Gathering the Guard

The attic dust, usually a silent testament to forgotten things, now hummed with a frantic energy Kira couldn't quite articulate. It was more than just the lingering scent of old paper and cedar; it was the tremor in her own hands as she clutched the tattered poetry book, the weight of her mother’s words pressing down on her. Her parents, gone. A scientist who despised verse, a future she was supposedly born from, a locket that whispered of time… it was a tapestry woven from threads of impossibility. But the fear coiling in her gut was undeniably real. She needed help. She needed her anchors.

Leo was the first. His apartment, a controlled chaos of blinking LEDs and the faint aroma of soldering flux, was his sanctuary. Kira found him hunched over a tangle of wires, his brow furrowed in concentration, a half-eaten energy bar abandoned beside him. “Leo,” she began, her voice a little shaky, “I need you.”

He looked up, his eyes, usually sharp and calculating, softened immediately at the distress in her tone. He pushed aside a circuit board, his movements fluid despite the cramped space. “Kira? What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”