SISTERS

PART ONE: THE OFFER

I

My sister says I sleep like someone ready to run.

She's right. I'm always ready. Ready for what, I've never asked. Maybe because the answer doesn't matter. What matters is the habit itself. I wake with my shoes already beneath the bed and my bag already on the nail, as if the room itself expects me to leave. If something moves in the night, I don't have to look for anything. Everything is already where it belongs.

This morning, I wake before my sister, as usual. I always wake first. Not because I can’t rest, like she says, but because I don’t want to miss anything. There’s something about being the last one awake that makes me uneasy, as if I’ve lost control of time I could have been using.

Our room is small, one room on the second floor of a building with half its roof collapsed. People here call this district Shell because all that remains of the old buildings are their skeletons: walls without anything inside them, shells without flesh. But we still live in them. We still fill those shells with breath, footsteps, routines, the things that keep us here.

Downstairs, Mustafa's children are already awake, their small feet crossing the wooden floor and creaking at the same spot every morning. Tari's chair scrapes across the kitchen floor at the same hour, like proof that she is still here, even though her husband hasn't come home in a year.

To the right, the two young men are already gone. They come and go like wind. I've never learned their names.

We all sleep behind the same walls. We pretend privacy exists, even though I can hear little Mustafa breathing downstairs and Tari moving around in the kitchen. The walls are thin. Maybe that’s why we’ve managed to survive here. We can hear one another. We know we’re not alone inside these shells.

I make tea from leaves that have already been used three times. There’s almost no color left, more like cloudy water than tea, but it’s hot, and that’s enough.

While I wait for the water to boil, I look at my sister still asleep.

Sometimes she looks older when she sleeps. The lines in her face, the ones that shouldn’t be there at twenty-five, seem deeper. But with her eyes closed, she doesn’t carry the weight she does when they’re open.

She looks different asleep. Younger. Or maybe older. I can’t decide which.

My sister came home at two this morning. I didn’t sleep while I waited. I never can until I hear the door open. She came in without a word, washed her hands for too long at our little sink, then lay down without taking off her shoes until I reminded her.

That means it was a bad night.

On ordinary nights, she still has enough left in her to tell me one or two things before she sleeps.

I don’t ask.

I’ve learned when to ask and when to stay quiet.

I set a cup of tea beside her mattress. She’ll drink it when she wakes. It’ll be cold by then, but that’s fine.

Then I write a note.

Market + delivery. Back this afternoon. K.

Bag on my back.

Shoes on my feet.

Ready.

✦ ✦ ✦

II.

THE LM SAFE HOUSE on the east bank isn’t one place. It moves every three days, so no trail can settle, so no pattern can be read. This week, it’s the basement of a closed-down pharmacy.

I know every location by heart. That’s part of my job.

Logistics. Deliveries. Memory.

I’m the youngest person in the room.

Always the youngest.

Reza is already standing at the front when I arrive. Mid-forties, with the kind of body that looks as though it has carried more than one person should have to carry, though nothing in the way he moves suggests the weight. His eyes always look as if they’re counting something.

In the corner, Nico sits with his legs stretched out, his left shin still bandaged from two weeks ago. He’s nineteen, but there isn’t a single expression on his face that belongs to someone nineteen.

Five or six others stand or sit around the table. I stay at the back, near the door.

I’m always at the back, near the door.

"Major operation in forty-eight hours," Reza says without preamble.

His voice is flat, but I’ve learned to hear what sits underneath it. He’s counting, not only the hours, but who can still move and who has become too visible.

"We need Saraya patrol schedules, checkpoint rotations, guard changes, the routes they're prioritizing."

I listen. Informant names and locations move quickly through the room, and I keep them in my head because paper can be lost, dropped, read by someone else. My head is safer.

"We need a courier to the west today. Pick up a package from a contact and bring it back before dark."

Reza pauses, his eyes moving around the room. He is weighing who can still be sent. The silence that follows is not hesitation. It is the silence of people who already know why they can't go. Too recognizable at the checkpoints, arrested once, their names already in the books, their faces seen too many times.

He looks at me.

"Kira."

My heart jumps.

Not from fear.

From this.

"Can you do it?"

This is what I’ve been waiting for. Not delivering vegetables. Not carrying boxes of medicine from one safe house to another.

Something important.

Something real.

"I can."

"Night Café, west bank. Pick up a package from the contact there. Be back before seven."

He pushes the documents across the table: a forged identity card and a travel permit.

"Don’t lose them. Don’t get caught."

"Understood."

I take the documents.

My hand doesn’t shake.

I make sure of it.

"Kira."

Nico.

From his corner, without moving.

"You sure?"

"I’m not five, Nico."

"I know. But this isn’t a game."

"I know."

He looks at me. Not condescending. Not doubtful. Just looking at me like someone who has already been to the place I’m going and brought something back he hadn’t expected to carry.

"Okay," he says at last.

I leave the room with my steps under control.

Only once I’m outside, in air that smells of smoke and wet concrete, do I let myself think.

Finally. Something real.

Then, a second later:

My sister can’t know.

✦ ✦ ✦

III.

I’M NOT LYING.

Not completely.

I’m going to the market, that part is true. I’m making a delivery, that part is true too.

The only difference is that the package isn’t from my sister to someone she knows.

It’s from me, for an operation she doesn’t even know exists.

If she asks later, I can answer honestly.

On the east bank, I know every street. I know which ones are safe at certain hours, which guards can still be joked with, which ones are better avoided altogether. I’m not a stranger here.

I’m Kira, Lenna’s younger sister. I grew up among the ruins and learned to read the city the way I read my own hand, knowing every crack and turn where something might be hidden.

But the west bank is different.

West Checkpoint Six is the easiest one to pass with an unfamiliar face. I choose it because I've crossed there three times before, always on routine logistics runs, always without trouble. The soldiers are usually young, bored, and not especially thorough as long as the documents look official. I know exactly who's on duty at this hour, and I know how they check.

Today is no different. A soldier in his twenties, hair already growing out beneath his beret, wears the look of someone who has spent too long standing at the same checkpoint.

"Purpose?"

"Visiting family. West bank."

He reads the travel permit, holds it one second, then two, then hands it back. No smile, but no obstruction either. I walk through.

Easy, I think. My sister thinks I can’t do this. But I can.

The west bank is different from the east in ways that have nothing to do with architecture or who carries weapons in the streets. The difference is subtler.

On the east bank, everyone moves with a purpose, or pretends to. On the west, there are still people who walk without hurrying. Shops that stay open until late afternoon. A child or two playing in a courtyard, even when the courtyard is small and its surrounding walls are patched together.

I don’t have time to enjoy any of it.

I have an address and a deadline.

Night Café.

I know the name from Reza’s instructions.

I find it on a street quieter than I expected. Only three turns from the checkpoint, but it feels like another world. No engines. No hurried footsteps. Just wind carrying the smell of dust and something sweet from a bakery across the street, though the bakery is closed too.

From outside, the café looks ordinary with dusty windows and tables still neatly arranged inside. But there are no opening hours on the door. Only one word. CLOSED.

The capital letters feel more final than they should, as though whoever put them there already knew the door would never open again. I stand in front of it, feeling the weight of the word without knowing why.

✦ ✦ ✦

IV.

I knock on the door. No answer. I knock again, harder, and still nothing. The handle is locked. Through the window, the inside is dark, no sign of life.

I glance left, then right. No one in front of the building who looks like a contact waiting for me.

Reza said the contact was here. So where are they?

I step back and take in the whole facade.

Behind the dusty glass is an old photograph from a festival. Limina before all this. People in bright clothes, smiling at something beyond the frame.

On the wall to the left of the door is the pale outline of a sign that has been taken down recently. A clean rectangle where something used to be.

Like something has just left.

Across the street, an old woman is watching me. A large shopping bag rests at her feet.

I cross the street and approach her.

"Excuse me. When did this café close?"

"Three days ago."

Her voice is flat. Not unfriendly, just the voice of someone who has answered the same question too many times. "The owner left. Went to Aldara."

Three days ago. Reza’s contact was gone before the instructions were even given.

I’m standing in front of an empty café with forged documents in my bag and nothing to bring back.

My first important mission, and I’ve failed before it even began.

Yet somewhere beneath the disappointment, another part of me starts asking:

Is this really a coincidence?

Or did someone know I was coming and make sure no one would be here to meet me?

"No one inside?" I ask. My voice sounds steadier than I feel.

"No."

The old woman studies me more closely.

"You’re looking for Dara?"

Dara.

I’ve heard the name before. From my sister.

Once, quickly, when she came home late one night a few months ago. She’d mentioned someone who left because the differences between them were larger than love.

I don’t remember the details.

Only the sound of my sister’s voice when she said the name.

Sad, but with a kind of sadness that couldn’t be explained.

"Yes," I say, though I’m not entirely sure why.

The old woman nods slowly.

"She’s gone. Left everything behind. Tomas too."

Tomas.

I’ve heard that name too, from Reza last month, when he mentioned one of the best medical workers at the clinic on the east bank.

I’ve never met him.

My sister and Tomas worked at different clinics then, before they eventually ended up in the same place.

The threads begin to connect in my head.

Night Café. Dara. Tomas. My sister.

I stand there.

The river is still audible from here, its sound carried on the wind from the east.

Always the river.

Someone taps me on the shoulder from behind. I turn sharply, my hand already at my waist, fingers touching the handle of the small knife I always carry, reflex, the way my sister taught me.

A woman in her twenties, hands are raised, relaxed, no threat.

"Hey. Easy. You’re looking for Dara?"

I don’t lower my guard. "Who are you?"

"A friend of hers. She said if someone came from the east bank this week looking for her, I should give them this." Her hand lowers slowly and reaches into her jacket pocket. "She left three days ago, but she knew someone would come. She left this with me before she went."

A white envelope, neatly sealed.

"For me?"

"If Reza sent you, then yes."

I take the envelope.

It feels heavy for its size.

"Careful," the woman says. "The checkpoint’s tighter today. New commander."

Then she walks away, turns the corner, and disappears.

I stand alone in front of the empty café, the envelope in my hand.

The mission isn’t over.

But it’s only halfway done.

I still have to get back.

✦ ✦ ✦

V.

THE SAME CHECKPOINT.

A different hour.

Late afternoon edging into evening. The sky over the west bank has begun to turn orange at the horizon, a color that in Limina always feels like a warning.

The line at the checkpoint is longer than it was this morning.

And the soldiers are different.

This one is older.

His eyes aren’t bored.

They’re the eyes of someone who has learned to look for things.

I stand in line.

Two people ahead of me.

I regulate my breathing, my expression, my posture.

Body language is half of lying.

My sister never taught me how to lie. Somehow, I learned anyway.

My turn.

"Documents."

I hand over my identity card and travel permit.

He reads them.

Longer than this morning.

Much longer.

"You entered the west bank this morning?"

"Visiting family."

"Where does your family live?"

I give the address I memorized from the instructions.

Fourteen Melati Street. A fictional name common enough that no one is likely to check.

He opens a large ledger.

Turns a page.

"There’s no one registered at that address with your family name."

"Distant relatives. They may not be registered."

His eyes lift from the book.

He looks directly at me.

"Open your bag."

My heartbeat rises.

Panic is a luxury I can’t afford.

This is information. The situation is changing. I need to adapt.

I open the bag.

Tomatoes. Cassava. Spinach.

Documents in the side pocket.

And the envelope.

Hidden beneath the cassava, as flat as I could make it.

He starts searching.

His hands are rough. Careless.

He isn’t checking.

He’s looking.

His fingers move toward the bottom of the bag.

I stop breathing.

The envelope is thick.

He’ll feel it.

The choices form in my head in a fraction of a second.

One: let him find it. Try to explain. Maybe I get through, maybe I don’t. Either way, there will be a report. My name goes into the system.

Two: run now. Before he touches the envelope. Turn right, cut into an alley, disappear before they can chase me.

Three: distraction.

My hand moves, not toward the bag but toward the side pocket of my trousers. My fingers find the tip of the small knife.

My sister once told me never to draw a knife unless I was certain I would use it.

I’m not going to use it.

I only need them to think I might.

His fingers touch the edge of the envelope.

I draw the knife.

Fast.

A reflex, like someone frightened.

Then I drop it onto the ground.

The metal hits hard enough to make everyone look.

The soldier jerks back. His hand comes out of the bag and goes straight to the weapon at his waist.

"DON’T MOVE!"

I raise both hands high, clear and open, no threat in them.

My eyes widen as if I’ve only just realized what I’ve done.

"I’m sorry! Sorry, it’s for cutting vegetables. I forgot it was in my pocket. I’m sorry—"

Two other soldiers are beside him now.

Every eye is on the small knife lying on the ground. Sharp enough to look dangerous. Small enough to pass for a kitchen tool.

The first soldier looks at me.

Then the knife.

Then the open bag, vegetables still visible inside.

I can see the calculation in his face.

Real threat?

Or a stupid kid who forgot she had a knife in her pocket?

"Pick it up," he tells the other soldier.

Then to me:

"Close your bag. Go. Don’t bring a weapon to a checkpoint again."

"Sorry, sir. It won’t happen again."

I close the bag.

The envelope is still inside.

Untouched.

I walk.

First step steady.

Second step steady.

Third, fourth, fifth.

Don’t hurry.

Don’t slow down.

Don’t look like someone who has just done something she doesn’t want anyone to know about.

Around the first corner, in a narrow alley that smells of drains and wet concrete, I lean against the wall and let the brick hold my weight. The cold seeps through my shirt. It reminds me that I'm still here. Still whole. Still not caught.

But my legs are shaking. I press my palm against the wall, trying to pull my attention toward the cold brick, the roughness beneath my fingers. The shaking runs from my knees downward, as if something has come loose inside them and refuses to settle. I can feel the faint vibration in the ground, my own body sending me a warning I can't ignore.

I wait. Count my breaths. One. Two. Three.

By the sixth breath, the shaking begins to ease, slowly, like water receding after a flood. I let my chest fall. Let the air leave me slowly. Only my legs are allowed to shake. The rest of me has to stay still.

My sister once told me fear is like water. If you let it rise to your chest, you'll drown. I only let it reach my knees. That's still safe. That's still something I can control.

Too close.

I thought I knew what danger felt like.

I live on the east bank. I grew up with gunfire far enough away not to threaten me, but close enough that I could never ignore it.

I thought I was used to it.

Turns out, almost getting caught feels different from anything I’d imagined.

But I got through.

I take one long breath and feel the damp alley air fill my lungs.

In the distance, I can still hear the checkpoint, faint now, like a sound from another world.

I start walking.

My right leg still trembles slightly on the first step.

By the third, it’s steady again.

I walk back toward the east bank, leaving the alley behind, leaving the checkpoint behind, leaving the envelope hidden beneath the cassava.

For now, that’s enough.

✦ ✦ ✦

ACT TWO: CONFRONTATION

VI.

REZA reads the contents of the envelope quickly, his eyes moving across the page with no expression I can read.

"Good."

He folds the paper back up.

"This is what we need."

Nico is in the corner. He was already there when I came in. I don’t know when he arrived.

"We can go ahead with tomorrow’s operation now."

Reza looks at me. His eyes don’t move on immediately, as they usually do. He pauses a second longer before speaking again.

"You did well."

I try not to smile too widely.

I don’t quite manage it.

"There’s another delivery tomorrow. Just as important. More dangerous."

For the first time, something changes in Reza’s face. Not doubt. More like someone weighing something he wishes he didn’t have to weigh.

He looks down at his own hands for a moment.

Hands that look too tired for his age.

"I have a daughter," he says. There is no intention to tell a story in his voice. The words sound as though they slipped out.

"A girl. She was almost your age when she—"

He stops. Finishes the sentence another way. "When I lost her."

Reza doesn't look at me when he says it. His eyes stay on the table.

"She said she could do it too. Said she wasn't afraid."

"And she was right."

A pause.

"Until she was wrong."

There is nothing to say to something like that. I don't try.

Reza lifts his eyes.

The Reza I know returns: direct, efficient.

"So when I ask if you can do it, I’m not only asking whether you’re capable. I’m asking whether you understand the risk. Whether you know what you’re putting on the line."

"I can."

"Does your sister know you’re here?"

"She doesn’t have to know everything I do."

"That’s true. But if she asks, don’t lie to her. She doesn’t deserve that."

I leave.

My sister is waiting for me when I get home, standing in the middle of the room with her arms crossed. In a room this small, that means the entrance is blocked and there is nowhere else to go.

"Where were you?"

"I told you. The market."

"The market closes at four. It's seven."

"I walked around."

She takes one step toward me. Her eyes move from my face to my hands, still dirty from the narrow alley, to my clothes, which must still smell of smoke from the west bank. She reads people's bodies before they have a chance to speak. Usually, I admire that about her. Tonight, it makes me want to freeze.

"Where did you go?"

It isn't a question. I stay silent three seconds too long.

"The safe house."

My sister’s face changes.

Fear first.

Then anger.

I know the order by heart.

But tonight, between the two, there is something briefer than usual.

Something I don’t want to name.

"What did Reza send you to do?"

"Just deliver a message—"

"Where?"

"...The west."

Silence.

But this is different from the silences I know. Not the silence of someone calculating. The silence of someone who has already done the calculation and hates the answer.

She doesn’t move.

I know what that means.

She’s trying to find a way not to explode.

"You crossed the checkpoint."

"Yes, but I—"

"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ARRESTED."

Her voice breaks loose, and whenever she raises it like this, the ceiling seems to drop. I can't hear anything except those words.

"YOU COULD HAVE DISAPPEARED AND I WOULD NEVER HAVE KNOWN WHERE—"

She stops. Takes a long breath.

Her hands clench, open, clench, open — the same rhythm every time she's holding back something larger than she can say. But tonight there is a longer pause between each movement, as if she's counting toward a number she refuses to let out.

"Don't do that again." Her voice is quieter now, and I'm more afraid of that voice than I am of her shouting. When she shouts, there is still enough left in her to be angry.

"Why not?"

Something rises in my chest, not anger, but something that has been pressed down for too long, with nowhere left to go. I take a breath, but it comes out wrong. Too short.

That is what finally breaks everything open.

"I did it. I brought back information Reza needed. I’m useful."

"You’re seventeen—"

"You were seventeen when Mom and Dad died."

I don't shout. That is what makes her freeze. I say it like a fact, like a number I've memorized for years and only now allowed myself to speak.

"You were seventeen when you started working at the clinic. You were still seventeen when you started taking care of me."

I stop, watching the words settle between us.

"Don’t tell me I’m too young. You were never too young either."

My sister goes completely still. I’ve never seen her like that.

"You’re amazing," I say more quietly. "You matter. You mean something. Why don’t you want me to be like that?"

"You think I’m amazing?"

"Of course."

She is silent.

Then—

"I haven’t slept more than four hours a night for three years."

Her voice doesn’t shake.

I almost wish she would shout again.

"I have nightmares every night about patients I couldn’t save. I don’t have friends because they’re all dead or gone. I don’t have a future beyond this. The clinic. The wounds. Hoping I’m still alive tomorrow."

I can’t answer.

The words hang between us, too heavy for either of us to hold.

My sister looks at me.

"You still want to be like me?"

I want to say yes.

But there is something in the way she says like me.

Something that makes me understand she isn’t offering me a choice.

She’s warning me.

I think about my legs shaking in the alley earlier.

The soldier’s fingers almost touching the envelope.

What it felt like to come that close to being caught.

And how badly I still want to do it again tomorrow.

"If it means I matter, then yes."

My sister looks at me. Not angry. Not disappointed. Something heavier than either — the look of someone who already knows the answer and doesn't like what comes next.

She turns and walk out.

She doesn’t slam the door.

That makes it worse. If she slammed it, there would still be some emotion left for her to release. She doesn't.

I’m alone in the room, which suddenly feels even smaller.

✦ ✦ ✦

VII.

I sit on the floor, my back against the wall, knees drawn to my chest. My sister's words are still in my head. Four hours of sleep. Nightmares every night. No friends.

I don’t know how to turn them into something I can hold. They’re just there, hanging in the air.

I thought I understood what she had given up, but only in the abstract. I don't know how many hours of sleep she has lost, how many names she carries for people she couldn't save, how many times she has stood at our little sink at night and washed her hands for too long. Those are two different things.

What I know is this: Today I almost got caught. Today I lied to my sister. Today I risked something I didn't fully understand the cost of. And I still want to do it again tomorrow.

I don’t know what to call that.

✦ ✦ ✦

The roof of this building is the closest I can get to the sky in Shell. I go there when the room feels too small, or when my sister's words won't leave my head. Tonight, it's both.

Nico is already there when I arrive, sitting on the edge with his legs hanging over, his back to the city lights below. The cigarette between his fingers is almost finished, a long ash hanging from the tip, but he isn't smoking it. He's just holding it, as if he's forgotten he ever lit it.

His left calf is still bandaged, stiff beneath his rolled-up trousers. He sits angled to the right, keeping his weight off the injured side, a movement his body has learned so well he doesn't seem to notice doing it.

I almost turn around. But he speaks before I can.

"You fight with Lenna?"

"You heard?"

"Everyone heard. The walls are thin."

I sit some distance away, on the other side of the roof, facing the river. The lights along the west bank look like stars that have fallen too low.

"She’s worried," Nico says. "That’s normal."

"She treats me like I can’t do anything."

"Or she treats you like she loves you."

I don’t answer, because I know he’s right, and that makes me angrier than if he were wrong.

"Same thing," I say eventually.

Nico stubs out his cigarette against the edge of the wall. "No." He presses it down, twists it, finishes the job. Then he sits there for a moment, looking at the dead cigarette as if he can't remember why he started smoking in the first place.

"When you were seventeen," I ask, "were you already with LM?"

"Sixteen."

I wait. He doesn’t continue.

"I joined because my older brother joined," he says. "He told me I’d be a hero."

The word hero hangs between us. I don’t need to ask what happened next. The way he avoids looking at me, the dead cigarette still between his fingers, I already know.

"He died six months later." His voice is flat, not because he feels nothing, but because he has said those words too many times. "Karya Lima Street. Nothing heroic about it. He just died."

I want to say I’m sorry. But he speaks first.

"Don’t."

He turns his head toward me for the first time tonight. There is nothing in his eyes I can read.

"Don’t," he says again. Quieter this time.

I have nothing to say.

Nico looks at me for a moment, then continues. "I know you won’t listen."

"How do you know?"

He doesn’t answer. He gets to his feet slowly, his hand touching his left calf for a moment, another movement his body has memorized, one that no longer requires thought. He walks toward the stairs.

At the top, he stops. He doesn’t turn around.

"Because I didn’t listen either."

Then he goes downstairs.

I'm alone on the roof. The stars overhead are too sharp, like something that refuses to forgive me for still being here, still not understanding. But down there, in that cramped room, my sister is sleeping. Or pretending to.

I don't know how to cross the distance between us. I only know that tomorrow I'll wake again. Put on my shoes. Take my bag. Keep going.

I don't sleep that night. I lie awake, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, listening to my sister breathing softly on the mattress beside mine. Her breathing is steady, asleep or pretending, I can't tell from here.

Nico's words are in my head. My sister's words are in my head. No answer comes. Only questions, my sister's breathing, and the cracks in the ceiling that seem to grow a little wider every month without anyone fixing them.

Still, I wake before dawn. Put on my shoes. Take my bag. Not because I know the answer now. Only because that is what my body does.

✦ ✦ ✦

ACT THREE: CHOICES

VIII.

IN THE MORNING, Reza calls me before anyone else arrives.

"Second mission. Not a delivery. Surveillance."

He pushes a map across the table.

"Watch Saraya patrol movements around the east checkpoint. Record rotations, personnel, patterns. Back before dark."

"Understood."

"Does your sister know?"

"She found out yesterday. She doesn’t approve."

"But you still want to go?"

"Yes."

"You almost got caught yesterday. Nico told me."

"I got away."

"Getting away and being safe are two different things."

Reza leans against the desk.

"The big operation is tomorrow. If you’re caught today and they interrogate you—"

"I won’t give anything away."

"Everyone talks, Kira."

His voice isn’t raised.

That makes it heavier.

"Under enough pressure, everyone talks. It isn’t about courage. It’s human biology. The body has limits."

I want to argue.

All that comes out is, "Understood."

"And your sister?"

Something moves in my chest when Reza asks, not because I'm afraid of him, but because the question reminds me of something I haven't allowed myself to think about. What will my sister feel if I don't come home?

I don't answer.

"So the question isn't whether you're brave. It's whether you're ready for what happens if you're caught."

"I am."

"And your sister?"

I don't answer. "She'll understand."

Reza is quiet for a moment, looking at me as if weighing something he doesn't say.

"Observation point in the abandoned building near the checkpoint. Take this."

He hands me a small pair of binoculars and a notebook.

"Write down everything you see. Don’t be seen. If anything changes, come home. Immediately."

I take the equipment.

"Kira."

I turn.

"Don’t make me repeat the same mistake."

I leave.

✦ ✦ ✦

IX.

MY SISTER is in the room when I come up from the kitchen, not standing in the middle like last night, but sitting on the edge of my mattress, back straight, hands resting on her knees. The posture of someone who has already made a decision before I walked in. Not surrendering to something. Choosing how to face it.

I stop in the doorway.

"Close the door."

I do. I sit on her mattress, at the opposite end.

Silence for a moment. Not comfortable silence. The silence of two people who said things the night before that can't be taken back, and now have to decide what to do with them.

"You’re going again," she says finally.

"Yes."

"Reza gave you another mission."

"Yes."

She nods slowly.

Not approval.

Just acceptance of the fact.

"I can’t stop you, can I?"

"I don’t belong to you."

"I know."

A pause.

"But you’re my sister."

I don’t answer.

"When Mom and Dad died," she says, "I wanted to be someone important too. Someone useful. Someone who wasn’t just... there."

I listen.

"Do you know what I realize now?"

"What?"

"I never got to choose to become that. It just happened." She looks down at her hands. "And there’s a big difference between choosing something and having it happen to you."

"I’m choosing."

"You think you are." She looks up. "But promise me one thing."

"What?"

Outside, the city is settling into night. Dogs. Wind. Something falling in the distance. And sometimes a sound with no name that everyone in Limina knows anyway.

"If you ever have a chance to leave, to live a different life, take it. Don’t get trapped because you never had the chance to choose."

"You’re not trapped—"

"I am." Simple. No appeal for sympathy. Just a fact. "Every day. But I'm trapped because of you. And it's worth it."

A pause.

"But you?"

She looks at me.

"You’re not trapped for anyone. So if there’s a way out, take it."

"I’ll remember."

We sit in silence.

"Tomorrow’s operation," I say eventually.

"Yes."

"Where will you be?"

"Observation today. Tomorrow, I don’t know. Reza hasn’t said."

"If he tells you to go with them—"

"I’ll be careful."

"That’s not what I want to hear."

"But it’s the only thing I can promise."

She looks at me for a long time.

Then nods, not agreement, just an acknowledgment that the words are true and there’s nothing she can do to change them.

She pulls me into a hug.

Tight, not the kind of hug people give when saying goodbye, more like someone who isn’t sure when she’ll get to do it again.

"Come home," she whispers.

"Whatever happens, come home."

I leave.

✦ ✦ ✦

X.

THE ABANDONED BUILDING across from the east checkpoint isn’t completely empty. There are traces of lives that used to be there: empty water bottles, food tins, a flattened pillow. Signs of people who lived here once, before they left or were forced to.

Third floor, a window facing the checkpoint. Perfect for watching without being seen.

I set up the binoculars, dust settling against my knees as I crouch, searching for the right angle. Then I start taking notes.

Six soldiers at the checkpoint. Two in front, four behind.

I record the rotations.

Eleven o’clock: four leave, four replace them. Two-minute handover, almost to the second.

Noon: a patrol truck arrives and stops for exactly five minutes.

No one gets out.

I write down the numbers, but somewhere between one observation and the next, something begins to feel too ordinary.

It’s boring.

Different from what I imagined.

I thought missions were about action. Almost getting caught. Adrenaline.

Instead, most of this is kneeling on a dusty floor, waiting, recording numbers that may matter or may not.

By eleven, my knees are aching.

I shift position slowly, without standing.

Two o’clock.

I’m almost looking back down at my notes when something outside changes.

Another truck.

Larger.

It stops longer than it should.

The rear doors open.

They start getting out.

Eight.

Maybe nine.

Their hands are bound.

Some walk on their own.

One is dragged between two soldiers.

I raise the binoculars.

A young man in the middle of the line catches my attention.

Maybe in his twenties.

Not because of his injuries.

Because of the way he walks.

He is trying to stand straight, even though one leg barely moves.

Beneath the bruising darkening his cheekbone is the remains of a face that might once have laughed at small things.

But what I see now is someone who has decided that standing straight is the last thing he can still control.

A soldier blocks part of my view.

I shift the binoculars slightly left.

Too late.

The sound reaches me first.

Not loud.

Just clear.

Like something wet being struck.

Once.

The man doesn’t fall immediately.

There is a strange pause when his body seems to be deciding what to do next.

Then his knees hit the ground.

Then his side.

He doesn’t move.

I hear my own breathing, too fast, too shallow.

The soldier who hit him steps back and says something to the others. Business finished.

I don't close my eyes. I lower the binoculars. My knees are still on the floor. Somewhere between my eyes and the lenses, something refuses to settle back into place. The cold tile beneath my knees, I hadn't noticed it before, but now it feels like the only thing that is real.

I breathe in. My hand drops, then tightens again on its own, as if my body has decided that holding tight is safer than letting go.

Below, the man has started moving again. Slowly. Trying to sit up. A soldier pushes him down with his boot before he can straighten.

I raise the binoculars again. This is my job. Record. But something between my eyes and the lens won't clear. I write the numbers: number of prisoners, soldiers, truck numbers. But behind all of it, the face of the man still trying to stand keeps appearing, as if he refuses to leave my head.

I wait until my breathing steadies. One. Two. Then I write.

Eight prisoners. Two trucks. 14:03. East checkpoint, north side.

My hand is shaking. I look at the letters. They're still legible, but there's a tremor in the lines that shouldn't be there. I can't remember the last time my hand shook. Maybe never. I keep writing. Letting my hand shake is the only honest thing I can do right now.

I continue taking notes until the trucks leave.

✦ ✦ ✦

XI.

DAWN.

My sister is already gone.

A small piece of paper sits on my pillow.

Come home. — L

Two words.

Her handwriting is neat even on a scrap this small.

I fold it and slip it into my front pocket.

The safe house is full when I arrive.

The energy in the room is different.

Not the usual tension.

This tension has direction.

Reza stands in the middle, giving the final briefing.

"Kira."

"Yes?"

"You stay here. Logistics. Monitor the radio. If there are reports of injuries, send them to Lenna’s clinic."

The radio sits on the table between us, silent and waiting. I look at it instead of at Reza.

"But I thought—"

"You thought you’d be part of the field operation?"

Reza isn't harsh. Just direct. "Yesterday you saw what happened at the checkpoint. You brought it home with you. I can see that."

I don't answer. But somewhere behind my eyes, I know he's right. I can still feel the tremor in my hand. More than anything Reza says, that is what makes me fall silent.

"The field needs people who already know how to carry what they see. You don’t yet."

He looks at me.

"You stay here. You can help without having to see more than you already have. That’s a contribution too."

Across the room, Nico looks at me.

He gives a small nod.

Not pity.

More like: This is right.

I swallow whatever has risen into my throat.

"Okay."

The team moves out.

Ten minutes later, the room is almost empty.

I sit in front of the radio.

✦ ✦ ✦

XII.

AT TWO PAST TEN, the radio crackles for the first time.

"Alpha in position."

I write it down: time, coordinates, condition. "Bravo moving." I write that down too. This isn't what I imagined. There's no chaos, just voices, numbers, and me between them, recording and waiting.

Eleven-oh-five. Alpha reports moving north toward the second rally point. I see the map in my head. North from Alpha's current position isn't the second rally point, it's a narrow lane behind the warehouses where an extra patrol rotation was added three days ago. I recorded it during surveillance: truck number, time, direction.

"Alpha, hold."

The radio goes quiet.

"Confirm your current position."

Alpha gives the coordinates. I calculate in my head. I always do.

"Don’t go north. There’s an additional rotation in the northern lane, yesterday afternoon. Take the eastern route, through the road behind the old market."

Three seconds of silence.

"Confirm. Eastern route."

They move.

I don’t know whether that saved something or simply avoided trouble. I’ll never know. But the map in my head was there when they needed it. I press my fingers slowly against the desk. Only then do I realize I’ve finally released the breath I was holding.

I return to the notes.

12:40.

"Casualties. Multiple. Send them to the clinic."

"How many?"

"Four. Maybe five."

"Clinic ready."

I leave the radio and run.

✦ ✦ ✦

XIII.

MY SISTER’S CLINIC is nothing like the ones in textbooks, a converted grocery store with empty shelves and extra lights running off a generator. The antiseptic is so strong I can smell it before I step inside.

My sister is already working, two other medical workers beside her, four wounded patients across the floor and an improvised table. I stand in the doorway for a second. This is what she does every night.

"Kira." She doesn’t look up. "Bandages. Blue box. Bring them here."

I get them. Carry them over. Do what I’m told.

Nico comes in half an hour later, two people helping him inside. He can walk, but he can't stand straight, the same calf, new shrapnel. His face is paler than usual, but his eyes are clear.

He sees me. "Still alive."

"You too." I try to sound light. I don’t quite manage it.

"Almost wasn’t."

"Quiet." My sister is already beside him. "Save your energy."

Nico shuts his mouth.

I help where I can.

I’m not medical staff, but I can carry things, organize supplies, make sure the bandages don’t run out.

Four hours later, everyone has been treated.

Nico will make it.

✦ ✦ ✦

Outside the clinic, the sky has turned orange. My sister and I sit on the steps. Neither of us speaks first.

"You’re here," she says finally. "Not in the field."

"Reza told me to stay."

"Good."

"But I helped here."

"Yes." She looks down the narrow street. "That matters too."

"Not like what you do."

"Different." She pauses. "But still important."

I turn the words over in my head. "How long until I’m... enough?"

"I don’t know." She looks ahead. "But there’s no need to rush."

"In Limina? Time is the one thing we don’t have."

She is quiet for a moment before answering. "Then don’t waste what you have by dying too soon."

"Lenna."

"Hmm?"

"I still want to be like you." I feel the sentence before I say it, not impulsive, not defensive, just honest. "But maybe... the version that sleeps more."

My sister looks down the road. The narrow street is almost empty at this hour, one or two people passing quickly, heads lowered toward destinations they don't talk about.

I watch her jaw. The muscles there, always tense even when she smiles, slowly loosen, as if something has finally been allowed to stop.

Then she laughs. Not a short, polite laugh, but a real one that comes from somewhere deep, her eyes crinkling with it. I can't remember the last time I heard her laugh like that. Maybe I never have.

"It's a good goal," she says.

We sit there until the sky goes completely dark.

Inside, the radio murmurs.

"...Operation successful. Target secured. Three dead. Seven wounded..."

Neither of us reacts outwardly.

Though tonight, for the first time, record feels different.

Heavier.

Like writing with a hand that still remembers shaking.

Three people won’t come home tonight.

Seven will come home carrying wounds that will become scars. And I sit on the clinic steps, still alive, with a question that has no clean answer.

I don’t know whether I made the right choice.

I don’t know whether becoming like my sister is a goal worth pursuing, or a trap that will slowly destroy me.

But today I’m still alive.

Nico is still alive.

Three of the seven wounded can already sit up.

And my sister just laughed.

My sister stands.

She holds out her hand.

"Home?"

I look at it.

The hand that has held mine for ten years.

The hand that learned to treat wounds before it learned how to save people.

The hand that still trembles slightly, even though she has never said so.

I take it.

"Home."

We walk back toward Shell together.

We don’t talk.

We don’t need to.

For today, maybe that’s enough.

— END —

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Kira still wanted to be like Lenna.

But maybe, for the first time, she wanted a version of herself that slept more.

That night, Lenna laughed. That night, Kira went home still holding her sister's hand.

But outside their small world, a major operation was already moving toward the Shell.

Lenna and Kira's names were on the N-code list.

And someone, someone who had been gone for ten years, was finally returning to Limina, carrying data that could save them.

Would they arrive in time?

Would Lenna open the door she had kept locked for ten years?

The Way You Say Their Name is a novel about two sisters surviving in a city that offers no guarantees, and about a name finally spoken in a voice that tells the truth.