a/n— look who finally decided to write the phone call scene that's been living in my head rent free! also yes, i absolutely had toria bail on meeting brooks bc 1) girl's got SOME self preservation and 2) bee stalking her home is way more fun to write. speaking of our favorite stalker bot, he really said "i'm going to be cryptic and protective while literally following her home" and honestly? we love that for him. also those symbols? maybe someone should tell toria sleep-drawing isn't normal...

warnings — mental health stuff, mission city trauma, sleep-drawing shenanigans, extremely questionable coping mechanisms

Closing down the café with both Mom and Rosa was strange. They kept shooting me concerned looks, probably worried about my mental state after the whole mysterious-men-rushing-out situation, but all I could focus on was the idling sound of a certain car outside.

I should've never said yes to talking to him. But yet, here we were. I was sweeping under tables, trying not to think about impossible blue eyes and the way Sean had looked at me like he knew something I didn't. I peeked out the window again, then stopped short.

The car was gone.

"Toria, what's going on in that head of yours?" Mom asked as I dumped the swept up dust and crumbs into the garbage. Her fingers went to her necklace—Dad's ring catching the light, a tell of my mother if I'd ever seen one.

I shrugged, "Nothing, really." I gave her a tight smile. "I got to therapy today with Jayde's car. We hung out for a bit before work." Changing the subject usually worked.

This was not that time. Mom's brow rose, and her lips pursed—just slightly—as she stared me down. "Toria."

"Just stressed about the car," I told her honestly. She didn't need to know which car I meant—the Chevelle that had mysteriously repaired itself, or the yellow Camaro that kept appearing and disappearing like some kind of mechanical ghost.

She bought it. Her face broke into a soft smile as she ran a hand through my blonde hair—definitely bleached, my roots were starting to show again. "Oh, honey, you and your dad loved that car more than yourselves. It'll be okay, honey. I promise." She smiled that mom smile that almost made the truth come out. "You're on dishes tonight." She laughed at the groan I replied with, but went to the back to start loading our industrial dishwasher.

Maybe Dad was looking out for us. Not my words, but at the funeral, one of his coworkers had told us that. I hadn't believed him then.

Now? Now I wasn't so sure about anything.

The industrial dishwasher hummed like background music as I loaded plates, trying to focus on normal things like water temperature and proper soap ratios instead of Sam's panic about symbols. Instead of the way Brooks and Sean had moved in perfect sync, like they were connected by something more than military training.

"You sure you're good to lock up?" Rosa asked, gathering her things. "I can stay if—"

"I'm fine," I said too quickly. "Just tired. You know how therapy days are."

She gave me a look that said she definitely wasn't buying it, but nodded anyway. "Text me when you get home? And maybe tell me why Mr. Perfect Hair and his equally perfect friend were so interested in your dad's work?"

I nearly dropped a coffee mug. "What?"

"I overheard them talking," she said carefully. "Something about Project Veiled? The thing your dad was working on before..."

Before Mission City. Before classified accidents and military cover-ups.

"Go home, Rosa," I managed, suddenly very interested in arranging coffee cups. "I'll text you later."

The door chimed as she left, and I was alone with the industrial dishwasher's rhythm and too many questions.

I slotted the last plate into place and started the dishwasher's final cycle for the night, its reliable white noise barely covering the unease in my head. Dad had mentioned Project Veiled once—only once—after a late night at the base. He'd been distracted, muttering about energy signatures and "keeping them hidden."

My phone buzzed, making me jump.

Unknown Number: Look up.

I glanced out the small kitchen window, and there it was. The yellow Camaro sat in the alley, engine humming that not-quite-normal purr. I didn't realize it had returned from whatever secret mission it had.

"Nope," I told the dishwasher. "We are not doing this. We are going to finish closing like a normal person and go home and definitely not meet with suspiciously perfect strangers who know about Dad's classified projects."

My phone buzzed again.

Unknown Number: Your father tried to protect you from this.

Unknown Number: Let me finish what he started.

"That's not fair," I whispered to my phone, twisting Dad's ring around my thumb. "You can't just... say things like that."

The dishwasher beeped its end-cycle alert, making me jump again. Just fifteen more minutes of closing duties. Fifteen minutes to decide if I was really going to do this.

The next fifteen minutes passed in a blur of muscle memory: wiping down equipment, counting the register, double-checking the back door was locked. The whole time, I could feel that car idling outside, its presence humming through the walls like an invitation. Or a warning.

I stood in the dark café, keys in hand, staring at my reflection in the window. The girl looking back seemed simultaneously too young and too old for whatever this was—blonde roots showing, Dad's ring glinting on her thumb, dark circles under eyes that had seen too much in Mission City.

"Okay," I told my reflection. "Let's review our options. One: go home, pretend this never happened, maybe change jobs and move to Canada." I twisted the ring. "Two: meet the suspiciously perfect maybe-government agent who knows things about Dad and keeps fixing the Chevelle and probably isn't human."

The Camaro's engine rumbled softly, like it was answering.

"Great," I muttered, gathering my stuff. "Now I'm having conversations with cars. Dad would be so proud."

I flipped the last light switch, plunging the café into darkness. Through the window, those impossible blue eyes watched me from the driver's seat.

I hit the lights and locked the front door, my hand only shaking a little. The Camaro's engine purred expectantly, Brooks' silhouette visible in the driver's seat, but...

"Not tonight," I whispered, knowing somehow he'd hear me. "I can't... I need time."

I turned toward home, pulling Dad's jacket tighter around me. The sound of an engine starting made me tense, but Brooks didn't follow. Not obviously, anyway.

But I wasn't stupid.

I caught glimpses of the Camaro in my peripheral vision the whole walk home—always just at the edge of sight, always gone when I turned to look. That distinctive engine noise echoed off buildings then faded into silence, like Brooks was trying to give me space while still keeping watch.

"You know," I said to the apparently empty street, "for a secret government whatever-you-are, you're really bad at the whole 'subtle surveillance' thing."

A distant rumble was my only answer.

By the time I reached my apartment, I was exhausted. The kind of bone-deep tired that comes from therapy, family trauma, and questioning your entire reality in one day.

My phone buzzed one last time as I unlocked my door.

Unknown Number: We'll talk soon.

"Yeah," I muttered, watching the yellow Camaro disappear into the fog, Brooks' perfect profile barely visible through the window. "I'm sure we will."

I dumped my bag on the kitchen counter, kicking off my shoes and running through the day's highlights: therapy, getting high with Jayde, Sam's freakout about symbols, Brooks and his too-perfect friend, and now this—being stalked home by the world's least subtle government agent.

I stared at my phone, at that "Unknown Number" that kept sending increasingly cryptic texts. My thumb hovered over the contact.

"Don't do it," I told myself. "Don't you dare—"

My thumb slipped.

The phone rang once before I could end the call, and my heart stopped as Brooks' voice came through, smooth and slightly amused: "Changed your mind?"

"I—" My voice caught. "That was an accident."

"Was it?" Something in his tone suggested he didn't believe in accidents.

"I should hang up."

"But you haven't." A pause, then softer: "Talk to me, Toria."

A laugh bubbled from my chest at his words. In the back of my brain, I tried to tell myself that this was fine, that this wasdefinitely notthe start of a manic episode.

"What am I even supposed to say? That I've filled up notebooks with doodles? Of 'things I'm not supposed to see'?" My tone got mocking as I flipped through the pages. "That I barely sleep and my therapist is probably thinking about admitting me again? Or the fact that I know you follow me, but for some reason don't say—" Fuck. I wasn't supposed to say those words to him.

"That everyone seemed to forget Mission City even happened. But I didn't. I wasn't there physically, but I was on my way to pick up Dad from the base, and I—" I swallowed hard, flipping faster through my sketchbook. "I saw things. Things that shouldn't exist. Things nobody talks about."

The anger built in my chest, that familiar torch under my lungs getting hotter. "I saw some kid on a rooftop, holding this... this cube thing, waving a flare like a fucking signal. And then these eyes—not human eyes, more like lasers or searchlights but red, so fucking red—and everything went to hell." My voice cracked. "The building exploded, and I just... I knew. I knew Dad was gone. I felt it. Like something in the air changed, like the whole world shifted, and suddenly he wasn't—"

I realized I was crying, hot angry tears tracking down my face. "And why the fuck am I telling you this? Spilling classified government secrets to my maybe-stalker with the too-perfect face and impossible eyes who probably thinks I'm having another manic episode—"

The silence on the other end stretched just a beat too long—that mechanical precision in everything he did.

"The boy with the cube," he finally said, his voice carrying something ancient beneath its perfect tone. "That was Sam."

"What?" The word came out breathless, my grip tightening on my phone.

"Your father..." Another perfectly calculated pause, like he was running through acceptable responses. "He knew what he was protecting, Toria. Who he was protecting."

"That's not—you can't just—" I ran a shaky hand through my hair. "You're doing that thing again. That cryptic, 'I know everything but won't tell you' thing."

A sound that might have been a laugh, might have been static. "Some answers need to be earned slowly."

"Slowly?" I stood up, starting to pace. "My dad's been dead for two years, I'm filling sketchbooks with things that shouldn't exist, and you're telling me to take it slow?"

"I'm telling you," his voice softened in that way that made my heart stutter, "that I won't let anything happen to you. Even if that means protecting you from the truth for now."

"That's rich coming from the guy who's been following me home."

"You noticed." He sounded almost proud.

"Hard not to notice a yellow Camaro that moves like—" I stopped myself. "Wait. Sam. The kid from the café today. He was the one on the roof?"

"Toria." My name came through like a warning, like a plea. "Get some sleep. We'll talk soon."

"Brooks—"

"Lock your windows tonight." Then, softer: "I'll be close."

The line went dead, leaving me with more questions than answers and the distinct feeling that I was being watched.

Through my window, a flash of yellow disappeared into the fog.

I fell into bed still fully dressed, Dad's jacket wrapped around me like armor. Sleep came faster than it should have, dragging me under into familiar yet strange territory.

Symbols danced behind my closed eyes—angular, alien things that seemed to pulse with their own light. The same ones Sam had been muttering about, the ones Dad used to sketch in the margins of his notes. They moved like living things, writing themselves across my vision in electric blue.

A voice that wasn't quite Brooks', wasn't quite human, whispered through the symbols."Your father knew... protect... spark..."

I jolted awake, heart racing, the ghost of mechanical whirs still echoing in my ears.

My sketchbook lay open on my bed, pages filled with perfect copies of the symbols from my dream.

I didn't remember drawing them.