This entire park was too clean for Void's taste. It wasn't exactly a chrome district or one of those gutted oldyards where you could hear the ghosts rattle in the chain-link fences. It was a patch of green wedged between housing blocks, with neat benches, playground swings that squeaked like they were lubricating themselves out of spite, and the sound of children instead of gunmetal.

Void stood under the crooked shadow of a chestnut tree, hood half-up, hair flaring magenta in the late summer light. 16:00 sharp. She was a woman of clocks and precision. When you told someone to meet you at four, you didn't stroll in at 16:17 or "whenever PKP decides to bless you." You showed up, or you didn't. And Amy had not...

Amy woke to the sound of cupboard doors slamming. Not just one, but three in quick succession - the percussive rhythm that meant her mother had been awake for a while, already wound up. Her heart sank before she even rolled out of bed. Morning hadn't started, and already it felt ruined.

The chat log with Void was still up on her computer. Amy hadn't shut the PC down after Void signed off. The words sat there like a challenge she couldn't blink away: tomorrow. 4pm. szczecin. bohdana zaleskiego. playground. swings still creak if you breathe on them. She'd read that line at least twenty times since the message dropped, her stomach coiling tighter every time. Szczecin. Given the distance to Gdynia it might as well have been another planet...

The door banged open with a thud that rumbled the cheap frame.

"Honey, I'm home!" Keira's voice rang out in a mock-theatrical pitch, followed by the heavy clomp of her steel-toed boots on the apartment floor.

From the couch, Void didn't even look up from her laptop. Her magenta fringe glowed under the bluish light of the screen, mouth twisting into a crooked half-smile.

"Jesus, babe. That's so 2014," she deadpanned. "Next you'll be telling me I won't believe what happens when she opens the door."...

The glassware rattled like bones every time the fume hood fan kicked on. She leaned closer to the flask, watching the thin coil of vapor snake its way up through the condenser tube. The liquid inside shimmered an oily purple under the lab lights, promise and disaster swirling together in a slow, mocking dance. She pulled her goggles tight against her face, heart thudding in rhythm with the stir bar. This was supposed to be the run. This was supposed to finally hold together...

Keira had brought soup again. Half of it had ended up on her shirt when she tried carrying it one-handed through the door. She didn't comment on it, didn't even notice the stain blooming down her shirt like a badge of honor: she was too focused on the way Void had finally sat herself upright on the bed, a blanket half-draped across her legs, looking like a half-alive ghost girl trying to pretend she wasn't falling apart.

Void's skin had lost that frightening chalky tone from a few days ago. She had some color now and her hair was messy in a way that finally stopped screaming "hospital bed."...