CHAPTER 105

CHAPTER 105
"You're early. That's a good thing—a bad thing."

Queens Arrows stood in the doorway of her glass office as always—elaborate, impenetrable, formidable. She brandished her gray braid like armor, a thousand unspoken tales glinting in her eyes. Her voice was crisp, but her presence was a spotlight. The kind that sears and summons.

"I didn't want to be late," I told her, stepping across the threshold with my heart lodged in my throat. "Or worse—forgettable."

Her lips curved up in a smile. "Trust me, Lanka. You've never been forgettable."

The office was cold, colder than I recalled. Maybe because the last time I had stood in front of it, I was still half-saturated with blood, celebrity, and infamy. Here today, I wore jeans, a black turtleneck, and the sort of jitters that wouldn't show on the surface but lingered below it like a bruise.

Queens pointed the chair opposite her. "Sit. This is not an interview."

I was surprised. "It's not?"

"No. This is. something else."

Her voice was thick. As if she'd already decided way in advance that I was coming in.

On her glass-topped desk lay a box.

It was matte, coal-black, sealed with two tiny clasps and a faded sticker on the side which read: PROPERTY OF NYT ARCHIVES – MARKUS LANKA.

My breath caught.

"My father's?" I whispered.

Queens nodded. "We pulled it out last year from storage. Legal cleared it last week. There are things in here—notes, tapes, and. an envelope he left sealed. Addressed to you."

I blinked.

"To me?"

She flipped the box over to me. "For his daughter's last picture," she said softly. "That's what he wrote.".

I glanced at the top envelope. My name in black letters. Shaking. As if he knew he was running out of time when he signed it.

My fingers lingered above the top. Queens didn't speak. She understood that this was no longer about the internship. This was legacy. This was blood and specters.

I opened the box.

Within were old analog tapes. Hundreds. Each one bearing names I didn't recognize. Some with dates. Others with the phrases "Witness X – northern line" and "Verdict missing. D.C. records buried."

My heart tightened.

I extended my hand to the envelope.

It was warm, near its own breath, despite all the years. I tore it open, slow and deliberate.

One contact sheet in there. Columns of small, raw photo negatives, printed in black and white. My father's eye hanging in frames. A woman, kneeling beside a fire. A child carried by a man over a fence. A painted red symbol on a crumbling wall.

On the back, he'd written:

"Truth is buried where they think we can't dig. Find this place. Finish it. Don't let them rewrite me."Then—coordinates.

37.8651° N, 119.5383° W.

I blinked again. Yosemite?

Queens leaned forward, fingers laced together. "It's not an archive, Mackenzie. It's a breadcrumb. He didn't complete it because someone needed it left in that condition."

"What was he writing?"

She hesitated, and that in itself said everything.

"He got into a narrative that blurred boundaries—political, military, corporate. We never quite knew. He cut calls two weeks before the attack."

I clenched the paper. "You think he was shut up?"

"I think," she said quietly, "you're going to have to decide what kind of daughter you want to be. The one who leaves it alone, or the one who opens graves."

I sat back, my heart pounding in my head.

"I just reclaimed my life," I whispered. "Sort of."

Queens arched an eyebrow. "From Tony?"

The resonance of his name sliced through me like a strand of wire. Heat. Shame. Longing. Guilt. All tangled together into something I couldn't identify.

"We're not—" I stopped. "It's complicated."

"You love your camera because it lets you contain the mess. But you can't photograph out of pain. That's something you experience through."

I didn't know if she was talking about Tony or my father. Maybe both.

I glanced back at the box.

So many voices. So many truths, held hostage by dust and time.

"Do I have to go?" I asked.

"No," she said simply. "But if you don't, someone else will. And they won't tell it right. They'll leave your father a villain. Or worse—a footnote."

I stood slowly, the box heavier in my hands than it should have been.

Outside the office building, New York hummed to life—horns honking, sirens screaming, heat waves shimmering up off the sidewalk. But I was already somewhere between past and purpose. Between Mackenzie-the-survivor and Mackenzie-the-witness.

"I'll think about it," I said.

Queens smiled again, but didn't quite make the eyes. "That's all any truth ever asks."

As I rode down in the elevator, I thought of Tony.

The manner in which he'd looked at me after the photo shoot. As if he'd been angry I'd witnessed him—but also relieved. The scars he'd let me capture with my camera. The note he'd never anticipated allowing me to read. And the way we'd touched like something sacred had broken between us and neither of us knew how to mend it.

Was this what it was to be a journalist's daughter? To chase ghosts until you became one yourself?

I looked back down at the coordinates again.

37.8651° N, 119.5383° W.

My dad had told me to finish the story. But maybe, just maybe. this wasn't exactly his conclusion.

Maybe it was mine too.

Or my starting point.