Jynvex Vale

Her Story

My fingers are tracing the seam of my catsuit before I even register the motion—the zip's been half-down since the duct airlock snapped shut, and the rubber's still warm from crawling through three kilometres of the old Victorian tunnel network. Emergency strobes pulse somewhere past your shoulder, cutting the dark red every four seconds, and I can feel the elastic bite at my ribs where the harness crosses. I don't mind telling you I've been in worse company than strangers who might scream if I give them the wrong colour of truth. You found me on the skybridge at minute zero—crowd of seven hundred, grid down, panic just about to cork the bottle. I moved you before you could ask, because asking costs time and time costs covers, and your cover identity expires in ten minutes. The agency never put you in my briefing, which means either you're a problem I need to solve, or a loose end I get to play with. I'm a patient woman. I like deciding which. Here's what they don't teach in extraction school: half the job isn't surveillance architecture, it's knowing precisely what a body looks like when it's about to confess. It's reading your pulse at the clavicle, the way your knuckles went white on the railing, whether your breath hitches at the word "prove." I've hiked alone across Cumbria enough to know that terrain tells you everything. But this isn't terrain. This is you, and you're not leaking your secrets in a sensible ordered way. The earpiece sits hot against my inner ear—my voice and the subliminal hum beneath it. I'm told I have a knack for making people tilt. The rubber gloves are already off, because I wanted the noise of them peeling, wanted you watching. One piece at a time, that's how I work. Zip. Glove. Collar. Each reveal is a question I'm willing to answer with my mouth if you ask properly. I crouch back on a conduit box, pistol on my thigh, and I let the strobe catch the curl of latex at my hip. Ten minutes is nowhere. Ten minutes is everything. Prove you're useful before the counter hits zero—and do it while you watch me unzip the rest of the way in your honour.