There's no time to think.
Only to act.
Kael was already moving before the echo of the knock finished bouncing off the walls—yanking the blanket from his bed in one pull, the cheap fleece one he'd bought from a discount bin two winters ago, and throwing it over the man in a single, graceless motion.
Not perfect.
Not even close to perfect.
But the black jacket disappeared. The ring disappeared. The watch disappeared.
Under a blanket covered in small grey geometric shapes, which was somehow both the least and most dignified thing that had happened tonight.
"Open up. Now."
Coming, he thought viciously, and dropped to his knees.
The blood on the floor was the problem. The trail he hadn't been able to move, the dark smear between the door and the desk — visible, damning, the kind of thing that asked questions he couldn't answer.
He grabbed the damp cloth he used to wipe down his desk.
Started on the worst of it.
The floorboards were uneven, grooves catching the blood like they'd been designed to make his life harder. He scrubbed fast, not clean — clean wasn't possible, not in thirty seconds — but less. Enough to be explainable. Enough to be ambiguous.
Water leak, he decided. Rainwater. Coming in under the door. This building leaks everywhere, that's just what this building does, nobody would question that—
Another knock. Harder.
The door frame shuddered.
"Last warning."
Kael straightened, looked around the apartment in one rapid sweep.
Cloth on the floor — kicked under the desk.
Laptop still closed on the desk — fine.
The steel bowl still catching the ceiling drip — actually helpful, supports the leak story.
The man behind the desk and the turned chair, under the blanket, against the wall — visible if you looked. Not visible if you didn't.
They can't come in, he told himself. They have no legal right to enter. They knock, I answer, I am a boring, unremarkable, completely uninteresting person who was asleep and heard nothing—
He needed to look like he'd been asleep.
He yanked his shirt out from his waistband, rumpled it. Dragged his hand through his hair, ruining the flat, forgettable tidiness of it. Pulled his glasses slightly crooked on his face.
Looked down at himself.
Plain. Almond-brown skin. Average height. Average everything.
Good.
Be boring, he told himself. Be the most boring person in Veltara. Be so boring they lose interest in the middle of looking at you.
He was almost at the door.
Almost.
When a sound came from behind the desk.
Small.
Barely there.
A shift of fabric against the floorboards.
Kael spun around.
The blanket was moving.
Not much. Just slightly — the faint, involuntary movement of someone surfacing from a very deep, very dark place and not quite making it all the way back. A hand appeared at the edge of the fleece, slow and uncoordinated, fingers pressing flat against the floor like they were trying to establish where the floor was.
No, Kael thought. No, no, no—
He crossed the room in three steps, dropped to his knees, and pressed his hand lightly over the man's mouth.
Not hard. Not restraining.
Just — there.
A barrier. A request.
The man's eyes didn't open. But something in him stilled — some barely-conscious part registering the contact, the warmth, the closeness, and going quiet in response.
Kael leaned in close.
Close enough that he could see the faint movement of breath against his palm. Close enough that the scent hit him again, full force, and he had to clamp down hard on every instinct that tried to respond to it.
Not now, he told his biology, with cold authority.
Not ever, he added, for emphasis.
He brought his mouth to a level just above the man's ear.
Barely a sound. Less than a whisper.
"Don't make a sound."
The hand on the floor went still.
The door handle moved.
Slow. Testing. Someone outside pressing down on it, feeling the resistance of the deadbolt, the chain.
Checking.
The sound of it was small and domestic and the most terrifying thing Kael had heard all night.
He stayed frozen for one more second, hand still lightly against the man's mouth, both of them breathing in the narrow dark behind the desk.
Then he stood.
Straightened his rumpled shirt.
Pushed his crooked glasses up.
Put on the face he'd spent nine years perfecting — blank, mild, slightly confused. The face of a person who had nothing to hide because there was nothing interesting enough about them to bother hiding.
He walked to the door.
Unlocked the deadbolt.
Slid the chain free.
And opened it.