Miria spent most of her time on Friday going through Lysander’s notes for their presentation. She could almost hear his voice over her shoulder while she read, his words so distinctly, tonally him that she could imagine him in the room with her.

The rest of the time she spent ignoring the binder of data, which she had done most of the time since her uncle let her off house arrest. She rationalized it by telling herself that she had so much else to do with the company and the day to day running of the city now sitting firmly on her shoulders–which was all true–but the real reason was that she was running out of ideas for how to fix things.

None of the data or facts presented in the binder discounted her father and the council’s decision. Practically speaking, it was the best decision that could be made for the survival of the most people long-term. Every fiber of her denied this, however. To see people as simple numbers on a graph was obviously heartless, but she also couldn’t blame her father for doing so, especially in those early days after his death when she threw all her energy at the problem without much to show for it other than laughably apparent solutions like “make more room for farms and greenhouses” and “eliminate the need for credits to purchase housing”, the latter of which would only send their society into further ruin as housing dried up as fast as their food supply and she couldn’t possibly make more farmland and create more housing within the limited land they had available. The pressure of it all pounded at her temples and she could feel an understanding for why her father pushed her so hard dawning, a feeling she had never wanted to have. She had already made waves by beginning the process of repealing some of her father’s worse ideas, like the mandate against more than two people inhabiting single bedroom apartments, and starting land surveys of unused buildings for potential demolition and refurbishing, but even these small things had the council breathing down her neck for written explanations and requests for meetings like they had been specifically designed to make her job harder. At least before, she had Lysander around as a comforting presence, but even one day without him left her feeling adrift–similar to how she felt right after her father died–because if none of this was working then what was the point of it? She worried sometimes that there was something fundamentally wrong with her. When she got the phone call from Julia about her father, the first thing she felt was relief, like to have him gone was to remove a weight from her shoulders. It wasn’t until later that she started to feel off kilter without the goals that he provided to keep her running. When Lysander had found her in the garden, she had been crying because she felt lost, like a child alone in the woods.

But what was the correct way she should have felt during all that?

She didn’t know, even now.

But no, she shook those thoughts from her head. Most days she could still remember why she kept fighting, even through the hopeless slog of it all.

Speaking of hopelessness, she had meant to question Lysander about his appearance on her father’s notes, but in the confusion during his time off request, she hadn’t remembered, making it feel like just one more thing on the pile of undone things that kept cropping up.

Scrubbing her eyes, she flipped off the reading light on her desk and set down her pen. Nothing productive was coming out of her, so she might as well head home and try to work there. Packing up the folders and loose papers she had sprawled over her desk, she headed out from the office for the night, locking her office door behind her, which she had taken to doing when she wasn’t in to encourage her executives to actually come speak in person with her instead of just leaving things on her desk for signatures. At this time of night, no one else was in, other than some late night janitorial staff, who she could hear emptying out garbage from one of the other offices and humming along to the low thump of a song coming from the boombox on their cart.

The night outside the office settled warmly over her shoulders, and even here in the city, the scents of spring swirled around her along with the earthy tang of fresh rain. Seeing the puddles gleaming from the multitudes of electric lights around her, she decided to walk home, thinking the unseasonable weather and exercise might help to clear her head. The walk would probably only take her about an hour, and it wasn’t like she planned on getting much sleep anyways.

Lost in thought about what Julia might have left her for dinner, she didn’t notice the woman until she was grabbing her arm and stopping her. Startled, Miria took in the other woman and saw she looked harried and gaunt, her eyes sunken in dark shadows and cheekbones protruding. Given all this, the grip she had on Miria’s arm was surprisingly strong, her fingers digging bruises through the fabric of her rain jacket. “You’re Mirianna Campbell,” she whispered. Even though it wasn’t a question, the woman looked surprised by this information as though she hadn’t expected it to actually be her when she stopped her.

“Yes? That’s me,” Miria confirmed. She had no reason to deny it, after all.

“I saw you in the papers,” the woman continued. That made sense to Miria since she had been featured in a lot of news articles after the death of her father and her subsequent assuming of his position.

“Can–Can I help you with something?” Miria stuttered out. The situation had begun to unsettle her, something in the frantic glint in the other woman’s eyes giving her an ominous foreboding deep in her gut.

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Suddenly, the woman pushed Miria into the brick of the building behind her and began screaming, “You killed him! You and your family did this to me!” The attack she began against Miria honestly seemed less like she was being punched repeatedly and more like the woman was flailing her hands at her, slapping and clawing her. Miria turned her face away and the woman’s fingers caught in her ponytail and pulled the hair loose, causing the blonde tresses to fall into Miria’s face and hide her view. As alarming as the whole thing was, she didn’t feel that threatened, if only because of how thin the woman really was. She looked vaguely like a stiff breeze might blow her away. Even the strikes Miria received only really hurt when one of her fingernails scratched at the exposed skin of her face or neck.

When the surprise of being assaulted finally faded, Miria grabbed the woman’s arms and started to wrestle with her. The anger that had fueled the woman seemed to fade once Miria fought back, and sobs began to wrack her shoulders as Miria pushed her arms back to her side.

But just as she was about to open her mouth and question the woman, a gunshot rang through the street, scattering the other passerby who had started to approach to help. Instantly, Miria was covered in spatters of blood and brain matter as a hole exploded out of the side of the woman’s head, her face forever frozen in a contortion of wild grief and fury and tears still slick on her cheeks. The body instantly collapsed even with Miria still holding her arms, and Miria simply followed suit, thumping to the concrete sidewalk on her knees. She couldn’t seem to force her hands to let go of the body, like a film had descended between her mind and her body disrupting her control of it. She also couldn’t stop staring at the woman’s face, even as she felt her blood running rivulets down her cheeks and hands.

“Oof, just in time,” said a voice. It sounded impossibly far away, on the other side of the world maybe, even though it had to be right next to her if the legs that had appeared in her periphery were any indication.

At last, the figure knelt beside her and waved a hand in front of her eyes, breaking her focus on the dead woman. With a blink, she shakily turned her head and saw her uncle. “Uncle Tony? What are you doing here?”

“Saving your skin, it seems,” he replied. The answer seemed both right and wrong in her mind. She remembered danger, but she couldn’t remember actually feeling threatened. Her uncle placed his hands over hers and started trying to pry her fingers loose from the woman’s arms. Once he had successfully loosened her grip, the woman’s body fell the rest of the way to the ground with a sickening thump, and he placed an arm around her shoulders and lifted her away from the carnage.

“Did you–Did you kill her?” she asked. It seemed obvious, but it also confused her.

“Yup, had to. She was trying to kill you, Miria,” he explained, but this too didn’t seem quite right.

“Were you following me?”

“Nah, I just like to keep a watch on ya from time to time.”

So yes, she thought to herself. The blood began to dry on her arms and in her hair, making her feel dirty and itchy.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she mumbled.

“Don’t worry, Mir, you’re safe now. I’ll have someone take you home so you can get cleaned up, okay?”

“No, wait,” she protested as a BP officer appeared from nowhere and started to bundle her away, “I don’t think she would have hurt me, Uncle Tony.”

Her uncle turned and looked at her, and the discomforting feeling she had had when the woman first approached her reignited in her stomach, clearing her mind slightly. “Don’t be silly, Miria, of course she would have. She had a knife. You’re just in shock.” With that, he turned on his heel and coordinated the other officers who had shown up to the scene to clean up the body.

Still confused and growing more nauseous by the second, she allowed the officer to shuffle her the rest of the way to the estate. She had been only two blocks from her home.

She must have blacked out for a moment because the next thing she knew, she was standing in the shower. Her skin chafed under the hot water, and she realized she must have scrubbed it raw in her stupor. Stumbling out from under the stream, she turned the water off and practically dove into her fluffiest bathrobe, trying to take comfort from the familiar feeling of the terrycloth enveloping her. Her bathroom had steamed up while she cleaned herself, so when she opened the door to her bedroom, the air felt cool and relieving.

But as comfortable as she felt physically, mentally, she was still reliving the woman’s head exploding in front of her, and her thoughts scrambled to hold on to literally anything else, but she couldn’t, and that moment played out over and over in front of her eyes. She wanted Lysander more than she had ever wanted another person. Even as children, when she had nightmares, she would crawl into his bed instead of making the trek up to her parent’s room. He was her safe place, but he wasn’t there. She considered going to his apartment, but she didn’t want to leave her house, less so because she was scared of someone else attacking her and more because she was scared of what her uncle would do if someone did.

She could call him? But no, she had promised to give him his space.

Feeling more alone than she had ever before, she even thought of going and waking Julia, but ultimately decided not to, if only because she didn’t want to bother her.

Again, she attempted to turn her thoughts away from the mental image of the woman’s death, tried to think more on why her uncle had frightened her even after he had supposedly saved her life or why the woman had attacked her to begin with, but then she caught sight of the tip of her blonde hair dangling over her shoulder and she swore that it still was tinged red in the dim light of her room and her panic would sweep over her once more.

She sat stiff and frozen all night on her bed, not even feeling the tears cascading down her cheeks.