"No," the man said softly.
The single syllable didn't just echo through the phone speaker; it seemed to drop the temperature in Lila's apartment by ten degrees. The voice carried a thick, precise Asian accent, but it was the tone that paralyzed her. It was entirely devoid of any human inflection. It was the flat, dead sound of a reptile.
"James is dead," the man continued, every consonant clipped and exact. "But you have something that I require."
The words didn't compute. They hit Lila's eardrum, bounced around her exhausted, sleep-deprived brain, and simply failed to attach to reality.
"What?" Lila stammered, her voice a high, thin squeak. She shook her head frantically at the empty living room, backing away from the windows as if the voice on the phone were a physical presence. "What? No. No, no, no. That's a lie. Put James on the phone. Stop messing around and put him on."
"I do not negotiate with delusions," the man stated, his boredom infinitely more terrifying than anger. "Knighton was butchered in an alleyway on Friday night like a rabid stray. His corpse is currently rotting in a municipal morgue. The extraction failed."
The phone slipped a fraction of an inch in Lila's sweaty palm.
Her knees completely gave out. She collapsed onto the cheap suede of her sofa, a harsh, jagged sob tearing its way up her throat. Hot, frantic tears spilled over her eyelashes, ruining her carefully applied makeup, burning tracks down her pale cheeks.
Dead.
The initial wave of pure shock instantly shattered, giving way to a bizarre, twisted rush of validation. He didn't leave me. The terrifying thought that James had taken his payday and abandoned her to take the fall vanished completely. He hadn't burned her. He had loved her. He had promised her Europe. He had promised her millions and a life where she would never have to be second-best to anyone ever again.
The only reason he hadn't called was because someone had stopped his heart.
Lila curled her free arm around her stomach, rocking back and forth on the couch cushions as her grief rapidly mutated into something dark, toxic, and utterly venomous.
It all made sense now. She had spent the entire weekend obsessively refreshing the local news sites and checking her university email, waiting for the frantic alerts about a missing geneticist. But there had been nothing. Absolute radio silence.
She had figured the silence was just because nobody actually cared about a missing orphan. It was the worst-kept secret in the department that Ebony and her older sister Ashley were adopted. Ebony always paraded it around like some kind of noble origin story, acting like her adoptive parents were absolute saints doing humanitarian work overseas. As if anyone's family was just that perfect.
Lila had always hated her for it. She hated the way Ebony walked through the world bathed in that aura of untouchable, golden-child perfection. And now, James was dead.
The brilliant, charismatic man who had finally seen Lila's true potential, who had pulled her out of the shadows and given her a purpose, had been killed because of her.
"It's her fault," Lila sobbed into the receiver, her voice turning shrill and hysterical as the toxic jealousy completely hijacked her brain. "It's all because of that lucky, entitled bitch. She ruins everything. James is dead because of her! She was supposed to just get in the damn van—"
"Cease your pathetic weeping immediately."
The command wasn't shouted. It was delivered at a perfectly normal volume, but it cracked through the phone line with the sharp, devastating force of a whip.
Lila instantly choked on her own sob. Her teeth clicked together, her breath catching painfully in her chest.
"Listen to me, you insignificant little parasite," the man murmured, his voice dripping with such absolute, aristocratic disdain that Lila actually shrank back into the cushions. "You are a sub-contracted thief. A disposable asset hired by a dead man. Your grief is an offensive waste of my time, and your petty, peasant grievances about your coworker bore me."
Lila could feel the pure, unadulterated terror radiating through the digital connection. The tiny hairs on the back of her neck stood straight up. A cold sweat broke out across her collarbones. James had been a criminal, yes, but he had been smooth. He had been a charmer who wrapped his dark intentions in expensive suits.
The man breathing on the other end of this line looked at her the way a human looks at a cockroach right before stepping on it.
"I'm... I'm sorry," Lila whispered, her entire body shaking so violently she could barely hold the phone to her ear. "I have the drives. And the biological samples from the freezer. They are in the thermal bag, just like James told me."
"Then you still possess a fraction of value," the man sneered, the degradation practically dripping from the word. "You will bring the thermal bag and the encrypted drives to The Rusty Anchor. It is a squalid little dive bar on the edge of the lower warehouse district. You will arrive in exactly two hours. Sit in the back booth near the emergency exit. Order a drink. Keep the bag on your lap."
Lila swallowed hard, tasting bile in the back of her throat. "How... how will I know it's you?"
A dark, hollow sound that wasn't quite a laugh vibrated through the speaker. "You will not. You will sit exactly where you are told, and you will wait to be approached by your betters."
"Okay. The Rusty Anchor. Two hours," Lila repeated, her voice trembling. She was desperate to prove her competence, desperate to keep this terrifying phantom from deciding she was just another piece of trash that needed to be swept away.
"Do not be late," the man warned softly, his tone dropping into a whisper that chilled her blood to ice. "And do not attract the attention of the local police. If you fail to deliver the assets, or if you attempt to run with my property, I will not simply kill you. I will have you dismantled piece by piece while you are still breathing. I will make you beg for the quick, merciful death that Knighton received. Do you understand your place in this?"
"Yes," Lila gasped, tears streaming silently down her face. "I understand. I swear. I'll be there."
"See that you are."
The line went dead with a sharp click.
Lila slowly lowered the phone, staring blankly at the glowing screen until it faded to black.
The silence in her apartment was absolute. The hum of the refrigerator suddenly sounded like a jet engine. The shadows stretching out from the corners of her living room felt alive, watching her, waiting for her to make a fatal mistake.
She looked over at the kitchen counter. The heavy, insulated thermal bag sat there next to the coffee pot, holding the stolen genetic secrets of a woman who was currently surrounded by monsters.
A violent shudder racked Lila's spine.
She had wanted to play the game. She had wanted the money, the excitement, the thrill of tearing down the perfect, brilliant Ebony Baptiste. She thought she was stepping into a sleek, corporate espionage thriller where she was the brilliant accomplice.
But as the sheer, paralyzing terror of that phone call finally settled deep into the marrow of her bones, the illusion violently shattered. She wasn't a partner. She was a peasant who had blindly stumbled into a war zone populated by gods and monsters.
Lila squeezed her eyes shut, dropping her phone onto the cushions, her chest heaving as she finally asked herself the one terrifying question she had been aggressively ignoring for the past three weeks.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into?