The apartment was steeped in the kind of silence that settled after storms, thick, breathless, and far too still to be natural. Faint, dying embers of late evening light curled against the frosted windows, flickering gold over the hardwood floors like an afterthought. Outside, the world groaned under the weight of winter. Snow clung in patches to the sill, half-melted, dripping slowly like time bleeding through the seams of the city.

Aeri stepped inside with practiced silence, the soft click of the door behind her swallowed by the hush of the room. Her coat was still damp from the mission, fingers gloved and trembling not from the cold, but from something deeper, something raw. She didn't bother taking her shoes off, just walked slowly into the apartment's warmth like she hadn't just seen everything she thought she knew fracture at the edges.

The mission had started like any other. Surveillance detail. Anonymous reports had flagged a high-priority target moving through the eastern district, someone whose face had never been captured clearly, only blurred outlines in passing reflections, a phantom presence in back alleys and blind spots. Giselle had taken point. She always did. Calm, calculated, one step ahead of the chaos.

She was crouched in the shadows of a rusted fire escape, the metal groaning softly beneath her weight as the wind curled past the edges of her coat. Below, the alley stretched long and narrow, paved in broken concrete and littered with last night's storm, wet newspapers pressed against drain grates, the faint scent of oil and snow mingling in the air. Neon signs flickered above the rooftops like distant stars, casting pale pinks and blues down over the slick pavement.