KAI
The campus coffee shop smells like burnt espresso and desperation—students cramming for midterms, laptops everywhere, and that ambient hum of academic anxiety.
I should be at the library studying. Political Theory exam in three days, and I'm woefully unprepared but I'm here instead, on the third table from the window, pretending to read while actually watching the entrance and looking for him. Bryce.
I need to talk to him, I need to warn him somehow about what Sloane is, what she won't admit to herself. Maybe if he understands what's really happening—
The door opens, not Bryce but her. The woman from Sloane's photos, the ones I snuck to my phone. Blonde ponytail, sharp green eyes, exhausted set to her shoulders like she's been carrying weight too long.
Mira Clarke. Bryce's sister according to the messages I saw on Sloane's phone.
