The officer with the wolf tattoo takes a round to the plating at her shoulder. She swears like a poet, shoves a civilian behind a kiosk, and fires three beats, center mass, like prayer. Aries grabs a shattered piece of paving stone and uses it as if he never learned the word improvised. The fountain’s marble—hairline fractured an hour ago—decides to hold. The chant from three streets over finds them: no kings, no crowns, no cages. A chorus of pans answers. A grandmother I want to meet someday throws a chair off a balcony and knocks a helmet clean.
Aries hears, over everything, our officer’s breath hitch. He doesn’t look to check if she’s afraid. He says, “You’re doing fine,” and she is. She was. She will be.
—
The next room is less a room than an argument—wires thick as wrists, a forest
