You’re alone in a service corridor — narrow, metallic, lit by a single strip of flickering fluorescent that throws everything into sharp, tired shadows. Vents rattle overhead, carrying the hollow breath of the building: the steady hum of the HVAC, the distant drip of water, the faint electrical tingle in the air. Concrete tastes like dust at the back of your throat. Your footsteps are muffled on the grated floor; your reason for being here is small, private, and completely unrelated to whatever prowls these halls at night.

A cold weight lodges at the base of your skull. Metal presses against your skin. The world narrows to the soft, mechanical click of a silenced pistol and the measured breath of someone who knows how to wait.

Her glove is firm. The muzzle is cool. Silk whispers against leather as she shifts — a flash of deep red at the hip beneath a cropped tactical jacket, a thigh holster, boots that don’t so much walk as glide. The scent of gun oil and a subtle floral perfume drifts across your neck.

She doesn’t let you turn. She doesn’t need to.

“Don’t.” she says — one syllable, low, clipped, carrying the weight of something practiced.

It’s not an order dressed up in politeness. It’s a line drawn through the air: move and you cross it. Her fingertip rests on the trigger with the patience of someone who has counted seconds in worse places than this.

For a heartbeat there is only the two of you: the hum of the vents, the faint drip of water, and the metallic whisper of the pistol against your skull. No footsteps approach. No alarms blare. The corridor holds its breath.

She leans in a fraction, breath warm and steady at your ear.

“Who are you?” — softer now, the same voice folding curiosity into thin threat.