Run: 2026-02-19-01KHTYHAN5FPEBY4EQ5N7NMPA2

The neon green sign above the heavy oak door buzzed with a dying low-frequency hum. The bell above the frame chimed, a cheerful, jarring sound that broke the damp London night air. The door pushed open, letting in a rush of cold wind and the scent of exhaust fumes. Rory Carter stepped inside, the warmth of the bar washing over her instantly, a physical barrier against the chill outside. She didn’t look back out at the Soho street. She knew the routine. She knew the reflex to check for foot traffic, to ensure she wasn't being followed. It was muscle memory now, deep in the marrow of her bones, developed over the last two years of sleeping with one eye open and the door to her flat deadbolted by three different locks. The room inside was a cave of shadows and amber light. The walls, covered in peeling black-and-white photographs and maps of a world she barely recognized anymore, seemed to close in slightly. It smelled of lemon polish, stale gin, and the faint, metallic tang of gun oil that Silas had tried to scrub out but never quite managed. She walked to the far end of the bar. The floorboards groaned under her weight, a familiar sound, but the person behind the mahogany seemed less familiar. Silas Blackwood was wiping down a glass with a blue rag. He didn’t turn immediately. He knew her gait. He knew the hesitation before the determination. He’d taught her enough about surveillance to know that reaction time dictated whether you lived or died. "Rory." The single word was rough, like gravel ground between stones. He didn't look up. His hand tightened on the glass, the ceramic creaking under the pressure. "A drink, then?" His voice was lower than she remembered, lacking the baritone warmth that used to rumble when she first knocked on the door of his flat above this place five years ago. She slid onto the stool. The leather squelched. "I thought you were closed on Mondays," she said. Her voice was steady, flat. Too flat. "Never closed." He put the glass down. It clinked against the wood. Rory watched his hands—gnarled, veins blue against the skin, the ring she’d admired as a teenager, a heavy silver band, now a symbol of a past life she had run from. He turned, his movements fluid despite the slight hitch in his left leg. The limp wasn't as pronounced as it had been after Prague, but it was there, a ghost in his walk. He looked at her. Really looked at her. The blue light of the sign overhead flickered, casting long shadows across his grey-streaked auburn hair and the neatly trimmed beard that matched in color. The hazel eyes behind his glasses were sharp, dissecting her. "You’ve grown," Silas said softly. "You haven't." He laughed, a short, sharp bark that died in his throat. "Old age is a seesaw, Rory. We all take lumps." He reached for the bottle behind the counter, pouring amber liquid into a tumbler with a practiced hand. He didn't offer her one. She had never been a drinker, at least not back then. She was the one who kept the tea water boiling while Evan screamed at her from the other room. But something in her chest had felt wrong lately—a tightness that tea couldn't fix. Maybe being a messenger for Yu-Fei's kitchen hadn't inoculated her against the weight of the world. "The usual?" "No. Whisky. No ice." He pulled a bottle of scotch from the shelf, unmarked and dark. "You know I don't stock this. It doesn't sit right with the locals." "I'm not a local anymore." He paused, his hand hovering over the glass. A muscle in his jaw ticked. He poured two fingers of the dark liquid. He set the glass down in front of her and retreated to his end of the bar, leaning heavily against the counter, the silver ring glinting in the dim light. She picked up the glass. The burn in her throat was immediate and terrifyingly familiar. It reminded her of the nights she stayed awake in Cardiff, pacing the floor of the flat she’d shared with Brendan and Jennifer before the screaming started. Before she’d met Silas. Before she’d run to London. "How long have you been back in London?" "A month." "Living above the flat?" "Converting to office space," she lied. The rent was too high. She was squatting in a basement in Islington now. It was safer that way. Less light. Fewer questions. "I heard about Evan." The name hung in the air between them, stagnant and heavy. It wasn't a surprise she had heard. In Silas’s line of work, information was currency, and despite his claim that the Nest was a front for quiet conversation, his ears were as dangerous as his past. "He didn't do much. Just moved on." "You didn't." "Correction. I moved back." Silas reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys, jingling them against the counter. He tossed them across the counter toward her. She flinched, but caught them with a reflex so fast her hand blurred. The silver keys hit her palm, cold and solid. "The keys to the flat?" "Yes. I had them sent to you. Came in the mail with a letter from Brendan. He's retiring. Buying a place in the Cotswolds. Doesn't have the energy to look after it anymore." She stared at the keys. She remembered the flat. It was her only safe harbor, the place where she had slept without nightmares for the first six months of her time in London. She had assumed they had burned them when she left. "You sent them?" "After I spoke to your mother. I told her if you ever came back... or if you didn't." Silas turned away, looking out at the darkened street through the grimy window. "I regretted not coming after you that night. Not the night you ran to Eva's, but the weeks after. I should have gone to Cardiff. I should have pulled Brendan aside." "You couldn't have." "I could have tried. Intelligence is about leverage, Rory. About knowing where the pressure points are. I didn't push hard enough on your father. I thought if I stayed out of it, let you have your law degree, your quiet life..." He trailed off, his hand tracing the edge of a coaster. "It didn't work out." She took another drink of the whisky. It tasted like fire. It tasted like history. "I didn't want to be a lawyer. I didn't want a quiet life." "And now?" Silas turned back, his expression grave, the worn lines on his face deepening. "Now what do you want?" "I don't know," she lied again. But she did know. She wanted to be invisible. She wanted the world to pass her by like the wind through the narrow streets of Soho. But she had changed. She had hardened into something sharp and unrecognizable. The girl with the crescent scar on her wrist was gone, replaced by a woman who knew how to spot a tail in three seconds flat. "You're drinking like a spy, Rory." "I'm drinking like someone who needs to forget." Silas moved from behind the bar, the springs of the floorboards groaning under his slight weight. He came around the counter, stopping at her side. He looked down at her. He was a head taller, but she didn’t shrink back. She didn't look up to him. She met his eyes, defiant. "You've got marks on your jaw. A bruise?" "Boxing." "Sparring?" "Fighting." Silas reached out, his hand hovering over her cheek. For a moment, she thought he might touch her, to check if she was real, to offer that comfort he used to give her when she cried in his spare room after a nightmare about Evan. But he stopped. His hand dropped to the counter. "I worry about you," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "I'm fine." "You're not fine. You're dangerous, and you're lonely, and you're drinking scotch at one in the morning in a bar that smells like gin and fear." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. "It's the little things that count." "I miss the girl who thought wearing her hair in two braids made her invisible." "That girl died in Cardiff, Silas. Before you got your knee fixed, before Yu-Fei even hired me." He sighed, a sound of profound exhaustion. He walked back to the other end of the bar, pouring himself a fresh glass. "There's a back room if you need it," he said, not looking at her. "Bookshelf. You know how it works." "I know." "Go on. Clear your head. I'll lock up at closing." She looked at the door. She could leave. She could go down into the damp London underground and disappear into the cavern of the tube station. But instead, she turned and walked toward the shadowy corner where the heavy oak bookshelf stood. It was ancient, covered in layers of dust and alcohol stains. She knew the mechanism. She had pressed the loose brick with her own hands a thousand times during her late-night panic attacks. She didn't press the brick. She stopped, her back to the bookshelf, looking at Silas's silhouette in the mirror behind the bar. He was watching her, waiting. Waiting for her to break, or for her to realize she was broken. Rory took a deep breath, the air in the bar tasting like old secrets, and turned back toward him. "Another round, Silas." He didn't smile. He just poured.