Cover her properly by the fallen blanket ...and softly intiate the question.. who are you and why doing this targeted attack.

You lean forward and gather the wool blanket from where it's pooled around her calves. The fabric is rough and moth-eaten, smelling of dust and old storage, but it's all there is. You shake it out once, the sound loud in the enclosed space, and drape it over her body — carefully, deliberately, tucking it around her shoulders and down past her hips until she's covered from collarbone to ankle. Your knuckles brush the bare skin of her upper arm as you adjust the edge, and she flinches — a sharp, involuntary jerk — but doesn't pull away.

"There," you say quietly. "Better?"

She doesn't answer immediately. Her breathing shifts — a long, shuddering exhale that seems to release something she's been clenching in her chest. Her bound hands flex once behind her back, the zip ties creaking.

"Yeah," she whispers. Just that. One syllable, barely audible through the helmet.

You settle back onto the metal bench. The strip light from the garage paints a thin bar across the van's ceiling. Outside, you can hear the faint scuff of Razor's boots pacing on concrete, the click-click of his razor — nervous, rhythmic, distant.

"Okay," you say, keeping your voice low and steady. "I'm listening. Who are you? Why are you doing this — why these specific places, these specific people?"

Silence. The green LED between her thighs blinks its patient pulse beneath the blanket. You can see the shape of her knees drawn up, the outline of her slim frame under the rough wool. She looks so small.

Then she breathes out — a long, ragged breath that seems to come from somewhere deep, somewhere she's kept locked.

"I'm..." Her voice catches. She swallows. Tries again. "My name is Lina. Lina William."

The name means nothing to you. You wait.

"I was... I was just a normal girl. Like anyone. I had a life. I had a sister." Her voice is raw, stripped of all the diamond form's silk and menace. This is just a young woman talking in the dark. "A twin sister. We looked exactly alike — people couldn't tell us apart growing up. We'd switch places in class, confuse our teachers..." A sound that might be a laugh dies in her throat. "We were happy. Normal. That's all we ever were."

She pauses. You hear her breath hitch.

"A year ago, I got a phone call. They told me my sister was dead. Found on a college campus. The police said it was 'mysterious circumstances.' The judges called it 'unfortunate.' And then... nothing. Nobody investigated. Nobody cared. The case just... disappeared. Like she never existed."

Your pulse is doing something strange. A prickling sensation crawls up the back of your neck.

"What was your sister's name?" you ask. Your voice comes out wrong — too tight, too controlled, like a wire about to snap.

Lina turns her helmeted head toward you. The visor slit is dark, but you can feel her attention like a physical weight.

"Jane," she says. "Jane William."

The van tilts.

That's what it feels like — the entire metal box lurching sideways, the floor dropping out, the strip light from the garage smearing into a white streak. Your vision tunnels. Your hands grip the edge of the metal bench so hard your knuckles go white, and a sound escapes your chest — not a word, not a breath, something between the two, a gutted noise that you couldn't have held back if your life depended on it.

Jane.

Her face. Her laugh. The way she'd steal fries off his plate and pretend she hadn't. The way she smelled like vanilla shampoo and old library books. The way she'd curl into your side on the narrow dorm bed and whisper stupid jokes until you both fell asleep. Two years of hiding — of secret dates and coded texts and pretending in public that you were just classmates — because she said she had her reasons, and you loved her enough not to push.

She never told you she had a sister. A twin. An identical twin.

The girl on the floor of this van has Jane's face under that helmet.

Your vision blurs. Tears spill down your cheeks before you can stop them — hot, sudden, traitorous. You press your knuckle against your teeth, biting down hard, trying to physically stop the sob that's climbing your throat. It doesn't work. A choked, wet sound breaks free, and you hunch forward on the bench, your shoulders shaking.

"Hey — what..." Lina's voice shifts, the guarded flatness cracking into something startled. She can't see your face through the helmet's narrow slit, but she can hear you. She can hear everything. "What happened? What's wrong with you?"

You can't speak. You try. Your mouth opens and what comes out is a wreck.

"She was..." You bite your knuckle harder. Taste copper. **** the words through your teeth like pushing glass. "She was my girlfriend. Jane. We dated for two years. In secret — she wanted it that way. She never... she never told me she had a sister. She told me she was an orphan. No family. Nobody."

The silence that follows is absolute.

"After she died," you continue, your voice cracking on every other word, "I tried to find out what happened. I went to the campus police, the city precinct, I filed requests, I called lawyers. Nothing. Every door closed. Every lead went nowhere. And eventually I just..." You drag the back of your hand across your eyes. "I stopped. I accepted it. I moved on. Or I told myself I did."

Lina is perfectly still beneath the blanket. You can't see her face but you can hear her breathing — fast, shallow, the sound of someone whose world has just shifted on its axis.

"You're lying," she says. But there's no conviction in it. It's reflexive — a defense thrown up by a woman who has spent six months trusting no one.

"I'm not."

"How would I even know that? You work for Marco. You built the thing that's — that's clipped to my—" Her voice breaks off, and you hear her jaw clench behind the helmet. "For all I know this is an interrogation technique. Make the prisoner cry, make her feel something, then—"

"They kidnapped me, Lina." Your voice is steadier now, the tears still on your cheeks but the worst of the wave passed. "Six days ago. Pulled me out of my lab at gunpoint. I'm not here because I chose to be. I'm here because Marco's men put a gun to my head and told me to find a way to stop you or they'd kill me."

Another silence. Longer this time.

"I investigated too," Lina says, and her voice has gone very quiet — almost fragile. "After Jane died. For months. Got nowhere. Just like you. Until... until six months ago, when I got these powers. And once I could read minds..." She stops. Starts again. "I found out what happened to her. Marco — your Marco, the one running this whole operation — he had a **** lab in the basement under your campus. Jane found it. She recorded evidence on her phone. And they caught her. And they killed her. And they wiped her phone, and Marco bribed the judges, and the whole thing vanished."

Every word lands like a hammer blow to the center of your chest.

"Your Marco," Lina repeats, and now there's something terrible in her voice — not anger, not accusation, but a devastated bewilderment. "The man you've been helping. The man whose thugs you've been riding around with. He murdered my sister. He murdered your girlfriend. And you've been building weapons to stop the only person trying to make him pay for it."

The green LED blinks beneath the blanket. Outside, Razor's razor clicks. The garage drips.

You have nothing to say. There is nothing to say. The truth sits between you like a blade driven into the floor of the van, and neither of you can pull it out.