FIRST PASS ON AMBER

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Daylight made Riverbend Elementary look harmless. Chalk dust and coloring pages, small shoes in crooked rows. Lena walked the hallway feeling like an armored vehicle.

Amber Adams’s classroom was a square of calm in the middle of it. Student art covered the walls—uneven suns, messy rainbows, crooked families. Amber stood by the whiteboard, talking gently to a boy who’d broken his pencil. Late twenties, brown hair pulled back, tired but kind eyes. Not a murder victim, Lena thought. Just a person.

Lena waited until recess. She introduced herself in the hallway, badge visible but not aggressive.

“Detective Thorne,” she said. “Mind if I ask you a few questions?”

Amber’s shoulders tensed. “Is something wrong? One of my kids?”

“Nothing like that,” Lena lied smoothly. “We’ve had some… unusual online activity in the area. Just making sure nobody’s been harassing you.”

Amber frowned. “Online? No. I mean, I get spam like everyone else. Why me?”

Because a machine thinks you’re going to die, Lena thought. Out loud, she said, “Random sweep. Have you noticed anyone following you? Strange cars near your place?”

Amber shook her head. “I live ten minutes from here. It’s just me and my cat. I’m boring, Detective.”

They talked about her routine—work, grocery store, the same gas station twice a week. There was an ex, Ben, a construction foreman with a loud voice and louder temper, but he lived two towns over now.

“We argued a lot,” Amber admitted. “He didn’t like that I cared about my students more than his mood. But he’s gone. That’s over.”

Lena logged his name mentally. The Algorithm wasn’t supposed to know about exes unless they left a legal trail. She would check.

In the parking lot later, Lena watched Amber walk to her car. No obvious threat vectors: no one loitering, no unmarked vans. Just parents in SUVs and a janitor hauling trash.

Her phone buzzed. Noah Park.

“How illegal are we feeling today?” he asked, skipping hello.

“Pretty,” Lena said. “Can you run an extended profile on Amber Adams? We need everything, including commercial feeds.”

“That’s HelixSight’s for-pay module,” Noah said. “They’ll notice if I poke too hard.”

“They’ll notice a lawsuit if she ends up dead,” Lena said. “Besides, we already broke in. Might as well rob the whole house.”

He sighed. “Text me her data. I’ll see what I can do.”

That night, in her car outside the grocery store, Lena watched Amber load bags into her trunk. A silver sedan pulled in three spots away. For half a second it looked wrong, like it had arrived too fast, at the wrong angle, but then it parked normally. Just a guy checking his phone.

Lena hated this part. The waiting, the thinness of reality when you knew something bad was queued but not yet delivered.

Amber finished, drove off. The sedan didn’t follow.

Lena exhaled. Maybe the Algorithm was wrong. Maybe the ninety-nine score was a fluke.

Her phone chimed. A text from an unknown number.

YOUR TIME IS CONFIRMED.

The same words as the envelope. Her blood went cold.

Another message followed, this one clearly aimed elsewhere.

AMBER ADAMS: VECTOR LOCKED.

The grocery lot suddenly felt like an arena.

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