Chapter 1
Chapter One
Human beings are killers by nature. Selfishness is simply the first weapon we learn to sharpen.
“Why is it so damn noisy outside?”
Alma stood on her narrow balcony in an oversized T-shirt and underwear, one hand shielding her eyes from the morning sun. Sleep clung to her face like a second skin. Below, traffic crawled through downtown Buenos Aires while car horns snapped at one another from every direction.
The noise drilled into her skull.
She had returned home at three thirty that morning and made the foolish promise that she would still be productive. She had even set three alarms.
She had ignored all of them.
Every time she attempted to get out of bed, the pillow swallowed her face again, along with whatever discipline she had managed to gather.
It was eight in the morning now.
The city had already begun without her.
Near Calle Florida, metal shutters rose over storefronts while vendors arranged their merchandise along the pedestrian street. Office workers moved between tourists with coffee in one hand and impatience in the other. By evening, the district would belong to tango singers, dancers, living statues, and performers painted in gold and silver. They would compete for the attention of visitors who wanted to experience something beautiful before returning to their hotels.
For now, the cafés were filling with people desperate for their first cup of salvation.
Alma’s apartment building stood a few streets away, squeezed between newer structures as if the city had attempted to hide it and failed. The building was old enough to groan whenever the wind pressed against it. Cracks climbed its exterior walls like veins.
That morning, sunlight poured across her balcony and softened everything it touched. For a few minutes, even the peeling paint looked intentional.
Alma went inside and collapsed face-first onto the gray couch in the center of the living room.
She remained there until breathing became inconvenient.
Eventually, hunger dragged her upright. She walked toward the kitchen—or what she generously called a kitchen.
It consisted of a narrow table, a small stove, several mismatched utensils, and a miniature refrigerator that hummed loudly enough to suggest it was suffering.
Inside, she found two eggs and a tomato.
She fried the eggs and mixed them with uneven pieces of tomato. Some were nearly minced; others were large enough to require their own cooking time.
I should never be responsible for feeding another human being.
She found a piece of bread that looked as exhausted as she felt and sat at the table with her phone propped against a cup.
The first news alert appeared before she could take a bite.
YOUNG WOMAN ABDUCTED IN FLORES AT APPROXIMATELY 10 P.M.
Beneath the headline was a grainy image captured by a security camera. A tall man had emerged from a black van and seized the woman from behind. His face was hidden beneath a cap, but his posture was clear enough. One arm locked around her chest while the other forced her toward the open door.
The woman’s hand stretched toward the empty sidewalk.
Alma enlarged the photograph.
The van had been parked too close to the corner. The man’s stance was unstable.
Alma stopped chewing.
Her attention had gone to the attacker before it had gone to the victim. She then stared at the woman’s blurred face and waited for the appropriate emotion to arrive.
Fear, perhaps.
Pity.
Outrage.
Nothing came.
Only an uncomfortable pressure behind her ribs, too faint to name and too familiar to examine.
Alma locked the phone and placed it facedown on the table.
“Not today.” she murmured.
She moved through the tv channels until she found a morning program loud enough to fill the apartment without requiring her attention.
Alma was twenty years old, and her greatest ambition was painfully ordinary.
She wanted a quiet life.
A small apartment. Enough money to pay rent. Food in the refrigerator. No one demanding anything from her, or viceversa. No voices following her home.
She wanted the kind of life other people complained about because they had never needed to fear losing it.
Her hair was long and dark brown, nearly black, and her skin was pale enough that exhaustion painted shadows beneath her eyes. Her body was slim, but there was more strength hidden beneath it than anyone expected.
Alma had never considered herself beautiful.
Other people often disagreed.
There was something strange about her appearance—something that made people look twice without understanding why. Her gray-green eyes rarely revealed what she was thinking, and her stillness sometimes gave the unsettling impression that she was not observing the world so much as studying it.
It was not a warm beauty.
It was the kind that made people curious before it made them cautious.
After breakfast, Alma took a quick shower and dressed in black leggings, a white T-shirt, a waist-length denim jacket, and sneakers that had once been white.
Before leaving, she locked the apartment door.
Then she tested the handle.
Then she checked the lock again.
Old habits had a way of surviving even after they stopped being useful.
When the elevator doors opened, Mrs. Martinez was already inside.
The elderly woman stood beneath the flickering ceiling light with a small shopping bag tucked beneath one arm. She was eighty-seven, widowed, and one of the few permanent residents of the building. Until recently, only three apartments had been occupied.
Very few people were interested in living there.
Alma liked it that way.
“Good morning,” Mrs. Martinez said, her voice roughened by age.
“Good morning.”
Mrs. Martinez looked at Alma with the bright, dangerous curiosity of someone who had spent decades collecting other people’s secrets.
“Do you know who moved into the apartment beside yours?”
Alma frowned. “Someone moved in?”
“You haven’t seen them?”
“No.”
“Well, the apartment was empty for such a long time.” Mrs. Martinez leaned closer, despite there being no one else in the elevator. “The last man who lived there disappeared without saying a word. One day he was there, and the next…”
She lifted one narrow shoulder.
“Gone.”
The elevator began its slow descent.
“So many people have already left this building,” Mrs. Martinez continued. “No one stays anymore.”
Alma was not prepared for a conversation that early in the morning. As the woman spoke, her words began to merge with the mechanical groaning of the elevator.
Why would anyone willingly move into this place?
One violent storm could probably reduce it to rubble. Most of the wiring had not been replaced since the 1960s. The pipes complained at night. The hallway lights flickered for no apparent reason, and the elevator trembled between floors as though reconsidering its purpose.
Alma was constantly surprised that the city had not condemned the building.
She was also fairly certain that the landlord was involved in something illegal. Drugs, most likely. Perhaps stolen goods.
Possibly both.
She had never asked.
Cheap rent did not require moral investigation.
Despite being located near a respectable neighborhood, the building remained strangely concealed between newer structures. No one paid much attention to it unless they already knew it was there. It was perfect.
Alma understood the appeal of being overlooked.
“Isn’t it?” Mrs. Martinez asked.
Alma blinked.
“What?”
“I said the day is beautiful. So sunny. I might get a tan just from walking outside.”
The elderly woman smiled.
“Oh.” Alma glanced at the elevator doors. “Yes. Very sunny.”
Mrs. Martinez continued talking.
The descent from the third floor felt long enough for Alma to reconsider every decision that had brought her there. She nodded occasionally and hoped her reactions matched the conversation.
At last, the doors opened onto the ground floor.
Alma stepped forward, but Mrs. Martinez caught both of her hands.
Her fingers were long, thin, and cold. They folded around Alma’s like pale roots.
Alma looked down at them.
Mrs. Martinez usually stopped her to complain about the plumbing, ask for help carrying groceries, or discuss the man on the second floor. According to her, he was either deeply troubled, involved in criminal activity, or possessed.
Possibly all three.
Today, however, the old woman’s expression had changed.
“Never stop being good,” she said.
Alma looked at her.
Mrs. Martinez’s fingers tightened slightly.
“These days, it is much harder to be good than it is to be bad.”
The word sounded almost childish to Alma. Like something adults taught children before the world corrected them.
Good people.
Bad people.
As though human beings could be separated so cleanly.
“Yes,” Alma said, offering a small smile. “Of course.”
Mrs. Martinez released her.
Alma walked away, wondering whether the woman had realized she had not been listening.
Or whether she had noticed something else.
Outside, sunlight struck Alma’s face with enough force to disorient her. She raised one hand over her eyes and waited for the street to take shape.
She was meeting Mai that morning.
Office workers rushed around her, their expressions tense and distant. A man slammed into Alma’s shoulder while attempting to catch a bus. He missed it by seconds and cursed violently as it pulled away.
Alma barely reacted.
She watched his hands instead.
Empty.
No threat.
The assessment came before conscious thought. It always did.
The smell of breakfast drifting from nearby restaurants soon softened her irritation. Butter, toasted bread, coffee, and warm sugar filled the air. For a moment, Buenos Aires smelled gentler than it was.
After several minutes, Alma spotted Mai sitting outside a small neighborhood café.
“Look who finally decided to join the living,” Mai called, waving from her table.
“Good morning to you too.”
“Is it still morning? I wasn’t sure you knew.”
Alma pulled out the chair across from her. “Did you already order?”
“Obviously. Coffee and a medialuna. I needed emotional support while waiting for you.”
Mai lifted the half-eaten pastry.
“Now that you’re here, I’ll probably need a second one.”
“Don’t use me as an excuse to order another pastry.”
“I would never.”
A server approached, and Alma ordered coffee.
She glanced at Mai. “Am I actually late? I thought we said ten.”
“We said nine thirty.”
“Oh.”
Mai stared at her.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry.”
“I’m expressing it internally.”
“That must be exhausting for you.”
Alma smiled despite herself.
Mai waved one hand dismissively. “It’s fine. I have to tell you about the insane night I had yesterday anyway.”
She began her story while tearing open three packets of sugar and emptying them into her coffee.
Mai’s full name was Mailane, though almost everyone called her Mai. She was from Salvador, Bahia, and spoke Spanish fluently, although Portuguese still slipped into her sentences whenever she became excited or angry. Alma teased her about her accent, and Mai responded by exaggerating it until every word sounded theatrical.
Her skin was deep brown, and her hands were covered in mandalas and geometric tattoos that stretched across her fingers. Her curly afro hair was dyed purple and arranged into two buns, with two dreadlocks hanging beside her face. A small silver ring decorated her nose.
Mai looked effortlessly interesting.
Alma considered herself pale, average, and painfully dull by comparison. The only feature she genuinely liked was her eyes, which appeared gray or green depending on the light.
They had become close soon after meeting, although Alma still did not entirely understand how.
“Anyway, enough about me,” Mai said after finishing her story. She took a bite of her second medialuna, which had arrived without further discussion. “How was work?”
“Fine.”
“That means terrible.”
“It means fine.”
Mai narrowed her eyes. “What time did you get home?”
“Three thirty in the morning.”
“Alma.”
“What?”
“You look dead.”
“I feel dead.”
“Then tell Adam to stop giving you so many assignments at once. You need to make yourself heard.”
Alma looked into her coffee.
People often spoke about Adam as if refusing him were a matter of confidence.
As if all she needed was to straighten her shoulders and discover the correct tone of voice.
“I’ll try,” she said.
Mai gave her an unimpressed look.
Alma lifted one shoulder. “You know how he is.”
“Yes. Stuck up.”
A quiet laugh escaped Alma.
“That too, sometimes.”
They remained at the café for another hour, speaking about work, money, Mai’s latest romantic disaster, and the increasingly creative ways their landlord avoided repairing anything.
Eventually, they said goodbye.
When Alma checked the time, it was twelve twenty.
She walked home slowly, allowing strangers to flow around her.
She often wondered about the people she passed.
What did they do when no one was watching? Who waited for them at home? What secrets did they carry beneath their clothes, held close to their bodies like concealed weapons?
Did they consider themselves good?
Did everyone?
Perhaps that was the easiest way to live—believing that whatever you did could be justified as long as you remained the hero inside your own head.
By the time Alma reached her apartment, the little energy she had possessed was gone.
She collapsed onto the couch.
“I want to do absolutely nothing.”
Her eyes had barely closed when a notification sounded.
Alma groaned.
Her phone was lying on the coffee table, several inches beyond her reach. She extended one arm.
Her fingers grasped at empty air.
She stretched farther, sliding toward the edge of the couch until her body slipped off and landed heavily on the floor.
She remained there for a moment.
“Great...”
Without standing, she reached up and grabbed the phone.
A message from Adam waited on the screen.
Be at the bar tonight at eight. Don’t be late.
Alma stared at it.
“Mierda.”
She let her head fall back against the floor.
“I thought I had the night off.”
There was no point replying. Adam had never considered silence an invitation for negotiation.
“He’d better pay me double.”
She climbed back onto the couch and collapsed for the second time that day.
Only a few hours remained before eight.
The apartment settled around her. Pipes groaned inside the walls. The refrigerator hummed. Someone moved across the floor above her, each footstep faint and distant.
It had been several months since Alma had managed to move out and begin living alone. Adam had helped make it possible.
She knew she should be grateful.
She was grateful.
But gratitude could become a chain when someone reminded you of it often enough.
This is the first time I’ve ever lived by myself.
She stared at the ceiling.
I have all this freedom now.
The word felt unfamiliar.
Freedom was supposed to feel light, wasn’t it?
Instead, it felt like standing in front of an unlocked door and waiting for someone to slam it shut.
She could eat whenever she wanted. Sleep wherever she wanted. Leave her clothes on the floor. Sit in silence.
No one watched her.
At least, no one she could see.
I don’t know whether I’m supposed to feel free or terrified.
The apartment was quiet.
It was the kind of quiet she had always wanted.
Yet some nights, silence did not feel like peace. It felt like the pause before something began.
“I need to get my life together somehow.”
Her thoughts tangled until exhaustion pulled her under. The television remained on, casting pale flashes across the room.
In her dream, Alma stood somewhere dark.
There were no car horns.
No voices.
No instructions.
No cameras.
Nothing demanded that she move.
Nothing asked her to become someone else.
She could not see her own hands, but she knew they were clean.
The darkness held her gently.
For once, she did not feel watched.
Then she opened her eyes.
The apartment was almost completely dark.
Alma looked at the clock.
7:35 p.m.
“Fuck!”
She launched herself from the couch.
“I fell asleep.”
She changed clothes, dragged a brush through her hair, grabbed her jacket, and rushed out of the apartment.
“Subway, then walking,” she muttered as she hurried down the stairs. “Twenty minutes if nothing goes wrong.”
On the subway platform, Alma checked the time repeatedly and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Dozens of people waited around her, all wearing the same hollow expression of urban impatience.
The digital sign announced that the next train would arrive in five minutes.
Five minutes felt personal.
By the time she emerged from the station, the sun was disappearing behind the buildings. Orange light spilled between the streets, stretching shadows across the pavement.
The evening crowd had begun to thin, giving Alma room to move quickly.
She might still make it.
She increased her pace.
As she passed an alley, movement caught the corner of her eye.
Three teenage boys had surrounded someone beside a dumpster.
Alma slowed.
One of them shoved the person backward. He fell onto a pile of garbage bags, which split beneath his weight.
“Nice camera,” one of the boys said. “You won’t mind if we borrow it, right?”
The others laughed.
Their victim remained on the ground, staring at them as if he had understood the danger but not the words.
“He’s so scared he can’t even fight back,” another boy said.
“Relax, amigo. We won’t hurt you. Just give us the backpack.”
The victim spoke quickly in a foreign language.
Alma stopped several feet from the alley.
She was late.
This was not her problem.
The city was filled with people who had perfected the art of turning someone else’s suffering into background noise. She could do the same.
She should do the same.
The young man attempted to stand.
One of the thieves planted a shoe against his shoulder and forced him back onto the garbage bags.
“What don’t you understand, idiot? Give me the backpack.”
Another boy grabbed the young man’s belongings and emptied them onto the pavement. A camera case, several papers, a wallet, and small personal items struck the dirty concrete.
The thief picked up the wallet and slipped it into his pocket.
The young man reached for it.
A fist struck him across the face.
His head snapped to the side, and his body slammed against the ground.
Alma’s jaw tightened.
“He doesn’t understand you, Paco,” one of the boys said. “I think he’s actually foreign.”
The tallest of them smiled.
“Fine. I’ll speak a language everyone understands.”
He pulled a pocketknife from his jacket.
The blade caught the last light of the evening.
For half a second, the alley changed.
It flattened inside Alma’s mind—the frightened victim, the boy above him, the knife at his throat. Every figure settled into place as though arranged for a camera.
A frame.
A performance.
A feed waiting to begin.
Alma blinked.
There was no screen.
No audience.
Only a trembling young man and three boys who had no idea what they were doing.
The knife pressed against his throat.
Alma exhaled.
She stepped into the alley.
The nearest teenager barely had time to turn before she caught his wrist. She twisted his arm behind his back and swept one foot beneath his ankle.
His body struck the pavement.
He cried out.
The second boy rushed toward her.
Alma drove her shoulder into his chest and sent him backward into the dumpster. Metal rang through the alley as he collapsed beside it, gasping for air.
Everything became quiet.
The boy holding the knife stared at her.
Alma kept the first teenager pinned beneath her.
“What a pathetic way to steal from someone,” she said. “Aren’t you boys supposed to be in school learning fractions or some shit?”
“This doesn’t concern you,” the armed boy said. His voice cracked slightly. “Move along, lady.”
“Let him go.”
Alma released the boy beneath her and stood.
“He clearly doesn’t understand Spanish,” she continued. “We don’t need him leaving with an even worse impression of the country. Idiots like you already give us a bad name”
The teenager’s face hardened.
“You think this is funny?”
“Not particularly.”
“Go back to the kitchen before I cut you open like the fat pig you are.”
Alma looked down at herself.
“Fat?”
The boy’s grip tightened around the knife.
“That was unnecessarily hurtful.”
She spread her arms slightly, leaving her body exposed.
“Go ahead, then. Charge at me.”
He hesitated.
That was the part people never expected.
They understood pleading. Crying. Anger. Those reactions made sense.
An invitation did not.
The boy glanced at his friends. One was still on the ground holding his wrist. The other struggled to breathe beside the dumpster.
Alma stood in front of him with an expression so empty that it seemed carved into her face.
His knife hand began to tremble.
She noticed the sweat along his fingers.
Poor grip.
Too much tension in the shoulder.
Eyes fixed on her face instead of her center.
He had never stabbed anyone before.
Still clutching the stolen camera in his other hand, he charged.
The blade moved toward Alma’s face.
She stepped to the side.
Her body reacted before fear had time to exist.
She caught his wrist, forced the weapon away, and drove her elbow into the side of his head.
The knife struck the pavement.
Then the boy followed.
His body collapsed beside it, and the camera slipped from his hand.
Silence returned to the alley.
Alma stood over him, breathing steadily.
She should have been frightened.
Her hands should have been shaking.
Instead, she was irritated that the camera might have been damaged.
The other two boys scrambled toward their unconscious friend. They dragged him upright and stumbled away, one of them limping as they disappeared into the street.
Alma did not follow them.
She picked up the camera and inspected it.
Expensive.
Far too expensive to be carried openly through that part of the city.
This idiot was practically asking to be robbed.
She turned toward the young man.
He was still sitting among the torn garbage bags. A red mark had formed across his cheek, and his breathing came too quickly.
Alma extended her hand.
He stared at it.
For a moment, he looked less like someone deciding whether to accept help and more like someone trying to understand why it had been offered.
Finally, he placed his hand in hers.
Alma pulled him upright.
He was much taller than he had appeared on the ground. Dark hair fell across his forehead, and his clothes were now streaked with dirt. He looked from Alma to the unconscious space where his attackers had been.
Then he looked back at her.
His expression changed.
Something opened in his face—relief, disbelief, and an emotion too immediate for Alma to recognize.
He bowed deeply.
Then he began speaking in a language she did not understand.
The words came quickly. His eyes were wide, almost shining, and he gestured toward her, the alley, and the direction the teenagers had fled.
Despite everything that had happened, he seemed excited.
His wallet and backpack were gone, but he still had his phone. He pulled it from his pocket with unsteady hands and opened a translation application.
He spoke into it.
A few seconds later, a mechanical Spanish voice said:
“Thank you for helping me. Everyone passed, but you saw me. I thought I would die here.”
Alma looked toward the street.
Several people were walking beyond the mouth of the alley.
No one looked inside.
“I saw the knife,” she said.
He stared at her, waiting.
Alma pointed toward the phone.
“Oh.”
He held it closer.
She repeated herself.
“I saw the knife. That’s all. Also, I hate an unfair fight”
The young man listened and then shook his head.
He spoke again.
The phone translated:
“You still stopped.”
Alma did not know how to answer that.
Perhaps because she did not know why she had stopped either.
She handed him the camera.
“Be more careful next time. It's scratched, but I think it still works”
He accepted it with both hands, holding it close to his chest.
After translating her warning, he spoke again.
“How did you manage to win that fight?”
He hesitated before continuing.
“It is embarrassing. I am not brave like you.”
The application showed that his words were being translated from Korean.
Alma looked at the swelling on his cheek.
“I’m not that brave,” she said.
The statement left her mouth too quickly.
She looked away.
“Brave people are afraid first.”
He did not seem to understand, even after the phone translated it.
Neither did she.
“I’m just glad they didn’t hurt you badly,” Alma added.
She spoke the sentence into his phone.
While the application processed her words, Alma noticed the time in the upper corner of the screen.
Her eyes widened.
“Oh, fuck.”
The young man looked alarmed.
“No—not you.” Alma pointed at the time. “I’m late.”
She pushed the phone back into his hand.
“Be careful. Don’t carry that camera openly unless you want someone to steal it again.”
The translation played.
He nodded rapidly.
Alma turned to leave.
The young man reached toward her, stopping just before his hand touched her arm.
He spoke urgently.
Alma glanced back.
His phone translated:
“Will I see you again?”
The question caught her off guard.
“Maybe, this city is big,” she said.
Before he could translate anything else, she ran.
The stranger remained at the entrance of the alley, holding the camera against his chest and watching until she disappeared into the evening crowd.
Alma ran as though the city itself were chasing her.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck. I’m in so much trouble.”
Her lungs burned. Her sneakers struck the pavement in a frantic rhythm.
She turned the corner and nearly collided with another pedestrian.
“Hope they don’t cut any of my body parts as punishment...Hahaha.” A breathless laugh escaped her.
It was supposed to be a joke.
The worst part was that she was not entirely joking.
