No footsteps.
No breathing but mine.
No enormous alien trying to make himself small in my doorway.
I lock the door behind me.
Then I lock the second bolt Kauss installed.
Then the third.
Only after that do I take my grandmother’s plasma pistol from the old flour tin in the pantry and set it on the kitchen counter.
The apartment feels colder than it should. Rainwater streaks the windows, though the rain itself has mostly passed. Neon from the street below paints the walls in bruised blue and purple. The couch still holds the blanket Kauss and I slept under. The kitchen still has the magnet that says THIS KITCHEN IS FOR DANCING.
“Do not cry again,” I tell myself.
My voice sounds small in the room.
I make tea because apparently people in emotional ruin still boil water. I am reaching for a mug when the hallway floorboard outside my door creaks.
Everything inside me goes still.
Not Kauss.
Kauss’s footsteps are heavy, careful, impossible to mistake.
This is lighter.
A second creak.
Then metal whispers at the lock.
My hand closes around the pistol.
For one suspended second, I am strangely calm. Not brave. Not unafraid. Calm, the way people become when terror has no more room to expand and must turn into shape.
I step away from the counter, pistol held low but ready.
The first lock clicks.
My heart pounds once.
The second lock begins to turn.
Kauss installed that lock. He showed me the weak angle. He told me no cheap bypass blade could catch it from the hallway.
Whoever is outside has something better than cheap.
I back toward the living room, putting the kitchen island between me and the door.
The third lock snaps.
The door opens.
A man steps in first, gun raised.
I shoot him.
