Provoke Fate

The man kneeling on the concrete is already bleeding when the door slams shut behind him.

He doesn't beg.
He knows it won't help.

Footsteps echo across the warehouse floor-slow, controlled. The kind that belong to someone who's done this before, many times, and won't lose sleep over it.

A woman steps into the strip of fluorescent light, a dagger spinning casually between her fingers.

"Last chance," she says. "Where is she?"

The man spits blood. "You're too late. She doesn't even know who she is."

The woman stops the dagger mid-spin.

"That's exactly why we need her now."

The man laughs, a cracked, painful sound. "She's hidden. Protected. You'll never touch her."

The woman crouches, eye level with him. Her voice drops, steady and cold.
"We already have."

He freezes.

She smiles a little. "She felt the shift today. Just a flicker, but enough. Keeps happening more often."

Silence.

Then she presses the dagger to his throat-not cutting, just reminding.

"Now I'll ask one more time," she says. "Who's guarding her?"

He swallows hard. The truth slips out like a reflex.
"The boy."

She doesn't react. Doesn't blink.

Of course it's the boy.

She stands, wipes the blade on his shirt, and turns to the man waiting by the door.

"Clean this up. Move the others. We don't have much time."

"And the girl?" the man asks.

The woman slides the dagger back into her belt.
"She's waking up. Slowly."

She looks back once, only once.

"When she finally remembers who she is... everything changes."

No threat.
No warning.
Just fact.

She walks out.

The warehouse lights flicker.

For a breath, the air feels charged-like something ancient stretched beneath the city, waiting for the right pulse to wake again.

Somewhere in the city, unaware, the girl they're hunting opens her eyes-feeling a heaviness in her chest she can't explain.