the past few days, always in roughly the same places, always quiet. Drunk men talked at him. Old people complained. He listened calmly, never interrupting, never responding. She couldn’t remember ever seeing his mouth move. The unreality of it — the way he absorbed attention without reflecting it — unsettled her more than it should have.
She looked away and descended into the station.
The transition between lines was abrupt enough to feel unreal.
One moment, the walls were stained and dim, the lights flickering with no sense of urgency to stay on. The next, everything brightened, surfaces smoothed, and the air itself seemed cleaner. Guards stood at regular intervals, masked and armored, rifles hanging comfortably at their sides. There were more of them than usual tonight, spaced closer together, their presence too deliberate to ignore.
On paper, they weren’t government officials. On paper, they didn’t have the authority to stop civilians, to scan them, to touch them. Elena had learned early that paper meant very little here. Corporations paid better, collected more data, and remembered longer. They knew where people went, what they said, what they searched for when they thought no one was watching. The official patrols knew it too. That was why they kept their distance.
Only a few people stood ahead of her at the checkpoint. Most avoided this part of the city unless they had a reason solid enough to survive paperwork and scrutiny. Work. Education. Service. Even then, most of the actual labor was handled by machines.
When her turn came, Elena placed her bag into the tray and pushed it forward, yawning as if she barely cared enough to stay awake. One of the guards had been watching her for some time now. Not aggressively, just way too uncomfortably. She kept her eyes forward and waited.
It wasn’t until the bag slid closer to the scanner that the realization hit her: The stash.
Her breath caught, sharp and sudden, her chest tightening as if the air had been pulled from it. There was no time to retrieve the bag. That would invite questions, and questions had weight. For a brief moment, panic threatened to take over, her vision narrowing, her thoughts scattering.
Then something steadied.
Adrenaline burned through the fog, clearing her head with brutal efficiency. She lifted her gaze and met the guard’s eyes, letting a smile form that didn’t belong to the fear clawing at her insides. She tilted her head slightly, held the look, let the implication settle between them.
The guard froze.
The moment stretched, everyone quietly leaning into the discomfort between the two. He hadn’t expected this — not from her, not here — and the hesitation rippled outward, unsettling the practiced rhythm of the checkpoint. Elena didn’t break eye contact. She leaned into the role she hated, pressing it forward until it was impossible to ignore.
The scanner hummed. The bag passed through.
The guard stepped closer, close enough that she could hear his breathing quicken behind the mask. He tried to speak, failed, and tried again, but only fragmented, weak mumbles left his mouth. His visor fogged, the edges of his authority blurring with something messier beneath it. Finally, the stamp came down on her ID with unnecessary force.
She took her bag and moved on, not running, not lingering. Only when she was clear did the aftermath hit her, sharp and sour. That had been anything but smooth.
The metro emerged from underground after the first station, the sudden openness almost shocking. Huge windows framed the pale gray evening sky, the crescent moon already visible above the city’s uneven silhouette. Inside, the lights were cold and unforgiving, washing everything in sterile clarity.
Elena welcomed it.
She used her phone as a mirror, steadying her hands as she fixed her makeup, pulled the worn hoodie over her head, and folded it neatly into her bag. Beneath it, she was already dressed for the center. She glanced around. The car wasn’t empty, but the seating separated them well enough. Cameras watched from the ceiling, their presence constant, indifferent.
She changed anyway.
The movement was quick, practiced. Pants off, skirt on. She didn’t rush, but she didn’t hesitate either. When she was done, she settled back into her seat, slipped her earbuds in, and let the music dull the edges of the world.
As the city slid past the windows, one thought remained, quiet but persistent. She would need to deal with the stash before heading home.
03
As Elena reached the city center, the air felt different.
Not cooler — just quieter, filtered, stripped of the weight it carried elsewhere. The streets opened up into wide corridors of glass and greenery, framed by towering buildings that reflected the sky so cleanly they barely seemed real. Everything here looked recently washed, recently trimmed, recently corrected. Grass cut to identical lengths. Trees supported by discreet metal frames. Water flowing in narrow channels that never overflowed.
Machines moved through it all with unhurried precision.
Robots trimmed hedges that did not grow fast enough to need trimming. Irrigation systems misted soil that never seemed dry. Humanoid units glided along the sidewalks, collecting debris that no one had dropped, wiping surfaces that were already clean. There was no sense of urgency in any of it, only maintenance — endless, immaculate maintenance.
The first time Elena had seen this place, weeks ago at the start of her training program, it had felt almost magical. Now the effect had dulled, replaced by something flatter, harder to name. The beauty remained, but it no longer surprised her. It simply persisted, unchanging, like a display that never powered down.
She followed the familiar route toward the office, a fifteen-minute walk through streets that stayed busy even at night. People sat at air-conditioned terraces behind transparent barriers, their conversations muted, their laughter contained. Most of them were old — not visibly so, but unmistakably. Faces stretched smooth, bodies tuned and reinforced, eyes sharp with a kind of restless vigilance. Age was something they negotiated with technology here, something to be managed rather than accepted.
Above them, holographic advertisements drifted across the facades of buildings, elegant and relentless.
Stay young.
Reverse your age.
Eighty is the new forty.
The slogans overlapped and dissolved into one another, glowing softly against the glass. Elena watched them flicker past with mild detachment. The promise had long since lost its edge. Everything here was an attempt to delay something inevitable, and the effort showed.
On her way to the office, Elena passed through one of the small parks woven between the towers, places designed more for symmetry than use. The grass was trimmed too evenly to invite sitting, the benches positioned where no one lingered long enough to leave a mark. Most evenings, she walked through without seeing anyone at all.
Today, there was a woman.
She sat alone on a bench near the edge of the path, eating from a small container balanced carefully on her knees. A salad, by the look of it. Simple. Unremarkable. What caught Elena’s attention wasn’t the food, but the woman herself. Her face was lined, openly so, her hair streaked with gray that hadn’t been corrected or softened. She looked nothing like the faces drifting across the surrounding holograms. No smoothing. No careful angles. Just age, visible and unnegotiated.
And yet she seemed calm. Content, even.
As Elena passed, their eyes met. Elena offered a polite smile, already preparing to move on, but the woman spoke before she could.
“You’re not from here, are you, my child?”
Elena stopped. She pulled one earbud free, the sound draining out of her ear.
“I’m sorry,” the woman added quickly. “I didn’t realize you were busy.”
“It’s alright,” Elena said. “I’m from downtown. I just started a training program here.” She hesitated, then laughed softly. “Is it that obvious?”
The woman smiled at her with something like recognition.
“It’s obvious the way it is when you’ve lived somewhere long enough. The young people here don’t look at anyone. They move as if the world has already been arranged for them.”
She gestured lightly to herself. “And then there’s me.”
Elena found herself sitting down beside her without quite deciding to.
“It’s actually nice,” she said, after a moment. “This park is usually empty when I come through.”
The woman nodded. “We moved here when this quarter was first established. My husband and I. The corporations were still collecting talent then, promising futures that felt very real at the time.” She paused, eyes drifting toward the buildings. “That was almost thirty years ago now.”
Elena listened, unsure where the story was going, aware only of the way time seemed to slow around them.
“When longevity treatments became common, everyone assumed we would follow,” the woman continued. “At first, they were only for the very rich. Later, they weren’t. By then, we already felt the weight of our years.” She smiled faintly. “It stopped being a question of money. It became a question of dignity.”
Elena glanced at her hands, folded neatly in her lap. Wrinkled. Steady.
“Whether you accept what’s coming with pride,” the woman said softly, “or whether you spend your life trying to delay it.”
She fell quiet. When she spoke again, her voice wavered just enough to notice.
“My husband passed ten years ago.”
A tear slipped free, cutting a clean line down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it away. She didn’t stop smiling either.
“Happiness,” she said, almost to herself, “isn’t the absence of pain. It’s what you learn to carry alongside it.”
Elena leaned in without thinking and wrapped her arms around her. The woman’s body was light, fragile in a way Elena wasn’t used to feeling.
The woman laughed gently. “You should get going. I don’t think they’ll accept a crazy old woman as an excuse for being late.”
They stood slowly. Elena squeezed her hand once before stepping back onto the path. When she glanced over her shoulder a moment later, the woman was already finishing her meal, unhurried, exactly where she had been.
Elena entered the building without breaking stride.
Inside, a humanoid greeted her, its voice warm and polished, calibrated to sound encouraging without becoming familiar.
“Welcome to Abstract, Elena. I hope you had a pleasant journey. Are you ready to begin your day?”
No products in this collection.
She nodded, though the question required no answer.
“Please follow me.”
The unit guided her toward the elevators, moving at a pace that left no room for hesitation. Elena already knew the way, but trainees were rarely left to navigate on their own. Here, independence was something you earned slowly, if at all.
The elevator doors slid shut and carried her upward in silence, depositing her on the seventeenth floor with gentle efficiency. As she passed the café, she spotted Ginny standing near the counter, her posture relaxed in a way that suggested she had arrived moments earlier.
“You’re here early,” Elena said.
Ginny smiled. “Just got in. Ran into Enrique on the way — kind of stumbled into each other.” She hesitated, then added more quietly, “Felt a little too convenient, if you know what I mean.”
Elena opened her mouth to respond, already aware of footsteps approaching behind her.
“He’s a cool guy,” she said instead. “Confident. Doesn’t seem like he cares much what people think.”
There was a brief pause.
“Is that so?”
Enrique stood there, faint color rising in his cheeks.
“Hi, Elena,” he said. “How was the trip?”
She waved the question away. “Another time. We should get going — first program starts in a few minutes.”
Ginny glanced toward the café. “We have time. Free coffee.”
She said it with a reverence usually reserved for rarer things.
Coffee wasn’t easy to come by in the suburbs. What passed for it there was expensive, diluted, mixed with substitutes that dulled its bitterness. This was different. Darker. Cleaner. A luxury disguised as a courtesy.
They lingered just long enough for the machine to finish.
As the cups filled, Enrique leaned against the counter. “So… what do we think about the Marquez show?” he asked. “It’s everywhere. Do you believe any of it? It sounds unreal.”
Elena exhaled slowly. “Why is everyone suddenly obsessed with that?” She shook her head.
“Marquez is a showman. His guests are about as legitimate as a sauna in Madrid.” She paused. “Let’s go. We shouldn’t be late.”
The last training day at Abstract ended without ceremony.
The lecture dissolved mid-thought, the synthetic voice finishing its sentence before cutting itself off with a soft chime. A pause followed — long enough to feel accidental — then a different voice took over, brighter, lighter, almost apologetic.
“Assessment complete. Thank you for your participation. You are dismissed.”
That was it.
No questions. No feedback. No sense of completion. The room remained exactly as it had been moments before: rows of identical chairs, seamless walls, the faint hum of systems recalibrating for the next group. A few people hesitated, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did.
Elena stood with the others, feeling vaguely underdressed for the anticlimax. She had crossed half the city for this, adjusted her sleep cycle, memorized routes and procedures. She had expected fatigue, or tension, or at least resistance. Instead, she felt strangely unused.
They drifted toward the exit, guided by illuminated strips embedded in the floor. No one spoke until they were outside, the doors closing behind them with a quiet finality.
“Well,” Ginny said, stretching her arms above her head. “That was… something.”
Enrique laughed softly. “Was it?”
“I think so,” she replied. “I mean, they let us go early. That’s good, right?”
Elena didn’t answer. The air outside felt cooler than she remembered, sharper against her skin. She glanced back at the building — glass, clean lines, no visible windows that opened. From the outside, it looked complete. Finished. Like it didn’t need anyone inside it at all.
They started walking without deciding where to go. The streets around the center were still busy, but the movement felt choreographed, efficient. People passed through enclosed walkways overhead, sealed off from the heat, from each other. Down here, everything was quieter.
“I don’t know,” Elena said finally. “I just thought it would feel more… real.”
Ginny tilted her head. “It’s the first weeks. They’re easing us in.”
“Maybe,” Elena said. She wasn’t convinced. She couldn’t point to anything specific that was wrong. That was the problem.
They walked in silence for a few blocks, the city slowly thinning out as they moved away from the center. Buildings grew shorter. Lights became harsher, less curated. The air carried different smells — food, dust, ozone.
Elena stopped near the edge of a service road that curved upward, leading away from the main streets.
“I need to get rid of something,” she said. “You guys still in?”
Ginny grinned. “Absolutely.”
Enrique hesitated, then nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”
They followed the road as it climbed, the city falling away beneath them. The hill wasn’t marked, just a leftover rise of concrete and dirt where construction had paused and never resumed. At the top, the noise softened. The lights spread out, less dense, more forgiving.
They sat along the edge, legs dangling, the skyline stretching out below them. Elena took out her things with practiced ease, her hands steady, movements economical. She worked without looking at them, muscle memory guiding her.
Ginny watched with interest. “So,” she said, “you’re pretty natural at this.”
Elena smiled faintly. “Mostly helps me wind down. Quiet mornings. Before sleep.”
Enrique accepted the cigarette when it came to him, inspecting it like it might change shape in his fingers. He took a tentative inhale and immediately coughed, bending forward.
Ginny laughed. “Easy.”
Elena leaned closer. “It’s not your first time, though. Right?”
“No,” he said quickly. “No. I mean. Second.”
“That explains it,” she said gently. “It just amplifies what you already feel. If you’re relaxed, you’ll be fine.”
“And if I’m not?”
“Then take it slow. Don’t fight it. Worst case, it lasts an hour. We’re not going anywhere.”
Enrique nodded, unconvinced but reassured enough to try again. This time he managed better, exhaling slowly, watching the smoke drift upward and disappear into the dark.
The city hummed below them, distant and impersonal. Up here, time felt looser, less insistent.
Ginny leaned back on her hands, looking up. “You can see Cassiopeia from here.”
Elena followed her gaze. The stars were faint but present, scattered unevenly across the sky.
Ginny traced an invisible shape with her finger.
“There,” she said. “Like a W.”
“Oh,” Enrique said. “Yeah. I see it.”
“The Milky Way cuts through it,” Ginny added. “If you follow the brighter line.”
They sat quietly after that, passing the cigarette back and forth, watching the smoke dissolve, the lights below flicker without pattern. Elena felt the tightness in her shoulders ease, her thoughts slowing, stretching out.
For the first time since leaving her apartment, she stopped thinking about where she needed to be next.
The night held a little longer than Elena expected.
Eventually, the cigarette burned down to a filter she didn’t remember lighting. Ginny stubbed it out against the concrete, stretching as if waking from a nap rather than coming down from anything.
“We should head back,” she said. “Before this turns into tomorrow.”
Elena nodded. The city below them hadn’t changed, but it felt farther away now, flattened into a quiet geometry of light.
She glanced at Enrique. “You good?”
He laughed, a little louder than necessary. “Yeah. That was… honestly great.”
They parted casually at the bottom of the hill, each peeling off toward a different line, a different routine. As Elena descended into the station, the last of the tension in her shoulders loosened, replaced by something duller — a faint sense of being between things, not fully in any of them.
Her phone vibrated as she crossed the platform.
Mateo:
you alive??
we’re already at the pub…
She smiled, thumb hovering for a second before typing back omw. The train arrived with a dry metallic sigh, doors opening onto air that felt older than the night above.
04
By the time Elena reached the pub, the warmth hit her first — stale beer, bodies packed close, sound bouncing unevenly off mismatched walls. It was one of the few places left that didn’t pretend to be temporary. Too far from the center to attract interest, too inconvenient to police consistently.
They were already there.
Thiago and Aitana shared the bench along the wall, knees angled toward each other, mid-conversation. Noa sat across from them, tablet out, stylus tapping idly against the screen, more listening than drawing. Mateo stood near the bar, leaning with one shoulder against the counter, eyes flicking up the moment Elena stepped inside.
“There she is,” he said, pushing off the bar. “Took you long enough.”
“Center traffic,” Elena replied, dropping her bag at her feet. “It lies about distance.”
“That’s because it’s not meant to be reached,” Aitana said lightly.
Someone laughed. A glass appeared in front of Elena without her asking.
“So?” Mateo said, leaning closer. “How was your big corporate debut?”
She shrugged. “Surprisingly short. I think the building did more work than we did.”
“That checks out,” Thiago said. “Did you at least learn something?”
“That I’m very replaceable,” Elena said, smiling. “Which, honestly, is comforting.”
They laughed. The tension thinned.
“You’re the star tonight, by the way,” Mateo added, half-joking. “Every conversation somehow ends up circling back to you.”
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not on purpose.”
“No,” he said. “That’s what makes it impressive.”
The conversation drifted — small jokes, updates, half-complaints — until Elena raised her hands in surrender.
“Okay. Please stop dancing around it. I’ve heard this name all day, and everyone reacts like I should already care. Felix. What am I missing?”
Noa looked up immediately, a smile tugging at her mouth. “It’s not one story. That’s the problem.”
Mateo groaned. “You’re asking the wrong person.”
“No,” Noa said. “She’s asking the right one.”
She leaned back slightly, gathering the thread. “It’s old. Older than Felix. Older than Orbit. Twenty years, at least. Maybe more. Back when people still believed casinos were about luck.”
“There was one on the coast,” Thiago added. “Or near it.”
“Depends who you ask,” Noa said. “Anyway — this guy shows up. Completely wrong for the place. Barefoot. Dressed in black. Carrying a bag nobody ever agrees on.”
“That’s already suspicious,” Mateo cut in. “Because why would anyone carry that much cash instead of crypto?”
“Because stories need symbols,” Noa shot back. “The guard stops him, laughs at his feet, tells him to get lost. Threatens him, actually.”
Elena leaned in, listening more to the cadence than the details.
“And the guy doesn’t leave,” Noa continued. “Doesn’t argue either. Just opens the bag. Shows him cash. Enough to buy the guard’s shoes for ten grand.”
“Which is where it turns into fiction,” Mateo said. “No one carries money like that. Not then. Not now.”
“Yet people swear they saw it,” Noa replied. “Different cities. Different decades. Same shape of story.”
“Faces stick,” Aitana said quietly. “Details don’t.”
“And when the guard asks why he shouldn’t just take the bag,” Noa went on, lowering her voice, “the guy tells him he can. Says whatever’s inside isn’t worth what he could get him instead.”
Mateo shook his head. “That line alone tells you it’s been rehearsed for years.”
Elena frowned. “And Felix keeps bringing this up because…?”
“The bodyguard,” Mateo said. “That’s the new angle.”
“The one on the show today,” Noa added. “He’s real. Protected executives. Political figures. Hasn’t worked in seventeen years.”
“And now he’s claiming the guy’s still alive,” Noa said, eyes bright. “Hasn’t aged. Just… moved.”
“That’s where I’m out,” Thiago said. “Up until then, it’s folklore.”
Mateo opened his mouth to argue, then glanced toward the door. “Smoke?”
Elena hesitated. “Yeah. Okay.”
Outside, the alley was narrow and dim, lit by a single flickering strip that made everything look slightly unreal. Mateo leaned against the wall, close enough that Elena felt the warmth of him as he reached past her to light the cigarette. His fingers brushed her knee as he handed it over — not accidental, not fully intentional either.
“You okay?” he asked, eyes still on the flame.
“Yeah,” she said. “Just… a lot of stories today.”
He laughed softly. “Felix does that. Complete bullshit, if you ask me.”
They stood in silence for a moment, smoke curling upward, thinning as it rose.
“So,” Elena said, exhaling slowly. “What have you been up to, besides arguing with Noa?”
Mateo hesitated. “Found something.”
She turned toward him. “What kind of something?”
“A drone,” he said. “Broken. Old model. Left behind after a sweep.”
Her stomach tightened. “Mateo!”
“I didn’t turn it on,” he said quickly. “Just stripped it. Studying the casing. The wiring.”
“That’s not harmless,” she said. “You know how they treat that.”
“I know,” he replied, softer now. “I’m careful.”
She looked at him — really looked — the restless energy, the half-smile that never quite settled. “Careful isn’t always enough.”
He shrugged, trying for lightness. “Someone has to understand how things work.”
She handed the cigarette back. “Just don’t make yourself interesting.”
He smiled at that, something gentler underneath. “You worry about me now?”
“Someone has to,” she said.
Inside, laughter broke out suddenly, sharp and loud, pulling them back.
Mateo pushed off the wall. “Come on. Before Noa rewrites the whole thing without us.”
When they returned to the table, the conversation picked up where it had left off, but something had shifted. The jokes landed softer. The hum outside passed overhead again — closer this time — vibrating faintly through the glasses.
Elena felt it then. Not fear. Just a creeping unease.
The sense that the night was no longer holding them.
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Updated by lorant.one 1mo ago
