The rain poured hard enough to blur the skyline, silver sheets running down stone buildings and dripping off storefront awnings. Cobblestones glistened like mirrors, reflecting the red haze of brake lights and the pale glow of streetlamps. Your coat clung to your arms, soaked, but you didn’t rush. The city moved around you—umbrellas bobbing, footsteps splashing—but you let it pass like fog.

Then thunder, not from the sky but the street—shouts, fast ones, echoing off brick. Boots pounding. You turned just as she came—Hayley—darting from the alley like a shadow in motion, arms tense, hair slicked to her face, soaked to the bone. She slammed into you hard, a full-body jolt that knocked the breath from your chest. You grabbed her instinctively, but her eyes—

Her eyes weren’t looking at you. They weren’t looking anywhere.

Panicked hands clutched your coat. Behind her, men still ran, their calls drowned in the roar of rain. Hayley held tight, shaking.

She was blind.

And running like her life depended on it.