The buzz of the stone in my pocket cut off abruptly.
I looked in the rearview mirror. Air got stuck in my throat.
The back seat was empty.
I slammed on the brakes. The tires screamed on the wet asphalt and the car fishtailed, coming to a stop crosswise in the middle of the deserted street. The seatbelt crushed my ribs.
"What the...?"
I spun around, flashlight in hand, glaring into the back like a madman. Nothing. No sign of the girl. No blood. Not even a wrinkle in the upholstery. The seat was dry. The doors were still locked with the child safety locks. The windows were up. We'd been doing sixty kilometers an hour. It was physically impossible for her to have gotten out without me noticing.
I got out into the rain, frantic, looking under the seats, scanning the asphalt. "Hello?" I shouted. "Hey!"
Only the sound of rain hitting the hood answered me. I ran my hands through my hair, getting soaked. My heart was racing. I was alone. Completely alone.
I reached into the pocket of my uniform. Empty. The black stone was gone too.
"I'm losing my mind," I whispered, leaning against the patrol car. "The night shift's fried my brain. Harry was right — I need three days straight of sleep."
There was no girl. No stone. Just me, exhaustion, and one hell of a hallucination. I climbed back into the car, shaking, and drove home repeating to myself that it had all been a lucid dream. Just a dream.
---
(The next morning)
Sunlight stabbed my eyes through the broken blind. I got up achy all over, like I'd been hauling sacks of cement all night. The memory of the alley stuck with me, sticky, but in daylight it seemed like a distant nightmare.
Coffee. I need coffee or I won't function.
I shuffled into the building hallway in my old flip-flops. I was about to go downstairs to the shop when I stopped dead.
The door to 3B — the apartment across from mine — was wide open.
It had been empty six months, since old Miller passed away. Now the hall was invaded by cardboard boxes stacked with absurd, military precision. All aligned to the millimeter.
"Mrs. Higgins?" I called, assuming it was the landlady.
No answer. I peered in. Curiosity is a professional flaw. In the middle of the empty living room, with her back to me, stood a figure.
Black hair, straight and glossy like fresh ink. Black clothes. She turned slowly.
I almost fell backward. I had to grab the doorframe.
It was her. The hallucination. The girl from the alley. But she no longer looked like a wet corpse. She was standing, immaculate, dry. Her eyes were dark, unfathomable, and they stared at me without blinking.
"You..." my voice cracked. "You're real."
She tilted her head. A quick, birdlike movement. "I'm the new tenant in unit 3B. Ayla."
Her voice was soft but flat, as if she were reading a script she didn't quite understand.
"Tenant?" My brain tried and failed to process it. "But... last night. In my car. You disappeared. I saw you... I swear I saw something weird in your shadow."
She didn't flinch. She took a step toward me. I instinctively stepped back. "Stress alters human sensory perception," she said with clinical calm. "You should hydrate. Your pupils are dilated and you smell of cortisol."
"Don't give me that..." I started to protest, but she shoved a box into my arms before I could finish.
"Assistance required," she cut in. "These cargo units are inefficient for individual transport."
My arms nearly gave out. "Fuck!" I gasped. "What have you got in here? Lead?"
"Books," she said. A terrible lie. She didn't even try to make it sound believable.
We went into her apartment. It was identical to mine, but soulless. Only boxes and her. I stood there holding the box, looking at her. My cop instincts screamed, "Run, call backup." My curious, slightly stupid human instinct said, "Stay and see what happens."
"Welcome to the building," I said, dropping the box with a dull thud and catching my breath. "You're lucky. This is the only flat where you don't hear the upstairs neighbors fighting."
She wasn't listening. She was staring toward my kitchen, visible from the open door of my place. "That device," she pointed with a long pale finger, "is that a toxin generator?"
I followed her gaze. "The coffee maker?"
I let out a nervous laugh. The situation was surreal. I was talking appliances with the woman who'd evaporated from my patrol car last night. "No. It's for making coffee. The only reason I'm still alive. Come, I'll show you."
We crossed the hall to my apartment.
I put the coffee maker on. The gurgle of boiling water filled the uncomfortable silence.
"Sounds like drowning," she observed, fascinated.
"It's the sound of happiness," I corrected.
I poured a steaming cup. "Here. Careful, it's hot."
She took the cup. Her fingers brushed mine. They were hot. Too hot. As if she had a high fever, or as if her blood ran at a different rhythm than ours.
She brought the cup to her lips, sniffed the steam with suspicion and took a small sip. She made a face. "Bitter," she declared. "Stimulant. Acceptable."
I leaned on the counter, arms crossed. "Ayla... seriously. Who are you? Last night you had a strange stone. And you vanished from a car traveling at sixty kilometers an hour. That's not what a 'tenant' does."
She set the cup down on the table with exaggerated care. Her expression went cold, empty. "Forget the night, Evan."
She turned with a brusqueness that left me chilled, walking toward the exit. As she passed the hallway wall, she placed her hand on the plaster to round the corner.
It was only a second. Her fingers touched the wall.
---
POV: Ayla
Contact with structural surface.
My mind betrays the disguise. Touching the wall, my tactile receptors seek the connection, seek data, seek the Hive. The hallway disappears.
Vision. I am not in a human building. I am in the hangar of the Mothership. The floor vibrates beneath my feet with the roar of antimatter engines. The air smells of ozone, of blood, of hot metal. Thousands of my kin, in their true form — black chitin, three meters tall, jaws capable of crushing steel — march toward the assault pods.
At their head, the King. A mass of living shadows and red eyes that fill the horizon. His voice booms in my skull, not as sound but as an order burned into my DNA: "Daughter. Earth is a plague. Find its weaknesses. And when I give the order... devour them all."
The vision was so intense pain doubled my knees. I pulled my hand off the wall as if it burned. A spark of violet energy jumped from my fingers. CRACK! The hallway bulb shattered, raining glass over us and plunging us into darkness.
"Fuck!" Evan covered his head. "Are you okay?"
I stood frozen in the dark, gasping. My two hearts beat out of sync, hammering my ribs like war hammers. Instinct was awake. Evan was a meter away. I could hear his racing pulse. I could smell the fear in his sweat. He was easy prey. Fragile. Soft flesh.
Kill him, whispered the ancient part of my brain. He's a witness. He's food.
I clenched my fists until my human nails nearly pierced the skin of my palms. "Don't come closer," I growled. My voice came out wrong. Distorted. Guttural.
"I'll get a broom, don't move..." he said, ignoring my tone, with that empathic stupidity characteristic of his species.
I watched him from the shadows. I could see his body heat glowing in the dark. I could rip his throat out before he hit the floor. But this human had offered me a hot drink. The King ordered me to destroy. Evan offered me coffee.
The contradiction made me dizzy. "Go to your unit, Evan," I ordered, edging back into the darkness of my empty apartment. "Now."
I slammed the door before he could see that my eyes had gone completely black.