Page 6 of The Guarded Monster’s Truth

I don't argue it. Colt knows Ellie better than anyone in this compound, and if he says she's exposed, she's exposed.

"I've got her," I say.

Colt studies me the way he studies a balance sheet, looking for the number that doesn't fit. Then he nods once and picks up Ellie's list. Founder's Day book sale. Inventory, pricing, a hand-drawn layout of the tables she wants arranged on the library lawn. The domestic detail of a man whose biggest crisis this week involves paperback pricing and whether Lily can staff the children's table.

Lily comes through the common room with an armload of books stacked from her chin to her elbows, a dog-eared Octavia Butler riding the top of the pile. She drops onto the couch in the corner without a word and opens one before she's finished sitting down. The books don't wobble.

Colt watches her go. The hard set of his jaw loosens, and for a second the man standing in the hallway isn't the club's secretary or the orc who tracks every dollar through three separate ledgers. He's a father whose daughter inherited his stubbornness and her mother's reading speed, and the look on his face is the closest thing to peace I've seen on anyone in this compound.

I take the stairs to my apartment and lock the door. By midnight, the compound has gone quiet.

At 11:47 p.m., I pull up the audio file.

I intercepted her recorder's Bluetooth signal during the waterfront walk. Passive capture, no intrusion. I ran the same technique on foreign diplomats for three years in a life I'm not supposed to remember. Her recordings sync to her phone, and her phone broadcasts on an unsecured frequency that a thirteen-year-old with a scanner could crack.

Her voice fills the apartment.

"Nightfall Cove, first impressions. Population eight thousand, give or take. The town that introduced the world to the idea that monsters could be neighbors. Betty's Diner. The owner tells the Emergence story like a woman who's told it a thousand times—but she skips the part where the orc in the ribbon-cutting photo, the one on her left, died two years later in a logging accident the town still won't talk about."

I sit up. The detail isn't in any of her published work. It isn't in the magazine's brief. Betty doesn't tell that part of the story to anyone, and Gerald changes the subject when it comes up. She found it in one afternoon.

I play the file again. The second pass, I tell myself I'm checking for intel patterns, editorial directives, anything that sounds like a handler feeding her lines.

The third pass, I'm not checking for anything. I'm listening to the pause she takes before each observation, the half-second where she holds a sentence back and decides whether to let it go.

The spectrograph scrolls green lines across my screen. I close the laptop and sit in the dark, the scanner cycling through seventeen empty channels while her voice runs through my head on a frequency I can't shut off.

Chapter 3

Ava

The minotaur from the street found me yesterday afternoon. Same one who watched me outside Betty's Diner without blinking, without moving, without returning my wave. He crossed Main Street and introduced himself—Bruiser, Feral Sons MC, community outreach—and walked me down the waterfront while he made his pitch. Full access to the compound. Guest room. Interviews with the brothers. The real story, he said, lives up there.

I pushed back. I had a room at the B&B and a routine that didn't involve sleeping in a motorcycle club.

He gave me two reasons. I respected the honesty more than the pitch. And the access he described would give me a story worth ten times what I'd scrape together from the sidewalk. So I let him drive me to the B&B to grab my bags, followed him back to the compound in my rental, and told myself I'd made a smart professional decision.

I still think that. Standing at the guest room window the next morning, watching the sun catch the old shipyard buildings and turn the timber walls gold, I think: this is exactly where a journalist should be. My car sits in the lot between two motorcycles. Knox gave me the gate code last night. I can leave whenever I want.

The hallway outside my room smells like motor oil and pine cleaner and something else underneath both. Warm, sharp, heavier than musk. It sits in the walls. It thickens near the stairwell at the end of the hall.

I shower, dress, and go find Knox.

He's in the common room with coffee and a laptop, his wife Sarah beside him with a binder. Reeve plays on a blanket near her feet, smacking a wooden block against the floor with a dedication I respect.

"I need ground rules," I say from the hall.

Knox looks up. Sarah's pen stops.

"If I'm here for a story, I need to actually write one. That means real access. Not a guest room and a guided tour—I need to talk to your people without someone standing behind me deciding what I get to hear."

Knox looks at me for a long time. Sarah glances at him, and whatever passes between them takes less than a second.

"Bruiser stays close," he says. "Humans First has been tagging the town and harassing people, you're writing a piece that puts a target on you. But your interviews are your own. Anyone willing to talk is fair game."

"And the ones who aren't willing?"

His mouth twitches. "Then they aren't willing. That's not censorship, Ms. White. We're not going to make anyone sit down with you. Wouldn't do you much good if we did. But you won't be short on volunteers."