Javier Montejo

  September 15, 2035

  The Soft Animal of Guilt

  An Inheritance of Ash and Narra Wood

  The morning unfolded in small, deliberate acts of devotion. Javier Montejo stood barefoot on cold marble, the city sprawling far below his single-floor condo, towers jutting through smog like half-forgotten promises. Sunlight, pale and bruised from fighting through Metro Manila haze, spilled across polished countertops and glass walls.

  In the kitchen, he cooked. Huevos rotos: eggs cracked open over a bed of fried potatoes and chorizo, yolks bleeding slow golden rivers into crisped edges. The sizzle in the pan was a language older than doubt. Chorizo oil shimmered, staining the potatoes a rich, guilty red. He flipped, stirred, adjusted the flame, every motion careful, almost reverent. This wasn't just breakfast. It was memory served hot: his mother's voice echoing in the clatter of the spatula, the ghost of her hand steadying his when he was a boy too impatient to wait for the yolk to set.

  Beside him, a ritual equally sacred: coffee, hand ground. He worked the grinder in slow circles, feeling the resistance, the crack of the beans fracturing into coarse promise. The scent rose sharp and dark, curling around him like an old coat. He watched the pour over drip into a heavy ceramic mug, each drop falling with stubborn patience. Bitter, fragrant, forgiving. A small rebellion against the instant, the convenient, the thoughtless.

  The rest of the condo lay still. The door to the bedroom hung slightly ajar, an eyelid half-open in the morning light. Beyond it, the woman he had brought home slept, or pretended to. A pile of last night's clothes sprawled like casualties across the floor. His eyes lingered on them. The flash of something official, cold, metallic: an NBI badge. Heavy letters stamped on black leather, half-hidden under lace and denim.

  Perhaps it meant nothing. Perhaps it meant everything.

  Outside, the city droned on, jeepneys coughing black exhaust, billboards promising things no one believed. But here, in this bright, silent kitchen, Javier Montejo cooked. The hiss of oil, the steady drip of coffee, the warmth of remembered mornings. An absurd, tender peace balanced on the edge of something waiting to wake.

  The bedroom door creaked open, slow as a confession slipping out at dawn. She stepped into the light. Hair tousled from sleep, shirt half-buttoned, hem brushing the tops of her thighs, bare legs carrying the kind of careless grace that comes only from knowing you look good without trying. Her feet were bare on the cold marble, yet she walked like it owed her warmth.

  "Smells good," she said, voice husky from sleep but edged with something deliberate. "What are you making?"

  He caught himself watching her longer than he meant to. "Huevos rotos," Javier replied, clearing his throat. "Something my mother used to cook when mornings felt too heavy to lift on their own." He nudged the spoon toward her. Steam rose, carrying garlic, paprika, the sharp salt of chorizo. She leaned in, tasted. A small nod of approval played across her lips.

  "So," he began, trying for casual, though the question had been burning in him since he saw it. "You're an NBI officer, huh?" The badge had glared at him from the tangle of clothes, black leather and brass, stubborn truth among forgotten fabric.

  She tilted her head. A teasing glint flickered in her eyes, mouth curling into a smile sharp enough to cut, but playful enough to keep him curious. "Mr Detective," she teased, words dancing between them like cigarette smoke. Then she offered, softer but with the same practiced control, "Sarah. Special Investigator, technically."

  The name settled into him, as though the city itself whispered it back. And then her gaze sharpened, recognition clicking into place behind her eyes, pupils narrowing just slightly. "Wait. You're Javier Montejo, aren't you? The senior VP who's always on TV after that fire in Tondo."

  "Ex senior VP," he corrected, though the words felt foreign in his mouth, like a coat that didn't quite fit. "I got appointed CEO yesterday." He tried not to let it sound like a confession.

  They carried plates across the quiet marble, yolks quivering, potatoes glistening with oil, to the massive dining table, cold wood polished to a sterile shine. Just the two of them at a table made for twelve, the empty chairs ghosts of parties and family dinners that seldom happened. They sat diagonal, a choice neither acknowledged: close enough to speak softly, far enough to measure each other's silences.

  "So that's why you were drinking alone last night," Sarah said, settling into her chair as if it were built for her. "New title. Heavy crown, huh? Especially after what your family's company is carrying."

  He caught the faintest thread of empathy running through her words. "The timely NBI statement helped," Javier admitted, letting the truth come quietly. "Saying the fire wasn't us. That it was some other group you were already targeting. People still accuse us of buying off the NBI, but it could have been worse." His voice edged softer, curiosity peeking out despite itself. "Speaking of, any updates on that?"

  She shook her head, the shift from warmth to steel nearly seamless. "No," she said, clipped and professional, like she'd locked a drawer. Then, after a breath, the edge softened again. "But don't worry. As far as I know, they're not interested in your land, we aren't either."

  The words hung in the morning light, delicate as ash balanced on the lip of a burning cigarette. Beyond the glass, the city sprawled on, restless, bruised, uncaring. And inside, Javier Montejo sat across from Sarah, a woman he had seen fully, skin against skin, breath shared in the dark. Now, clothed in shirt and practiced calm, she felt both closer and farther than she had last night. He studied her across the wide table, half-truths and half-smiles between them, and wondered which part of her he'd come to know better by the time the morning decided to end.

  They ate in slow, thoughtful bites. Forks scraping porcelain, steam curling from coffee cups like the last remnants of a dream. Outside, the city dragged itself awake, traffic coughing under gray morning light. Inside, marble floors stayed cool beneath their bare feet, and words drifted between them in half-finished sentences and quiet laughter.

  After breakfast, Javier showed her the guest bathroom. Always kept ready, stocked with high-thread towels and glass bottles of shampoo that smelled faintly of bergamot and guilt. "What size?" he asked, voice light as powdered sugar. She answered, and something flickered across his face, recognition, perhaps, or memory.

  They walked into the bedroom closet together. His ex's clothes still hung there, perfectly pressed, waiting like museum pieces no one had dared to move. Sarah flipped through silk, linen, muted colors and quiet elegance, as if she were choosing which memory to wear. Finally, she settled on a cream blouse and soft gray trousers, draped across her arm with a nod of quiet approval.

  They showered separately, hot water fogging mirrors and softening edges. In the white noise of falling water, Javier tried not to remember the shape of her body as it had pressed against his just hours ago. When he stepped out, towel around his waist, she was there too, newly dressed, hair damp, still glowing faintly from the heat.

  Sarah glanced at her phone, screen catching a shaft of morning light. Her brow creased, and she drew a sharp breath. "Shit." The word snapped the air in two.

  Javier moved closer, bare feet whispering against marble. She tilted the phone toward him, the headline glaring in bold letters. A highlight piece just posted: Jiro Lim Uy. The name burned itself into the quiet. Main suspect, criminal web, the man whose people had turned Tondo into smoke and ruin. The fire, suddenly, had a face.

  She slipped the phone into her pocket and met his eyes. Voice softer now, stripped of tease, she told him what she could. A sketch of the case that is allowed to be disclosed, a glimpse behind the badge, the kind of truths shared only when the morning is thin and trust feels possible.

  They stood by the glass wall, city unfolding behind them in gray sprawl. Javier leaned in, hand brushing her waist, and she didn't pull away. Their lips met, slow, careful, the kiss of two people who knew they were parting and kissed anyway.

  She drew back first. "We had fun," Sarah said, words lighter than they felt. She slipped a business card into his palm, fingers lingering just a beat too long. Then she turned and walked to the door, bare feet now in borrowed heels, the borrowed clothes fitting her as if they had never belonged to anyone else.

  The elevator shut with a quiet finality. And in the hush that followed, the condo felt absurdly wide, Javier still tasting her goodbye, the name Jiro Lim Uy echoing through marble and glass like the answer to a question he hadn't known he was asking.

  ? ? ?

  Amy Rivera

  September 15, 2035

  The Drummer Who Lit the Fuse

  Love, Betrayal, and Other Loud Things

  The afternoon pooled heavy and yellow against the stained walls of the rehearsal room. The sun outside burned through Manila smog like a dying bulb, spilling dirty gold onto cracked tiles and scuffed amplifiers humming their quiet, constant threat. Inside, the air smelled of rusted strings, sweat dried into denim, and the stubborn tang of last night's cigarette ash crushed underfoot.

  Amy Rivera sat behind her drum kit, arms draped over the toms, sticks balanced like lazy promises between bruised fingers. The kit itself was battered, skins marked by old strikes, each dent a silent footnote in a history of gigs, memorials, and rage played too hard. The stool wobbled when she shifted her weight, but it had always done that. Familiar imperfection.

  To her left, the new bassist hovered near the amp. Shoulders tense, gaze locked on frets like they held the map to a city that didn't want to be found. They were trying to slip into the shape Zaira left behind. But it wasn't a shape. It was a wound. And wounds do not fit new flesh easily.

  Around them, the band, Children of the Storm, tuned, cursed, scratched chords into the stale air. Posters peeled on the walls: old benefit gigs, riotous slogans now half-obscured by grime and tape.

  Amy's thoughts drifted back to that morning, the stillness of her room, sheets twisted like spilled thoughts. The phone screen lit up in her palm, humming with quiet violence. The headline she had bled two weeks into: Jiro Lim Uy. The deep dive finally breathing outside her own head. Words pulled from scraps Zaira had left, from her own sleepless nights piecing them together until they stopped being fragments and became accusation.

  Her name sat below the headline, smaller, but real. Alive in print. Co-author. Amy traced it with her thumb, as if to prove it wouldn't vanish. The room she had written in, ghost-heavy and silent, felt lighter in memory. The weight she had carried so long it had bent her posture now felt strangely lifted, as if grief itself had shifted on its haunches to rest.

  She could still hear Anton Mercado's voice from last night, raw from cigarettes, pacing under flickering office lights: racketeering, smuggling, arson, the machinery of Jiro Lim Uy's empire, once rumor, now laid bare. Words threaded from Zaira's notes through Amy's own stubborn heart, stitched together until the story stood up on its own.

  And for a moment in that morning, alone in bed, phone glowing against dawn-stained sheets, Amy Rivera felt it: the quiet relief of having done right by the dead. The heaviness not gone, but gentled. Made into something she could carry without breaking.

  Back in the rehearsal room, the present beat loud around her. The amps snarled at low volume, a predator's purr before the real noise began. Children of the Storm tuned and tested, guitar strings tightening with small squeals, the new bassist exhaling shallow breaths before every note. The city beyond the thin walls pressed close, invisible but heavy, jeepney engines rattling in the distance, a dog barking at nothing, a low-pressure system brooding somewhere east of Luzon.

  Amy raised her sticks. The drumsticks felt different in her grip now, lighter somehow, though the scars on her knuckles still remembered why they hurt. The memory of Zaira's memorial gig burned under her skin, her palms split raw, blood pattering onto the hi-hat like a secret offering to grief itself. Back then, every strike had been an act of punishment, the skin demanding penance for surviving what Zaira did not.

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  Now her hands moved freer, wrists rolling easy, the ache softened into muscle memory. The songs were still knives pointed outward: lyrics coiled in rebellion, basslines that rattled the ribcage, guitars twisted into anger made audible. Yet threaded through the rage, Amy found something bright, almost absurd. Joy.

  She kept the rhythm steady, toms thudding against the stale air. The new bassist found the groove by the second chorus, shoulders easing, head beginning to nod. Across the room, guitarists exchanged a look, half-grin and half-sigh, the language of bandmates who've known loss and still showed up to play.

  Amy felt the sweat gather at the nape of her neck, the sting of it running down her spine. Each crash cymbal shivered against her fingertips, vibrations shooting through old bruises and finding nothing left to hurt. She realized how stiff she had been these past weeks, spine locked, shoulders clenched against guilt and unfinished words. In drumming now, she felt those knots come undone, breath flowing easier with each bar.

  The songs were still ugly prayers spat at a broken city, but the act of playing them together, alive, unbowed, felt strangely celebratory. Amy struck the ride cymbal, felt it bloom into the space, and thought: For once, I'm not just carrying the dead. I'm playing for them.

  The ghost of Zaira still hovered near the amp, silent witness to every chord. But grief no longer had both hands on Amy's throat. It rested at her side, quieter now, as if content to let the living speak. And as the last note faded, palms blistered but unbroken, Amy Rivera let herself believe she had done right by the dead, and that it was enough.

  ? ? ?

  Javier Montejo

  The gallery smelled faintly of wet plaster and the collective breath of too many half-finished thoughts. Track lights glared down like silent accusations, bleaching color into something raw and uneasy. Outside, Quezon City simmered in exhaust fumes and concrete dust, jeepneys coughing their way past cafes named after feelings, past coworking spaces humming with curated ambition.

  Javier Montejo had come because a voice on the phone had told him to. One of the triplets: Vanessa, Violet, or Victory: Marius Zhu's secretaries, identical in face, different only in the gravity of their pauses, the sharpness of their vowels. Even after weeks of interacting with them he never quite managed to tell which was which. Today, the voice had said Marius was out, but free to see him here. And so he'd come, curiosity knotted tight with something heavier he couldn't name. Javier thinks it might be Vanessa on the phone today but he's not sure.

  The first two floors were an echo chamber of laughter, smartphone cameras raised to catch brushstrokes and beauty poses they'd forget before tomorrow. Hip young things in curated thrift, feeding algorithms more than their eyes. Javier moved through them like a suit-shaped ghost, the city's noise muffled by white walls and anxious silence.

  Up a narrow stairwell that smelled faintly of suppressed mold and solvents, he found Marius in a private room on the third floor. Ceiling high, air stale with old air conditioning. Six paintings lined the walls. Not quite abstract, figures twisted into poses that defied bone, flesh tangled into geometry, bodies broken into lines that seemed to scream and whisper at the same time. The canvases felt confrontational, restless. As though caught mid-revolt.

  Marius stood there, head tilted slightly, gaze caught in the tangled limbs and bruised colors. The track light caught the edge of his jaw, made him look carved out of thought itself. He didn't move when Javier entered, as if still listening for something in the chaos on canvas.

  Javier cleared his throat, the sound scraping the stale air. "Do you know what they mean?"

  Marius turned then, just enough for his eyes to catch the light. "Meaning," he began, voice soft but heavy, "isn't something fixed. Especially here. The figures are provocations, gestures caught mid-collapse, mid-scream, mid-laughter. The artist fractures anatomy so it bleeds into metaphor. A limb can be anger, a ribcage can be guilt. Color becomes a question rather than an answer."

  He raised a hand, fingers hovering an inch from cracked paint. "It's the language of semiotics, what you see isn't what is painted, but what your mind assembles from the fragments. And it never quite settles into one truth."

  Javier tried to keep up, but most of it slipped through him like smoke. Semiotics. Metaphor in anatomy. Rage or guilt or memory tangled into elbows and ribs, bruised reds and blistered yellows shouting in a language he only half understood. The words felt like wet paint themselves, refusing to dry into something solid.

  Marius noticed. His gaze softened, the edge of explanation blunted by something closer to patience. "Look," he said, voice lower now, almost conspiratorial, "meaning isn't chained to the canvas. It lives in the space between the paint and your eyes. What I see here, what sense I make of these fractured figures, that's mine alone. And what you see," he paused, letting the words weigh themselves, "will always be something different."

  He stepped closer to one canvas, hand hovering a breath away from the cracked and bleeding pigments. "These bodies aren't telling a single story. They're bait. They dare you to see what you're ready to see. And sometimes, what you're afraid to."

  Javier nodded, or something like it, the motion halfway between agreement and surrender. Up close, the paint smelled faintly of varnish and something raw, as if it hadn't quite finished becoming itself. The figures were chaotic, backs twisted into impossible arcs, faces half-erased or multiplied, arms reaching for something unseen. It was ugly and beautiful and unsettling all at once, and in that moment, Javier could almost believe that maybe that was the point.

  Marius turned to face him fully then, the sharp light carving shadows across his cheekbones. "Vanessa told me you had something on your mind."

  So it had been Vanessa after all. Javier felt a small, absurd relief settle into his ribs, a detail anchored in a conversation made of fog. He just might be able to differentiate them one day.

  Javier let the words roll out slow, heavy as hot tar under his tongue. “There’s good news,” he said, as if it might sweeten the smell of turpentine and old concrete curling in the gallery air.

  Marius turned to listen, gaze lingering on paint that refused to resolve into clean meaning.

  “An independent investigation just published a deep dive on Jiro Lim Uy,” Javier went on. “Finally, the public has a face for the Tondo fire. PR and legal will eat this up, it’ll help bury lawsuits, calm the noise. We can finally talk about redevelopment again without getting lynched in the comments section.”

  He paused, running a hand over the back of his neck, sweat cool against skin. “Still,” he said, softer, words almost catching, “fifty?two people burned alive. More left coughing up black water, forced out earlier than anyone planned. We were evicting them anyway, but there’s a difference between a date you know and a night that devours you without warning.”

  For a second, something flickered in Marius’ eyes. Not quite sympathy. Recognition, maybe. The brief spark of a man who knows what guilt feels like, even if it never changed a damn thing he did.

  Javier pressed on. “Legally, I’m thinking of squeezing the Lim Uy estate for damages. At least get something for us and the displaced. But before that…” His voice dropped, turning from lawyerly to conspiratorial.

  Marius arched an eyebrow, a small gesture that somehow felt like the room tilting. His hand made a half?circle in the air, an invitation. Go on.

  “The board,” Javier said. The words tasted of old family dinners, of laughter turned vinegar over decades. “Old farts clinging to seats, each one more concerned with protecting their slice than actually keeping the ship afloat. They’re dead weight. Worse than dead. Anchors.”

  A pause. The smell of linseed oil, vape smoke somewhere below, the silent scream of the painting’s twisted figures.

  “I need them gone,” Javier finished, voice raw but sure. “Quietly. Permanently. Without a scandal that makes the few investors we have left panic.”

  For a heartbeat, the room held its breath. Then Marius smiled. Not the polite mask he wore for cameras or boardrooms. Something sharper. Something that smelled faintly of blood and fresh ink.

  “Well,” Marius murmured, soft enough to scrape bone, “I must admit, I’m impressed.”

  The laugh that followed was dry, almost fond, as if he were toasting the absurdity of it all: a newly minted CEO asking to dislodge his own blood, under the watchful eyes of six impossible paintings.

  Marius let the silence drag, just long enough for the room itself to lean in, for the twisted figures on the walls to look like they were listening. Then his mouth curled, a half?smile that was almost kind if you didn’t look at the eyes.

  “Congratulations, Javier,” he said, voice dipping low, almost teasing. “I have a feeling you’ll make a very interesting CEO.”

  Javier felt the praise settle somewhere between pride and unease. He didn’t have time to savor it;

  Marius’s gaze had already sharpened.

  Then his voice cooled again, words falling precise as loose coins. "But you know," he said, "nothing for free."

  Javier almost smiled. Of course he knew. Memory surfaced unbidden: that first meeting when he'd asked Marius for help with their finances. The price had been absurd, almost laughable: his father's old narra table, the one carved by hand decades ago, its surface pitted and stained with a history only the family could read. But it had made perfect sense, in the strange gravity of Marius Zhu's world.

  Javier wondered what it would be this time. What small but irreplaceable fragment of his life Marius would want to peel away.

  Marius let his gaze drift, eyes sweeping across the chaotic figures caught in oil and canvas. His hand rose, almost lazily, to gesture around them. “I want you to get me all six of these paintings.”

  Javier laughed, short, surprised, the sound cracking against the room's hush. "Easy," he said. "I'll write a check. Do they accept cards?"

  Marius shook his head slowly, almost pitying. "Not that easy. The artist refuses to sell. Principles. Stubbornness. Who knows. He's only displaying them here as a favor to the gallery owner." His gaze held Javier's, dark and unblinking. "You'll have to convince him yourself. While I go to work."

  Then, almost like an afterthought dipped in acid, he added, "Consider it your first official act as CEO of Montejo Holdings. Hunting down paintings in an indie gallery."

  Javier almost winced, the truth landing heavier than expected.

  The next words slid out like a blade wrapped in silk. "If you can't pull it off by the time the work is done," Marius said, "then I want your Porsche. The 911."

  Javier felt something tighten in his chest. His 911. The car he kept polished like a shrine to memory, late-night drives down Roxas Boulevard, engine noise drowning out regret. Marius knew. Of course he knew. And that was the point.

  The demand wasn't about money. It was about something that would hurt to lose, something that would make Javier want to succeed.

  Marius held out a hand, ring catching the low gallery light. Javier hesitated, just a breath, then took it. Their palms met in that small, wordless pact: art, blood, and quiet betrayal inked between them.

  ? ? ?

  Amy Rivera

  Cubao Expo roared around them, applause rattling against corrugated metal and concrete as if the whole night had grown lungs. Children of the Storm had just finished, the last chord still buzzing through sticky air and spilled gin. Amy's sticks trembled faintly in her grip, sweat rolling down her temple, breath hot and sharp in her throat. The crowd blurred into color and grin and phone screens, until, through it all, she caught a single familiar outline.

  Raven. Long black hair falling like a curtain, eyes that curved with quiet mischief. Their gaze tangled for a moment, sharp and soft all at once. Amy smiled first.

  Later, outside the bar, the night was an open wound humming with neon. Raven leaned against the cracked wall, hair catching bits of streetlight, the faintest curl at the edge of her mouth. "You're good," she said, voice low, almost teasing. "Didn't know you were in a band."

  Amy shrugged, heartbeat still thudding from the set. "To be fair, neither of us disclosed anything in The Zone that night." The memory flickered across her skin: Raven's kiss tasting of vodka and adrenaline, shirts peeled off in shadows, the room's low light turning bodies into outlines and heat.

  They walked then, drifting through the crooked veins of Cubao Expo. The street felt alive, a tide of Saturday night kids in thrifted rebellion and curated mess, smoke and laughter swirling up to tangled power lines.

  "Come here often?" Amy asked, voice lighter than she felt.

  "Not really," Raven replied. "I'm based in BGC. When I wanted to get loose, I'd go to The Zone. I knew the owner. Private room anytime." Her words floated out, casual and unguarded under the dim sodium lamps.

  Amy blinked, curiosity slipping through. "Must be close, then. To get a private room anytime in a place like that."

  Raven exhaled, shoulders dropping. "Family is like that."

  Amy's stomach dropped. Family. The word clanged in her chest, louder than the band, louder than the city. She felt the article she helped birth this morning press against her ribs like a hidden blade. Jiro Lim Uy. The owner of The Zone. The man whose name she had helped drag into daylight.

  She forced the words out, gentle, almost tasting them before speaking. "I heard about the closure. There was an article... published this morning." Her voice felt thin, like cigarette paper. "Didn't know you were related to the owner."

  Raven's guard slipped then, something in her posture softening. "Family's been arguing all week," she admitted. "It got even worse today after the article, so I had to get out. Couldn't breathe in that house."

  Amy stopped dead on the cracked concrete, words snagging in her chest before ripping free. Guilt churned beneath her ribs like something alive, sharp and sour. The noise of Cubao Expo blurred at the edges, laughter, clinking bottles, the pulse of bass bleeding out of open bar doors. She tasted regret like blood bitten from the inside of her cheek. This was the woman whose kiss had brightened her night just a week ago, whose warmth still haunted the soft bruises on her neck. And here she was, dragging a confession behind her like a corpse she couldn't bury.

  "I helped publish the article this morning," Amy forced out, each word tasting heavier than the last. "I'm the co-author."

  Raven noticed. The slow turn of her head caught by sodium light, hair slipping over one shoulder. Silence stretched, the crowd still breathing and laughing around them. Then Raven laughed. Loud, sharp, laughter scraped from the ribs outwards, so raw it felt almost holy.

  "Of course you did," Raven gasped, breath catching between syllables. "That's just... hilarious."

  Amy blinked, heart caught between beats. "You're not mad?"

  "What's left to be mad about?" Raven's voice dropped low, ragged but steady. "My phone's evidence. Mom cried three hours straight. Family's been spitting venom at each other all week." She rolled her shoulders, as if to shed something that clung too tight. "Irony's slapped me so many times, I don't even know what pain feels like anymore."

  Amy's throat felt too small. "I didn't know Jiro was your family."

  "And I didn't know," Raven said, stepping half a breath closer, eyes catching fractured light, "that you would turn out to be the only light in my shitstorm of a week... and also the one who lit the match that burned what's rest of it."

  The words tasted like metal and ash between them.

  "Don't apologize," Raven murmured, softer now, almost fond. "Jiro's a bastard anyway. I hate his guts. But forgiving family is too easy, isn't it?"

  Then she leaned in, lips brushing Amy's, quick, hot, gone before it settled.

  She pressed something into Amy's hand. Paper rough against sweat-slick skin. "I'm just going to disappear for a while tonight," Raven whispered, voice falling between confession and goodbye.

  Amy opened her palm. A cellphone number, ink slashed quick and certain.

  The crowd swelled and spilled around them, music echoing off peeling paint. Raven was already turning away, hair catching neon like oil on water, leaving Amy holding numbers and a heartbeat that wouldn't slow down.

  rating, a comment, or even just a line about what worked, or what didn't. Your thoughts help shape these tangled words into something sharper, stranger, and more honest next time.

  Should Raven have been more angry at Amy? Or do you think this was in character based on her descriptions a few chapters ago?