For the first time in longer than Raven could remember, she awoke from her nap with her father feeling rested. No nightmares. No sudden awakening into a panic attack. No dreams where her father was unable to see or hear her—where she felt like a ghost in her own home. She had lost herself in the fragile peace of that moment, but as she glanced out the window, the orange halide glow of the streetlights bleeding through broken blinds brought her back to reality.
“Shit, I shouldn’t have slept,” she hissed under her breath, berating herself as she noticed the time. “I’m going to be late.”
She stood, whispering to her still-slumbering father. “I’ll be back soon. I have to meet Dr. Vance. I’ll call the insurance company when I get home, I promise.” Her voice faltered at the thought of dealing with them again, but she pushed it aside.
Grabbing her black hooded puffer jacket from the back of her desk chair, she hurried out the door, letting it click shut softly behind her.
The Hill wasn’t far, just a neighborhood up the slope of Broadway from her apartment, but the jog left her breathless. Beads of sweat dotted her forehead despite the chill in the night air, and an icy trickle ran down her back as she reached the crosswalk.
There he was, Dr. Vance, sitting at a table in the cafe’s large front window. His familiar smile as he exchanged a word with the waiter briefly calmed her racing mind. Relief washed over her. Good, I didn’t miss him.
She stepped into the street, her pace quickening. But a sudden commotion in the cafe froze her mid-step. Five men in plain clothes emerged from the rear of the cafe. Their movements were sharp, practiced—predatory. One flashed a badge to the other customers while two of them grabbed Dr. Vance by the shoulders, yanking him to his feet.
The cafe erupted in chaos. A young man, likely a fellow student, stood to intervene, only for one of the agents to swing around and draw a gun, aiming it directly at his face. The student raised his hands and backed away, pale with terror. Phones appeared in trembling hands, but the agent with the badge pointed menacingly at the onlookers, silencing them. A woman screamed.
Raven’s breath caught in her throat. She darted into the shadows of a narrow pedestrian path between buildings, crouching low. Her hands trembled as she fumbled for her phone. She plugged in her headphones, launching the hearing assistant app she had used earlier. Then, pressing record, she aimed her phone’s camera at the unfolding scene.
Through the screen, it felt unreal, like something from a documentary her father might have covered. The detachment helped—barely.
The agents dragged Dr. Vance out of the cafe, shoving him onto the sidewalk. His glasses slipped from his face, skittering across the concrete. Vance instinctively reached out for them, one of the agents, much younger than the others, and dressed not in the usual polo shirt and windbreaker but more like a fellow student, wearing a black hoodie with Meme Lord printed across the chest and khakis, and a thick-framed black pair of AI-enhanced glasses that Alexander Cain hawked on his social media site. But there was something odd, something Raven couldn’t quite make out behind his ear—some sort of wet-wired antenna, one of those second-gen mind-link implants. Yet, despite his age, he seemed in command—the leader. He stepped forward and crushed the glasses beneath his boot deliberately, twistingly.
Dr. Vance winced, reaching for his hand where the agent had stomped on it moments earlier. Blood smeared his palm.
“Where is it, Elias?” the kid demanded, Raven not seeing him being any older than 24, his voice cutting through the night air. “We know you have it. You smuggled it out of the lab.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dr. Vance said, his voice shaking but defiant. “We had setbacks. The project wasn’t ready.”
The kid agent’s lip curled into a mocking smile. “Still clinging to your lies?” He gestured to the others, who seized Vance under the arms and began dragging him toward the alley. Raven’s heart pounded as she crept further into the shadows, her phone shaking in her grip.
The alley was dimly lit, the sickly yellow light from a single bulb casting distorted shadows on the walls. Raven crouched lower, angling her phone to catch every detail.
“Let me be clear,” the leader said, his tone venomous. “This is not the world you think it is, Elias. Constitutional rights? Protections? Those are relics of the past. You should have cooperated when we gave you the chance. It’s our world now...”
Dr. Vance laughed—a hollow, bitter sound. “I know exactly what this world is now. But let me tell you something, Kid. History doesn’t favor men like you.” He coughed, spitting blood onto the pavement. “I don’t have your device. It’s gone. Handed off to someone you’ll never find. And it’s already in motion. Whatever you’re trying to stop? You’re too late.”
Raven’s stomach churned. Was he bluffing? She had no idea what he was talking about. Did he mean her?
The agent’s grin faltered, replaced by a cold, calculated fury. “Too late, huh?” he said, raising his gun. “Then you’re useless to us.”
The shot echoed down the alley, cutting through the night like a blade. Dr. Vance crumpled to the ground, his blood pooling beneath him. Raven’s scream caught in her throat. She stumbled back, clutching her phone like a lifeline, her breaths shallow and ragged.
The agents searched Vance’s body and briefcase with mechanical efficiency, finding nothing. “Search his house. And the lab,” the leader barked. “We’re not leaving empty-handed.”
They disappeared behind the cafe into the night, leaving Vance’s lifeless body in the alley.
Raven stayed frozen for what felt like an eternity, the phone still recording in her hand. Finally, her legs obeyed, and she sprinted down the pedestrian path, the dark Boulder night swallowing her whole. Hopelessness pulled her under the surface she was so desperately trying to stay afloat in, but now she had no doubt that the Phoebe device would be in the hands of the agents in no time. The one thing the most brilliant man that Raven had ever known thought was the only chance for a future would no doubt soon enough be reverse-engineered and then used to make things worse.
For the first time, Raven questioned whether it might be easier to just check out, to remove herself from the game, to spiral off of this mortal coil of hers.
