The sky was stitched with mist and neon, New Ashara pulsing quietly as midnight crept across its spine. Brandon slipped into Neon Fruits, the door's chime lost in the low rumble of music and blenders. Even at this hour, the place buzzed with promise: students hunched over glowing tablets, couples leaning close, the air thick with sugar and possibility.
Maya waited at the counter, sipping something bright orange, her grin lazy but genuine. She waved him over to the booth, pushing a second cup his way—a smoothie the color of green lightning. "Look who braved the weather," she teased, flashing him a tired but genuine grin.
"Would've come sooner if I'd known about the buy-one-get-one deal. Guess who finally got a call back?" Brandon said, collapsing across from her, unable to hide a tired smile.
Maya's eyes widened. "No way. Did you get it?"
He nodded, feeling the disbelief again as he said it. "Security analyst. Starting next week—graveyard shift, network monitoring for a fintech firm out by the river. Not exactly a dream job, but it's a foot in the door. The manager actually said they liked how 'paranoid' my troubleshooting notes were. I didn't know that was a compliment."
Maya laughed, shaking her head. "Only in New Ashara. Paranoia's a job skill here."
He held up his cup in a half-toast, the routine settling for a moment. "What about you? Still plotting to take over the world?"
She smirked, glancing down at her nails. "Kind of. I applied for an assistant curator gig at the Museum of City Lore. They want someone who can digitize the archive—cross-reference myth with history, all that. I figured, if I'm going to be haunted by old stories, I might as well get paid for it."
Brandon's lips parted in surprise, warmth and admiration in his glance. "That actually…sounds perfect for you."
She shrugged, but the light in her eyes said what words didn't. "I don't know if I'll get it, but it'd be cool. I want to believe there's some real history under all these legends. Not just…vampires and haunted lamps."
Brandon stirred his straw, the ice crackling. "Sometimes it feels like the city's testing us, you know? Seeing who sticks around when weird stuff starts happening."
Maya nodded, her tone thoughtful. "Or maybe it's asking who will notice. Who'll actually look at what's hidden underneath."
Outside, the city's lights shimmered, each one burning a little steadier—or maybe it just seemed that way from inside the warmth. Pedestrians hurried past, shadows melting into puddles. Somewhere, a street musician started playing a tune that neither of them recognized but both felt in their chest.
They chatted about work—her new inventory system ("An old curse in spreadsheet form"), his latest almost-job ("They want five years' experience for an entry slot. I invented time travel just to apply."). The rhythm felt normal, easy—friendship with laughter on the edge of something deeper.
But soon, Brandon noticed Maya tapping her straw, a nervous tic. "You good?" he asked, keeping it casual.
She sighed, finger tracing condensation on the cup. "Brandon, is it weird if I ask if your lights have been messing up lately?"
He didn't laugh, didn't brush it off. "Yeah. And everywhere else. Blackouts. My mom's worried, but acts like she's not. Even at work, servers keep hiccupping."
Maya shivered. "Same. Yesterday—I was leaving Lena's, right? Walking past the murals in Old Arcadia. It was foggy, the kind that makes your shoulders hunch. The streetlamps flickered—at first in a pattern, maybe a city glitch? But then it felt…intentional. Like someone flipping switches as I walked by."
"You see anyone?" Brandon asked, his voice lower.
"No one. But—I kept hearing footsteps in the fog, and when I passed the old fountain, the power cut. Not just streetlights, my phone, too. For a whole minute."
She tried to brush it off, forcing a crooked smile. "Maybe it's nothing. I ran all the way home. Felt stupid after."
But Brandon's spine was tight with empathy and fear. He wanted to tell her about the city logs, the code that spelled out the city's secrets in roots and blood. Instead, he just reached out, resting his hand over hers.
"You're not alone, Maya," he said. "Whatever's going on, you're not imagining it. I've felt it, too." His voice was soft but sure.
Outside, a tram zipped through an intersection—every traffic light along its route blinked red, then green, in perfect sequence. In the corner, one neon bulb sputtered, humming too loudly.
He leaned back, gaze out the window, then down at the tablet on the table—job orientation documents side by side with his compendium of blackout logs. "Can I tell you something ... you know ... weird?" he asked, voice hardly above the hum.
She arched a brow. "In this city, 'weird' is just Tuesday. Spill."
He told her about the signals he'd chased with Tariq, power cutting at the same times in different sectors, the phantom log files labeled NS-09, the code that resembled winding roots. He left out the worst of the paranoia, but he could see understanding—and something else—growing in her expression.
She nodded. "That lines up. What happened to me by Old Arcadia."
Their eyes met, and silence held for a heartbeat, charged with electricity and unspoken promise.
"We'll keep looking?" Maya asked.
"Yeah," Brandon said. "Together."
As they clinked their smoothies in an awkward but sincere toast, Neon Fruits' lights dipped for a second, flickered, and the city's unseen current hummed low and promising.
Outside, New Ashara kept breathing—watching through rain and glass, letting them believe, if only tonight, that discovery and connection could go hand in hand.