Before the fangs, before the cage. Before the name Mad Dog clung to her skin like blood she couldn't wash off. There was a girl once. A girl who believed in wildflowers and the moon. A girl named Cici.

The sun filtered down through the eucalyptus trees in golden strands, the afternoon light pooling across the dusty earth like spilled honey. Somewhere nearby, a cicada trilled, high and warbling. And a little girl laughed, a sound so pure it seemed to shiver the silence out of the branches.

Cecilia Spector, age seven, had grass stains on her knees, dirt smudged across her cheek, and the most serious expression on her face for someone cradling a wounded squirrel in her hands.

"It's his leg, Marc," She said gravely, turning slightly to show her cousin the creature, "See how it's twitching? That means he's in pain. Real pain. Not pretend."

Marc Spector, twelve and already convinced he was grown, crouched beside her with the patient resignation of an older brother figure long used to being bossed around. He didn't roll his eyes,not quite. She had that effect. Made even sarcasm soften.

"I see it, Cici," He said, "You think he fell out of the tree?"

She nodded solemnly, curls bouncing. Her hair was a nest of soft, tangled brown, full of tiny leaves and one pink flower she'd tucked behind her ear earlier that day. The name he gave her—Little Leaf—was fitting. She was always collecting things. Stones with specks of quartz. Leaves shaped like hearts. Dead bugs she insisted weren't dead, just tired.

"He was probably reaching for the moon," She whispered, petting the squirrel's head with a fingertip, "And then he slipped."

Marc watched her for a long moment, and something swelled in his chest, a fierce, older-cousin love that made him want to wrap her in a blanket and never let the world near her. Cici was delicate, but not in the breakable way. She was delicate like moth wings, or frost on windows, things that only existed for a little while and were all the more beautiful for it.

"You think he'll make it?" She asked, glancing at Marc with wide, amber eyes.

He should've told her no. Should've said that the squirrel would die and they should bury it under the old oak tree near the water. But she looked at him like he could fix things. Like he was magic.

So he lied.

"Yeah. If we make a little nest for him, keep him warm, he might pull through."

Her face lit up. Not just smiled, lit up. Like someone had uncorked a jar of sunlight inside her.

"You promise?"

He hesitated.

"I promise."

They built the nest out of twigs and moss in an old shoebox, lined it with one of her socks, and tucked the squirrel in as gently as if it were royalty. She named it Moonbean, because she said Moonbeam sounded too sharp and she didn't like sharp things.

That night, they snuck it into the lakehouse.

While the grownups drank and played cards downstairs, Marc kept watch near the kitchen door while Cici tiptoed up the stairs, the shoebox clutched against her chest like a sacred relic. She moved with exaggerated stealth, sticking close to the wall and pausing dramatically at every creaking floorboard. Marc almost blew their cover just from laughing.

"You're not a ninja," He whispered as she disappeared around the bend in the hallway.

"You're not a squirrel doctor!" She hissed back.

They stayed up late in her room, whispering stories to each other under the covers while Moonbean rested on a towel beside them.

Cici's voice was a soft, dreamy hum in the dark. She spun tales out of thin air, about squirrel kingdoms and sky queens, about trees that grew candy and a dog who protected the forest with his big, slobbery heart.

Marc listened with one arm under his head, watching the way her eyes caught the moonlight, how her lashes brushed her cheeks when she blinked.

"I think," She said suddenly, "that if I was an animal, I'd be a fox."

Marc smirked, "You? You're not sneaky enough to be a fox."

"I am so sneaky!"

"You're loud. And clumsy."

"I'm seven."

"Well, seven-year-olds can't be foxes."

She stuck her tongue out at him.

He chuckled, then said more gently, "You're a deer. Soft. Fast. You always want to help things."

Cici considered this with great seriousness, "You'd be a hawk."

"A hawk?"

"Yeah. You always watch everything. But you don't talk unless you really mean it."

That quieted him.

She wasn't wrong.

He turned on his side and ruffled her hair, "Get some sleep, Little Leaf."

"I'm not tired."

But within minutes, her breathing evened out, slow and steady. Her fingers curled against the blanket like roots clutching soil. She always slept like she was trying to hold onto the earth.

Marc stayed awake a little longer, watching the moon drift across the sky.

Moonbean was dead by morning.

Cici screamed when she found him, a sound that shattered every window in Marc's heart. She refused to eat breakfast, refused to leave the room. Her little fists balled up in her lap and she cried for two hours straight, whispering "I did everything right," over and over.

Marc sat with her the whole time. He didn't try to fix it. He just sat.

When she finally let him bury the squirrel under the oak tree, she asked if they could plant something there.

"A daisy," She said, "Because they're not fancy. They're just nice."

Marc didn't tell her the earth was too dry for daisies.

He helped her plant one anyway.

That was the summer before it all went wrong.

Before the lake. Before the blood.

Before Marc would look back on these days and ache with the kind of sorrow that has no shape, only weight.

He would remember her laugh echoing off the trees. The way she insisted he take a leaf home every time they parted—"So you don't forget what the wind sounds like."

He would remember her hands covered in dirt and her cheeks flushed pink from the sun. That flower in her hair. That bright, beautiful hope.

Marc Spector would forget a lot of things in the years to come.

But never her.

Never Little Leaf.

Some truths are too heavy for little shoulders. So Marc buried them, one by one, beneath laughter and make-believe. Because Cici believed in happy endings. And Marc would die before he let her stop.

It was late afternoon at the lakehouse, the kind of day that smelled like pine needles and sunscreen, the kind of heat that made everything feel sticky and slow. The dragonflies skimmed the surface of the water like jeweled darts, and the sky was an endless stretch of blue, so blue it hurt to look at.

Marc was lying on the splintering wood of the dock, arms folded behind his head, staring at the clouds like they might spell out answers if he waited long enough. His shirt was damp from swimming, clinging to his ribs, and he hadn't spoken in twenty minutes.

He didn't need to. Cici was doing enough talking for both of them.

She sat cross-legged beside him, hair dripping wet down her back, her favorite green bathing suit covered in flecks of sand and lakeweed. She was holding a rock in each hand, inspecting them like rare gems.

"This one looks like a sleeping cat," She said, turning a lumpy gray stone toward him, "See? Its little ears?"

Marc tilted his head obligingly, "Sure. Looks just like one."

"And this one... " She squinted, then grinned, "It's a heart. A perfect heart!"

It was misshapen and cracked through the middle.

Marc smiled anyway, "You have a good eye, Little Leaf."

She puffed out her chest with pride, "I'm gonna make a collection. I'll keep 'em in that old tin lunchbox at the cabin. It still smells like peanut butter, but that's okay."

Marc nodded, gaze drifting back to the sky. He liked it when she talked like this. It made the silence inside his head go still, made the pressure behind his eyes soften. Around her, things quieted. Around her, the world didn't feel like it was pressing in.

Cici leaned over him, arms braced on either side of his chest.

"Tell me a story," She demanded.

Marc closed his eyes, "About what?"

She tapped her chin with the sleeping-cat rock, "About a boy who lived on the moon."

He cracked one eye open, "Why the moon?"

"Because it's lonely," She said, matter-of-fact, "and I think someone should live there."

Marc thought about that. About loneliness. About silence and darkness and spaces too wide to name.

"Alright," He murmured, "Once upon a time, there was a boy who lived on the moon. But he wasn't sad. He had... a library. And a telescope. And a dragon that glowed in the dark."

Cici gasped, delighted, "What was the dragon's name?"

"Starlace."

"That's so cool."

"He was a silver dragon, and he flew the boy all the way to Earth whenever he wanted to visit his favorite person."

Cici's eyes sparkled, "Was it a girl?"

Marc smiled softly, "Yeah. A little girl who loved rocks and squirrels and talked way too much."

Cici pretended to pout, swatting his arm, "I do not talk too much."

"Do too."

"Do not."

Marc laughed, full and easy. It was rare, and it felt like warm honey spilling down the inside of his chest.

Later that evening, they sat on the porch steps while cicadas screamed in the trees and the adults bickered in the background. Marc's father had taken his bourbon inside, and Marc's mother was lighting another cigarette on the deck, jaw clenched so tight it looked carved in stone.

Cici leaned against Marc's shoulder, thumb idly picking at a scab on her knee. She smelled like bug spray and watermelon juice.

"Why doesn't your mom like me?" She asked, quiet.

Marc stiffened.

He looked down at her, at the mess of curls against his arm, at the way she always looked up like the truth couldn't possibly hurt her.

"She's just... not good with kids," He lied.

"She doesn't smile at me."

"She doesn't really smile at anyone."

"But she looks mad when I talk."

Marc stared ahead at the lake, the way the sun cut the water into ribbons of fire.

He could've told her. Could've said, she looks mad because she always is. Because she wasn't built for softness. Because she wishes the world had ended the day my brother died. Because she thinks I should've died instead.

But Cici didn't need to carry that weight. Not when she still believed squirrels could be saved with shoeboxes and bedtime stories.

So instead, he said, "She just doesn't know you like I do."

Cici tilted her head, "Do you like me?"

"I love you," Marc said, without hesitation.

She grinned, "More than your comics?"

"More than Batman," He said solemnly.

After dinner, Marc's mother shouted at him for getting lakewater on the cabin rug.

Cici watched from the hallway, peeking around the doorframe, small and silent. She saw the way his posture changed. The way he didn't raise his voice. The way his eyes stopped blinking. Like he could fold himself into a wall and disappear.

She didn't understand the words. Only the tone. The sharpness. The violence curled beneath the surface.

Later, when he came outside, she was waiting for him on the porch, legs dangling off the edge, her tin lunchbox clutched in her lap.

She didn't say anything.

Neither did he.

But when he sat down beside her, she opened the box and offered him the cat rock.

"You keep it," She said, "For when you're sad."

Marc took it. Ran his thumb along its edge.

She laid her head on his shoulder.

And for a moment, just a moment, he didn't feel like he was going to break.

Up in the sky, the moon rose full and golden.

Marc wondered, quietly, if there really was a boy up there.

And if that boy, too, had someone like her.

Grief has a sound. It is not silence. It is not screaming. It is the quiet gasp before the world caves in. It is the sound of a child's name being called through the trees—over and over—and never answered.

It was supposed to be a game.

Cici wanted to play hide and seek.

Marc had rolled his eyes, pretending he was too old, too cool, too tired for childish things. But she'd given him that look, the one that crumbled walls, the one that still had baby fat in its cheeks and galaxies in its eyes, and said, "Just one round, Marc. I'll hide real good this time."

She had always been proud of her hiding skills. Too proud. Her record was seventeen minutes once. She made him swear, pinky promise, thumb lock, secret code, that he'd try this time. Really try.

So he'd covered his eyes and counted beneath the willow tree, cheek against the bark, counting loud enough for her to hear, slow enough that she'd get her head start.

"One... two... three..."

She giggled as she darted away, that light-footed laugh carried on the wind.

"Four... five..."

The sun was still high, the lake sparkling in the distance, cicadas humming like static in the warm summer air.

"Twenty... twenty-one..."

He never thought about the time.

He never thought she'd really disappear.

By hour three, it was still funny. A little.

"Okay, Cici," Marc called, hands cupped around his mouth, "I give up. You win!"

He wandered the woods near the cabin, calling her name. Checked the crawl space beneath the porch. Peeked inside the tool shed. Even the loft in the barn where the hay bales were.

Still nothing.

By hour four, it wasn't funny anymore.

By hour six, they were all outside.

Her parents shouting. His dad pacing. Marc running through the trees, screaming her name until his voice cracked.

His mother didn't yell.

She just smoked, mouth tight, eyes narrowed like she was waiting for something terrible to confirm what she already knew.

Night fell fast over the lake, swallowing the trees in blue and black.

Flashlights cut through the woods like erratic stars. Grown men with walkie-talkies and dogs marched through the brush. Her mother's voice cracked like glass. Her father's turned to something raw and unrecognizable.

They didn't find her in the trees.

They found her at the water's edge.

The scream shattered the night.

Marc didn't see the body at first, he only saw the flashlight fall from someone's hand, the way it tumbled in the grass, beam spinning. He ran toward the sound, toward the voices, and then--

He stopped.

Dead.

There she was.

Or what they said was her.

A small shape on the shore, tangled in lakeweed, the moonlight slick across her skin. Her hair fanned out like a crown of drowned flowers. Her little green bathing suit. The one she'd worn yesterday. Or the day before.

Or was it today?

Time didn't feel real anymore.

Someone said they'd found her. Someone said it was her.

But he couldn't see her face. Not from this distance.

He didn't try to get closer.

He didn't move.

Marc sat on the porch steps, knuckles white around the edge of the wooden railing, listening to the sound of Cici's parents sobbing inside the house. Her mother wailed like she was being ripped open. Her father punched a hole in the drywall and then collapsed to his knees. Somewhere, someone knocked over a chair. A door slammed. A glass broke.

None of them mattered.

Because Cici was gone.

And he'd let her hide.

And he never found her.

"You never watch her closely," His mother hissed behind him, the venom in her voice dragging him back to the earth, "Just like before. Just like before."

His father's voice was low, urgent, "Wendy--"

"No!" She snapped, "Don't tell me to calm down! First Randall, and now--"

"Don't say her name."

"It's happening again, Elias. It's happening again, and it's his fault."

Marc closed his eyes.

The porch was shaking.

Or maybe he was.

"You said she was with you," She snarled, "You said she was safe. But she wasn't. Because nothing is safe with you, Marc. Nothing ever is."

"Stop it," His father said, voice breaking, "He's just a boy--"

"She's dead!" She screamed, and the wind caught it, carried it over the lake, made it echo back as if the water agreed.

Marc didn't cry.

He didn't flinch.

He just kept staring at the trees.

The ones where she might've hidden. The ones he should've searched better. The ones that swallowed her whole.

Hours passed. The world dimmed. Grown-ups came and went, like shadows with clipboards. Someone asked him questions he couldn't answer. When was the last time you saw her? Was she upset? Was she trying to run away?

No. No. She wanted to play.

She just wanted to play.

He sat in Cici's room that night. The one with the pink walls and the tin lunchbox and the sleeping-cat rock still on the windowsill.

The bed still smelled like bug spray and watermelon juice.

He climbed into it and curled up on her side, head pressed to the pillow she used. It was still warm, somehow. Still hers.

He whispered her name into the cotton.

"Cici."

Nothing answered.

Not even the wind.

That night, something inside him broke.

And something else was born.

He didn't remember falling asleep, but when he woke up, the world was softer.

Stranger.

He was still in the bed, but the weight in his chest was gone. The ache dulled. His thoughts quiet.

He blinked at the ceiling.

And a voice, calm, clear, not his, whispered, It wasn't your fault.

It was the first time Steven spoke.

The first time Marc split the weight between two souls.

Because he couldn't carry it alone anymore.

Outside, the daisies they planted for Moonbean had begun to wilt.

But he didn't bury her there.

He didn't believe she was really in that casket.

Cici wouldn't have gone down like that.

She was too good at hiding.

Maybe, just maybe...

She was still playing the game.

She was a girl once. Now she is a wound that walks. Her name is Mad Dog, and she wears it like a collar. She sleeps in corners, breathes like silence, and kills like instinct. No one calls her Cici anymore. Not even herself.

It's raining in Berlin.

Not a soft rain, no, this rain comes down like punishment, hard and fast, slicing across her cheeks like glass. Her boots are soaked. Her knuckles are bleeding. And the man she was sent to kill is already dead, but she keeps hitting him anyway.

His face is unrecognizable. Not that she ever cared about the face.

She breathes through her teeth, sharp and steady, chest rising and falling like a snarling tide. Her hoodie is torn at the shoulder. There's blood in her mouth that isn't hers.

Someone calls her name, Mad Dog, not her name, not hers, but the one they all use now. The one that makes her spine stiffen and her eyes narrow. The one that gets her moving.

"Enough," says the voice in her earpiece. Valentina.

Cici doesn't answer. She never does. She just lifts her head from where she crouches over the corpse, her breath visible in the cold.

She stands.

Blood drips down her wrist like it's got somewhere to be.

Cici rides back to base in the dark compartment of a steel-gray van, legs spread wide, shoulders hunched, eyes closed. The others don't speak to her. They never do after a mission.

They think she's asleep.

She isn't.

She's listening to the rhythm of the tires on the road. It calms her. Reminds her of the heartbeat of the cage she used to live in, the way it creaked with every footstep, the way her breath would fog the bars. Back then, there was no earpiece, no mission. Just a bell. When it rang, she fought.

Now Valentina whispers instead of ringing a bell. But it's the same command, the same trigger.

Go. Tear. Bite. Obey.

Sometimes Cici wonders if she's still in that cage.

Sometimes, she knows she is.

At the safehouse, she drops to all fours in the hallway and crawls to her quarters.

There's no one around. But the habit remains.

She reaches the room marked only by a number—no name—and slips inside. It's barely a room. No furniture. Just a blanket in the corner, and a duffel bag she never unpacks.

She doesn't sleep in the bed provided. She never has.

Beds are for people.

She curls on the floor, tucks her arms in tight, and closes her eyes like she's bracing for a kick.

She dreams of teeth. Of metal. Of laughter she used to know.

She dreams of a lake, and of being small again.

Cici doesn't speak much.

It isn't because she can't.

It's because words were punished once. Spoken out of turn, and they'd take your dinner away. Talk too loud, and you'd bleed for it. Cry, and someone twice your size would make sure you never cried again.

So she learned silence. She learned to bite the inside of her cheek and swallow the words until they turned bitter. Now even in freedom, if this is what freedom is, she holds her tongue like a weapon that might turn on her.

Valentina doesn't mind.

Valentina likes that she doesn't speak.

It makes her easier to command.

"Mission tomorrow," Valentina says through the phone, no greeting, just order, "A weapons convoy. No survivors."

Cici's jaw tics. But she nods. Alone, in the room. Because nodding is easier than speaking.

And she doesn't question the no survivors part.

She never does.

She eats on the floor, too.

Canned food. Cold. No fork.

She licks the inside of the can clean and tosses it aside.

Her hands still shake sometimes, not from fear but from memory. From the way her body still expects to be hit. Still remembers the collar, the one they made her wear in the pits. She clawed it off the first day Valentina took her in. She thought that meant freedom.

But she still hears the bell.

On missions, she wears no armor.

Armor is for soldiers. She is not a soldier.

She's a beast.

She wears a leather jacket she found in a dumpster once, and combat boots with holes in the sole. No mask. No helmet.

She wants them to see her face.

She wants them to know what's killing them.

There's no elegance to how she moves. No precision. No mercy.

She fights like something rabid. Like something that forgot it once had a name.

Fists, elbows, knees, teeth.

She doesn't use guns. She likes the sound of bones better.

One mission, she tore out a man's throat with her mouth. Didn't even realize it until afterward. Valentina called it "effective." Cici called it Tuesday.

Valentina calls her to debrief.

The room is cold. Too white. Too clean.

Cici stands in the corner with her arms behind her back, chin lowered, waiting.

Valentina paces.

"You overperformed," She says with a hint of amusement, "Which is better than the alternative."

Cici doesn't respond.

"I needed ten bodies. You gave me fifteen."

Still silence.

Valentina turns toward her, lips curling into something like approval.

"You're very good at what you do, Mad Dog."

Cici's eye twitches.

The name itches at her skin. Like something that used to bleed.

She lowers her gaze to the floor.

"Can I go now?" She murmurs.

Her voice is rough from disuse. It sounds foreign even to her own ears.

Valentina nods, "Of course."

Cici turns and leaves without looking back.

That night, she paces the room.

She crawls under the bed. Stares at the dust. At the metal slats above.

She curls into a ball.

Like she used to in the cage.

She whispers a name she hasn't spoken in years.

Not Valentina's.

Not Mad Dog.

Cici.

It feels like a lie.

But it still makes her cry.

Just a little.

Just enough.

Outside the window, it rains again.

The world keeps turning.

But the dog stays caged.

Even when the door is gone.

She doesn't have memories. She has echoes.
She doesn't have a past. She has a kennel full of bones.
She doesn't remember being Cici Spector—
Until she hears his name.

The mission is simple.

Find the man. Break his legs. Drag him out by the hair.

Valentina's voice in her earpiece is calm and cold, like ice water poured down a spine, "No one sees you. No one survives."

Cici nods once, perched in the rafters of a half-destroyed warehouse in Bucharest. The rain makes everything glisten, steel and stone slick with shadow. Below, her target, some middleman with a briefcase and a name she didn't bother learning, talks on the phone while two bodyguards keep watch. They're soft. Rich men in borrowed armor.

She's already mapped out the kill. In her head, it takes eleven seconds. She drops from the beam, cracks the nearest man's skull on the way down, and--

Then she hears it.

A voice.

A name.

"Marc Spector," The man says into his phone. "He's alive. The deal still stands."

Marc.

The name hits her like a brick to the temple.

Marc Spector.

Her cousin.

Her first friend.

Her first heartbreak.

She freezes mid-breath, one boot still on the beam, the other already hovering in space. The hunter gone still. Her heartbeat doesn't quicken. It vanishes. Her muscles seize, but not in fear. Not in rage.

In memory.

But nothing comes.

Not clearly.

Not really.

There's a lake. A girl. A shoebox with a squirrel. A voice calling her Little Leaf.

And then, nothing. Teeth. Bells. Blood. Her name said like a curse. Like a command.

Mad Dog.

Not Cici.

Cici is dead.

But the name Marc, it rattles something loose.

And just like that, she forgets the plan. Her body is still poised to drop, but her mind is elsewhere. Wandering halls she thought she bricked shut.

The briefcase man turns.

He sees her.

He sees her.

And she does nothing.

The gun in his hand rises. The flash blinks white.

She jumps late.

She misses.

The bullet grazes her shoulder.

The bodyguards move. The man runs.

She hits the concrete hard, a snarl caught in her throat, palms skidding across broken glass.

She scrambles to her feet, teeth bared, bleeding, but it's too late. Tires screech outside. An engine revs. The target is gone.

Gone, because for five seconds, Cici Spector remembered she had a soul.

The van ride back is silent.

No one talks to her.

They've seen what she can do. What she's done. They've seen her rip a man's jaw off with her bare hands. Seen her drag a body by the spine. But today?

She let someone live.

They don't know why.

But she does.

Valentina waits.

In the concrete room. The leash room, Cici calls it in her head.

No chairs. No table. Just the woman in black, heels gleaming like polished venom, a file in her hand and a look like a knife balanced on its tip.

"You failed," She says, voice flat.

Cici says nothing. Blood stains her shirt. Her knuckles are still raw. Her teeth still ache.

Valentina steps forward.

Taps the file.

"You heard a name," She says, "And the dog forgot how to bite."

Still, Cici is silent.

"You don't get to remember," Valentina continues, circling now, "You don't get to reach back into the dream and pull out a teddy bear."

She stops in front of Cici.

Her smile is small. Pitying. Cruel.

"You sit when I say sit."

Cici lowers her eyes.

"You kill when I say kill."

A pause.

"Do you understand?"

Cici swallows.

And nods.

Not because she agrees.

But because she has no choice.

That night, she doesn't sleep.

She paces her room on all fours, circles the floor until it's warm with the heat of her body. Her shoulder throbs. Her nails are cracked. She keeps whispering the name.

Marc.

She tries to say it like it's meaningless. Like it's just another word.

But it isn't.

It's the name of the boy who held her hand in the dark.

The name of the only person who ever looked at her like she was someone instead of something.

She claws at the floor.

Not out of anger.

But because it's the only thing that keeps her here.

She used to have a voice. She used to laugh. She used to be someone.

But that someone drowned in the lake.

Or so the world thought.

She stands in front of the mirror.

Naked from the waist up, bandaging her shoulder with trembling hands.

She looks at herself.

The scars.

The teeth.

The muscles built from fear.

She doesn't recognize the woman staring back.

But she remembers a girl with twigs in her hair.

And for a moment, just a moment--

She aches to be her again.

The next morning, Valentina sends her a file.

It arrives on her cot, neatly wrapped in plastic.

Inside: coordinates. A photograph.

A new target.

But no details.

Just a note.

Make up for last night.

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[ what do we think so far? ]