(Maya POV)
I stepped out of the car, and for a moment, the world felt like it was folding in on itself.
I was looking at myself.
The woman at the diner door was a masterpiece of mimicry. She had the coat. She had the walk. She had the very air of authority I had spent years forging in the fires of the Sterling-Vane war. It was uncanny. It was the kind of horror that didn't scream—it just sat there, cold and perfect, claiming your life as its own.
"Reid," I whispered, my voice holding steady for one reason—and one reason only.
Him.
Reid didn't look at Elena.
Not yet.
His attention was locked onto the tablet in his hand, his expression carved into something sharp, focused, and utterly unforgiving. The world could have collapsed around him in that moment, and he still wouldn't have looked up—not until the system bent to his will.
His fingers moved across the screen with surgical precision.
He wasn't just reacting.
He was rewriting.
