Swipe Right
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 19: Extraction Night
The sound that started it, wasn’t a knock.
It was the absence of one.
Darius had been standing at his kitchen sink, hands in warm water, washing a mug he didn’t need to wash, listening to the house breathe the way he always did when his mind refused to rest. Bianca’s nails clicked faintly on the porch next door—slow, deliberate patrol steps that had become a new kind of clock. A television laughed through the shared wall from his sister’s side, something bright and harmless aimed at children who still believed the world stayed the same if you wanted it to.
Then the street went ... wrong.
Not quiet. Not loud.
Just different.
A car door closed without the casual rhythm of a neighbor. Tires stopped too cleanly—no crunch of gravel, no lazy roll. Footsteps that didn’t commit to a pace because the person didn’t want to be remembered by sound.
Amina’s head lifted at the same moment Darius’s hand froze in the water.
Her voice reached him through the comm node like a thread pulled tight.
“Now.”
Darius didn’t swear. Didn’t flinch.
He turned off the faucet slowly, as if sudden movement might echo outside. Crossed the room and looked through the corner of the window without pressing his face to glass.
A figure stood near the curb, half in shadow, head angled slightly as if listening—then another moved past the mailbox with the careful confidence of someone who believed the night belonged to them.
Not police.
Not neighbor.
Not lost.
The decision clicked into place in Darius like a magazine seating into a rifle.
The normal was over.
Amina was already at the door—shoes on, hair pulled back, calm threaded with steel.
“They’re early,” she said quietly.
Darius checked his phone. No calls. No warning.
That was the warning.
“They’re not here to talk,” he replied.
Amina’s gaze flicked toward the shared wall.
“Your sister.”
He nodded once.
“First the kids,” he said.
Amina’s eyes softened—just enough to be human.
“Always.”
He stepped next door without knocking.
His sister opened the door before his hand reached it, like she’d been waiting for the moment her life stopped pretending.
Darius took in the room in one breath: the sixteen-year-old slouched on the couch, trying to look bored and failing; the eight-year-old on the floor with toy cars, glancing up too often; her husband in the kitchen doorway, arms crossed, jaw tight, trying to decide whether to trust instinct or demand answers.
His sister didn’t waste time with pleasantries.
“It’s now,” she said.
Darius nodded.
Her face tightened. “What’s happening?”
“No time,” he said. “Bathroom. Door locked. Kids first.”
Her husband stepped forward, anger arriving early the way it always did when fear didn’t want to admit itself.
“Darius, you’re not taking my—”
Darius cut him off with a look that wasn’t threatening.
It was final.
“You can argue,” he said quietly, “or you can move. But you don’t do both.”
The husband held his gaze, jaw clenched—then something in Darius’s eyes made the argument die before it could grow.
His sister swallowed hard.
“Okay,” she said, voice shaking once and only once. “Boys. Bathroom. Right now.”
The sixteen-year-old stood too fast, trying to hide how badly his hands trembled.
The eight-year-old hesitated. “Mom—”
His sister dropped to a knee, hands gentle but unyielding on his shoulders.
“Baby, we’re playing a new game,” she said. “You’re gonna do exactly what Uncle D says.”
The boy nodded, trusting the tone more than the words.
They moved.
Darius followed them to the small downstairs bathroom. It looked normal: cheap tile, towel rack, a cabinet with medicine and spare toothpaste.
His sister’s husband lingered in the doorway like the threshold might accuse him of abandoning reality.
Amina appeared behind him—not rushing.
Just present.
She looked at him the way she looked at systems: measuring not what was said, but what could be depended on.
“Lock the door,” she told him softly.
Something in her voice did what force couldn’t.
He stepped in.
The sixteen-year-old locked the door with a sharp click that sounded like a line being crossed.
Darius pressed his palm against the wall behind the towel rack.
The panel accepted him without sound.
No lights.
No dramatic hiss.
Just a gentle shift—like a seam releasing.
A narrow doorway opened where there should have been drywall, revealing darkness and a faint, cool airflow that smelled like concrete and clean metal.
The eight-year-old’s mouth fell open.
“This is—” the sixteen-year-old started.
Darius crouched, voice low and steady.
“Eyes on me. You go down. Single file. Hands on the rail. Nobody talks unless I ask you to. Understand?”
They nodded.
His sister stared at him like he was suddenly someone she’d never met.
“Darius,” she whispered, and the word carried everything she’d been holding back for days.
He met her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said simply.
She swallowed. “Are we ... leaving?”
“Yes,” he replied.
Her eyes flashed. “Where?”
He didn’t answer.
Not because he didn’t love her.
Because the truth was too big to fit in a bathroom.
He looked to her husband.
“You go with them,” he said.
The husband’s jaw tightened.
Amina stepped forward—not as a threat, but as an anchor.
“If you stay above,” she said gently, “you will be separated. That is not a warning. It is a consequence.”
The husband looked at his kids.
Then his wife.
Then Darius.
He exhaled like surrender and choice decided to share the same lungs.
“Fine,” he muttered. “Fine. Let’s go.”
His sister pushed her boys into the darkness.
The husband followed.
She took one last look at her home.
Then she turned back to Darius.
“You coming?” she asked, voice thin.
Darius shook his head.
“I can’t,” he said. “Not yet.”
Her eyes widened. “Darius—”
He grabbed her hand and squeezed it hard.
“I’ll meet you,” he said. “I promise.”
His sister held his gaze like she needed to memorize it.
Then she stepped into the dark.
Darius sealed the seam.
The bathroom returned to normal.
Just tile. Just towels.
Just a lie that looked like truth.
Outside, the street was still wrong.
Darius slipped back into his duplex, grabbed the bag he’d kept ready without admitting to himself that he’d kept it ready, and checked the live feed—one clean view, one partial angle. The kind of information that never saved you, but sometimes kept you alive long enough to choose how you lost.
Movement by the curb.
A shadow where there shouldn’t be one.
Amina stood near the window, face calm, eyes sharp.
“They’ll come inside,” she said.
“They won’t find anything,” Darius replied.
Amina’s gaze flicked to him. “They will find absence.”
Darius nodded.
Absence was evidence too—if you knew how to read it.
He moved for the back door.
Amina caught his wrist.
“You’re splitting,” she said.
“I have to,” he replied. “If we move as a group, they’ll follow the shape of it.”
“And you?” she asked quietly.
Darius’s smile came once and only once, with no humor in it.
“I’m harder to hold than they think.”
Amina’s thumb brushed the gold crown above her heart through fabric—an unconscious grounding.
“Skate park,” she said.
Darius blinked. “What?”
“You need eyes that move fast,” she said, “and hands that don’t ask questions.”
He understood instantly.
Human networks.
Informal loyalty.
People who could disappear under cameras because cameras had never been built to respect them.
Darius nodded.
Amina leaned in, forehead touching his for a single heartbeat.
“Go,” she whispered.
Darius left through the back—no crouch, no sprint.
Just moving like he belonged in the dark.
The first camera caught him at the end of the block.
A grainy overhead angle from a corner store: Darius walking with a bag over his shoulder, head down, pace ordinary.
A second camera caught his reflection in a parked car window.
A third caught nothing but blur as he turned a corner at exactly the moment a man stepped from behind a utility pole.
Not police. Not uniform.
Just posture—intercept.
Darius didn’t accelerate until he had to.
And when he did, it wasn’t panic.
It was geometry.
He cut between two houses, vaulted a low fence, landed soft, moved through a backyard like he’d been born there. A dog barked in the distance. Darius didn’t look.
Cleared another fence. Hit asphalt. Merged into a street where headlights washed everything into sameness.
A car rolled past too slow.
Darius turned his head just enough to see the driver’s silhouette.
The phone glow.
Recording or signaling—either way, it meant attention.
He changed direction again.
Not sprinting.
Not yet.
He’d learned long ago: if you run too soon, you tell the hunter you’re prey.
He walked into downtown Fort Wayne like a man headed somewhere mundane.
But his mind mapped exits as he went: alleys, doorways, crowd density, traffic light rhythms.
Then the pressure arrived.
Footsteps—more than one set.
Closing distance.
Darius whispered into the comm.
“They’re not subtle now.”
Amina’s voice came back, tight.
“They don’t need to be. They think you’re alone.”
Darius’s jaw clenched.
He turned toward the skate park.
The park was alive with motion.
Boards slapping concrete. Wheels cutting arcs. Music pulsing from a speaker that sounded like it had survived a war. Under the lights, kids and young adults moved like gravity was optional.
Darius stepped into the edge of it and felt the shift immediately.
Here, cameras didn’t intimidate.
Here, movement was language.
A young man on a board rolled past, eyes flicking over Darius—quick assessment, no judgment.
Darius lifted his hand slightly.
Not a wave.
A signal: I need something.
The skater circled back.
“You lost?” he asked, voice casual.
“Need to borrow speed,” Darius replied.
The skater’s eyebrows lifted.
Darius didn’t explain.
He showed the smallest thing from his pocket—nothing incriminating. Nothing dramatic.
Just a clean symbol on a key fob that wasn’t from any manufacturer.
The skater’s expression changed.
Not fear.
Recognition of weird.
He looked past Darius toward the street.
Black sedan.
Another vehicle behind it.
The skater exhaled through his nose. “Yeah. You ain’t lost.”
A girl in a hoodie rolled up, board tucked under her arm.
“What’s up?” she asked.
The skater jerked his chin. “We got a problem.”
She looked, then back at Darius. “You cops?”
Darius almost laughed.
“No,” he said. “I’m trying not to meet them.”
She nodded like that was enough.
“Okay,” she said. “That’s relatable.”
A few more drifted in—not a crowd. A cluster.
Skate rules.
You don’t leave someone to get swallowed by unknowns under streetlights.
The skater tilted his head toward the back.
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