At eleven years old, Lena Calloway had already learned that the world rarely paused for anyone, especially not for a girl who lived with an elderly grandmother in a cramped apartment where the walls were thin and money was thinner, so when she chose to take the longer route home from school that evening, it was not because she was reckless or curious, but because she wanted a few extra minutes of quiet before stepping back into a life that demanded far more strength than people ever noticed.
The rain had started without warning, the kind that soaked through shoes and clung to the air with the smell of metal and oil, and as Lena hurried past the warehouses lining the industrial edge of the city, she heard it, a sound so small and desperate that it cut straight through the noise of traffic and dripping water, a cry that did not belong to the street itself.
She slowed, heart thudding, trying to convince herself that it was nothing, that someone else would hear it, that someone else would stop, but the crying came again, unmistakable now, thin and frightened, and Lena found herself turning toward the sound before she could talk herself out of it.