Page 19 of Prospect’s Curvy Vinyl Girl

The ritual begins. 5 a.m. We move out to the main shop floor. The oak counter serves as our kitchen table. Eggs crack against the lip of a cast-iron skillet on the small hot plate. The smell of black coffee brews strong and bitter, cutting through the musty scent of the old oak flooring. I drink it black. Always black. No sugar to remember. No cream to track. A habit forged in paranoia so nothing about my order ever sticks in a barista's memory. Wendy slides the mug across the counter. Our fingers brush. Electricity arcs up my forearm. My jaw locks. I want to drag her right back behind the beaded curtain. I want to spend the next week burying myself in her heat until she forgets the word Syndicate even exists.

But the world outside the glass is still breathing.

9 a.m. The OPEN sign flips. The deadbolt clicks back. The trap resumes. We’re locked inside the Syndicate’s territory. The corporatized extortion machine hums outside the windows. The Tuesday Enforcer is scheduled next week, but the foot soldiers are always watching. I take my place by the crates. A silent gargoyle haunting the soft rock section. My spine straight. My peripheral vision tracking every shadow passing by the front glass.

The bell over the door jingles.

A regular walks in. An older guy, hunched shoulders, smelling of cheap tobacco and stale rain. Charlie. A local mechanic who buys vintage jazz tapes.

The shift happens in a microsecond.

My spine rounds. The military-grade stillness drains out of my frame. My shoulders slope downward. The hard line of my jaw softens into something unremarkable. A bland, hollow smile stretches across my mouth. I become Tom. It’s a visceral, physical sickness. The lie slips over my skin without my permission. My brain defaults to the programmed survival mechanism. The harmless cousin. The invisible man.

"Morning, Tom," the regular mutters, flipping through the jazz bin.

"Hey, Charlie. How's the knee holding up?" The voice coming out of my throat is a pitch higher. Friendly. Weak.

It disgusts me. The sickness crawls up my throat, acidic. I’m standing ten feet away from the woman I just claimed, the woman who owns my soul, and I’m wearing a dead man's skin in front of her. The trauma of the cover identity is a relentless parasite. I can’t turn it off. I’m a machine built to deceive. I’ve run so many covers I don't know who I am without a role to play.

The regular pays for a battered cassette. He complains about the weather. I offer a pathetic, agreeable chuckle. The bell jingles. He leaves.

Silence slams back into the shop. I stare at the closed door. The fake smile is still rotting on my face. A muscle in my jaw twitches uncontrollably. I hate myself. I hate the training. I hate the operative they turned me into.

Wendy watches me. She stands behind the oak counter. Her eyes are dark, sharp, too perceptive. She sees the mask. She knows the millimeter difference between the man who tore her apart in the back room and the smiling idiot who just sold a jazz tape. She doesn't ask. She doesn't push for an explanation. She simply observes the fracture in my mind.

She moves. Stepping out from behind the register. Her hips sway with a confident, sassy rhythm. She walks to the clearance bins on the far wall. Her fingers dance over the cardboard sleeves. The scent of old vinyl kicks up around her. She pulls a sleeve. Slides a shiny black disc out. She drops it onto the vintage turntable behind the counter. The needle hits the groove with a sharp crackle.

Music spills from the corner speakers.

It’s the most atrocious, plastic, overproduced corporate garbage I’ve ever subjected my ears to. Synthetic keyboards. A soulless drum machine. A cheesy saxophone wailing in the background. Elevator music designed to sedate people in waiting rooms. Perfect, polite, fake. A song that apologizes for existing.

Wendy crosses her arms. She leans back against the counter, popping one hip out. A wicked smirk plays on her lips.

"That," she says, pointing a finger at the speakers. "That’s what your face is doing."

The absurdity of the statement hits my chest like a physical blow. The sheer, unadulterated sass. She’s mocking my elite, deep-cover intelligence training with a dollar-bin instrumental track. The pressure building in my skull shatters. The eight months of suffocating tension. The terror of losing my own identity. The manic fear that I would never find my way back to the surface.

A laugh rips out of my throat.

Rough. Rust-covered. A real laugh. It scrapes my vocal cords raw. It bounces off the tin ceiling and echoes through the narrow shop. I tip my head back, the sound pouring out of me in uncontrollable waves. It’s Tyler laughing. Not Tom. Not the undercover weapon. Just the man. I haven't heard that sound in almost a year. The physical relief is staggering. The phantom skin burns away. The suffocating weight lifts from my ribs. I’m grounded. I’m anchored. She just performed surgery on my fractured mind with a terrible seventies B-side.

I cross the room in three strides. I bracket her against the counter. My hands grip her waist, fingers digging into the soft cotton of her shirt. The laughter dies down into a possessive grin.

"You're a menace," I growl against her mouth.

"And you're a terrible actor," she shoots back. Her hands slide up my chest. Grounding me. Claiming me right back. "Keep the real face, Tyler. I like it better."

Tyler. My name on her lips is a physical brand. Searing into my flesh. Erasing the aliases.

The moment breaks. The burner phone in my pocket vibrates. Urgent. The outside world intrudes. The war. The Syndicate. The laughter vanishes from the room, sucked out by the vacuum of impending violence. The Ignition demands protection. The urge to secure the perimeter flares hot in my blood.

I pull back a fraction. I fish the encrypted device from my pocket. A single text message flashes on the black screen. A meeting confirmed. The intel I requested hours ago, back when I still thought I was just an operative.

My blood goes cold. The operative returns. The tactician. But this time, I’m not working for the club. I’m not gathering evidence for Logan Gunnar's eventual strike. I’m working exclusively for her.

"I need to step out," I tell her. My voice drops an octave. The protective register locking into place. "Thirty minutes. Tops."

Wendy frowns. Her hands tighten on my shirt. "Where?"