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The rent was due in six hours and the safe wasn't cooperating.
Nia pressed her ear against the cold steel, fingers light on the dial. Third number had to be close. She could feel the pins catching, that tiny drag most people missed. The shop was dark except for the work lamp clamped to the edge of the table. Outside, the street was empty. Past midnight on a Tuesday meant even the bar across the block had gone quiet.
She'd taken the job because Mrs. Chen paid in cash and didn't ask questions. The safe had shown up on a dolly at eleven, wheeled in by a guy who wouldn't meet her eyes. He'd left it in the middle of her workshop and walked out before she could confirm the address. The lock was old, maybe seventy years, the kind with a three-number combination and a keyhole under the handle that didn't do anything anymore. Someone had tried to drill it once. The scarring around the dial told her they'd given up.
Nia twisted left. Seventeen. The pin caught and held.
She sat back, rolled her shoulders. Her hands were cramping. She'd been at this for over an hour and the rent wasn't going to wait because she was tired. The landlord had made that clear when he'd taped the notice to her door last week. Pay up or get out. She'd lived above this shop for eight years. She wasn't leaving.
She spun the dial again, slower this time. Zeroed it out. Started the sequence from the top.
Twelve right. Thirty-four left. Seventeen right.
The bolt clicked open.
Nia exhaled and pulled the handle. The door swung wide and the smell hit her first. Copper and rust and something else, something that made her stomach turn over. She leaned back, hand over her nose, squinting into the dark interior.
No money. No jewelry. Just a small black recorder, the old-fashioned kind with the twin cassette slots, and a plastic bag sealed with red tape. The bag had something in it. Something the size of a walnut, off-white and stained dark on one side.
She didn't touch it.
The recorder sat in the center of the safe like someone had placed it there on purpose. A strip of masking tape across the top had a single word in marker: SPARROW.
Nia's hand froze halfway to the recorder.
No one had called her that in eight years.
Her brother used to call her Sparrow when she was small. A private nickname because she climbed too high and talked too fast and never sat still. He'd stopped using it when she turned sixteen, said she'd outgrown it. Then he'd died in a street accident when she was nineteen and she'd never heard it again.
She picked up the recorder. It was heavier than it looked, the plastic casing scratched and cracked along one corner. The tape inside was wound halfway through. Someone had already listened to part of it.
She pressed play.
Static crackled through the tiny speaker. Then a voice, low and rushed and so familiar her throat closed up.
"Sparrow, if you're hearing this, I screwed up."
Jonah.
Her brother. Dead eight years. Talking to her from inside a safe she'd just cracked for rent money.
Nia's hands started shaking. She set the recorder down on the table, volume up, and pressed her palms flat against the wood to keep them steady.
"I don't have a lot of time," Jonah's voice continued. The recording quality was bad, like he was talking into a phone in a moving car. Wind or static blurred some of the words. "If this gets to you, it means I didn't make it out. I'm sorry. I tried to keep you clear of this but I need you to know what's coming."
A pause. Breathing. Then:
"There's a pact in this city. Blood for protection. It's old, older than the bureau, older than the council. Someone's keeping it active and they're going to call it in soon. I found the records. I found the names. I was going to burn the whole thing but they found me first."
Nia's chest hurt. She couldn't breathe right. Jonah's voice kept going, calm and careful like he was explaining how to pick a lock, like he wasn't telling her he'd been murdered.
"Don't trust the bureau. Don't trust anyone in a government jacket. And Sparrow—" His voice dropped, urgency cutting through the static. "Don't touch the second lock. I hid it where I thought it'd be safe but if someone's moving it, if it's active again, you need to stay away. The lock's not for opening. It's for keeping something in."
The recording clicked. Silence.
Then Jonah's voice came back, quieter this time. Tired.
"I love you. I'm sorry I wasn't better at this."
The tape ended. The recorder kept spinning, playing nothing but the hiss of empty space.
Nia sat there, staring at the safe. Her brother's voice was still in her ears. The shop was too quiet. She could hear her own heartbeat, the hum of the fridge in the corner, the distant sound of a car passing two streets over.
She reached for the plastic bag.
Her fingers brushed the red tape and something slammed into the front door hard enough to rattle the frame.
Nia jerked back, knocking the recorder onto the floor. It cracked against the concrete but kept playing static. The door shook again. Not a knock. A body hitting wood.
She grabbed the nearest tool, a pry bar, and moved toward the front of the shop. The windows were covered with security grating but she could see a shape through the glass. Someone tall, shoulders hunched, one hand pressed against the door.
The shape slid down and hit the ground.
Nia swore under her breath and unlocked the deadbolt. She opened the door six inches, pry bar ready.
A man was on her doorstep. Blood all over his shirt, dark hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. He looked up at her and his eyes were wrong. Too bright. Reflective, like an animal's.
"Don't call anyone," he said. His voice was rough, barely a whisper. "Please. They'll kill both of us."
Nia didn't move. "Who's they?"
"Bureau hunters." He tried to push himself up and failed. His hand left a smear of blood on her doorframe. "I just need an hour. Just one hour and I'll be gone."
She should've shut the door. Should've called the police. But his eyes flicked past her, into the shop, and landed on the open safe. His whole body went stiff.
"Where did you get that?"
"None of your business," Nia said.
"That safe." He was staring at it like it was a bomb. "Who gave it to you?"
"I said it's none of—"
"Did you open it?" He grabbed the doorframe, pulling himself halfway upright. Blood dripped onto the concrete. "Did you touch anything inside?"
Nia's grip tightened on the pry bar. "What's it to you?"
The man's eyes locked on hers. Desperation and something else, something that looked like panic.
"Because if you touched the second lock, we're both dead."
Nia glanced back at the safe. At the recorder still hissing static on the floor. At the plastic bag with the red tape seal, still sitting in the dark interior.
She looked at the man.
"What second lock?"
He closed his eyes. "Shit."
Something metallic clattered in the alley behind her shop. Footsteps, more than one set, moving fast.
The man shoved the door open and stumbled inside, slamming it shut behind him. He threw the deadbolt and turned to her, breathing hard.
"You need to run," he said. "Right now."
Nia didn't run. She stepped back, pry bar up, and watched him lurch toward the safe. He moved wrong, too fluid and too sharp at the same time, like his body wasn't sure what it was supposed to be. He reached the table and stared down at the contents.
The plastic bag sat in the safe, red tape still sealed.
The man let out a breath. "Okay. Okay, you didn't open it. That's good."
"I didn't open what?" Nia demanded.
He turned to look at her. Blood was still running down his side, soaking into his jeans. His eyes were too bright and they didn't blink enough.
"The second lock," he said. "The one your brother died hiding."
Nia's heart stopped.
The back door exploded inward. Three figures in dark tactical gear poured into the shop, weapons up. Not guns. Something else, silver and humming with a sound that made her teeth ache.
The man stepped in front of her.
"She's not part of this," he said. His voice had changed. Deeper. Rougher. "Let her go."
The lead figure tilted their head. "She opened the Lockwood safe. That makes her part of it."
Nia looked at the safe. At the plastic bag inside. At the bloody silver thing she still hadn't touched.
"What the hell is going on?" she said.
The man glanced back at her. His eyes were glowing now, full yellow, and his teeth were too sharp.
"You cracked the wrong safe," he said.
Then he moved.
Nia didn't see him cross the room. One second he was in front of her, the next he was on the lead hunter, claws out, teeth bared. The sound he made wasn't human. The other two hunters opened fire and the silver hum filled the shop and Nia hit the ground, hands over her ears.
When she looked up, the man was standing over three bodies. Blood everywhere. His shirt was shredded. He was breathing hard, shoulders heaving, and when he turned to look at her his face was still wrong. Still halfway something else.
"We need to go," he said. "More are coming."
Nia stayed on the floor. "What are you?"
He wiped blood off his mouth with the back of his hand. "Someone who's about to owe you his life."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one you're getting tonight." He grabbed the plastic bag from the safe, sealed tape and all, and shoved it into his jacket. Then he looked at her. "You want to stay alive, you come with me. You want answers about your brother, you come with me. You want to keep pretending you're not in this, you stay here and wait for the next team."
Nia looked at the bodies. At the blood on her floor. At the recorder still hissing static.
Jonah's voice in her head: *Don't touch the second lock.*
She got to her feet.
"What's your name?" she asked.
The man was already moving toward the back door. "Rafe."
"Where are we going, Rafe?"
He glanced back at her. His eyes were still yellow.
"Somewhere they can't follow," he said. "If we're lucky."
Nia grabbed the recorder off the floor and followed him into the dark.