Nightfall Protocol

Chapter 6:Hey Mia!

Andrew set the radio down on the counter and stood very still, listening to Mia's voice cycle through the static one more time before the signal broke apart entirely and left only silence.

Mia Reyes.

He hadn't heard her voice in — how long had it been? Three weeks since they'd last shared a patrol shift. Three weeks since she'd stolen the last coffee from the break room and blamed it on Detective Harris with a completely straight face. He'd laughed harder than the joke deserved. He almost always did with Mia.

They'd grown up four streets apart in the same unremarkable neighbourhood on the south side of the city. Had sat two rows from each other in the same homeroom class for six consecutive years. She used to cheat off his history tests and he used to let her, because Mia was terrible at dates but could read a person's intentions from across a crowded room in under ten seconds flat — a talent that had saved both their lives at least twice since they'd joined the force together. Same recruitment cycle. Same interview panel. Same rookie orientation where they'd both shown up early and ended up sitting in the hallway eating vending machine sandwiches and making each other laugh until a sergeant told them to keep it down.

Same team. Always the same team.

He exhaled slowly through his nose.

She was somewhere in this city, broadcasting into the void, and he was standing in a pharmacy with a broken radio and a bandaged skull. The situation was almost funny if you looked at it from far enough away.

Then the other thought surfaced, quieter but heavier.

Find her. Whatever it takes.

Not just Mia. He turned the thought over carefully, the way you turn over something fragile. There was someone else out there in this. Someone whose face had been sitting at the back of his mind since he'd first opened his eyes in that alley. Shawna. He didn't know yet where she fit into tonight's events — didn't know what she knew, where she was, whether she was safe.

But he would find her. That wasn't resolve so much as simple fact, settled somewhere deep and immovable in his chest.

He walked back to the bathroom, turned the tap on cold this time, and bent over the sink. The water hit his face like a hard reset — sharp, immediate, pulling him fully back into the present moment. He stood up, water dripping from his jaw, and looked at himself one last time in the cracked mirror.

Focused. That was the word. Whatever had broken loose in this city tonight, falling apart was not an option he was entertaining.

He moved back to the front counter, loaded everything useful into a plastic carry bag he found beneath the register — extra gauze, the remaining antiseptic, the ibuprofen, a spare lighter sitting near the till. He checked his Glock, confirmed the magazine, holstered it clean.

He slung the bag over his shoulder, turned the collar of his jacket up against the cold waiting outside, and pushed through the front door of the pharmacy into the dark street beyond.