I reached the outskirts of Washington sometime after midnight, driving on fumes and paranoia, both of which are cheaper than gas these days. The sky was a duller blue now—like it was embarrassed to be seen loitering over the capital after hours.
Birds lined the highway signs like punctuation marks in a sentence the government didn’t want anyone to finish. They watched me drive by with the deadpan intensity of jaded bureaucrats stuck in eternal committee meetings.
One particularly self-righteous pigeon almost saluted.
THE MOTEL WHERE TIME REFUSED TO CHECK IN
I checked into a motel whose carpets smelled like democracy left out in the rain. The clerk didn’t ask for ID—just stared at me with a weary sympathy usually reserved for widows and whistleblowers.
“The city’s different tonight,” he said.
“In what way?” I asked.
“In all of them.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but it felt prophetic enough to accept without argument.
I dumped my bag, collapsed on the bed, and listened to the AC wheeze like a dying senator filibustering in its sleep.
Before I could rest, my phone buzzed. My secret lover.
Don’t go anywhere alone.
Especially not where the birds gather at night.
Especially not near federal buildings.
Which, of course, meant that I immediately went toward federal buildings where birds gathered at night. That’s the curse of being a young reporter—you follow danger the way moths follow porch lights and bad poets follow heartbreak.
THE SHADOW OF THE CAPITOL IS LONGER AT NIGHT
D.C. after midnight is its own creature—slick marble, too-bright lamp posts, and the faint smell of ambition simmering in the humidity. A few suited bureaucrats scurried across the plaza like political beetles, holding briefcases the size of existential dread.
I felt watched.
Then I realized:
Everyone is watched in this city. That’s the point.
A flock of starlings circled above the Capitol dome in a perfect, geometric pattern—an ouroboros of wings. Too precise. Too rehearsed. Like they were performing for someone with a clipboard.
A man in a government windbreaker approached me.
“You lost?” he asked, but in a tone that suggested he hoped the answer was yes, because then he could file paperwork about it.
“Looking for meaning,” I said.
He snorted. “Wrong town for that.”
He walked away, feeding crumbs to the starlings as if they were employees on break.
THE RENDEZVOUS
I turned down an alley behind a federal annex and found her leaning against a lamppost—my secret lover, wearing a trench coat like he was auditioning for his own mystery.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said.
“You said not to come alone,” I replied. “So I came to find you.”
“You misunderstand me on purpose.”
He stepped closer, the lamplight drawing silver lines through his hair. If the sky was losing color tonight, he was collecting all of it for himself.
“There are briefings happening,” he whispered. “Late-night ones. Off the books. Something about ‘avian behavioral anomalies.’ Something about unusual movement near the West Wing.”
“Birds spying?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Birds organizing.”
I blinked. “That’s worse.”
“Yes,” he said, “and they don’t want the public to panic. The election’s too close. They need stability. Or at least the appearance of it.”
We walked together through the dim streets, brushing shoulders like teenagers pretending not to want what they clearly wanted.
“Are you in trouble?” I asked.
“Aren’t we all?” he said, and kissed me with the desperation of someone who knows the window is closing.
The birds above us screeched in perfect unison, as if marking the moment for archival purposes.
THE MESSAGE UNDER THE BRIDGE
We ended up beneath a bridge, where graffiti bled across concrete in neon confessions. A homeless man slept nearby, using a stack of shredded government documents as a pillow.
My lover pointed to a symbol painted on the underpass: a crude bird silhouette inside a triangle.
“They’re popping up everywhere,” he said. “People think it’s street art. It’s not.”
“What is it then?”
“A warning.”
Pause.
“Or a countdown.”
I asked him what the birds wanted. He didn’t answer.
Instead he pressed a small, sealed envelope into my hand.
“Everything you think you know about surveillance is wrong,” he said. “And everything you’ve been ignoring is right.”
Then he vanished into the night the way he always did—no footsteps, no goodbye, just the faint scent of danger and citrus shampoo.
Above me, the birds shifted formation—tightening, rearranging, watching.
And for the first time since I left California, the sky turned a shade of blue I didn’t recognize.
Not natural.
Not man-made.
Something else.
Something paying attention.