The November cold bit through my jacket as I leaned against the concrete wall, watching the warehouse across the street. Four weeks in Neukölln had taught me that winter crept in fast here, slipping between the industrial buildings like smoke. The streetlights cast uneven pools of yellow on the cracked asphalt, and the air carried the smell of diesel and Turkish coffee from the all-night café two blocks over.

I pulled my phone from my pocket.

11:47 p.m.

Still nothing.

The work wasn't glamorous. Watch the loading dock. Note who comes and goes. Report back with license plates and timestamps. Cash payment, no questions. The kind of job that existed in the spaces between legal and illegal, where a nineteen-year-old girl with no papers could blend into the shadows.

Because that's what I'd become. Not Alan anymore… not really. Alan was the voice in my head, the analytical mind that catalogued details and spotted patterns. But the body that sat on this cold concrete belonged to someone else. Someone young enough to look harmless. Someone attractive enough that men didn't look too closely at what she was actually doing.

A van pulled up to the warehouse. Dark blue, license plate starting with B-TK. I made a mental note and checked the time again.

11:52 p.m.

The driver stepped out: heavyset, beanie pulled low. He knocked on the service door in a pattern: three short, two long, one short. The door opened, casting a rectangle of orange light onto the street. Someone handed him a small package. Thirty seconds later, he was gone.

I typed the details into my phone, fingers moving quickly despite the cold. This job paid enough for another week in the hostel, maybe two if I was careful with food. The hostels in Neukölln didn't ask many questions either, especially when you paid in advance and kept quiet.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Forty-four years of corporate life, and now I was making a living as a nineteen-year-old lookout. But this body… her body, opened doors that mine never could have. Young women were invisible in certain ways. Overlooked. Underestimated.

And sometimes, that was exactly what you needed to survive.

A police car turned the corner, moving slowly. I shifted position, pulling out my phone like I was texting someone. Just another girl waiting for a ride home from a late shift.

The cruiser passed without slowing.

I settled back against the wall and resumed my watch. Two more hours until my shift ended, then I could disappear back into the maze of Neukölln's side streets.

Replacement arriving. 10 min.

Relief flooded through me. My shoulders dropped, and I felt that familiar urge to stand up and stretch. Four hours crouched against this wall had left my legs cramped and my back aching.

Wait…

The thought came sharp and clear, cutting through the relief. I forced myself to stay still, phone still in my hands like I was reading something important. A figure appeared at the far end of the street, moving with deliberate casualness toward the intersection. A youngish man, maybe late twenties or early thirties, hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.

My replacement.

Every instinct wanted to get up, wave him over, maybe even smile. I was eager to be done, to head back to the hostel and the promise of a hot shower. But my mind held firm.

Don't move. Don't acknowledge him. Wait.

The man crossed the intersection, glancing once toward the warehouse before continuing down the side street. Professional. He'd taken over without making contact, just as planned.

A taxi slowed at the traffic light on the main street, its yellow light cutting through the darkness.

Now.

I stood up, waving at the taxi like I'd been waiting for it all along.

~oO🐺Oo~

I walked three blocks before allowing myself to glance back. A new habit, born from decades spent devouring spy novels, imagining that every shadow and doorway could hide a threat. Now it had a sharper purpose: less fantasy, more survival.

The street behind me stretched empty under the yellow streetlights, broken only by the occasional parked car and graffiti-tagged doorway. No one is following. No one is paying attention to a girl in a too-large jacket walking alone at midnight.

Good.

The Turkish bakery sat wedged between a closed auto shop and a pharmacy, its windows glowing warm against the November cold. Güneş Fırını was painted in faded gold letters above the door. Inside, I could see the owner behind the counter, reading a newspaper spread across the glass case filled with börek and baklava.

I pushed through the door, bell chiming softly. The smell hit me immediately: fresh bread, strong coffee, and the lingering sweetness of honey pastries. After four hours in the cold watching that warehouse, the warmth felt like absolution.

"Guten Abend." The owner looked up from his paper, a man in his fifties with graying hair and tired eyes that had seen plenty of late-night customers. He didn't seem surprised to see a young woman walking in alone at this hour.

"Hi. Coffee, please. And one of those." I pointed at the börek, my voice coming out softer than I intended. Her voice, pitched higher, with that slight upturn that made everything sound like a question.

"The spinach one? Gute Wahl. Long night?"

"Work." I pulled a ten euro note from my pocket, crumpled from hours pressed against the warehouse wall. "You know how it is, ja."

He nodded, understanding passing between us without explanation. Night shift workers had their own unspoken code in Neukölln. We kept each other's secrets.

I took my coffee and pastry to a small table against the back wall, settling into the plastic chair with my back to the corner. From here, I could watch the door, the street, and anyone who might walk past the windows.

The börek was still warm, flaky pastry giving way to spinach and cheese. I ate slowly, methodically, making it last. Tomorrow I'd have enough for another week at the hostel, but tonight I was just another invisible face in the city's margins.

~oO🐺Oo~

I was halfway through the last bite of my börek when a shadow fell across the table.

“Darf ich?” a low, gravelly voice asked. German, with the rough edges of the city in its cadence. My head snapped up. A man stood there, mid-sixties perhaps, wiry but carrying himself with a quiet certainty that made me instinctively lean back. His eyes, deep-set and sharp, studied me with a patience that was almost unsettling.

He gestured to the empty chair opposite me. “Is this seat taken?”

I shook my head, though my fingers tightened around the coffee cup. My pulse picked up a notch. The smell of old leather and cigarette smoke clung faintly to him, subtle but unmistakable.

He lowered himself into the chair without hurry, eyes never leaving mine. The quiet confidence in his movements, the way he carried himself, set him apart from the usual late-night strangers.

Observe. Analyze. Not polizei. Definitely not random.

“I’m Wolf,” he said, voice calm, almost conversational. “Wolfgang to those who need a name.” He allowed a faint, almost imperceptible smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Verstehst?”

I nodded cautiously, unsure how much to reveal, how much was safe. Inside, I was cataloguing everything: the way he leaned, the subtle tension in his shoulders, the almost imperceptible scanning of the room before he sat.

“Long night?” he asked, eyes flicking to my empty coffee cup and the crumbs of my pastry.

“Work,” I said, keeping my tone light, casual. The single word felt heavier than it should.

He hummed softly, leaning back. “I’ve been watching,” he said, casual, almost as if commenting on the weather. My stomach lurched. “Keine Sorge. Not in a… wrong way. Just… careful. I like to see what I’m dealing with before I speak.”

I blinked, processing. My body was tense, every sense alert. Not a threat. Calculating. Testing.

Wolf smiled faintly, a shadow of amusement crossing his face. “You move through the city… quietly. Efficiently. I like that. Not easy to find someone who does things without drawing attention.” He paused, letting the words hang. “Ich habe… opportunities. For someone discreet. Someone who knows how to be unnoticed.”

I swallowed. The warmth of the bakery felt different now, almost like a trapdoor had opened beneath the calm glow. My pulse raced: not fear, exactly, but the same thrill of attention I hadn’t felt in weeks.

I nodded slowly, letting the caution settle over me like a second skin. “Opportunities?” I asked, keeping my tone neutral, almost curious.

Wolf leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing with a subtle intensity. “Yes. The kind you don’t see coming. But the kind you notice… if you’re careful.”

He paused, then extended a hand across the table, calm and deliberate. “Und… your name?”

I let the pause stretch, just long enough to savor it. Clever, I thought. Still me, only sharper. A neat little trick I’d tucked away, waiting for the right moment. My mouth curved before the word even left my lips.

“Lana,” I said, steady and casual, as if I hadn’t just handed over a riddle in plain sight.

I reached out, letting our hands meet. His grip was firm, measured: not overbearing, not weak. Respectful, professional.

“Lana…” he repeated, letting the name roll off his tongue. “Good.” A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, subtle but approving.

And just like that, the quiet night in Neukölln had shifted. The warmth, the pastries, the streetlights… it was all background now.

The game had changed.

~oO🐺Oo~

From the street, it looked ordinary, just another reihenhaus: narrow and brick-faced, pressed tight against its neighbors. Laundry lines sagged in a yard down the row, and the faint rattle of the S-Bahn carried over from the tracks that cut past Sonnenallee. Nothing about it marked the place as different from the dozens of others lining the block. Which was, I suspected, exactly the point.

Wolf unlocked the front door with a practiced turn, stepping into the dim hallway that smelled faintly of plaster dust and cigarette smoke. The renovations were halfway done: new wiring exposed along the skirting, fresh paint masking but not quite hiding the decades of wear. The house was old bones dressed in a fresh coat, just believable enough to blend in.

I carried my bag up the narrow staircase. From the first-floor landing came the murmur of voices: German, Turkish, Polish, layered with the low thump of bass from a radio. Male laughter, sudden and sharp, broke across it.

The crew.

They weren’t lounging. They sat in a small group across the wide first-floor room that had once been a family living space, men in their late twenties to forties. Wolf’s choosing. They spoke quietly, smoked, cleaned gear, and played cards without distraction. Not a gang of strays, but operators.

The air shifted when they noticed me. Conversations stilled. Heads turned. A few seconds of silence weighed heavier than any shouted challenge.

The room fell quiet when they noticed me: a bag over my shoulder, a girl in a too-large jacket standing in the doorway. Their stares weren’t leering, not exactly, but edged with hostility. Disbelief. Why her?

Wolf was at my side, quiet but absolute.

“Komm,” he said, moving me forward.

One muttered, sharp in German: Warum sie? Another snorted. The tone was ugly, but Wolf didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

He led me down a short corridor, past a row of doors, until he stopped at one. He unlocked it, swung it open. “Yours.”

The room was small, but private. A narrow bed, a battered desk, a wardrobe that might have been lifted from a flea market. And at the far wall— a door. A bathroom. Cramped, tiled, but mine.

“The others share,” Wolf said, leaning in the frame. His eyes were steady, unreadable. “They don’t like this arrangement. But I like quiet. You understand?”

I nodded. My mind was already weighing the advantages: privacy, a lock on the door, space to think without eyes on me. Lana’s body, though, tensed with unease, remembering the charged silence in that living room.

Wolf tapped the frame once with his knuckles, more signal than gesture. “Settle in. Tomorrow we begin. Verstehste?”

And then he was gone, leaving me in a room that was refuge and cage, both at once.

~oO🐺Oo~

The bathroom was barely wider than the tub itself, white tiles cracked at the edges, a single frosted window letting in the glow of the streetlights outside. But to me, it felt like a sanctuary. My own space. My own lock on the door.

I turned the tap, listening to the water rush and echo off the walls. Steam gathered quickly, curling against the mirror, blurring my reflection until only a vague outline stared back. A stranger’s silhouette.

My clothes came off in layers, damp from the night air, still carrying the smoke of the crew’s cigarettes, the flour-dust warmth of the bakery. I folded them without thinking, old habits, neat, deliberate, before stepping into the rising water.

Heat wrapped around me, a sharp contrast that made my skin prickle. I sank slowly, watching goosebumps vanish under the surface. Muscles unclenched, my body loosening in ways I hadn’t realized it had been holding tight all evening.

I let my head rest against the rim of the tub, eyes closing. For the first time since the warehouse, since Wolf, since the stares of the men downstairs, I was alone. Untouchable. Safe, in a way only four tiled walls and a locked door could provide.

My mind catalogued sensations: the slide of water over skin, the way breasts floated just beneath the surface, the shifting weight between thighs. Different. Intriguing. Data points I couldn’t ignore.

But the body, her body, didn’t care about analysis. It responded instinctively: to warmth, to touch, to the absence of eyes. To the sudden, startling freedom of being able to let go.

I ran my hands along my arms, just to feel. Down to my stomach, the subtle curve of my waist, the softness that still surprised me every time I noticed it. My breath slowed, deepened.

In that moment, I wasn’t Alan-the-observer or Lana-the-lookout. I was something in between, dissolving in the heat, learning what it meant to inhabit this shape fully.

And for the first time that night, I let myself simply feel.

~oO🐺Oo~

The water lapped against my collarbone, steam curling up into the dim light. For the first time since Wolf had hauled me into this place, I could breathe without listening for footsteps in the hall. My own room. A lock on the door. I hadn’t realized how much tension I’d been carrying until it drained out with each exhale.

I let my hands drift. Not Lana’s hands, mine. At least that’s how I tried to think of them. Smaller now, slimmer, but still directed by me.

When my fingertips slid over my thigh, I almost pulled away. The smoothness jarred me every time. No coarse hair, no familiar shape. It was like touching someone else in the dark and convincing myself it was fine. I pressed harder, tracing the muscle underneath, reminding myself that I was in there.

Curiosity edged me further. My palm rested lower, hovering where I knew the difference waited. My heart thumped, ridiculous and loud in my ears. It wasn’t like I hadn’t imagined this moment before, but imagining and feeling were worlds apart.

When I finally touched myself— really touched, it wasn’t a spark so much as a rearranging of the whole map. A nerve lit up where no nerve had ever been. My breath stumbled. It didn’t feel wrong. Just… alien. Like opening a door into a room I hadn’t known existed inside me.

I froze there, hand suspended under the water, waiting to see if it would fade. It didn’t. The sensation pulsed, insistent, demanding more.

And the strangest part? That hunger didn’t feel borrowed. It felt mine.

I tried to approach it methodically, the way I approached everything. Pressure here, a circle there. Testing responses. Collecting data.

But my body didn’t want data. It wanted momentum.

Each stroke sent a shiver climbing my spine, and soon my careful rhythm slipped, fingers moving with their own urgency. I told myself to slow down, to observe, but the observation blurred. I wasn’t charting the response anymore. I was in it.

My hips shifted upward of their own accord, breaking the still water into ripples. I caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror: damp skin, flushed face, lips parted in a sound I hadn’t meant to make. For a heartbeat, I didn’t recognize the woman staring back.

And that was when something shifted.

The thoughts in my head, the constant cataloguing, comparing, correcting, grew fainter under the rush of sensation. A higher, breathier voice threaded through instead, not spoken aloud but felt.

Yes. Like that. Don’t stop.

It startled me, but I didn’t stop. Couldn’t. My hand moved faster, smoother, no longer tentative. Pleasure tightened through me, each pulse louder than the last, drowning out logic.

It wasn’t surrender, exactly. More like being carried.

Alan was still there, stunned and watchful. But Lana was rising through the steam and the water, taking the lead as naturally as breath.

Her hand didn’t feel like mine anymore. The movements were too assured, too fluid. My pulse beat hard in my ears as water lapped against porcelain, every shift of hips sending new waves outward.

This isn’t you, I told myself. You’re just experimenting, that’s all.

But the body answered differently. Fingers slid lower, found a rhythm I hadn’t dared. A low sound escaped my throat, not the groan I knew, but something softer, higher, almost needy.

Panic edged in. I tried to still my hand, to clamp down, to slow it. But my grip loosened uselessly, as though some other will had slipped beneath mine.

Alan. The name drifted like smoke, somewhere between thought and whisper. You’ve had your turn. Let me breathe.

I jerked at that, chest tight, trying to rally, to reclaim the deliberate pace I’d set. But the body didn’t obey. My hips rolled, legs spreading wider, the bathwater sliding higher up my belly. Pleasure pressed sharp and insistent, tightening inside me, dragging me forward whether I allowed it or not.

I felt myself receding, watching from a step behind, as if seated in the second row of my own skin. Lana moved now: slower, yes, but sure, savoring every drag of fingertip, every tightening curl of muscle. She wasn’t hurried. She was claiming.

I wanted to protest, to reason my way back into control. Instead, I gasped, nails grazing my thigh, the sound spilling into the tiled air… hers, not mine.

The water was too hot, or maybe I was. Steam clung to my skin, every droplet magnified until even the glide of air across my shoulders felt electric. My breath came ragged, shallow, like I was already chasing something I hadn’t meant to start.

Stop. Slow down, Alan! You're in control.

But that was the lie, wasn’t it? My fingers didn’t listen. They moved with a certainty that wasn’t mine, circling deeper, pressing where I hadn’t dared to press. Each motion set off a chain reaction: thighs tightening, stomach fluttering, breasts shifting under the water in a way that sent sparks racing up my spine.

It was too much. Too raw. Male orgasms had been urgent and simple. This was a maze of sensation, layers folding over one another, endless. Every nerve wanted, every nerve screamed.

I tried to pull back, to deaden it, but the body surged forward anyway. My hips lifted slightly off the porcelain, water spilling in little waves. My mouth opened: a gasp, then a moan, foreign and intimate all at once. It didn’t sound like me. It sounded like her.

Alan… let go.

The words weren’t heard so much as felt, rising from the same place as the heat between my legs. Lana’s presence, insistent, coaxing, wrapping around me.

“No,” I hissed through clenched teeth, but it broke into another moan, traitorous, trembling. My fingers slipped faster, harder, chasing something inevitable.

The world shrank to that point of pressure, that aching knot unraveling inside me. My vision blurred, head tipping back against the porcelain, breath coming in short, helpless gasps. I wasn’t guiding this anymore. I was being carried, swept under by the current of a body that wasn’t mine but was, every nerve commanding surrender.

And then it hit. Not sharp and explosive like before, but a rolling wave that tore through me, crest after crest, until I couldn’t tell where Alan ended and Lana began. My cries filled the tiled room, higher, softer, unstoppable.

When it finally ebbed, I was trembling, half-submerged, hair plastered to my forehead, fingers limp against my thigh. My chest heaved, water rippling with each breath.

And beneath the exhaustion, beneath the fading pulses of pleasure, a truth I didn’t want to admit settled in: Lana had taken more than the moment. She had tasted freedom. And I wasn’t sure I could take it back.

~oO🐺Oo~

The lock clicked shut behind me, and the corridor felt colder than it had before. I walked toward the main room, my footsteps muted against the worn floorboards.

The crew was there, same as earlier. Cigarette smoke drifted above them, card games scattered across battered tables, low murmurs in half a dozen languages. But the moment I appeared, the atmosphere shifted. Not silence this time… something tighter. Eyes lifted, conversations faltered.

I kept my face neutral, reminding myself to catalog details: who leaned back with arms crossed, who narrowed their eyes, who smirked as though already planning their joke.

And then it came. A man at the far side, mid-thirties, Turkish maybe, leaned forward on his chair, a grin cutting sharply through the haze. His voice carried easily across the room:

“Next time,” he said, voice pitched just loud enough to carry, “Moan louder, huh? Let the rest of us… the whole kiez, have some fun with it.”

The room cracked into laughter: short, ugly bursts that didn’t last long enough to be real. Testing. Watching me.

I felt heat rise to my cheeks, Lana’s body betraying me before I could think. My instinct was to hold steady, to give them nothing, let the moment pass. But before I could lock it down, I heard myself say it— sharp, bright, cutting through the smoke like glass:

“Next time I’ll bring a microphone. Didn’t realize you were that desperate for a show, ja?”

Silence.

Followed by a few scattered chuckles, as the grin on his face faltered.

I hadn’t expected that at all. The audacity, the clarity… it was all hers, and I watched, half in disbelief, half in awe. Lana had slipped off the leash for a second, her voice carrying the edge of a joke that was anything but safe.

And in the space that followed, Wolf didn’t intervene. He just watched… smiling.

The chuckles died down, awkwardly clipped, like someone had stepped on the tail of a sleeping dog. I felt the eyes shift back to me, assessing, recalibrating. Small victories measured in seconds, microshifts in power.

A younger man, maybe early twenties, with a baseball cap tilted low, leaned forward. His voice was softer this time, cautious. “Careful,” he said, half warning, half challenge. “You got a sharp tongue for someone new here, nicht schlecht.”

I tilted my head slightly, the posture natural, easy. Alan noted the tension coiling in the room, how the older men were still watching, how Wolf hadn’t said a word. The silence Wolf allowed was heavier than any command.

“Sharp enough to notice when people are full of themselves, ja,” I replied, voice steady, clear, projecting just the right mix of irreverence and calm. The words came out naturally; hers, not mine.

A ripple ran through the table. One of the men snorted, a low, grudging sort of laugh, almost respect. Another muttered something in German, clipped, and leaned back. Testing, testing again. I catalogued it all. Who moved their hands, who shifted their weight, who avoided my gaze.

Then a long shadow stretched across the room.

Wolf rose from his seat slowly, deliberately. Everyone froze, including me, though I didn’t move. He glanced at the younger man with the baseball cap, and something in his expression: sharp, cold, and patient, made him straighten up as if yanked by an invisible line.

Wolf’s eyes flicked to me, just for a fraction of a second, and I felt it: acknowledgment. Approval, even. Not praise. Not warmth. A signal that I had passed the first small test. The leash could stretch a little further without breaking.

“Good,” Wolf said, voice low, calm, carrying weight without effort. “You understand… boundaries. But you also… speak when necessary. I like that, ja.”

The words hung in the smoke-thick air, and the room exhaled slowly. The men relaxed, some leaning back, others keeping one eye on me, measuring, recalculating. The tension didn’t disappear, but it shifted. I could feel it in the subtle movements, in the tiny exhalations of smoke, in the way a few chairs scraped lightly against the floor.

I didn’t smile. Not fully. But a small, imperceptible curl tugged at the corner of Lana’s lips anyway, and I catalogued that too. Victory wasn’t loud. It didn’t have to be. It was in the quiet recalibration, the tiny acknowledgment that she… we, weren't just invisible.

And for the first time since the bakery, the warehouse, and Wolf… it felt like I had a measure of control. Or at least, a sense that Lana and I, together, might just be able to navigate this world without breaking entirely.