Amelia had always considered herself a rational woman. Her life ran on schedules, research, and logic. She didn't believe in coincidences or fate or any of those fantastical things people clung to when they needed comfort.
But that certainty began to fracture the moment she saw her shoulder.
It happened on her second night home. She stood before the bathroom mirror, lifting the thin hospital gown she still wore. The bandages had been removed earlier by her doctor, who told her the wound was "healing remarkably fast." He said it like a compliment, but Amelia found it unsettling. Bullet wounds weren't supposed to knit together that quickly.
When she peeled back the gauze to see it herself for the first time…
Her breath hitched.
The wound had closed into a small, pink scar, becoming barely noticeable now. But radiating outward from that scar, curling delicately along her skin like vines of black ink, were markings.
Thin, intricate lines that looked almost like an ancient script of a language she didn't recognize.
They were almost like tattoos but she had never gotten tattoos.
And they definitely weren't there before.
Amelia traced the designs with trembling fingers. They were faint, like someone had drawn them under her skin with glowing charcoal.
She stared deeply...
And the longer she stared, the more her chest tightened.
Her hand flew instinctively to her mouth as the realization settled over her like cold water:
The bullet... It passed through him first.
She could still see it in her mind...
Ethan's hand raised in front of her as a shield... that tattoo on his palm glowing in impossible patterns just before the bullet tore through it and slammed into her shoulder.
She felt dizzy.
The markings on her skin suddenly emitted a glow and then agony hit.
A sharp, searing pain shot from her shoulder to her ribs, like a branding iron dragged across her bones.
Her knees buckled, and she clutched the edge of the sink to keep from collapsing. The pain spread in waves, synchronized with the glowing ink.
When it finally faded, she was left breathless and shaking with sweat dripping down her temple.
"What did you do to me?" she whispered into the dim bathroom, as if Ethan could hear her.
---
Despite the episodes, Amelia returned to work two days later. Her board protested. Sam protested. Lila nearly burst into tears.
But Amelia Lockhart wasn't raised to hide. Her father taught her that leading meant showing up, even when it hurt.
So she walked into Lockhart Industries with her shoulder throbbing and a personal security team three times its original size.
Some trailed behind her. Two stood beside the elevator at all times. Another was assigned to watch her car. The company lobby felt like the entrance to a presidential bunker.
Her employees stared as she walked through the glass doors, some whispering, others stepping back as if she had become untouchable. The news had already circulated: Amelia Lockhart survived an attempted abduction. Everyone assumed she was traumatized.
If only trauma were the worst of her problems.
Behind her composed expression, she felt the faint throbbing of the ink under her skin, almost like a heartbeat that wasn't hers.
Her office felt familiar, comforting. The scent of coffee from the machine in the corner. The faint buzz of the air conditioner. The framed picture of her father on her desk, smiling warmly.
She sat down slowly, exhaled, and opened her laptop.
Work.
Work would ground her.
The Lockhart Project files glowed on her screen. Pages of schematics, energy output calculations, security protocols, neural interface diagrams.
Her father's last dream before he died. One she had inherited and promised to complete.
She focused for twenty minutes.
Twenty agonizing minutes.
Then the ink on her shoulder sparked like someone had pressed a glowing fingertip against her skin.
She gasped, letting out a sharp inhale she couldn't hide.
Pain tore through her again. It was less than before, but still enough to blur her vision. The office spun for a second. Amelia gripped the desk, knuckles white, waiting for it to pass.
It did. Eventually.
But when her vision cleared, her monitor screen was still open to the schematic of the energy core... the same one Ethan had mentioned while rescuing her.
How would a clumsy junior employee know classified details about her father's most guarded invention?
He wouldn't.
Not unless he was someone else entirely.
Someone trained.
Someone hidden.
Someone sent.
Amelia swallowed hard. She closed the laptop.
But it didn't stop the memories from coming.
Every time she walked down the hallway, she saw him, bumping into a stack of folders and sending them scattering.
Every time she stepped into the elevator, she remembered that awkward apology when he accidentally spilled papers on her shoes.
He had always looked harmless.
Forgettable.
Almost… too forgettable.
Now she replayed it all and saw inconsistencies... little moments where his reflexes were too sharp, where his eyes flickered to exits, where his posture shifted like he was trained to observe everything.
Which one was he?
The fool who dropped staplers?
Or the man who killed trained mercenaries?
Two different masks.
One person.
And she had no idea which was real.
---
At night, the dizziness worsened.
Sometimes her vision blurred at the edges, like the world dimmed for a fraction of a second.
Other times, she heard faint ringing in her ears, almost like whispers. Not voices. Just vibrations.
Her doctor said it was stress.
Her team said it was trauma.
Everyone said it was normal.
But nothing about this was normal.
She knew it the night she woke up at 3 AM to find the ink on her shoulder glowing.
It emitted a dull blue glow, lighting up the dark room like a soft lamp.
Her breath got caught in her throat as she touched it.
And the moment she did, pain shot through her entire arm.
She doubled over, clutching the sheets, nearly screaming.
It faded after several excruciating seconds.
She stared at her hand, panting.
No one would believe what had happened at the train tracks. Neither would they believe this.
No one had believed her from the start. So she stopped telling them.
She kept every episode to herself.
Every glow.
Every dizzy spell.
Every detail of that day...
Ethan's name tasted like a secret she had no choice but to swallow.
"If only Liam wasn't off the grid... can't wait for him to get back..." she let out a sigh.
As days turned into weeks, her personal life shrank into a quiet, haunted routine:
Work.
Pain.
Dizziness.
Pretend everything was fine.
Repeat.
Eventually, when the pain became too much to bear, she made a decision.
She hired a private investigator.
One of the best in the country who was an ex-Interpol analyst with a reputation for uncovering ghosts.
She gave him all the information she had: Ethan's workplace records, schedule, everything she had observed.
He worked for about three weeks until he finally called her in.
The look on his face told her the answer before he even said it.
"Miss Lockhart…" he began slowly while placing a thin, nearly empty folder on the table between them, "there is no record of an Ethan who matches this description."