Kira Forge's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

Kira walked away from the exhibition grounds with her tool case heavy in one hand. The cold bit through her gloves. She needed somewhere quiet to sort her photographs before sending them out. The frosted windows of a glass workshop glowed up ahead, tall and still. She crossed toward it, head down against the wind. She stopped beside the building to check her case. A spotted creature, half-cat and half-dog, trotted out from behind a stack of crates. It bumped against her knee with a purple nose. Kira knelt, surprised, and set the metal box down on the snow to steady herself. The creature licked her wrist. She laughed once, quietly, for the first time all day. A shout came from across the lot. Boots crunched fast through the snow. Kira stood up. The creature darted off between the crates. When she looked down again, the box was gone. Only a square dent remained in the snow where it had sat. She spun, scanning the ground, the crates, the workshop wall. Footprints led away from the spot — not hers, not the animal's. They went toward a metal storage shed with a frozen doorframe. Kira ran. She yanked the handle. The door held fast, sealed shut with ice. She kicked the base. Nothing moved. She pressed her forehead against the cold metal and breathed. The photographs were gone. The measurements, the proof, every careful shot — taken in the one moment she'd let her guard down. Whoever had followed her from the exhibition had been patient. They had waited. Kira straightened. She picked up her tool case and looked back at the workshop's glowing windows. The proof was lost. But she had seen the cracks with her own eyes, and she remembered every measurement. If she couldn't show them the flaw, she would have to build the answer herself — a wearable piece that held its curves without lying about the body underneath. She turned away from the shed and started walking.