Background Noise

Posted on Wed Sep 23rd, 2026 @ 9:29pm by Niamh (Neeve) Keane

6,985 words; about a 35 minute read

Mission: Fallout
Location: Concord, California
Timeline: 22nd July 2026, 1942 hrs

A week after San Francisco tried to crawl inside her head, Niamh Keane discovered that two bottles of beer could make other people considerably more tolerable.

It wasn’t silence. She’d learned years ago that there were very few ways to achieve genuine silence without involving chemicals she’d rather never see again, unconsciousness or distances inconvenient to civilisation. Alcohol did something softer. It blurred the edges. The thoughts surrounding her remained present, but after the second beer they stopped arriving with quite so much insistence, less like strangers leaning across a table to speak directly into her face and more like voices carried through a wall. Niamh knew perfectly well that treating psychic overload with lager probably wouldn’t feature highly in any responsible medical textbook. Fortunately, nobody had given her one, and the beer was cold.

She’d chosen the sports bar in Concord because there was almost nothing remarkable about it. It occupied the corner of a shopping centre beside a mobile phone shop and something that appeared to sell mattresses at permanently miraculous discounts. Inside, old hockey jerseys shared wall space with baseball pennants, neon beer signs and framed photographs of local teams whose players had probably aged badly and moved to Arizona. Television screens covered nearly every available angle above the bar. Most were showing baseball, one had a mixed martial arts replay, and three had been surrendered to an Avalanche game from earlier in the year after Niamh had asked whether there was any hockey on. The bartender had looked at her as though July made the request mildly suspicious, but eventually found an archived broadcast and left it running.

Colorado were already two goals up.

Niamh knew they were going to win.

That was part of the attraction.

There had been quite enough uncertainty lately.

She sat near the far end of the bar with one boot hooked around the lower rail of her stool, copper hair loosely tied back and a baseball cap resting beside her drink rather than on her head. The fading red bloom in her left eye had become easier to hide beneath tiredness and poor lighting, although she’d caught the bartender noticing it when she first sat down. He’d decided drunken argument rather than mutant apocalypse and moved on. Niamh appreciated a man willing to settle for the least interesting explanation. Her bruises were mostly beneath clothing now, her headache came and went rather than occupying permanent tenancy behind her eyes, and the blood from her ear had never returned. Physically, she’d started looking enough like herself that mirrors had stopped being accusatory.

Her mind remained less cooperative.

A man passing behind her laughed at something his friend said, and for one brief, disorientating second Niamh felt the sour ache of missing a woman named Rachel. She didn’t know Rachel. She didn’t particularly want to. The feeling vanished almost immediately, leaving behind nothing except the awareness that some stranger’s loneliness had slipped across whatever boundaries she normally maintained without effort. Earlier that afternoon, a cashier’s irritation had followed her halfway across a petrol station before Niamh realised she wasn’t actually angry about somebody named Derek forgetting milk. That had been happening since the tunnels. Stray emotions arrived too cleanly. Memories occasionally brushed against her when people passed close. Nothing stayed for long, but her head had apparently forgotten that other people's lives weren’t supposed to stick.

The beer helped.

So did hockey.

Niamh had acquired the Avalanche almost accidentally several years earlier, during one of those periods when temporary accommodation had possessed cable television and very little else worth doing. She’d liked the speed first. Hockey didn’t spend enough time politely considering itself. Things happened, people reacted, mistakes became expensive almost immediately, and every so often two grown men decided the appropriate response to disagreement was punching each other while standing on knives. There was an honesty to that she found difficult not to appreciate. Supporting Colorado had followed without ceremony. Nobody had introduced her to them. There wasn’t a family story attached to it, no childhood jersey or sentimental allegiance. She’d watched them play, decided she liked them and kept coming back.

It might have been one of the most normal decisions she’d ever made.

"Come on," she muttered when Colorado turned the puck over carelessly near the blue line. "What the fuck was that?"

The man two seats away looked across, amused. "You know this is a replay, right?"

Niamh turned her head slowly. He was perhaps thirty, wearing a San Jose Sharks shirt and thinking nothing more threatening than that he'd found another hockey supporter in a bar currently dominated by baseball.

"No," she said, completely straight-faced. "I thought January happened again."

He stared for half a second before laughing. "Fair enough."

Niamh returned her attention to the screen.

That was another thing the bar gave her. Nobody here knew who she was.

Not Mei. Not the Underground volunteers. Not the Purifiers who had seen a red-haired telepath turn their own bodies against them. Nobody knew about Chinatown, the tunnels or the station. Nobody had watched a folding chair leave somebody's hands and cross several feet of open space because something inside Niamh had apparently decided telepathy was no longer enough complication for one lifetime.

Concord wasn't far enough from San Francisco to qualify as running.

She'd considered Sacramento. Reno too. She'd even stood in front of a departures board and looked at routes heading north before deciding that transport hubs were exactly where frightened governments put cameras after national emergencies. Central San Francisco had become impossible. Too many lenses, too many witnesses, too much footage being replayed and analysed by people whose job descriptions probably contained words like enhanced, security and threat. She'd left the city, changed motels twice, changed names once and reduced her physical footprint to a holdall beneath another anonymous bed.

She told herself remaining nearby was tactical.

The explanation had survived six days largely because she hadn't examined it closely.

Niamh lifted her bottle and took another drink as Colorado pushed back into the offensive zone. Around her, conversation rose and fell beneath the televisions. Baseball statistics. A bad date. Somebody complaining about petrol prices. A couple arguing quietly about whether they could afford a holiday. Minds full of groceries, sex, work, money, children, grudges and tomorrow morning.

Ordinary things.

For the first time since July 15, Niamh let herself sit amongst them without searching for anyone dangerous.

The third beer could wait.

Probably.

By the middle of the second period, the beer had done enough work that Niamh could read the menu without simultaneously inheriting somebody else's divorce, childhood disappointment or opinion about the designated hitter rule. That felt like progress.

She picked up the laminated menu again and gave it more attention than she'd managed the first time. American sports bars still fascinated her in small, ridiculous ways, particularly their determination to make food look less like a meal and more like something a person had agreed to defeat. Burgers arrived in photographs held together with wooden skewers, wings could apparently be ordered by the dozen without anyone asking whether there was a party involved, and the loaded fries came buried beneath cheese, bacon, jalapeños, spring onions and something ominously described as signature sauce. There were fried pickles, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, quesadillas, three different kinds of nachos and a "Triple Overtime Platter" containing enough fried food to make Niamh wonder whether medical insurance came with it. She'd lived in America long enough that none of this was new, but there were certain things about the country that remained reliably entertaining.

"You've been studying that thing long enough I'm starting to think there's gonna be a test."

The bartender had wandered back into her end of the bar, drying his hands on a towel before tucking it over one shoulder. Rick, according to the name badge. Forties, easy smile, thinning dark hair and the practised friendliness of somebody who'd probably heard several thousand personal problems while pouring drinks and had successfully forgotten almost all of them.

Niamh tilted the menu towards him. "I'm mostly trying to work out how many people this is supposed to feed."

Rick glanced down at the photograph of the overtime platter and laughed. "Technically? Four."

"Technically?"

"I've seen one guy finish it."

"Was there an ambulance afterwards?"

"Should've been." He rested one hand against the bar, following her gaze when Colorado regained possession on the television. "You're really watching this, huh?"

There was mild surprise in it, but nothing hostile. Niamh recognised the type easily enough. A young woman sitting alone with a beer was one category in his head. A young woman sitting alone, drinking beer and actually caring about hockey required a small adjustment.

"That's usually why I ask someone to put a game on," she said, smiling rather than sharpening the answer. "Though in fairness, I already know how this one ends. Takes some of the stress out of it."

"Avs fan?"

"Yeah."

"That's a long way from home."

Niamh gave him a small, easy shrug. "I've been a long way from a lot of places."

Something in her voice made the answer sound conversational rather than evasive. That was the useful part. People tended to become interested when they felt a question had been avoided; give them something that sounded personal enough and most happily decided they'd learned something.

Rick looked at her for a moment, probably trying to place an accent that hadn't belonged cleanly anywhere in years. "You grow up around here?"

"God, no." She smiled over the neck of her bottle. "Bit of everywhere, really. Makes that question complicated."

"Military family?"

Niamh nearly laughed.

"Something like that."

He accepted it without digging, which moved him several places up in her estimation. "And somewhere in all that you picked Colorado?"

"Found hockey first. Colorado came after." She nodded towards the screen as an Avalanche forward carried the puck through neutral ice. "They're quick, they're aggressive, and when somebody does something stupid everyone gets to watch the consequences immediately. It's a very honest sport."

Rick chuckled. "That's one way of describing it."

"You disagree?"

"No, actually. I'm just trying to decide if you've put more thought into this than most of the guys who come in wearing jerseys."

"Almost certainly." Her smile widened just enough to make the exchange feel playful. "Don't tell them. They look sensitive."

Rick laughed and glanced towards a group farther down the bar. "I'd never betray my customers."

"Good man."

That was how conversations were supposed to work. Give enough away to feel friendly, nothing useful enough to be remembered later. Smile. Ask something back when necessary. Let the other person enjoy themselves. People rarely investigated someone they thought they'd already understood.

Rick tapped the menu with one finger. "So what're we risking tonight?"

Niamh looked down again. "Bacon burger, I think. Unless that's secretly designed for six."

"That one's survivable."

"Promising."

"Fries come with it."

"I'd gathered Americans consider vegetables an admission of defeat."

"We put lettuce on the burger."

"Ah. Health food."

He shook his head, still smiling as he keyed the order into the terminal. "Another beer?"

Niamh looked at the empty bottle beside her and then at the second one she'd nearly finished. Rick's surface thoughts drifted close enough to catch without effort, softened by the alcohol but still legible. Nothing intrusive, just the automatic professional arithmetic of someone responsible for the people he served.

She's tiny. That's three. At least she's ordering food.

Niamh almost smiled.

"Yeah, go on," she said. "One more. I'll behave."

"I've heard that before."

"Probably from people less trustworthy than me."

Rick gave her a sceptical look that somehow remained friendly. "Can I see your ID first?"

"There it is." Niamh reached into her pocket with a long-suffering smile that didn't require much acting. "Every bloody time."

"You're gonna miss that when you're forty."

"That's what everyone says, which makes me suspect you've all got a group chat."

The licence belonged to the identity she'd put together after leaving San Francisco. Her face, her date of birth adjusted only enough to fit the rest of the paperwork, an address that would survive a casual check and very little else worth knowing. Rick compared photograph to face, returned it and seemed genuinely amused.

"Twenty-two. All right."

"I've been twenty-two the entire time."

"I had to make sure."

"Heartbreaking lack of trust."

"You'll recover."

The conversation drifted away naturally as another customer caught his attention, which was exactly how Niamh preferred these things to end. No abrupt withdrawal, nothing memorable, just a pleasant young woman with a difficult-to-place accent who liked hockey and had ordered a burger. Rick moved down the bar and Niamh returned to the game, letting the bar settle around her again. The Sharks supporter nearby was making increasingly poor decisions with hot sauce, a couple near the windows were debating whether they could afford another round, and someone near the pool table had laughed loudly enough to briefly spike through the soft haze around Niamh's mind before disappearing back into the general noise.

The burger arrived about fifteen minutes later, stacked high with bacon, cheddar, onions, lettuce and enough sauce to make eating it neatly an optimistic proposition. A small mountain of fries occupied the other half of the metal tray. Niamh looked at it, then at Rick.

"You lied."

"About?"

"Survivable."

He laughed. "You'll manage."

"That's an irresponsible amount of confidence in someone you've just met."

"You're the one drinking beer and criticising professional hockey players from a bar stool. Figured confidence wasn't the issue."

That got a proper laugh from her, and Rick moved away before the food cooled. Niamh took the first bite and grudgingly admitted America might have had a point about portions if the first third tasted that good.

Unfortunately, food being excellent didn't make it free.

She had money. Enough, at least, that paying for dinner wouldn't change anything tonight. But money had become something Niamh measured in motel nights, fuel, transport, documents and how quickly she could move when an identity stopped being safe. Twenty dollars wasn't twenty dollars anymore. It was part of an exit.

She ate several fries while considering the moral complexity of stealing dinner from a perfectly decent bartender.

There wasn't much.

Rick was at the till checking open tabs when Niamh let her awareness drift towards him. She didn't push deep enough to touch memory or anything personal. She didn't need to. His immediate awareness of her bill sat near the surface, numbers and table position and the vague recollection that her order had taken longer than expected.

Niamh touched the thought gently.

You said you'd take care of the food. Kitchen took too long. You already promised.

It wasn't a voice in his head. She knew better than to make it that obvious. The suggestion settled into the spaces between things Rick already knew, borrowing credibility from the delayed kitchen and his own habit of comping customers when service went wrong.

He frowned at the till.

Shit, yeah. Told her I'd comp the burger.

Niamh dipped a fry into ketchup and kept her attention on the game.

Rick adjusted the tab, grabbed her next beer and brought it down to her. "Hey, I'm taking the burger off. Kitchen took way too long."

Niamh looked up with mild surprise polished to exactly the right shine. "You don't have to do that."

"It's fine. Shouldn't have taken that long."

"Well..." She let herself hesitate before accepting the beer, then offered him a warmer smile. "I'm not going to fight you very hard about free food."

"Didn't think you would."

"Thanks, Rick."

"No problem."

He moved away, and Niamh took another bite of the burger she'd just stolen through supernatural means.

It remained excellent.

She felt very little remorse.

Niamh settled back towards the Avalanche replay, one hand around the cold bottle and the sharper corners of the room softened pleasantly again. She didn't notice the man seated at a high-top across the bar glance up from his phone when Rick altered the bill, nor the brief attention he paid to the bartender's face before shifting his gaze towards Niamh.

He'd noticed Rick chatting with her earlier.

Friendly bartender. Attractive young woman. Nothing unusual there.

The bill changing after no complaint had been made was only slightly stranger.

Not enough to mean anything.

Not yet.

By the time Colorado went three goals up, Niamh had made respectable progress on the burger, considerably less respectable progress on the fries and enough progress through her third beer that the room had settled into the kind of comfortable blur she’d actually come looking for.

The man who took the empty stool beside her arrived smelling of expensive bourbon, aftershave and the particular confidence of someone who’d spent most of his adult life assuming rooms would make space for him. He was somewhere in his mid to late fifties, broad through the chest despite the softness gathering around his middle, silver beginning at the temples of otherwise carefully maintained dark hair. His boots looked expensive, his watch more so, and his shirt carried the sort of understated western styling that probably cost far more than anything pretending to be understated had a right to. He’d been drinking for hours. Niamh knew that before he opened his mouth, partly from the faint redness across his cheeks and partly because his thoughts wandered half a second behind whatever expression he was trying to wear.

He looked at the television, then at Niamh, and smiled as though something had gone conveniently his way.

"Hockey?"

Niamh glanced over. "Looks like it."

His accent placed him before anything else did, warm Texas drawn out by bourbon. "That ain’t a sport, sweetheart. That’s Canadians finding something to do till the snow melts."

Niamh smiled because smiling was cheaper than making him leave. "You’ll break a lot of hearts saying that in the wrong bar."

"Not worried about hockey fans." He settled onto the stool without being invited, signalling towards Rick for another drink. "I’ll show you a real sport sometime. Football. College football, preferably. Texas football if you want it done right."

"Very generous."

"It would be educational."

She took another bite of her burger and let the game reclaim her attention. Most men understood that particular combination of polite answer and turned shoulder. This one interpreted it as encouragement.

"Where you from?" he asked.

"Here and there."

"That accent says more there than here."

Niamh smiled around the neck of her beer. "Gets confused."

"European?"

"Sometimes."

He laughed loudly, apparently delighted by an answer that told him nothing. Rick appeared with a tumbler of bourbon and set it down, giving Niamh a brief glance that asked a question without requiring her to answer. She gave him the smallest smile back. Fine for now.

The Texan noticed none of it.

"Name’s Wade," he said, offering his hand.

Niamh looked at it for half a second before shaking it. "Nia."

Close enough to answer naturally. Far enough away to be useless.

"Nia." He repeated it slowly, testing the sound. "Pretty name."

"Cheers."

"You here alone?"

There it was.

Niamh rested her forearms lightly against the bar. "At the moment."

"Boyfriend meeting you?"

"No."

"Husband?"

That almost made her laugh. "Definitely not."

Wade grinned and leaned closer, bourbon loosening whatever restraint he might’ve possessed several drinks earlier. "Good. Hate wasting my time."

Niamh looked at him properly then. The confidence wasn’t entirely alcohol. The drink had merely removed the polish from something already there. He was accustomed to expense solving inconvenience. Better table. Better room. Better bottle. Someone said no, increase the offer until the answer changed. His thoughts weren’t especially deep or complicated, and Niamh didn’t need to go looking for them. They drifted towards her all by themselves.

Pretty little thing. Might be fun. Probably needs money anyway.

That earned him considerably less patience than the hockey insult.

"Enjoy your drink, Wade," she said pleasantly, giving him another opportunity to understand the conversation had ended.

He took a slow sip instead. "You know, I’ve got a place down near Austin. Ranch country. Pool, horses, all that. You’d like it."

"Would I?"

"Sure you would. Girls your age love horses."

Niamh looked towards the television, where Colorado were moving the puck cleanly through the neutral zone. "I’ll take your word for it."

"You always this hard to talk to?"

"I'm eating."

"Can buy you something better than that."

She looked at the half-finished burger. "It’s actually pretty good."

"I mean somewhere nice."

"I gathered."

Wade laughed as though she’d made a joke for him personally. "There we go. Knew you had a little personality hiding in there."

Niamh slowly put her beer down.

The temptation to make him forget English lasted just long enough to amuse her.

She didn’t.

Instead she turned slightly towards him and gave him the warmer smile he’d been trying to earn for the last five minutes. It transformed his entire expression immediately.

There.

That was the trouble with men who thought everything had a price. Eventually they mistook basic attention for negotiation.

Wade moved closer. "See? Much better."

"Is it?"

"Absolutely."

His hand settled lightly against the back of her stool, close enough to become possession without quite becoming touch. A moment later his fingers brushed across her lower back when he leaned in to say something about knowing a better bar nearby.

That was enough.

Niamh’s smile didn’t change.

She let her awareness slide across his surface thoughts with practised ease.

The bourbon had left everything beautifully disorganised. Hotel room. Rental car. Somebody named Cheryl who would apparently be furious if she knew where he was. Business meetings tomorrow. A contractor waiting for cash because Wade preferred paying certain jobs without invoices. His wallet sat heavy in his back pocket.

Niamh almost admired the convenience.

"Actually," she said softly, turning enough that he had to concentrate to hear her, "you know what? I think you were right."

His grin widened. "About which part?"

"That you’ve been wasting my time."

Confusion barely had time to form before she touched the thought underneath it.

You owe me. You said you’d make it worth my while. Cash is easier. You’ve already decided that.

The suggestion slid into a mind softened by bourbon and ego, fitting neatly around assumptions Wade had already brought with him. He blinked once, frowned faintly, then reached automatically towards his wallet.

"Well, hell," he muttered, more to himself than her. "I did say that, didn’t I?"

Niamh tilted her head. "You did."

He pulled out a thick fold of notes and peeled several bills free. Niamh watched without helping him decide how many. That part was important. She nudged certainty, not arithmetic.

Wade put the money on the bar between them.

Two hundred dollars.

Niamh looked down at it.

Then back at him.

His expression had become oddly pleased, as though generosity had restored his control of the evening.

"You’re a gentleman," she said.

"Damn right."

She gathered the notes and folded them once before slipping them into her pocket. Wade reached for his bourbon again, apparently expecting the transaction to lead somewhere much more interesting.

Niamh gave him one final smile.

You’ve just remembered you need to leave. Something important. You’re already late.

Wade’s expression changed.

He looked towards the entrance, then pulled his phone from his pocket with sudden urgency. "Shit."

"Problem?"

"Yeah. I gotta..." He was already getting off the stool. "Hell, I completely forgot."

Niamh lifted her beer. "That sounds serious."

"Yeah. Yeah, it is."

He tossed several notes beside his bourbon, muttered something about maybe seeing her around and headed towards the door with the purposeful instability of a drunk man convinced he had somewhere urgent to be.

Niamh watched him go.

Then she counted the money again beneath the bar.

Two hundred dollars.

She took a fry.

"Not bad."

Across the room, the man at the high-top had watched Wade approach her.

He’d watched the older Texan become progressively more familiar while the young woman barely changed her posture. He’d seen Wade take out his wallet, hand over cash without receiving anything obvious in return, then leave less than a minute later looking as though the decision had occurred to him somewhere between one breath and the next.

This time, when his attention returned to Niamh, it stayed there.

Niamh didn’t notice.

Not yet.

The Avalanche were halfway through killing a penalty when every television above the bar changed at once.

There was a brief flash of the network logo, the hockey commentary disappeared beneath a sharp burst of music, and the room filled with the familiar cadence of a news anchor speaking quickly enough to make sure everyone understood something had happened before they knew what it was. Niamh looked up with a fry halfway to her mouth and felt irritation arrive before concern. She'd specifically come here because hockey wasn't news. Hockey had rules, boards, penalties and a scoreboard that remained mercifully uninterested in whether mutants should be allowed to exist.

The headline crawling beneath the anchor made the fry stop short of her mouth.

**TWO OFFICERS DEAD IN PHOENIX MUTANT STANDOFF**

Phone footage appeared beside the presenter, shaky and poorly framed, showing an apartment complex surrounded by emergency vehicles while people shouted somewhere behind the camera. The recording lurched sideways just before a burst of white-blue light tore across the car park and shattered several windows along the lower floor. Someone screamed. The image cut immediately to a reporter standing several streets away beneath flashing police lights.

"...authorities say the incident began shortly after four this afternoon when local officers, supported by federal enhanced-threat personnel, attempted to detain three individuals wanted for questioning in connection with suspected unregistered mutant activity. Officials say officers were fired upon shortly after entering the residential complex. Two officers have been confirmed dead, with at least seven others injured. Civilian casualties remain unclear."

The room had gone quieter without becoming silent. Glasses still touched tables. Someone near the pool tables muttered something Niamh couldn't catch. Rick had stopped wiping the counter and was watching one of the televisions above the beer taps.

The reporter continued. "Witness accounts remain conflicting. Several residents claim security personnel entered the building using what witnesses described as military-style equipment and attempted to separate one of the suspects from a younger family member. Authorities have not confirmed those accounts."

Another video played, this one filmed vertically from an upstairs window. Tactical officers moved through the courtyard below while several people shouted from behind a low wall. The picture shook too badly to establish who'd done what first. A man ran across the frame. Someone screamed, "Don't touch him," and the recording dissolved into static and light.

"Jesus," the Sharks supporter two seats away murmured.

A man farther down the bar shook his head. "Again. Fucking again."

His friend glanced at him. "You don't even know what happened."

"Two cops are dead. I know that."

"You know what the TV told you sixty seconds ago."

"Yeah, and two cops are still dead."

Nobody raised their voice much. They didn't need to. The subject itself seemed to occupy more space than the conversation.

Niamh put the fry back onto her plate.

She hadn't reached for anyone.

She didn't have to.

The emotional shift in the bar came through the alcohol like cold air under a door. Fear was strongest, but anger travelled faster. Some of it was uncomplicated outrage at dead police officers. Some had nowhere particular to go and was simply looking for something large enough to blame. A woman at one of the nearby tables kept glancing towards her teenage son while imagining, involuntarily, what would've happened if the energy blast on television had gone through a school instead of a car park.

At the bar, a man's surface thought rose cleanly enough that Niamh couldn't avoid it.

They should've started rounding them up after San Francisco.

A second voice followed from somewhere behind her, weaker and frightened rather than angry.

What if Jamie manifests? What the hell am I supposed to do if Jamie manifests?

Niamh didn't turn around.

That was the part people arguing on television never seemed to leave room for. Fear rarely arrived with ideological purity. Someone could want mutants locked away and still love one without knowing it. Someone could defend mutant rights publicly while privately being afraid of what happened when powers went wrong. Thoughts contradicted themselves constantly. People contradicted themselves even more.

July 15 had taught the country nothing about simplicity.

Rick turned the sound up.

The anchor had moved on to a statement from an official standing behind a bank of microphones. He spoke about public safety, emergency powers and preventing further loss of life. The language was careful. Responsible. Almost soothing.

Niamh disliked it immediately.

Not because anything being said was obviously unreasonable. That would've been easier.

It was the shape of it.

Temporary measures. Expanded authority. Enhanced screening. Public cooperation. Information sharing between local and federal agencies. Every phrase landed with the reassuring weight of bureaucracy while something colder assembled underneath.

She'd heard institutions describe cages without ever using the word.

Someone at a nearby table said, "Good. About fucking time."

Another man answered, "Yeah, until they kick your door in because your neighbour says your kid looked funny."

"That's not what they're talking about."

"Isn't it?"

The first man scoffed. "You got a better idea?"

"No. That's the problem."

That silenced both of them.

On television, the report changed again. A split screen showed grainy images of armed civilians gathered outside a municipal building somewhere in Arizona, several wearing white-and-purple insignia Niamh recognised immediately.

Purifiers.

The reporter called them a "mutant-sceptic civilian organisation."

Niamh nearly choked on her beer.

"Mutant-sceptic," she murmured.

Rick glanced towards her. "That's one way of putting it."

"Generous way."

"News likes polite words."

"So do governments."

He gave her a quick look at that, but somebody farther along the bar called for another drink and the moment passed.

The segment explained that Purifier-linked groups had reported a sharp rise in volunteer enquiries and donations since July 15. A spokesman insisted the movement was concerned only with "community protection" and denied responsibility for several assaults against suspected mutants reported across three states during the previous week.

A thought surfaced from somewhere near the televisions.

Maybe they had the right idea.

Niamh took another drink.

The beer helped less now.

She could feel the room arranging itself around the story. Not into sides exactly, not yet. It was messier than that. People were frightened of mutants, frightened of the government, frightened of Purifiers, frightened that nobody was actually in control. Several managed all four simultaneously.

She understood more of it than she wanted to.

There had been mutants in San Francisco who'd lost control. People had died. There had also been humans who'd put themselves between frightened mutants and rifles. Purifiers had hunted civilians through streets while telling themselves they were protecting civilisation. Niamh herself had forced men to shoot one another, break themselves against walls and hand over control of their bodies because she'd decided the alternative was worse.

She wasn't particularly interested in pretending she occupied some clean moral territory above everyone else in the bar.

The footage from Phoenix replayed.

This time Niamh noticed the boy.

He appeared for perhaps two seconds behind the low wall, maybe fourteen or fifteen, before an adult pulled him down. Terrified. No visible mutation. No way of knowing whether he'd been involved in anything.

The white-blue blast came seconds later.

Niamh looked away.

Her attention landed instead on the reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

Across the room, the man at the high-top wasn't watching Phoenix.

He was watching her.

Not staring. Nothing that crude. His phone remained in one hand, his body angled towards one of the televisions, and anybody without Niamh's particular relationship with attention would've assumed he was following the news like everyone else.

But every time the footage changed, his eyes came back to her.

Niamh lowered her bottle slowly.

The alcohol had softened the room enough that she'd missed him becoming interested.

That irritated her more than it frightened her.

She turned back towards the television before he could realise she'd noticed and watched the Phoenix footage begin again, expression settling into the same tired concern worn by half the bar.

Inside, something much more sober had just woken up.

Niamh kept her attention on the television long enough for the Phoenix report to roll back into studio commentary. She took another drink, watched Colorado recover the puck and gave herself thirty seconds to become exactly what she’d been five minutes earlier: a slightly tipsy twenty-two-year-old killing an evening in a sports bar.

Across the room, the man at the high-top still had his phone in one hand. Mid-forties, short brown hair, open collar beneath a light jacket, nothing about him remarkable enough to stick in memory. His beer had barely moved since Niamh first noticed him. What had looked like idle phone use now made more sense. He wasn’t scrolling. Every so often his thumb moved in short, deliberate bursts before the screen went dark again, and once, while appearing to check a message, he angled the phone towards the bar for barely a second.

Niamh felt irritation tighten beneath her ribs.

A photograph.

Probably not even a good one. It didn’t need to be.

She let her awareness drift towards him without pushing past the surface. His thoughts were orderly, built around observation rather than conversation, each detail stored with the same detached economy.

Female, early twenties. Red hair. Accent unclear. Two unexplained behavioural changes within twenty minutes. Image logged. Time 20:41.

The phrasing told her more than the photograph did. He wasn’t some nervous civilian recording something strange for social media. He was working.

Niamh took another sip and kept her face turned towards the hockey.

His phone lit again beneath the table.

Submit only if third indicator. Otherwise retain for district review.

That was almost reassuring.

Almost.

Whatever he belonged to, they weren’t arresting people because a bartender gave away a burger. They were watching, recording, building patterns and deciding later which patterns deserved attention. In some ways Niamh preferred open hostility. Open hostility generally announced where it was standing.

Rick wandered down with her bill and set it beside her. "You calling it?"

"Yeah, think so. Hockey's getting dangerously relaxing."

"That's usually the point."

"I've been doing it wrong, then."

He smiled. "Cash?"

"Please."

Niamh pulled out enough to cover the beers and left a respectable tip with it. One of Wade's twenties went onto the pile without ceremony. Rick glanced at the notes, then at her.

"You know the food was comped."

"I know. Tip's for humouring me."

"Wasn't difficult."

"Don't undersell yourself."

Rick tucked the receipt away. "Take care, Nia."

"You too."

That was all she wanted the conversation to be. Pleasant. Forgettable. Finished.

She slid from the stool and headed towards the toilets without once looking across the room. Behind her, the watcher didn't move. He didn't need to. If she'd gone to the bathroom, she'd return. If she didn't, the shopping centre had cameras covering almost every public exit.

That thought surfaced clearly enough that Niamh understood the rest.

If she leaves, exterior feeds give direction. Car park coverage should catch vehicle or plate.

There it was.

His surveillance wasn't built around following somebody down an alley in a trench coat. It was quieter than that. Photograph first. Behavioural note. Time and location. Then fixed cameras did the boring work: entrances, pavements, parking rows, vehicle plates. If the face became interesting enough, somebody farther up the chain compared it against footage already collected elsewhere.

Modern hunting involved considerably less running than people imagined.

Niamh reached the corridor beside the toilets as a server pushed through the staff door carrying empty glasses.

"Sorry," the woman said automatically when Niamh caught the door. "Staff only back there."

Niamh met her eyes.

There wasn't time to manufacture a story, and she didn't need one.

It's fine. I'm supposed to go through. The loading exit's back there.

The suggestion barely disturbed the woman's thoughts. Her expression changed by a fraction, resistance replaced by the comfortable certainty that nothing unusual was happening.

"Yeah, you're good," she said, shifting aside. "Straight through, left past the kitchen."

"Thanks."

Niamh was already moving.

Three seconds, no fuss, nobody remembering an argument afterwards. For all the frightening things her powers could do, there was something almost absurd about how useful they were for opening doors.

The kitchen was loud enough to cover her passage without assistance. Fryers hissed, plates knocked against stainless steel and two cooks were engaged in a disagreement about an order neither seemed willing to admit they'd misread. Niamh crossed behind them, followed the narrow service passage and pushed out into the warm evening air behind the building.

She didn't immediately head for the motel.

That would be convenient for exactly the wrong person.

Instead she moved between two delivery vans parked near the loading bays and waited where the building's security lights lost strength. She wanted one answer before she vanished: whether the man inside had actually been interested enough to act.

Nine minutes later, she got it.

He appeared around the side of the building without looking hurried or annoyed. Phone already in hand. He stopped beneath one of the car park lights and spoke quietly into it while walking towards a dark grey SUV near the outer row.

His thoughts arrived before his words could.

Subject exited through non-public route after apparent awareness of surveillance. Escalate image. Request centre exterior from 20:35 onward and run against Bay Area enhanced-incident unknowns.

Niamh stayed perfectly still.

The wording mattered.

Not wanted persons.

Unknowns.

People caught on footage who hadn't yet been identified.

Her photograph wasn't being matched against a neat government file with her name sitting underneath it. Someone was collecting fragments from July 15 and trying to turn faces into people.

The watcher reached the SUV. Another man sat behind the wheel with a tablet mounted low beside the console, its screen divided between what looked like a map and several small image windows. When the passenger door opened, Niamh caught the edge of a credential wallet inside the man's jacket, but she made no attempt to get closer.

She already knew enough to leave.

The SUV pulled away a minute later.

Niamh remained hidden until traffic swallowed it, then headed out the opposite end of the service lane. Her thoughts had cleared considerably. The pleasant fuzz from the beer wasn't gone, but the part of her that measured distance, cameras and exits had pushed its way back to the front.

The motel couldn't be treated as safe now. That didn't mean abandoning everything immediately. It meant not leading anyone directly there.

A bus was pulling towards a stop on the next block when she reached the junction. Niamh changed direction without breaking stride and boarded just before the doors closed.

The driver glanced up. "Two-fifty."

There was a camera above his shoulder.

Niamh looked at him rather than it.

I've already paid. You remember me getting on earlier.

His brow creased for less than a second before the certainty settled.

"Right. Go ahead."

"Thanks."

She moved towards the back and took a seat away from the windows. The bus eased into traffic, carrying her west without requiring her to decide where west eventually became.

Only when the shopping centre had disappeared behind them did Niamh allow herself to consider what she'd learned.

Someone had photographed her. Somewhere, footage from July 15 was being catalogued well enough that an unidentified face from Concord could be compared against it. That was a problem, but it wasn't yet a catastrophe. They didn't have her name. They didn't have her motel. They might not even have a clear image.

The space between being noticed and being found was still wide enough to live in.

She knew how to make it wider.

Niamh rested her head against the seat and watched reflections move across the darkened glass opposite her. Tonight she'd circle back towards the motel only after she was certain she hadn't collected company. If anything looked wrong, she'd leave the bag where it was and replace whatever she'd lost. Tomorrow the hair might change. The name definitely would.

There was no need to know which agency the man worked for. Finding out would mean getting closer to people whose job involved building lists of unidentified mutants, and Niamh had no intention of volunteering for the next line on one.

The city rolled past outside, ordinary and brightly lit, while somewhere behind her a photograph of a red-haired woman entered a system with no name attached.

For now, Niamh intended to keep it that way.

 

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