POV: Kim
He was already moving when I got to the bottom of the stairs.
Moving was a generous word. He was navigating — the particular, deliberate negotiation of a body that has decided it's going to do a thing and is now in ongoing discussion with physics about the terms. One hand on the wall. Not leaning on it. Just: aware of where it was.
The smell hit me at the third step from the bottom.
Blood, first. Hot and metallic and immediate, the kind of smell that bypasses analysis and goes straight to the base of the spine. And underneath it — around it, threaded through it like a second signal — that wild, ozone musk that I had catalogued and filed and never successfully explained. The two things together were wrong in a way I felt in my sternum before I understood why.
Something is hur
