Archive of Our Own ^beta

Everything had been fine an hour ago.

Danny catches himself on a tree trunk. His heart is pounding in his chest so hard it hurts, and he hates having to get used to it over and over again. 

He’s burning up from the inside, and when he reaches for the cold, it fizzles into nothing.

The woods echo with the sound of boots snapping over twigs. Further, distant shouts ring out—harsh and short, like dogs barking. He curls his fingers against the rough bark, not caring about the dull pain it dredges up. 

Fuck the Foundation, fuck their Mobile Task Forces, and fuck whatever they shot him with. It hurts—burning fingers coursing through his side, winding under his skin and blocking off his core.

He forces his body to move, stumbles over a tangle of roots. His limbs are heavy and uncooperative, but he has to keep going. Keep as much distance between him and them as he can. He has a big enough lead that he should be off their infrared scanners. 

They aren’t looking for him—not like this. 

Tree branches snag at his clothes as he pushes through, scraping across his face. His chest is tight, growing tighter; whether it’s because he can’t access his powers or because he’s sure there’s a box with a number on it just for him, he doesn’t know. 

If he’s honest with himself, it’s both.

He just has to make it into this town and try to blend in… with any luck, whatever this is will wear off and he’ll be a hundred miles away this time tomorrow. 

When he breaks the tree line, his hands and cheeks are stinging against the cool evening air. It’ll be dusk within the hour. 

The shadows are long languid shapes that creep along the ground. They whisper to him—a call he can’t answer. 

Danny hauls himself over a chain-link fence. The metal digs into his hands, and the effort makes his vision swim. Why didn’t he steal more from the last convenience store?

Whatever. Hindsight’s twenty-twenty and all that shit. He doesn’t have time.

The fence rattles against the poles as he drops down on the other side, wincing. His knees feel like they might buckle. It won’t take the task force long to comb the woods and realize he isn’t downed. 

He yanks his hood up over his head and cuts across a parking lot towards the closest building. The orange of the sky reflects in its windows. He skirts the outside, stepping up onto the sidewalk. He looks both directions. There’s a park down at the end of the street, occupied by a smattering of people and their dogs. Someone has a guitar, strumming and singing a song he can’t really hear. 

Danny knows a thing or two about small towns like this. The sleepy but always-watching type. 

He turns away from the park and towards what looks like the main drag. If he’s lucky, he’ll find a comic book store or arcade—somewhere he hopefully won’t look too out of place. 

He feels the absence of his powers like a gaping wound. Or maybe a lock box he can’t pry open. 

Dull, burning pain echoes down his arm at the thought, and he trips over his own feet, bumping into an empty chair outside a restaurant’s outdoor seating. People a few tables away turn to look at him, a mix of curiosity and suspicion. 

Shit. 

He says nothing—hunches his shoulders and pushes away from the restaurant. The smell of food begs him to come back. 

He clasps his right hand around his left wrist inside his hoodie’s pocket. He’ll worry about being hungry later. 

As he goes, he glances down alleys, but they’re offensively well-lit. Tidy, even, with murals painted on the walls. Fucking well-off little artsy towns. 

There’s a small women’s clothing store with racks set up outside the door. Sweaters and floral button-ups twist on their hooks in the evening breeze. The sound of car engines purr up and down the streets—crawling past him, gingerly parallel parking across the street. 

It’s all so mundane. 

An unmarked white van stops at an intersection two blocks ahead of him. 

Fuck. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Time to get off the street. 

A tremor goes through his hands. He glances left and right—down on the corner is a 7-Eleven. It’s better than nothing—better than the women’s boutique. His chest tightens and he keeps his head down. There’ll be cameras. 

He’s probably ended up on enough already. 

Hot dread soaks through him. He glances over his shoulder as he walks, hopes the van doesn’t turn this way—hopes they don’t have more cars—knows they do. 

Is it too much to hope that they can’t track his signature with his powers offline? Probably.

He picks up his pace across the street and pushes into the convenience store. The door chimes when he walks in and he casts a glance at the person behind the counter. They’re a middle-aged lady with wiry hair and dark makeup, looking like she’d rather be watching paint dry. There’s deep frown lines around her mouth. She says nothing to him when he comes in, but when she catches his eyes her shoulders hunch as if to protect her from a cold wind. 

He sidesteps the heavy door and tries to force himself to relax. Is he breathing too much or not enough? He has no idea. 

The fluorescent ceiling lights hum above him, washing everything in bleak too-bright light.

“—109.9 The Fox. The best place to listen to your favorite Top Forty Pop Hits—” the radio crackles down from the plastic ceiling speakers. A song starts that Danny’s never heard before.

He picks a middle aisle, staying away from the windows. The store is laid out like a hundred others; the fridges are at the walls, so he avoids them too. Would’ve gravitated towards their comforting chill otherwise.

Here, there’s dried goods. Packages of mixed nuts, beef jerky. Energy food. Danny stares numbly at the labels. Mango Habanero, Barbeque Mesquite, Aloha Hawaiian…

God. He’s hungry.

The cashier is looking out the window when Danny sneaks a glance. Follows her gaze. No vans pulling up on the curb.

Alright then. Not like he has any cash on him, but that shouldn’t be a problem. He reaches out—

The teriyaki beef crinkles gunshot loud as his left arm spasms and smacks it off the shelf. He sucks a pained breath through his teeth as his core contracts in protest. 

The lady at the counter looks up sharply.

He shoves the jerky back into place and tries to remember how to breathe. The radio station briefly spits static.

Right. No powers. No fucking powers, and no fucking money, so no fucking food. He ducks behind another shelf to break the lady’s line of sight. He can feel her eyes boring into his back now.

Fine. Screw it. He can starve a little while longer, so long as he can get through this—

He stops a few steps in when he sees he’s not alone. It’s a boy with brown hair, circles under his eyes and a stud in one earlobe. About his age, if Danny had to guess. Shorter than him, but sturdier. Even his stance is square.

He nearly backs away down a different aisle, but the stranger turns to glance at him, holding a colorful package of candy. 

Danny freezes as he looks him over. The stranger’s head tilts ever so slightly. He looks down at the candy in his hands and then back to Danny. He lifts an eyebrow. 

“Gummy worms?” he asks. 

For a second, Danny has to remind himself that this is real. That this person is talking to him. He doesn’t remember the last time he spoke to a living person. Actually, he doesn’t remember the last time he spoke, period. 

The stranger gives him a look. “Not a fan? What about gummy bears?”

“Huh?” he forces out. 

“Instead of the gummy worms. They’re basically the same thing, just smaller.” He stops to consider the candy lining the shelf. “Or, actually, d’you want peach rings, maybe?” 

Danny blinks. 

“…Y-you want to buy me candy?”

“Psh, sure. You look like you could use it. It’s not my money, anyway.” 

Danny just stands there. He almost wants to laugh. 

Here he is, one more malfunction away from spending the rest of his pitiful afterlife in a white box, and this guy wants to buy him—peach rings?

In the space where Danny fails to respond, the stranger goes back to browsing. His fingers skim over the bags, making them rustle. All Danny can think of is dry leaves. Packaged candy feels like something from another lifetime.

“Well, I’m getting gummy worms,” he muses, securing them in the crook of his elbow. He invites Danny’s input with another glance. “You gonna make me guess what you like?”

“Uh.”

“I’ll just close my eyes and grab something, and whatever it is is what you’re getting.”

“But—”

“Any allergies?”

“I…”

Danny takes too long to answer, so the stranger makes good on his threat of random selection. Knocks over several packets of Werther’s Original in the process. 

Danny flinches as they scatter to the ground, but miraculously, the bored lady tending the counter doesn’t manifest to start yelling.

“Congratulations,” the guy says, opening his eyes with a wry smile, “I hope you like Andes.”

Danny should say something. He doesn’t know what. “You can’t…”

“The twenties in my pocket say otherwise.”

Danny shakes his head. “I mean it. Don’t spend it on me.” 

He can’t buy anything himself, and stealing is off the table. That much is obvious. But he’ll be fine, as long as he can avoid them long enough for his powers to come back online. 

He only needs food when he’s human. The last year has had few enough human days that he doesn’t even need two hands to count them. 

He doesn’t plan on changing that any time soon.

So he just has to get through this.

Right. He just has to get through this.

“You’re not the boss of me,” Andes Guy says. Adding insult to injury, he snags a second bag of Andes, and after a moment, a duplicate bag of gummy worms, too.

“Hey,” Danny starts, but the guy pinches the edge of his sleeve between two fingers, and puts another finger to his own lips. 

Danny nearly jumps when he feels a chocolate bar soundlessly slipping into his hoodie’s pocket.

“Distraction,” Andes Guy mouths at him, lifting the chocolate mints and the gummy worms. “Prize,” he mouths after, pointing at Danny’s stomach. Out loud, he says, “It’s cool, man. I’ve got you covered.”

“Th-thanks,” Danny says, trying to play along.

Andes gives him a wry little smile. He speaks in a low tone, but his body language doesn’t change. “Pull your hood down and relax your shoulders. You’re a normal customer.” Presses a bill into his hand. “You pay for some, you pocket the rest.”

Danny feels the need to glance around the store for eavesdroppers, but resists it. “You—you’re helping me steal?”

“Uh, yeah, basically.” 

“Do you always encourage people to break the law?” he whispers.

Andes grins like a devil. “Only sometimes.” His smile softens. “When it looks like they need it.”

Danny looks over his shoulder once. No agents or vans through the window.

He tries to smile back. “Thanks? But—listen, I… I don’t need to add getting caught for petty theft to my rap sheet.”

Danny winces, withdraws.

Andes snorts softly. “Just worry about living long enough to have one at all.”

Danny is, quite literally, out of his element. As if he needed any more confirmation that he was out of practice with this stuff. 

Andes must attribute his hesitancy to the concept of stealing—as if Danny could still hold any moral high ground about that.

Andes pockets another slim chocolate bar and moves on to consider and subsequently disregard a packet of Five Gum, before sliding an impressive number of granola bars, one after the other, into the pockets of his own cargo pants. 

Danny represses the urge to look over his shoulder for the second time in less than a minute. Andes told him to look normal.

Andes is good at this, maybe too good.

“…Should I be worried about your rap sheet?”

“Oh, yeah. Definitely. It starts with arson and ends with second-degree murder, so you should be real intimidated.” Andes pauses. “Wait. Does blowing shit up count as arson?”

“You mean like… terrorism?”

“No, like—” Andes stops short, then groans. “Aw, fuck. I guess like terrorism. Damn.” Mutters to himself. “Not arson. What else starts with A?”

“…Aiding and abetting?”

“The Queen of England formally forgave those charges, actually.”

Danny stifles a snort. The Queen of England?

“I don’t think you have any criminal record, then.”

“Pity.” Andes sighs dramatically, spreading his arms. “Here I was, ready to start my supervillain origin story.”

“Dude, being British is a crime in and of itself. If you’re on speaking terms with the Queen, I think you’re already part of the way there. But…” Danny trails off. Something catches his eye. “We could cross arson off the list pretty easily.” He snags a misplaced lighter from between two Pringles cans and waggles it at Andes. “Check it.” 

Andes laughs, sudden and bright. “I like the way you think!” 

He holds a hand out and Danny smacks the Bic into Andes’ palm. For a moment, they grin at each other over it. 

There’s the prickle of something almost warm in Danny’s chest. It’s not unpleasant. 

Of course, like everything else, it doesn’t last. 

The door chimes, breaking the fragile bubble of calm Danny had found himself in. He turns towards the sound and his stomach bottoms out.

Walking into the store is a man with stiff posture and a slim tranquilizer gun strapped to his hip, along with a can of bear mace.  

“Sorry to bother you, ma’am, but have you seen or heard anything strange in the last half-hour or so?” 

“Fuck,” Danny hisses, backing up further into the aisle. 

The lady’s response is lost to the white noise buzzing through his eardrums.

He needs to leave.

He needs his invisibility, because the field agent—clearly a field agent, couldn’t be any more obvious about it if he was wearing a neon sign—is planted squarely between Danny and the way he came in. 

Should have checked for a back door. A window. An anything. His eyes dart sideways and all he clocks are solid things. Shelves, walls. Ceiling.

Never in his life has Danny felt more trapped. He envisions himself as a rat in a cage. A fox in a snare. 

An entity in a tidy white box.

He ducks his head, tugs his hood more closely around his face. His hands shake. Every inch of him is sickeningly heavy. Slow and clumsy. Human.

“Woah. You good?”

And he’s not alone.

The guy he’d been talking to has a worried crease between his eyebrows. Danny can’t focus on that. Instead, he attempts to watch the agent from the corner of his eye as he edges back, and tries to think.

The only thing his brain sees fit to provide is a vague nostalgic desire to say goodbye to the first living person he’s spoken to since—since. Doesn’t know what he’d say even if he tried. 

Thanks for the laugh, maybe.

The guy follows Danny’s gaze. Narrows his eyes on the agent, or maybe on the lady with her dark makeup as she twirls her hair around her finger and pretends to think. 

The distraction won’t last long; to anybody that’s not Danny, the agent probably looks inconsequential. Danny readies himself to bolt. If he’s fast enough, maybe he could make it out the door…

Instead, Andes mutters, in a very sudden and very British accent, “Aw, shite. That’s not good.”

And when he looks back at Danny, his expression is… considering. Gauging.

For a thunderous heartbeat, Danny just stares back. Deer in the headlights.

Andes jerks his head over his shoulder. “We should get out of here,” he says, sounding perfectly American again.

“What?” Danny can’t make himself move.

“Come on,” he says in a low tone, “follow my lead and keep your head down.” He nudges Danny’s elbow. Somehow, his feet unglue from the floor.

Andes leads them to the back with minimal noise. His eyes discreetly flicker to the windows, though his face is impassive. 

They make good headway away from the agent, who’s still questioning the lady, but then Andes slows midway through and appears to browse the products.

“Dude,” Danny whispers unsteadily, “what—”

Andes puts a quick hand on his elbow before looking back at the chips. “Chill, man.” He inclines his head slightly behind him.

Danny looks over his shoulder and his throat closes up.

There’s another suited agent on the street, visible through the windows at the end of their current row of shelves. She’s flipping through a notepad, questioning someone. The beady red eye of an ecto-meter stares at him from her belt. So does an ecto-gun. 

On the opposite side of the street, a white van rolls to stop.

If he’d run out the door, it would’ve been over right then and there.

He gets nudged again. Andes is moving towards a door marked ‘EMPLOYEES ONLY’. Danny starts to follow. Hope wells up in him—neither of the agents had spotted them yet, and they’ve almost disappeared out the back—

Tendrils of hot poison squeeze his core. His left arm spasms and he hisses through his teeth.

Through the window, the red eye starts blinking.

Andes looks at him, brows pinched, but it smoothes into a kind of glacial blankness at the tapping of polished boots behind them.

“Excuse me—” the agent calls out to them. Andes grabs Danny’s good arm and yanks him through the door.

It’s heavy and old, shrieking on its hinges as it swings open. Danny stumbles into a tiny break room. There’s another door across from them.

“Hey, you two, stop!”

Andes slams the door shut, flicking the lock on the knob. A second later, the handle rattles and the agent’s voice filters through.

“Open the door, kids. No one is in trouble. We’re just trying to help.”

Andes scoffs, grabbing a chair and tucking it under the knob. Then he makes a beeline for the other door and shoves it open.

Danny sees the alley beyond. He doesn’t need prompting this time: he’s right on the heels of his unlikely new friend. They both slip out and the door closes behind them. 

The smell of garbage and cat piss permeates the air. On their right is a chain-link gate held closed with a heavy padlock. Danny has never hated fences like he hates fences today. 

He turns the other direction, back to the street. That is, until the lady agent rounds the corner. 

“I’ve got eyes on ‘em,” Danny hears her say. 

Andes grabs the sleeve of Danny’s hoodie as she gets closer. She has her hands lifted, showing her lack of a weapon. 

“Everything’s okay, alright?” She looks between the two of them. “Did you see something? You can trust me—we aren’t here to hurt anyone, just here to help. ” 

Something in Danny loosens. 

They don’t know. His hands are shaking and the adrenaline burns through him. 

They don’t know, and it has to stay that way.

She draws closer to them, slow. 

“Like hell we can, lady. Kindly fuck right off,” Andes snaps, and then he’s throwing Danny towards the fence behind them. Andes takes a running jump at it and scales it with ease. 

Holy shit. They’re really fucking doing this. 

Who the hell even is this guy? 

It takes Danny a few seconds longer than his mysterious companion to get up over the fence and drop down on the other side. 

“Stop!” the lady shouts, making it to the fence a moment too late. “Dammit,” she spits. Her partner comes around the corner of the store behind her.

They don’t wait. They start running.

“They’ve seen something—still no sign of 6377,” Danny hears her say to whoever she’s connected to over her comm unit.

He feels sick, mercury sloshing in his stomach—heavy and killing him from the inside out.

6377.

Something about hearing it makes it more real.

That’s all he is now.

It’s all that’s left.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Alex thinks this is just his luck. 

He thinks something to the tune of: old habits die hard. 

So, here he is, breath drying the back of his throat and the familiar heat of adrenaline flushing his skin.

All he wanted was some sugar to take the edge off his latest three hours of sleep. He should know by now his life is never that simple. 

Yassen is going to be thrilled with him.

Alex skids to a stop at the mouth of the alley, his new friend stopping right next to him. There’s no one waiting to cut them off yet, but they’re on borrowed time. 

He’s only gotten a rudimentary understanding of the area, but here they’re a little way out from the main street, and the buildings are smaller, more gerrymandered together. Ramshackle. The sort of architecture that lends itself to creating narrow pockets of space: damp corners and weird crevices, tucked away from touristy eyes.

His options as of now are painfully limited: a few short-term hidey-holes. A mottled cat slinking out from a bush. A bag of Andes shoved into his pocket, probably melting. 

They need to get to the heart of town.

“C’mon.” He darts across the street and toward another alley. 

Hoodie, as Alex has been thinking of him, keeps pace, though he’s a bit clumsy. Definitely hasn’t had as much practice as Alex. 

He yanks Hoodie’s telltale hood off his head before he can protest. “And fix up your hair. We gotta blend in.”

Alex only pays half attention as Hoodie starts tugging his fingers through his hair. He wonders when this dude last had a run in with a hairbrush. It looks like it’s been a while. 

Alex leads them up the sidewalk, keeping his eyes on the road signs. Johnson Boulevard’s sign looks bigger—a larger road. He hangs left, relaxing a bit when he sees more people, more cars. Beside him, Hoodie fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve. 

A plan isn’t the only thing on his mind. There’s something bothering him. A lot of somethings, actually. Chief among them: neither of those agents recognized him. Not even the barest flicker. 

At first, he thought they were MI6, but they definitely aren’t. Not the FBI either, even if he and Yassen were traipsing around on American soil. And from how sloppily they operated, they’re clearly not Scorpia. 

None of that tells him who these people are or why they think they’ve “seen something”. Or how Hoodie fits into it.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t worried. 

The candy in his pockets crinkles as they walk. It’s the only sound beside the civilian cars and their breathing. For the time being, there’s no sirens and no footsteps rushing them. 

He can’t decide if that’s good or bad. Local law enforcement are clumsy and incompetent. In a way, he’d prefer that, but Alex doesn’t exactly want more eyes on them. 

No cops could also mean whoever these people are, they either don’t play nice with others… or they want this done quietly. 

Fantastic. 

He hops off a curb and jay-walks across another street. Hoodie follows after him, hair only slightly less of a mess. 

Hoodie glances back over his shoulder. “Do you think we lost them?” he murmurs. 

Alex snorts. “Let’s not bet on it.” 

Up ahead is a movie theater, the old spire lit up with neon, glowing in the fading daylight. A group of high schoolers bustle past.

Perfect.

Alex jerks his head towards them. He picks up his pace to catch up, tagging along to the back of the group. 

He watches Hoodie from the corner of his eye. His breathing is uneven, face pale and flushed, littered with tiny scratches, and his body stiff. His eyes flick around their surroundings like a feral cat waiting for the smallest gap in a window or door. 

Bloody hell, maybe this dude isn’t as used to being hunted as Alex thought. No way he’s been doing this for long. He didn’t even know how to steal from a convenience store. How he could spot an agent at a glance is beyond Alex.

Hoodie jerks a little when Alex says, “Just take a deep breath, yeah? Remember what I said about being relaxed.”

Hoodie doesn’t say anything back, but Alex hears him inhale. 

The teens around them fall over themselves, laughing at some dirty joke made at the expense of the movie. Alex smiles lightly but stays upright, keeping pace. Can’t let Hoodie stick out too hard. 

Following the kids takes them on a path further downtown, artsy street lamps flickering on as the sun sets below the horizon. 

No white vans—and white vans? Seriously? Not exactly subtle—and no suits. The coast looks relatively clear.

He fingers the burner phone in his pocket. Feels the pilfered candy next to it. Looks at Hoodie, who’s studying the ground like it has the answers.

He fishes out the Andes package. “Hey man, want some?”

Hoodie stares at it like he forgot they even stole them in the first place. 

“Um, sure,” he rasps, reaching for the candy. A twitchy wince cuts the motion in half. Hoodie sticks the hand into his pocket to conceal the way it keeps jittering and switches to his right. 

Alex doesn’t comment, just shakes a number of green foil-wrapped chocolates out for him.

Hoodie is in the middle of one-handedly unwrapping the candy when Alex sees the same pair of agents step out onto the sidewalk dead ahead. 

He slows his pace, catching the fabric of Hoodie’s sleeve again. The agents haven’t seen them yet.

The teens start pulling away down another street. He and Hoodie duck behind the dumpster of a promising alley—hidden from view by the garbage, but the other end of the alley opens up behind some shops and broadens out onto another street between the shop fronts. Plenty of room to lose anyone if they get made. 

Around the corner, he hears the rangers calling a few questions at the stalled teens.

He wishes he could pinpoint what organization they’re from; as it is, he’s got no idea what kind of manpower they’re up against.

These kinds of odds never phase Yassen. Then again, Yassen always has a gun and a plan—one that usually involves putting lead between people’s eyes. 

But Yassen isn’t here. Not yet. It’s just Alex, and what he needs is intel. Intel, or a reliable means of escape. He’d take either. 

The town is built on slopes and cliffs; the whole thing flows roughly upwards. It’s a mountainous area. Height would give him a better view of the available escape routes. Plus, if they’re cornered there, they can bail through the back pass between the mountains. The weird organization after Hoodie might have people stationed that way, but it doesn’t look like they have those numbers. 

So far.

Higher ground it is, then. If they can lose their tails in a crowd, even better.

The brick of the building is cool to the touch and Alex shifts so his back is flush with the wall. He feels eyes on him, but not from the street. 

Hoodie is studying him closely, looking like he has something to say. Alex lets him chew on it.

Finally, Hoodie manages to find his words.

“Why are you helping me?”

For a second, Alex is at a loss. 

Why is he?

This guy and his apparent issues with some mystery agency isn’t his problem. He doesn’t have to help. In fact, it’d be smarter if he’d left well enough alone. 

“I just thought I could, so I did,” he says eventually. 

Hoodie reads between the lines, eyes burning into Alex with a nebulous mix of sudden fear and hope, so intense that Alex blinks back.

Hoodie’s fingers dig into the forearm of his left arm—the injured one he’s been favoring—and twist.

“…Is the Foundation after you, too?” 

You, too?

Hoodie had told him as much by spotting that agent who’d been casing the corner store, but hearing it from the horse’s mouth still makes a familiar anger curdle in the pit of his chest. Caustic. Eating him away from inside.

You, too.  

“The foundation?” He knows he sounds bitter but can’t help it. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

Hoodie tilts his head, drawn up short. “You know… the Foundation?”

Alex can hear the capital letter. “Yeah, which foundation? I mean, I don’t wanna brag, but there’s at least three after my head right now. Maybe four.”

Hoodie coughs on a laugh like he’s out of practice with that, too. “Wait. Seriously?”

Alex shrugs. He should laugh too, play along, but the anger is too acute. “At least one of them is a terrorist organization.” Scorpia dislikes the term, but it’s true. MI6, on the other hand… “Eh, let’s say two of them.”

Hoodie laughs again. This one’s the better take. “Christ, dude. And I thought I had problems.”

Alex breaks and laughs, too, even if it feels sharp on the way up. 

“Seriously, I’d trade with you. Why not?”

Well, for one thing, the assassin who’s gonna take his head off for getting involved in whatever this shite is. “I can think of a few reasons—”

The banter dies in his throat when Hoodie stops breathing.

Pupils dilate to pinpricks swamped by the washed-out blue of his irises as Hoodie staggers, barely keeping himself from thudding against the dumpster. His left arm is jackknife rigid, fingers scrabbling hard at his thigh; his other hand clutches the limb so hard his knuckles turn white. A thready, reedy gasp makes its way past his lips.

“H-hoodie guy? Hey, are you okay?”

A choked sound. Hoodie visibly tries to relax one wire-tense muscle at a time.

Alex steps closer, slowly reaching for his shoulder, but he flinches even harder.

From the street, a shrill beeping rings out: high and frantic, getting quicker. Getting louder. Alex’s heart jumps a gear, his pulse hot in his wrists and throat. It sounds like a Geiger counter. Maybe the death throes of somebody’s decades-outdated smoke detector. Not relevant to them. 

He measures an exhale, forcing his heart back to baseline. 

They’re fine. 

Alex has this under control. 

But somehow, Hoodie makes it possible to go even more ashen.

“It’s 6377!” somebody yells, too close; it echoes strangely through their concrete alley—from a rooftop? “We’re locking on its signature—yes, triangulating now—”

“Shit.” Hoodie sounds strangled, sandpapery. “Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck.”

“Plan,” Alex says quickly. Pushes his spine straight to affect confidence, a calm he hasn’t exactly felt since the last time he got a good night’s sleep. “I have a plan. Promise.”

“You can’t have a plan for this,” Hoodie’s voice goes a note higher. “You don’t even—you didn’t know—”

Alex’s eyes snap to the tip of a gun taking the corner of their hideaway. He barely manages to tug Hoodie out of his rigid, pained position before the weapon sprouts an armored soldier at the other end of it.

Alex realizes it’s not a normal gun the minute it swings into full view. The shape and material are unfamiliar, almost sci-fi; jet black, blocky angles, with a bright green indicator on the side. 

It doesn’t matter; the gun flies out of the surprised soldier’s grip all the same once Alex gets in range. The soldier swings, trying to put space between them again, eyes wide through his dim green visor.

“This is Alpha, it’s not 6377, it’s childr—” 

An uppercut finishes his sentence for him. Alex manhandles his stunned opponent over the lip of the dumpster and slams the lid on his torso. 

The soldier chokes brutally under the force of plastic wedging metal into his chest before Alex shoves him, ass over head, into the bin. 

Alex snaps focus to the fallen gun. In his hands, it’s far lighter than it looks. The weight distribution is all wrong, centered somewhere too high behind the barrel before cool shiny plastic slides into an unnervingly comfortable grip.

“Wh—what the fuck.”

Hoodie.

Alex looks at him. 

“What the fuck,” Hoodie says again, putting his hands up. Alex is baffled for a second before he realizes what it looks like.

“Oh,” he says, “no, shit, put your hands down, I’m not going to shoot you.”

Hoodie puts them down falteringly. Alex winces. Wonderful. He got maybe five minutes of talking to another teenager like a normal person before the reality of being Alex Rider set in.

Not like Hoodie’s exactly normal, either, but…

“Look,” he says, “when I said I had a plan, I meant it. Trust me.”

Hoodie’s gaze darts down to the gun Alex is still holding.

Alex finds the safety. Flicks it. The green indicator on the gun’s flank cuts out to a flat gray. He tucks it barrel-first against the small of his back. Lets Hoodie see he’s disarmed himself.

“I can get us out of this. Please trust me.”

He holds Hoodie’s gaze.

A long second passes.

Slowly, Hoodie nods. “…Okay.”

Whatever relief Alex might have felt evaporates as the lady agent and her partner from the 7-Eleven appear between the slats of the crates piled up where the alley spills into the backlot. 

Hoodie sees them too, swallowing. “What was your plan again?”

“Step one,” Alex says, “run.”

Alex chooses the faux park rangers over the armed SWAT guys that are, presumably, still on the street. He still has the element of surprise; the agents startle backwards when the first crate topples towards them, and the second is flung with more directionality. The guy’s breath audibly leaves him when it hits his ribs, but the lady manages to sidestep it. 

She has only a split second to look shocked before Alex plants a foot in her stomach. She doubles over, and Alex chops the flat of his hand into the vulnerable side of her neck. Down she goes, spluttering. Alex is forced to shift his attention when a vice-like grip circles his bicep.

“Hey, we’re not going to hurt you boys,” the agent says cajolingly. “We know you’re scared, but we’re just here to ask some questions and help you.”

Bullshit. His hand is creeping towards an ill-concealed weapon. 

Alex snarls. “Don’t condescend to me.” A vicious twist breaks the agent’s grip. A knee to the groin sends him to the ground. He’s distracted just long enough for Alex to snag his weapon. 

The gun is strangely slim and long. Probably weighs less than a can of pop. Alex leaps out of the agent’s grabbing range—because, boy, that guy is still trying—and makes for open ground. 

There’s a shout and a tremendous clatter. Alex makes a quick check and finds Hoodie stumbling three steps behind him. Whatever crates had still been stacked have now been toppled over the agents, who are doing some pretty good impressions of bugs flailing on their backs beneath them.

Alex can’t help whooping a laugh at the sight. He catches what might be a half-smile from Hoodie, but doesn’t contemplate it long.

“Hey, take this.” Alex offers him the new gun handle-first but doesn’t pause his stride. “You’ve earned it.”

Hoodie’s expression twitches, then shutters, but he slides it from Alex’s hands nonetheless. Like second nature, his thumb immediately checks the safety.

Alex spares a heartbeat to feel gratified—Hoodie does know some things—but only just.

The backlot is flat concrete penned in by unpainted brick walls with dark, unfinished, recessed wood doors; the kind of thing that isn’t supposed to be seen by anybody but employees. Three other alleys branch out between the buildings—Alex had known the 7-Eleven agents had approached from somewhere—and he’s about to lead Hoodie towards the nearest one when he realizes that all potential outlets are just as compromised as the one they came from, and not by fake rangers. 

No. More fully kitted-out SWAT guys, swarming their exits like ants.

Alex had made the wrong decision. But this time, it wasn’t just himself he’d screwed over. This time, it wasn’t just him rattling down a dark road in the back of a truck towards Cairo. 

This time, he had the nameless Hoodie, clocking their noose just half a second behind him. Hoodie didn’t even have the luxury of knowing what kind of life Alex usually led, like Jack or Kyra or Tom.

He fucked up. He shouldn’t have tried to catch their breath to begin with. They were surrounded and outnumbered. There was no way out, left, right, or center that he could see—

Alex stops thinking. His eyes go in the direction that nobody looks first.

A crane looms overhead.

Alex grins.

Eyes go to the building walls. Handholds everywhere, window ledges and jutting pipes, but none he can trust Hoodie to be able to take advantage of. He spots what he’s looking for.

“Um, Andes—” Hoodie starts, but Alex is already making a ninety-degree turn.

“This way.”

Hoodie doesn’t have to say anything. Alex can practically feel the doubt and anxiety the guy’s shedding like a fur coat in summer.

Alex takes his second running leap of the day.

Metal screeches a protest at his body weight, and he hangs for a heart-wrenching second before the ladder starts to give properly, unfolding a fire escape that switchbacks up the building.

The ladder has drawn low enough for him to kick off the ground with one foot, leveraging himself towards the second rung. Then another, to give Hoodie the room to follow. “Need a hand?” he grunts.

Hoodie sets his jaw. “I can climb.”

The SWAT team’s strides are eating up the pavement at an alarming rate. Alex all but jumps off the ladder as Hoodie grabs the first rung.

The fire escape has clearly seen better days. The first landing shrieks under the impact of his trainers, and the stairs rattle like they’re about to work themselves loose from their bolts, but they hold. He makes it up several flights and crouches just before the lip of the roof, waiting for Hoodie, who gets to the first landing and—smart bloke—pulls the ladder up. It protests rustily.

Alex knows he shouldn’t, but he looks down anyway. Swallows against the swoop of vertigo that worms through his stomach.

There’s two SWAT guys watching them, almost directly beneath the fire escape, a third further back. Their visors reflect the sun, making them faceless as they approach the fire escape. The one furthest up looks like they’re going to make the same jump Alex did as Hoodie clambers up the rest of the escape.

None are aiming. Fingers aren’t even on triggers.

That’s… not a good sign. At least when people are shooting, he doesn’t have to wonder what trick they’re hiding up their sleeves.

Alex mutters a curse and hops over the edge, onto the building’s flat rooftop.

He comes face to face with a new soldier.

Well, that answers at least one of his questions.

“Stand down.” The soldier is trying to sound authoritative, but all it does is piss him off more. “There’s nowhere to run. Just put your hands above your head and nobody gets hurt.”

Behind him, Hoodie startles and ducks out of sight, staying on the fire escape. Good.

Alex darts sideways. A lateral move to buy time, some diagonal distance. He gets maybe ten paces, then skids to a stop. He takes a furtive glance around, like he’s realizing there’s really no way off the roof here. The soldier’s words were at least partially true, after all. The roof is empty but for a boxy A/C unit complaining loudly on the far end. A wary glance over at the SWAT guy seals the portrayal, a facsimile of distress painting his face. 

The soldier takes one solid step.

Alex tentatively puts his hands at shoulder height, letting them hover, making him look uncertain. It’s an invitation to draw close.

Of course, the soldier takes it.

“See? Nowhere to go. Let’s calm down and—”

This time when Alex disarms him, the gun flies too far to grab—a shame—but the soldier quickly draws a simple baton and swings. Alex barely manages to deflect the blow along his arm, gritting his teeth at the redirected force. The next is the same, but Alex gets more distance before the third.

The soldier aims at his knee; Alex jumps back, drawing the gun at his waist. The soldier’s eyes widen, but Alex doesn’t shoot; he brings it home under the chin of the soldier’s helmet. His head flings back; the helmet flies off.

“Bravo, confirm receipt,” crackles the busted earpiece. “Apprehend and amnesticize—”

Alex doesn’t wait to hear anything else. Plants his feet wide and reverses the soldier’s momentum in a way that’s clearly unexpected. Sends him careening into the open air, bare-faced and shocked.

Below, there’s an audible thump half-buried beneath sudden shouts and commotion. A quick peek confirms that Bravo is splayed out in the same dumpster Alex had used to dispose of his predecessor—who’s now tangled there too, both of them groaning. Shame. He’d wanted at least one of them unconscious. But they’re still down for a few minutes, at least.

Alex rolls his shoulder, tests his arm. Both are going to bruise, thanks to that baton.

They bruise a little darker when he throws himself to the ground at the sound of gunfire.

But—it’s way too quiet. It takes half a second for Alex to realize that he’s not wearing ear protection, and the sound should have been near-infinitely louder, more percussive. 

It’s Hoodie. He’s claimed Bravo’s fallen handgun.

He looks tense, but no more tense than he’s been since Alex met him. He checks the indicator and resets his aim. It looks like an extremely familiar gesture.

Hanging half off the edge of the roof in a way that makes Alex feel sick, Hoodie squeezes out a second shot. A third. A fourth. The muzzle flares with each like a flashbulb stained with copper arsenite.

And each shot connects not with the piercing power of a nine millimeter, but with nothing less than an explosion, ones that crackle sparks and ozone.

With a jolt, Alex realizes he’s targeting the weak bolts of the fire escape. Two more, and the entire thing starts groaning in a way that overtakes the rickety A/C unit and the abandoned headset that’s still crackling commands. 

A gloved hand grabs for Hoodie’s arm. Hoodie jolts back, aims, fires. The hand—and the entire fire escape—vanish in a tremendous crescendo of screeching metal.

Alex can feel himself gaping. “Dude.”

Hoodie winces. “Sorry, I—”

“Don’t you dare,” Alex cuts him off. “That was really fuckin’ cool.”

Hoodie huffs a laugh. “You’re weird.” Then he jerks away from the side of the building. “Shit, they’re parkouring up the fucking sides.”

“What? Oh, hell,” Alex says, walking towards the edge— “Get down!”

He tackles Hoodie. Two darts whiz past his hair, the lady agent adjusting her aim to follow them. He rolls the both of them further away from the edge as another shot goes wide over their heads.

He doesn’t even know what’s in these. Tranqs? Poison? Something else?

He spots the dart gun that he filched from the other agent—that’s what it was, too lightweight for bullets—a little ways away from the fire escape. Hoodie must’ve tossed it aside to take down the fire escape.

Why not find out?

He picks up the dart gun, peeking over the rooftop for just a second to shoot a round at the lady agent. She yells in alarm, immediately moving to sidestep it. 

The nearest soldier on the rooftop isn’t so lucky. First shot goes wide, but the second hits that pesky thin mobility fabric between the bulletproof vest and the rest of their shoulder. Easy shot at close range. They jerk and fall like a stone, but before Alex shoves himself back to the tenuous safety of the roof, he sees them sit up and hold their head in both hands.

A clatter. Behind him, two soldiers breach the lip of the roof, grappling hooks retracting. He aims the dart gun again. Jams. “Son of a bitch.”

“This is your fantastic plan?” Hoodie mutters.

“This bit might be, uh, improvisation,” Alex says. The neighboring building is close, a distance Alex could jump with ease, but he hesitates. Could Hoodie make it?

Hoodie’s voice strangles on a yell. Alex whips around. 

One of the grappling hook maestros has trapped Hoodie in a bearhug. 

He catches Hoodie’s eyes. They’re wide, blue like the surface of a frozen lake. Viscerally afraid, before the light behind them dims.

Hoodie goes limp. The soldier’s grip is so tight he barely falls.

It’s a horrible thing, to watch someone give up. 

The instinctive part of Alex’s brain screams at him to get over there, but the second soldier who’d rappelled up has other ideas. Closes in on him almost instantaneously with the clear intent to subdue him; the glimpse Alex gets through his visor tells him that these guys aren’t into verbal reasoning so much. Alex drops to a sloppy roll to avoid being brained but is still boxed in on the other end of the move. 

This guy—Charlie—comes at Alex again. He’s built like a truck and moves like one too. He reminds Alex a bit of Wolf. 

Alex tries to keep the others in his line of sight. It looks like Delta, holding Hoodie like a sack of potatoes, is trying to reach his comm without dropping his suddenly unresponsive load. 

Charlie barely gives Alex a chance to think, let alone disengage. Alex angles a strike for the chin, where he’d found a gap in the SWAT gear just wide enough to knock off Bravo’s helmet, but Charlie preempts him. Blocks. Then nearly takes his arm off as payment.

Alex bites back a pained sound, but the tail end escapes anyway. 

He needs a new strategy. There are precious few vulnerabilities in Charlie’s black-and-white getup, and the bastards learn fast.

The blows smear together. Alex takes more hits than he’d like to admit—more than he gives. As he’s forced back, he loses sight of what’s going on with Hoodie and Delta. 

It’s brutal hand-to-hand until it’s not, Charlie brandishing a baton like Bravo’s. Alex thinks it might not be a normal stick, just like their guns aren’t normal guns, but doesn’t get to consider it long. It still bruises like a baton, whether or not it’s been souped up.

A third soldier materializes by the clattering A/C unit. That’s, what, Echo? How many guys can they spare for two kids?

…Probably however many they need after the show he and Hoodie have unwittingly put on. 

Shit. He’d thought he’d learned his lesson about the benefits of subtlety.

He takes a nasty baton blow to the ribs in the process of avoiding an arm lock, but somehow still has the air left to yelp when Echo makes himself a true threat with something so cold it burns. 

His eyes catch the afterimage of light so neon green it makes his teeth hurt. He can’t help but grit them as he winces back, cradling his hand against his chest. Charlie backs away from the friendly fire.

The shot had only skimmed him. He’d been lucky, probably, but it’s ghastly, like no other bullet he’s taken before. The pain doesn’t just bite. It lingers, sinks, then flares anew. Warbles through his vision as the wound brushes against the fabric of his jacket.

The gun in Echo’s hand is the same sci-fi plasma beam number as the others. There’s a finger curled against the trigger like a promise. The muzzle’s eye finds his heart. 

He stops breathing. Phantom rain patters his neck. Phantom rain pours, and he doesn’t have a gun this time— 

Delta howls. It’s a strange one. Equal parts surprise and pain. 

Echo’s aim and Charlie’s head swing towards Hoodie, who eels out of Delta’s grasp with a lithe, vicious twist. He shoots Delta in the foot, downing him with another squeal. 

And then it’s like Delta has been rendered completely inconsequential to Hoodie. His gaze snaps lightning-quick to Echo, followed by the barrel of his nicked plasma pistol.

Cold fear chokes his diaphragm. His ribs are bruised. For a moment, Alex can’t breathe.

For a moment, he’s staggeringly lightheaded.

Hoodie is—

Dangerous.

Now, Alex can see why there might be half a dozen SWAT-geared guys trying to sniff out one teenager as awkward and scraggly as Hoodie. He has this air in the limber set of his shoulders, the easy length of his arms, the lidding of his eyes—had they really looked so lifeless ten seconds ago?

It’s the air of someone who’s not afraid to make people pay.

Somehow who knows exactly how.

It’s a look Alex recognizes.

When Hoodie fires again, it’s at Echo’s head. The searing green of it slams into the side of his helmet with a sound half percussive, half static, but Echo keeps his footing, swinging to return fire—his beam goes high, just barely missing Hoodie’s shoulder.

His movement gives Hoodie a clear shot directly to his visor. This one tosses Echo’s head back more violently than the first. Blinded, he stumbles and goes down.

Hoodie’s steady through every recoil. He makes it look easy. Alex knows from experience that you can never predict the power of a gun’s kickback without handling that model at least once.

Alex unlocks his frozen knees as Charlie prioritizes Hoodie over Alex, drawing his own gun and taking a potshot. Hoodie dodges it fluidly. The motion makes Alex think of a doll lolling its limbs. His eyes are glacial as he answers Charlie’s fire, peppering the soldier’s feet; Charlie dances. Corralled away from Alex, he realizes.

Charlie’s revenge clips the hood of Hoodie’s sweater, barely missing his ear. Hoodie narrows his eyes and takes cover behind the A/C unit. Nails Charlie squarely in the chest. But whatever armor the SWAT guys have shields him—Charlie only stumbles back before his next shot nearly blinds Hoodie.

Alex remembers his own plasma pistol, tucked against his back. 

Charlie grunts when Alex snipes his knees from behind. Hoodie takes point, downing the arsehole with a concussive headshot right to the visor. 

It’s over, and just in time. The indicator on Hoodie’s plasma pistol begins to sputter, dims, then goes out entirely. Flat gray. The only glow left is an afterimage on Alex’s retinas.

Hoodie scowls and discards it like a battered toy. “Worth a try…”

Staying put is begging to be overpowered again, and more thoroughly, whenever reinforcements arrive. “Let’s go!”

He jumps roofs without waiting for Hoodie to ask questions.

Hoodie lands sloppily after him, but keeps his footing. When Alex reaches to steady him, he instead finds Hoodie already leaning towards him, concern writing his brow into knots.

“Are you okay?”

Alex blinks. Hoodie’s open face has no trace of the icy languidness he’d used to aim a gun at someone’s head. None of the rigidity that had crept into his eyes. Almost like it was never there, but Alex knows better.

“Y-yeah, yeah, I’m fine, totally fine, thanks to you.”

“What about…” Hoodie fidgets, glances at Alex’s hand. Prompts Alex to look at it for the first time himself.

It doesn’t look like a normal burn. Black and green at the edges. Pain screams through the wound if he flexes his hand, but the adrenaline is doing a decent job washing the worst of it away. He grits his teeth, clenches his fist, and shoves the pain aside. “Minor.”

Hoodie just shakes his head. “We need to treat that, it could get, like—frostbite,” he says. “We need something warm—”

“Later,” Alex urges, ignoring the question of how Hoodie knows these things. “We’re still surrounded and outnumbered. We’ve gotta keep going.”

Hoodie closes his eyes momentarily. Asks, “Where?”

There’s some shouting from below. If they stay here any longer, the noose will be too tight to escape.

“Not far,” Alex promises. Points. “Up.” Moves his finger. “And over.”

Imposing black and red machinery hangs overhead. Hoodie tilts his chin up to take it in. From here, the crane blots out the sun.

“Construction site,” Alex elaborates, scanning, until— “There. We should be able to get across.”

“Across?”

“What? You said you can climb.”

Hoodie makes a disbelieving noise. 

They scale a maintenance ladder to a cramped landing; scooting to the far edge puts the jib just about eye-level and conceals them, at least momentarily, from the chaos on the rooftop and backlot. 

It’s not meant to be used as a balance beam, but there are wide metal rivets at regular intervals, which will make better footholds than Alex has made do with before. It’s going to be harder with his burned hand and Hoodie’s unreliable arm, but it’s a small crane; they only need to get a few meters, at a gentle downward slope, before they reach the cabin. 

“The jib will hold,” Alex says, gesturing to the thick beams. He’s done worse. “Think you can do it?”

“…This is a bad idea,” Hoodie says. He’s looking down.

“This is a fantastic idea,” Alex corrects, gazing resolutely forward. Solid metal. Plenty of footholds. “Don’t look down.”

“Looking down isn’t the problem.” Hoodie sounds breathless.

“Is that a no?” Alex asks. If they can’t get across the crane, they’ll have to go back down the maintenance ladder and find a new way out of the soldiers’ perimeter; downing the three on the roof would only stick so long, and Alpha and Bravo were surely long since recovered. Not to mention the faux-rangers were certainly on the move, and—

“I’m fine,” Hoodie says. “I can do it.”

Alex looks at him. There’s a determined slant to the corner of Hoodie’s mouth. A desperation that verges on hope in the way his gaze flickers between Alex, the jib, and the way they came.

“Just across to the cab? Then we’re free of—them?”

“If I’ve got anything to say about it, yeah.”

“I can do it,” Hoodie repeats.

Alex nods, draws a sharp breath, then pulls himself up, staunchly putting aside the way every movement makes the burn on his hand throb. He steadies himself with his knees and helps Hoodie up. 

They make their way down and across, shifting their footholds one at a time. Alex resolutely keeps his eyes on the cab, and does not think about how far they are from the ground. Does not think about how utterly exposed they are. Does not think about one of those neon green blasts coming their way. 

Does not think about the shouts still echoing up in the distance behind them. 

Only that they’re halfway out of the noose.

Only that the cab’s getting closer.

The tone of the commotion below shifts suddenly, then spikes to a fever pitch. Near Alex’s head, Hoodie’s foot slips off a rivet, scrabbles for a moment, regains purchase. Alex thinks Hoodie is holding his breath.

“The crane!”

They’ve been spotted.

They drop onto the roof of the cab and both fall into crouches to reduce their visibility. The cab is older than the jib; there’s rust crawling the seams. Hoodie looks ready to jump off and bolt, but he looks to Alex. 

“Wait.” Alex puts out a hand. “While we’re here…” 

He eases himself onto the small footbed just outside the cab door and jimmies the handle. After a bit of work, it opens. Thank god for old shit. Alex grins. “Let’s have some fun with this.” 

“What?”

“Don’t worry, I know how to operate a crane.”

“Why?”

Alex shrugs. “It’s come in handy once or twice.” 

Despite the crane’s small size, the cabin is roomier than the one he’d played drug-boat-claw-machine with last year. Fortunate, because it lets both of them cram inside. Alex finds the power beside the radio and anemometer, and two joysticks: left for the jib, right for the hoist. 

The crane sputters to life, the smell of diesel and oil leaching into the air. The joysticks have a healthy amount of resistance, but they move as he applies the pressure.

Good thing he doesn’t need finesse for what he’s about to do.

The jib veers under his command, the hoist swinging belatedly after it. With little ceremony, he sends it crashing through a billboard and watches the wood and metal rain down. Doesn’t see where it lands. On the backswing he takes down a variety of construction equipment: bags of sand piled on the edge of the half-built roof, trussed up planks and sheets of flooring.

The world beyond their little bubble is muffled. There’s just two sets of ragged breathing as Alex puts as much shit as he can between them and those agents.

For a moment, it’s like there’s no rain on his neck. There’s no Scorpia, trying to find their most promising yet wayward recruit. No MI6 after their runaway golden boy.

It’s peaceful.

“Do you hear that?”

A second later, he does. Something is buzzing.

Alex shoves his uninjured hand into a pocket and extracts the burner Yassen had pressed on him three days ago. Swipes it open. The ringing cuts off. 

“Sup.”

“Where are you?”

Yassen certainly has a way with words. That way is usually ‘minimal’.

“Look for a crane. Red and black—near there. Good timing, by the way.” Alex jams the phone between his ear and shoulder. The controls need both hands; the right joystick is starting to drift and taking the jib with it. “I need you to pick us up in—hmm. Less than five minutes.”

A pause. “Us.”

Alex doesn’t address the thinly veiled question-threat combo. “Yeah, I made a friend. Don’t worry, he’s cool.”

“Alex—” Yassen’s voice is taut.

“I said don’t worry,” Alex hurries to cut him off. “I’ve got everything under control.”

This time Yassen exhales. Alex imagines he’s forcing himself to reign his composure in. Sure enough, he sounds infuriatingly stable again when he says, “What’s going on?” 

“We’re compromised. Or at least we will be, probably. There’s agents and armed guys all over town.”

There’s the sound of movement over the line. “Scorpia?” 

“Definitely not.” He clenches his teeth as his hand stings sharply, the burned skin stretching too far with his fingers curled around the joystick. He backs off momentarily, but the hoist begins to drop almost immediately. Nearly takes out that geriatric A/C unit, too isolated to do them any good, not when he’s just zeroed in on a bigger threat. “Shit. I gotta go. See you in a few, yeah?” 

“Alex—” 

Alex hangs up. He doesn’t have time to try and get the phone back in his pocket. He spares a second instead to shove it at Hoodie. 

“Hold that for me real quick.” 

Hoodie blinks but takes it anyway. “Who was that?” 

“Uh. You’ll see. Now, let me concentrate.”

“On what?”

“This is more complicated than it looks,” Alex grits out. “And we’ve got company.”

White vans all look the same, but it’s still no question where this one came from, idling at a corner with eyes on them. 

On his first attempt, the hoist swings high, and he jolts the joystick to drop the unwanted elevation. The hoist hits home on the way back, blowing the doors of the van concave and rocking the vehicle violently on its suspension. The shock of the hook driving into the metal reverberates through the length of the crane. Rattles the walls of the cab.

Alex keeps forcing the joystick until the entire van goes sideways and skids. He drags it along, doesn’t ease off until the entire thing is overturned mid-intersection. Oncoming traffic swerves to a screeching, honking standstill.

“Right, there she is.” Alex pops the cabin door—then pulls back immediately, hunching down with a groan. “Again?”

There are agents swarming to right the van. Some blockade that turned out to be.

“We were supposed to be done with them,” Hoodie mutters.

“I know.” Alex presses his forehead against the door handle. He has to think. Has to plan. But he still has only the faintest idea of what—of who—they’re up against.

Suddenly Hoodie is tapping his shoulder with the back of his hand.

“Hey, do you still have that lighter?”

“What? Oh. Yeah.” Alex roots around for said lighter, pulling it free. “Fat lot of good it’ll do us.”

But Hoodie shakes his head, a smile growing on his face. “Throw the lighter and then shoot it,” Hoodie says, motioning towards the gun Alex swiped. 

Alex looks at the pistol in his hand. It’s not rocket science. Shooting an energized bolt at an accelerant is bound to do something. Right?

Hoodie shifts, more urgent. “It’ll work. Trust me.” 

Alex looks at Hoodie for a second—his eyes are clear and earnest. Hoodie hasn’t given him any reason not to trust him. Which Alex can’t say for most of the people in his life, so… Fuck it. 

“Alright,” Alex says and hefts the lighter in his hand and throws it over the cabin door. 

“Well—as long as you’re a good shot, that is.” 

The lighter skitters across the tarmac.

“Pf, please.” He aims through the partition of the cabin and its door. He ignores the way his hands start to shake. Not now— 

—He doesn’t want to be thinking about this now. 

Sweat slicks his palms and he tightens his grip until it hurts. He lifts his hands and tries to line up the shot with the target but his arms tremble. He sucks in a choked breath. 

A hand gun. Why does it have to be a hand gun? 

He hears rain. He hears rain and another breath crops up just behind the last. He can’t do this—the grip feels like hot coal, eating away at his skin. He feels cold— 

A hand moves into his vision, pushing the gun down with a firm but gentle force. Alex looks up at Yassen, feeling his stomach clench. It’s so stupid—he knows it is but—Yassen slips off his own ear protection, expects him to follow suit. 

He moves one side off his ear. 

“Take a deep breath,” Yassen says. “Finger off the trigger. Safety.” 

He swallows the burning embarrassment and inhales. It’s harder than he wants to admit. 

He flicks the safety.

It’s not raining. It’s not raining. This is Malagosto, not Cairo.

The cold gray firing range pieces itself back together and all Alex can think is how much he hates it. 

“They are paper targets, little Alex. No more. No less,” comes Yassen’s voice again.

“This is stupid,” Alex spits. “I know how to use a bloody fucking gun. I—”

He wants to throw something. He wants to scream. He wants to fucking sleep.

“I know,” Yassen says. 

He must seem pathetic. 

“Take another breath. Try again. The faster you finish, the faster I can check this box. Then we can leave.”

Alex glares at Yassen. 

He looks back, blue eyes still like water. 

Alex grits his teeth. He hates when Yassen is right. It’s been happening a lot lately. 

“Fine. But you better give me high marks.” He fixes his ear protection, snaps the safety back off, and lifts the gun. It’s easy, lining it up with the paper target at the end of the range. 

It’s not raining. 

He moves his finger over the trigger and takes a deep breath. 

He exhales slowly, and only once he’s steady does he pull the trigger, just like Yassen showed him. 

The shot connects with the lighter and the whole world goes incandescent. 

Hoodie yanks him down before his eyes can be burnt out by the searing jade. Through the cab door, the arctic shockwave hits them like a train, stealing Alex’s breath from his lungs. The hair along his arms stands to attention and gooseflesh crawls up from his stomach.

Hoodie’s thrown his head between his arms, fingers clasped together in his mess of black hair like he’s praying. Alex gives the dust a moment to settle, then drops a hand briefly on Hoodie’s shoulder as he unfolds himself. Realizes the cab’s windows have shattered when he feels the glass covering Hoodie like a fine misting. Some falls out of Alex’s hair as he moves. Peers out where the window should be, and finds—

Total wreckage.

The ground is scorched green and black; a nearby tree has been reduced to tatters, with shreds of brown leaves still drifting to the ground. The van is twisted almost beyond recognition, warped into a lump of metal more black and gray than the previous stark, clean white. The swarming agents that had been working to right the vehicle have either taken shelter or been knocked unconscious, bodies slammed into buildings or parked cars like puppets with cut strings. He can see one moving, haltingly reaching for comms, but… 

All that from a little butane and—

And what?

“Bloody hell,” Alex murmurs. He glances at Hoodie. 

He hasn’t even looked at the fallout, but he’s at least sat up. He’s shaking slivers of glass from the folds of his jacket. “That’ll keep them busy for a while.”

“No shit,” Alex says, but watches out the door anyway. Some of the ones who’ve taken shelter are regrouping, and they look angry.

A compact four-door slams to an abrupt halt half a dozen meters from them.

Alex locks eyes with the driver. Can’t help but grin and wave.

The driver lifts one unamused eyebrow.

Alex grabs Hoodie and darts towards the car. “C’mon!”

“What’s—”

“Our ride.”

He rips the door open, and before Hoodie can hesitate or say anything, Alex is shoving him in. Hoodie scrambles across the back seat to the far side and Alex follows, yanking the door shut after them.

“Drive!”

Despite how much he’d like to, Yassen has no time to argue. 

He slams on the accelerator and the car jumps forward. Swinging them through the sharpest U-turn he can manage, Yassen guns it, weaving around the few cars foolish enough to still be on the roads around the explosion site.

“Seat belts,” he says. 

Alex scoffs from behind him. “Seriously, that’s what you’re worried about right now?” 

Yassen watches as a truck hops a curb, swinging out from behind the smoldering shell of the van. 

“Yes.” 

He shoots past a stop sign.

“He’s worried about seat belts,” Alex mutters mockingly under his breath, but Yassen hears him grab the buckle.

“You’re lucky I didn’t take the other end of the road,” he says. The car jerks around a bend. Wheels screech. Alex lurches sideways, loses the belt.

“Oh, come off it. The explosion wasn’t my fault this time,” Alex complains, righting himself. “I mean… not entirely.”

“Of course not.”

The truck behind them takes the same bend at a breakneck pace. It’s small, white, decorated with stripes and a circular decal Yassen doesn’t have time to decipher.

Yassen bears down harder on the pedal. The speedometer ticks up and up. There’s a highway exit not far from here, as long as he can find a route that will shake their tail.

The other teenager speaks up for the first time. “It—it was my fault.” His voice is raspy, as if he’s been ill. 

Yassen takes a moment to study the boy Alex has thrown in the back of their sedan: black hair, gray hoodie, dark circles under his eyes that might as well be carved in—his irises are pale, almost unnaturally so. He’s sunk low in his seat; Yassen has to adjust the rearview mirror specifically to get a look at him. The position also cuts off any line of sight from the exterior. Their tail, visible behind the boy’s car seat, would’ve had to have seen him get in to be sure he was there.

Lacking that knowledge wouldn’t stop most of their enemies from opening fire on the car, but the precaution is oddly forward-thinking.

Or paranoid.

But that’s the kind of thinking that will keep him alive. God knows it’s what Yassen has been trying to instill in Alex for the past six weeks—possibly longer. Keeping Hunter’s child from getting himself caught or killed is proving more difficult than he thought. 

Yassen turns at a promising four-way intersection, heading toward the highway. The new boy’s eyes flick back and forth between the window near his head and the side of Yassen’s face. Guarded. Possibly judging their speed, how much it would take to bail out of the car. 

Paranoid, definitely. But Yassen already knows the boy isn’t about to yank the handle and toss himself at the asphalt.

His first move was to defend Alex, after all.

“I see.”

“It’s—it’s true,” the boy insists, “I told him to shoot the lighter.”

“And I’m the one who decided to use the crane, so I think we’re evenly matched on the insanity front,” Alex fires back easily.

A crane. That would explain the state of the road. The lighter, on the other hand… “What precisely set off the explosion?” Yassen cuts in. 

“Something energy-based,” Alex replies. “I’m not sure what, exactly—I took it off one of ‘em. I still have it, want to see?”

Yassen yanks the steering wheel and swings around a motorcyclist. “Now is hardly the time.” 

Of course Alex managed to steal a gun and arm himself. Leave the boy defenseless and he’d improvise his way into holding at least two weapons by the time the day is done.

“Okay, but I totally know you want to see it later,” Alex says, wheedling. “And you should’ve seen their faces when we—”

“I told you to keep a low profile.”

Alex scoffs. “That’s not fair. I don’t go looking for trouble.”

And yet it inevitably finds him anyway. 

“Debrief. With details.”

“Like I said on the phone—the town was crawling with agents, just out of the blue. I couldn’t tell from which organization. Not like they mark their white vans.” He snorts. “A few of ‘em were dressed like park rangers, but mostly there were guys in SWAT gear. They were the real problem. But it didn’t look like they were working with the local PD.”

Ranger gear—a decent cover in a forested area such as this. It explains the state seal on the car that’s still trying to keep up with them, too. Yassen swerves two lanes over and whips them around a clover-shaped highway entrance. For a moment, their tail is out of sight, but Yassen doesn’t relax. The car whines as he pushes it past eighty.

“The SWAT guys had these guns straight out of Halo,” Alex continues. “That’s what I grabbed. Freaky shit, completely sci-fi. Kinda reminded me of…” He trails off, face darkening.

“The vault,” Yassen confirms. Dread curls at the back of his throat. 

Anomalous weaponry.

“Yeah.”

“You are certain it was not my former employer?” 

The list of possible candidates is shrinking. Scorpia, with connections crawling like veins through the underbelly of the world, acquires those sorts of weapons with voraciousness. 

He takes a turn. Were it a legitimized entity like MI6 or the CIA, they would endeavor to subtlety. But the blazing wreckage behind them being any of their work? Uncharacteristic. 

Maybe the wreckage was more due to it being Alex. His favorite lessons at Malagosto were, predictably, the ones on explosives.

Yet he cannot deny the shrinking of the pool of viable candidates.

“I’m sure.” Alex carries on, insistent, pushy. “I mean it. They were weird, with these dodgy dart guns on top of the plasma pistols. And it’s not like Ross just got an upgrade. They didn’t recognize me at all. If it were anybody from Scor—” 

“I believe you.”

Alex stops his tirade with surprise audible in the click of his teeth. He eases away from Yassen’s headrest, where he’d grabbed on and pulled himself forward like yelling in Yassen’s ear would make him more credible.

“Oh.”

The faux-forestry vehicle tail is losing ground when Yassen checks, struggling to keep track of them as Yassen weaves the lanes like a backstrap loom. They should be able to shake it soon, but Yassen can’t reliably assume another won’t come out of the woodwork. Not to mention the very real possibility of them setting up a roadblock ahead. 

“Any injuries?” he asks. “And were you otherwise compromised?”

He hears Alex shift in his seat. “I kept my face out of sight of any cameras, but if the SWAT team had body cams, I definitely got clocked. They have our rough descriptions, at least.”

“What—what about your hand? Is it okay?” the new boy speaks up. Gone is the certainty with which he’d jumped to Alex’s defense. 

“It’s fine,” Alex says hurriedly. 

“I—I’m sorry… I should’ve been quicker, you wouldn’t have been hit—”

“Barely scratched me.”

“Yeah, but, you can’t just leave it—”

“What ‘barely scratched’ you?” Yassen cuts in. Alex should know better; anomalous weaponry doesn’t just scratch.

“Nothing. I’m fine,” Alex says.

Defensive. A tone Yassen knows well. More than once, Alex has used it to try hiding his lack of sleep. 

Yassen eyes him in the rearview, but rather than prompting honesty, Alex volleys a glare twice as venomous, then turns his shoulder. 

“What about your arm, dude? What happened?”

The boy blinks. “Mine?” Pauses. Then seems to shrink in on himself. “Oh. It’s—don’t worry about it. It’s… an old injury.”

“Must’ve been some injury.”

“Alex.” Yassen grips the steering wheel tighter. “Do you need medical attention?”

Alex says, “No,” at the same time the other boy looks up with a crease in his brow and says, “Yes.” 

Yassen sees Alex scowling. A glance at the other boy is all that’s needed to get him talking. 

“He got burned,” the boy says, stilted. “It needs to be cleaned, wrapped… kept warm.”

“Warm,” Yassen states. That’s not the treatment for a burn. 

His skepticism prompts the boy to continue. “It’s not a normal burn,” he murmurs. “You can get frostbite if you leave those alone. Necrosis, even.”

“What was in those things?” Alex sounds like he doesn’t want to know.

The boy responds with a noncommittal hum.

Yassen can already feel a headache building behind his eyes. Whatever happened, the new boy in the back of his car is at the heart of it. Close enough to have first-hand experience with likely classified anomalous weaponry. 

Unfortunately, Alex’s injury is going to have to wait. Though their tail has now vanished, Yassen doesn’t trust for a moment that their vehicle’s make, model, and plates haven’t been compromised. Their priority is to cross sufficient ground and find a new one.

Of course, if Alex had been able to follow directions for a quarter of an hour, none of this would be happening.

“Debrief,” Yassen reminds Alex. “Details. What exactly prompted you to engage with them?”

Alex is distracted, watching out the back window with a spine-aching twist. 

“Alex.”

He turns when Yassen stresses his name, bracing a hand on the back of Yassen’s seat. “They were trying to catch us—I didn’t really want to find out why, so we fought back.”

“Your common sense knows no bounds,” Yassen says.

“What’d you want me to do? Stop and give them my NIN? I didn’t know they had laser guns,” Alex snaps. “At first it was just the ranger pricks, they had the 7-Eleven circled, and all we did was dodge their questions and take off.”

“What else did you notice?”

“Small numbers, but well-coordinated and responsive,” Alex says immediately. It’s unclear if his annoyance is at Yassen’s prodding, or the team whose composition he’s laying out. “Two fake rangers with one car. The SWAT guys were Alpha through Foxtrot at least—two vans for them. There might’ve been another two on the ground, though, considering drivers. So, about ten agents, max. We only managed them because they weren’t expecting—well, us.”

If nothing else, Alex is sharp. MI6 hasn’t been chomping at the bit to use him as an operative since he was fourteen for no reason; his situational awareness surpasses his elders in many ways. 

“Weapons?”

“The plasma pistols on the SWAT guys, and batons. Real fuckin’ nasty with them, too. The rangers had the dart guns.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Not any I’ve seen before.”

“Anything else?”

“Bear mace, I think,” Alex says. “There was a canister of something on the rangers’ belts.”

“I see.” Given the anomalous weaponry on them, Yassen has a sneaking suspicion that those canisters weren’t what they claimed to be.

“Uhh… oh, they said something dodgy at the end. Commands to ‘apprehend and amnesticize’ us.”

The phrase sets Yassen’s teeth on edge.

“And even though they weren’t looking for me, they were looking for something. They kept bringing up a number—6377. But he knows more about them than I do.” Alex stops himself. “Wait, what’s your name actually?”

“Oh. Um. Danny,” the kid mutters.

“I’m Alex, but you probably caught that already, right? Anyway, who did you say they were?” Yassen hears Alex shift in the backseat. “The foundation? You never elaborated on what one.”

The final nail in the coffin.

“The Foundation.” Yassen’s voice comes out flinty.

Alex squints at him. “Yeah. What foundation?” His patience is clearly being tested.

Yassen tightens his grip on the steering wheel and narrowly avoids clipping a sedan as it switches back into the right lane to avoid him—blaring its horn.

Beside Alex, the other boy—the anomaly—shifts.

“The Foundation,” Yassen repeats tightly. “A highly secret, globalized organization which specializes in the identification, containment, and scientific study of anomalous objects and entities.” 

Clients pay good money for anomalous objects, and often come to Scorpia to get them. Scorpia itself makes use of a small range of them on a semi-regular basis. 

“Wait, you mean like…” Alex doesn’t finish the sentence, but his dark tone tells Yassen exactly what he’s thinking of. “I didn’t know there was a whole organization for… them.”

“I’m certain you’ve crossed paths with their agents before now,” Yassen replies. “Though you would not know it—they keep a low profile. They have a chemical agent that can wipe a target’s memories. More than likely, those are the dart guns you saw. But it comes in many forms.”

“Woah.” 

The headlights of oncoming traffic are a blur in the growing dark, and the glow of the city behind them gets smaller in the rearview, further obscured by a low layer of gathering fog. Alex is silent for a second. 

“Have you ever used it?” 

Amnestics are liquid gold for an organization like Scorpia. Smuggling from the Foundation is a high-risk, high-reward business. But Scorpia has always paid its people well. 

Yassen presses his lips together. His career should be the last topic of discussion with a stranger in the car. It’s bad enough that Alex at some point decided to drop the American accent.

“Not relevant.”

“That’s a yes, isn’t it?” he asks, sounding far too enthusiastic for his own good. 

“I think you’re focused on the wrong implication in this situation,” he says. His eyes flit back to the extra child in the backseat. 

“Fine, but you’re telling me later. Mate—Danny. So it was the guys that deal with freaky shit. Why did you think they were after you? They didn’t seem to recognize you. And you seem pretty… normal, compared to… well, you know.”

“There’s only one reason the Foundation would be searching for him,” Yassen says.

The kid wrings the seatbelt in his right hand, curls up tighter on himself. “I—I’m not a threat, I promise.” 

Unfortunately for the boy, there’s no reason for Yassen to believe him. He knows desperation—the child is more than likely willing to feed them any sort of story if it gets him away from his pursuers. Not to mention that if the Foundation was deploying the manpower Alex described, then this child is clearly lying about how much of a threat he is. 

Yassen keeps an eye out for the next exit sign.

“I don’t—I don’t hurt anyone. I’m just—” The boy falters. “I’m just weird. Not totally normal, and if you really do know anything about them, you know they don’t care how anomalous someone is, just that… they are.”

“You are right, which is why as soon as I find a safe place to pull over, you are going to be getting out.”

“Yassen, seriously?” Alex demands from behind him. 

He pulls in a slow breath. 

“He just said he wasn’t a threat, so what’s it matter?” Alex continues.

“It matters because of the exact situation we are in right now.” 

For all of Alex’s skills, he’s easily blinded by his empathy and sense of morality. Of all the charity cases the brat wanted to take on, he had to pick an anomaly? 

The one saving grace of this situation is that the boy probably won’t risk telling any government authorities about them once they go separate ways. He can tell Alex is already far too attached for him to take care of this the easy way. His .22 pistol sits against him, tucked in his waistband, a last resort option.

“Well, it’s not exactly like government organizations aren’t after our heads already.”

“The Foundation is not an organization we want added to the list, Alex.” 

“Yeah, I get that, but Christ—surely we can slip them and have some food or something and then decide what to do, yeah?” 

In the rearview mirror, Alex is looking at him with pleading eyes. 

“Just for tonight? Please?”

“No, Alex. No more unnecessary risks.” They’ll be lucky if this little stunt doesn’t land them smack dab on the CIA and MI6’s radar.

“He saved my ass back there too, you know. We owe him, Yassen.” There’s an infuriating sureness to his voice that suggests Alex has already been thinking this through. 

“I would think helping him escape Foundation custody is more than enough.” 

“Not even close,” Alex says and Yassen can imagine the teenager with his arms folded over his chest. 

He grits his teeth, glancing back again. The other teenager is looking between Alex and him, eyes frightened. It’s written all over the boy—his thin frame and torn clothes—he has nothing. Who knows how long he’s been on his own. He looks like any other street rat. Yassen would know.

Chert voz’mi.

“One meal,” he bites out. “One.” 

.

It takes three highway changes, countless backroads, and a fair amount of backtracking before they hit a new tourist destination that Yassen deems both decently trafficked and far enough to make the switch. 

Yassen parallel parks in a quiet alley. The engine sighs as he pulls the keys from the ignition and it leaves the car cabin silent. 

In the back seat, the boy shifts. Yassen watches as uncertainty creeps into his eyes. 

“What’re we doing?” he asks. 

Yassen hears Alex unbuckle.

“Gotta ditch the car. It’s compromised.”

“First, let me see your hand,” Yassen says before Alex moves to get out of the car.

“I keep telling you, it’s fine. It can wait,” Alex says.

“Let me see it.” Yassen gives Alex a hard look in the rearview mirror.

The boy avoids his gaze.

“Little Alex.”

Alex groans and his head lolls back against the seat. “Alright, alright.”

Then Alex is clambering into the front seat, dramatically clumsy as he pulls himself over the center console. Yassen tilts his head to avoid an elbow. 

“Using the doors would have been more appropriate.” 

Alex gives him a look as he arranges himself and drops into the seat. “D’you want me up here or not?” Alex holds out his hand. “Hurry an’ look, alright? ‘M hungry.” 

The burn—if that’s what it truly is—is inflamed and tight around a very small, oblong blister of fluid. The edges of the burned skin are peeled up slightly, discolored black and green. 

Yassen cautiously feels the temperature of the wounded skin with the back of his hand. It is in fact cooler than he would expect, though not to the degree of frostbite.

Fortunately, it looks shallow. Alex has been through far worse.

“See? Told you it’s fine.” Alex pulls his hand away.

“For now. We’ll get more supplies in the next town.” Yassen has already started on the mental list of things they’ll need to restock. He gives their surroundings a slow scan before his focus moves back to Alex. He holds out his hand.

“Gun.” 

Alex reaches behind his back and retrieves the firearm. He offers Yassen the grip with no protest, having much less to say about giving it up than Yassen thought he would.

The anomalous gun is light relative to its size. Yassen turns it in his hands. The body style is similar to that of a Desert Eagle, sporting a blocky wide-diameter barrel. Matte black, its surface scarcely reflects the low light.

He releases the clip. It’s no normal magazine, not that he needs any more evidence he’s dealing with something he’s infuriatingly inexperienced with. He pulls a cartridge from the gun. Distinctly taser-like, but the weight is lighter than he’d expect. 

He’ll need to find a remote place to fire it to make a more accurate assessment.

“Weird, right?” Alex says, eyes glued to it. 

Yassen snaps the magazine back into the grip with his palm—a motion he’s completed more times than he’d like to count. 

The other boy shifts position in the back seat. When Yassen looks at him, the boy swallows. 

He knows exactly what this weapon is. That, Yassen is sure of. 

“You said you shot some of the agents with this?”

“Yeah,” Alex says.

“And?”

Alex looks thoughtful. “Like I said, they were kitted out, so it’s hard to tell. It packs a punch for sure, but honestly it doesn’t seem very lethal. Clearly against bare skin it bloody hurts, but I think you’d need a point blank or execution style headshot to…” Alex falters for a moment and Yassen watches his eyes grow distant. “To…” he gestures jerkily with his hands. “Y-you know.” 

Alex’s breathing hitches and he curls his hands into fists in his lap. 

Yassen sits up and pulls his .22 from the back of his waistband, tucking it into the inner pocket of his coat.

“Rain?” he asks. He slips the Foundation gun against the small of his back. 

“No. I’m fine,” Alex snaps, resuming use of his American accent. “Can we just go now?” 

Without waiting for a reply, Alex swings the passenger door open. 

“Come on,” he says over the seat to the other boy, who startles and unbuckles. 

Yassen pops the trunk. 

“What were you able to grab?” Alex asks. 

“Very little.”

Alex opens the lid and shrugs.

“Better than nothing,” he says, pulling out his backpack and tossing it at the boy. “There’s some trail mix in the front if you want a snack. Who knows when we’ll actually get to eat. Oh, and we’ve still got these.”

Alex unloads a few granola bars from the depths of his pockets. “And,” he says with an air of mock gravitas, “the most important of them all.” He presents the other boy with a squished package of gummy worms and a bag of foil-wrapped chocolates. “Take your pick.”

Their stowaway hesitatingly picks out one of the silver candies, unwrapping it with slow, careful hands. An old injury, Yassen recalls. The boy favors his left side.

Yassen hoists a duffle bag out of the trunk as well, unzipping a side pouch. He takes out a small pack of wet wipes and latex gloves. A smaller pair, he hands to Alex, who sighs. 

The other boy hovers, quiet.

Yassen closes the trunk with a slam. He keeps the boy in sight as he begins to wipe down the surfaces of the car. If the boy decides to bolt, it would solve several of Yassen’s problems.

…And create a few more, if the way Alex has already integrated this boy into his worldview is any indication. 

They make quick work of the car; it’s routine now, the nth time they’ve gone through the motions of a switch since leaving Malagosto. An efficient science, if a bit repetitive and “boring”, as Alex often declares. Today, though, he works in silence.

Yassen discards the keys while Alex double checks their work.

“Seems like you’ve done that a lot,” the boy says, directed at Alex. His voice is neutral, or at least feigning non-judgemental curiosity. 

Alex shrugs a shoulder, motioning for his bag back. “Yeah, well. You know. Being a criminal is actually a lot more boring than films make it look.” 

The other boy snorts. “No offense, but I’m not sure I believe that. Especially after today.” 

Alex smiles. “Point taken.”

“It was like being in a Fast and Furious movie. They have those in Britain, right?”

“Dude, it’s a different country, not a different dimension.”

The boy laughs. “You sure? Might as well be.”

“Nah, nah,” Alex says. “I can promise you, though, most of the insanity of today is more because it’s my life, not because we’re across the pond doing crime.”

Yassen gives them a mild look. The other boy looks immediately cowed, falling silent, while Alex rolls his eyes.

“Relax, no one’s listening, Yassen. Where are we car shopping, anyway?” Alex asks, falling a step behind him as they leave the car behind. The boy walks on the other side of Alex. 

It’s quarter till seven and the air around them is sharp—the slightest hint of mist clouds the air when they exhale. “Parking garage,” he says with a nod up the street. 

“Great. Can’t wait to see what old lady car you pick this time.” 

Yassen raises a brow. 

“This time I will let you pick, then.”

Alex groans. “What’s the point? You never let me choose anything fun.” 

The compact downtown has a three-story parking garage providing access to the local art museum and lake; prime real estate for wiring a new car, with fresh, perfectly innocuous and un-compromised civilian plates.

“Can I rewire it this time at least?” Alex looks at him with that spark in his eye, loping up the sidewalk. He’s usually not so eager.

They dodge around a passing group of young men with skateboards and a camera. Yassen gets the sense that maybe Alex wants to show off to his new friend. 

He shakes his head. “Next time.”

“But you were the one saying I need more practice,” Alex says.

“Next time, little Alex. We cannot afford any mistakes now.” They had put a decent fifty miles between themselves and the last town, but Yassen isn’t about to relax. He hasn’t survived fifteen years in his profession by being optimistic. He eyes the bustling restaurants and stores passing by.

“I promise not to set off the alarm. That one time was just bad luck.” 

“Alex.” 

“Fine. Yeah, whatever.” 

The garage is mostly full when they follow a few others through the door. They follow behind a small family, the father scanning his parking pass.

“Oh, I’ve gotcha,” says the mother, holding the door for them.

“Thank you,” he says as the three of them enter. Her child peers around the frame, giggling. A quick scan shows two staircases, one heading up and another down from this level. Security camera coverage is spotty, but he keeps his head turned away. He starts towards the one leading down but turns when he hears fast, light footsteps.

The child grabs at his hand. “I helped Mommy hold the door! See, mister?”

“Ada, we don’t touch people without their permission,” the mother scolds, rushing over to collect her. “Sorry—I mean, you know what it’s like,” she says with a sympathetic smile. “Kids, and all that.”

“No worries,” he says with an easy smile. He gestures at the boys behind him. “I get it. You have a good night, now.” They part ways, the family going up, and the three of them heading down.

“Cute kid,” Alex remarks as they begin prowling the area. “Glad you didn’t suplex her or anything.”

“Children are not the pinnacle of stealth. She did not surprise me.” 

Yassen scans the lot, looking for a suitably inconspicuous vehicle. An older model Lexus catches his eye. He walks over, Alex and the boy trailing behind him.

A quick inspection yields no notable dents, decals, or markings; there’s nothing expensive in the car. A good candidate for them. He retrieves the equipment he needs from the bag and begins to work.

“Here,” Alex says to the boy from behind Yassen’s shoulder. “Swap out your hoodie for this.” Alex’s backpack unzips. He hears a rustling sound.

“Um—can I put it on top?” The boy’s voice is quiet.

“Yeah, you just want to change your profile,” Alex says. “Grey hoodie to green bomber jacket. You sure you won’t be hot, though?”

“I run cold. I’ll be okay.”

It’s interesting, Yassen muses, hearing Alex interact with someone else his own age when his life isn’t at stake. Despite the setting—of changing into disguises and Yassen with his hands in the wiring of an outdated car model—this is probably the most normal interaction Alex has had with a peer in a while. If the other boy is bothered by them stealing a car, he doesn’t show it.

Neither Alex nor Yassen had anything approximating normal teen years. If Alex could snatch even a sliver of normalcy, even if they would have to part from the other boy soon, Yassen would let him take it.

Alex breaks the forming silence.

“Danny. In the car. You said you’re weird, right? Weird how?”

There’s a long pause. Yassen doesn’t stop examining the wires.

“I’m just… a bit of a…”

“Bit of a what?” Alex presses after a beat.

The boy blows out a rush of air. “Medical marvel, I guess. That’s the easiest way I can—look, it’s hard to explain.”

“Try me.”

The boy doesn’t answer.

“…Alright, I get it. I won’t press, but I have to ask—you’re not going to like, bloody grow tentacles on me or something like that, right?”

“What?” The boy is shocked into genuine laughter. “God, no way.”

“No? No Lovecraftian horror on the forecast for Yassen and I?”

The boy is still shaking off the last of his laughter when he replies, “No, no. Absolutely not. The shit that’s weird about me—look, you won’t have to deal with it. Trust me. You’ll be tentacle-free.”

Yassen pulls the final wire. The engine rumbles to life.

“Let’s go,” he calls to the boys.

Alex’s backpack hits the seat and slumps to the floor. The other boy follows him in, empty-handed.

Yassen hands Alex the first aid kit. “Here. Wrap your hand while I drive.”

“Roger that, sir,” he says with a mocking two-fingered salute. “Anyways. When are we gonna eat?” Alex asks over the sound of the other boy shutting the side door. “You promised us something that didn’t come out of a can.”

They had been driving for hours, changed cars and thrown on new jackets. Yassen could concede that at this point, rest and recuperation could be safely prioritized. He glances at the map. 

“Thirty minutes.”

.

The diner is like many of the other hole-in-the-wall places they’ve stopped at. The automatic door chime blares as Yassen follows Alex and the other child in. The boy squints up at the fluorescent lights. 

The air smells of grease, watered-down bleach, and scalded coffee. There’s two visible exits, and a third back through the kitchen, Yassen assumes. A single surveillance camera is mounted above the cash register. 

They don’t seem to be that busy. Behind the counter is a waiter and a teenager maybe a few years older than Alex, distracted by their phone. An older man sits at the counter nursing a coffee, and a couple sits by the front windows where they’d walked in.

“Sit anywhere ya like. I’ll fetch you some menus,” says the front of house waitress, a woman in her twenties with dark hair.

“Thank you,” Alex says, making a bee-line to a booth out of direct eyesight from the register and kitchen, but close to the opposite exit. 

The boys slide into the booth and Yassen sits across from them.

The waitress reappears with three waters and menus tucked under her arm. She deposits her cargo onto the table with a smile.

“I’m Allie, and I’ll be taking care of you tonight. Can I get you guys started with something to drink?”

Alex perks up first. “Coke?”

“You got it.” Her attention moves to the other child.

He’s silent, eyes wide and shoulders hunched.

Alex bumps him with an elbow. “What’d you want?”

The boy glances across the table at Yassen, uncertain. Awaiting permission.

He tilts his head towards their waitress. The last thing he needs is this child raising any red flags, acting like a hostage. He regrettably agreed to the one meal, after all.

“Um. Sprite. Please.” His voice is just barely audible over the sound of clattering plates in the kitchen.

Yassen watches the waitress, knows she’s picked up on very clear discomfort—but all she says is, “Sure thing.” Her attention moves to Yassen.

“Just water,” he says, polite.

“Alrighty, I’ll be back with those.”

As she walks away, Yassen watches the boy’s shoulders lower as some of his tension leaves him, eyes tracking her until she disappears behind the counter.

The boy’s clear distrust of adults is notable. 

Not that an abused child is his problem—not for much longer, that is. He just hopes the boy relaxes enough that no one gets the wrong idea before they can leave. 

He’s already kidnapped one unruly teenager—he does not need two.

Alex flips open his menu, the metal corners clicking on the linoleum table top.

“Got a favorite diner food?” Alex asks his companion. “All these places have the same things.”

The boy shrugs, glancing at the overhead lights for the second time.

“Okay, I gotta ask,” Alex says, smacking a palm on the table.

The boy looks at Alex, face filling with dread, scooting away—

“What the hell is a chicken-fried steak anyway? Because it sounds pretty gross, or oddly good. Haven’t decided.”

The boy blinks, taken aback, before he smiles—looks too relieved. “Oh, it’s, uh. I dunno. Like, steak that’s breaded and then fried, I’m pretty sure. I’ve actually never had it. It’s like, southern comfort food.”

Alex hums. “Maybe shouldn’t risk it this far north, then?”

Before the boy can answer, the footsteps of the waitress approach again. She sets two red, hard-plastic cups on the table and then pulls straws from her apron.

“Here you kids go. Do you still need a few minutes to decide?”

“Yes, please,” Alex says, pushing the boy’s Sprite over to him while slipping the straw below the table into his lap.

“Take your time,” she says and then she leaves.

Yassen listens to the faint tearing of paper and to the waitress’ retreat, making sure she gets back behind the counter.

He lifts his hand just as Alex shoots the paper wrapper from his straw at his face. The wrapper bounces off his palm and falls to the table.

Alex slouches back into the seat. “Oh, come on.”

Yassen picks up the wrapper and crumples it.

“Be faster or more discreet next time. You were too obvious.” 

Alex gives him a narrow-eyed look. 

If there’s one thing Yassen knows, it’s that Alex loves a challenge—

—and a challenge is exactly what he gets after lunch-hour, when Yassen retrieves Alex for their one-on-one sparring lesson. 

Alex huffs. “It’s not fair if you’re expecting it.”

“Who said I would be expecting it?” 

The hall is more or less quiet as they move through it. Lower-ranked operatives nod at him as they pass, a few shooting Alex disapproving looks.

“You just told me to pick-pocket you.”

Yassen shakes his head. Teenagers and their literal thinking. Or perhaps this was something specific to Alex.

“Not now. The timing is up to you.”

“I already know how to pick-pocket, thanks.”

“Taught by your uncle, or MI6?”

Alex scowls down the hall at something not there. “Is there a difference?”

Yassen hums. He lets the silence sit for a second. “So then are you telling me you cannot do it?”

Alex looks at him. His hair hangs down past his eyebrows—longer now than when he’d first arrived at Malagosto.

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then I do not see the problem. If you are so good, then you should have nothing to worry about, correct?”

Alex’s eyes remain squinted and Yassen can hear his mind working. “What do I get if I do?”

“Is the accomplishment not reward enough, little Shrike?”

“Not a chance. Extra pudding?” he asks with a grin.

They reach the end of the corridor and Yassen pushes into the sparring area.

“Is that all?”

Alex scoffs, a dark tone creeping into his voice. “Not like I’m gonna bloody be here long enough for much else.” 

Yassen lets Alex go in front of him. The boy was right. One way or another, his time at Malagosto was about to end.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

—Alex rolls his eyes. “Yeah, alright.”

Next to him, the other boy is giving them a look of poorly-concealed confusion. 

The boy clears his throat, glancing at Alex. “So, uh… at the convenience store… was the Queen of England thing not a joke? Like… your accent…”

Alex looks baffled, and then a smile breaks over his face. He starts to laugh.

Yassen should be annoyed at how quickly Alex has seemingly thrown caution to the wind and blown his cover, but… 

Alex continues to laugh, clutching his stomach and doubling over the table. The boy starts to look more embarrassed the longer Alex laughs. 

A sinking feeling spiders through Yassen’s stomach.

He has a feeling that things are about to get much more complicated.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Sitting there in the diner booth next to Alex, Danny can’t help but feel out of place. He knows he’s on borrowed time. This is little more than a vacation—one he just hopes lasts until his powers come back. That’s all he needs.

That’s what he tells himself.

He glances at Yassen, stomach wound in knots.

He can’t get a read on him without his powers. Every time he speaks, his voice is perfectly measured, and when he looks at Danny, he can’t help but feel like he’s under a microscope. 

It’s jarring—the nothing in the air around him. Even then, Danny has known from the second he got into that car with Alex that Yassen is dangerous.

Danny shifts in his seat, mind rolling over the lingering pain in his side.

When is it going to wear off, anyway? 

The fear of it being permanent wiggles just under his skin.

No—this isn’t the time to think about that. He can still feel his core after all, muted and heavy as it is. That has to count for something.

Danny sips his Sprite. The side of the glass is slick with condensation and he ignores the pang, wishes for cold. 

When Alex orders a burger, Danny mumbles he wants the same thing. He’d read the menu, but nothing had stayed in his mind. 

The burgers arrive hot. Danny inhales the near-overwhelming scent of fresh food. It’s a novelty; salt, oil, something almost nutty. He unwraps the burger from the paper like it’s holy and takes a bite.

God. He forgot how good real food is. Hot meat, crunching vegetables, greasy flavor that promises heart problems in his future. Emotion burns behind his eyes, but he pushes it down.

They eat in near silence, at least for the first few minutes. A quiet table’s a sign of a good meal, his dad used to say.

Danny slows, puts his burger down. Makes idle conversation with Alex instead of dwelling on that thought.

The waitress asks if they want dessert, and drops off the server book when Yassen says no. Yassen scans the receipt, counts out some cash, and closes the billfold.

When he stands, he pulls a paper map out to consult their route. 

“It is time to part ways,” he says. “Alex?”

“Wait—what? Here?” Alex asks. Danny’s not sure if that’s disbelief or just surprise in his voice, but he puts the last bite of his burger down, like this conversation is more important than his hard-won meal. “This is practically the middle of nowhere.”

Danny scrapes at the dredges of ketchup on his plate with the last of his fries and keeps his eyes down. The fries are nothing but burnt scraps.

“Yes,” Yassen says. 

“It’s late,” Alex goes on. “What is Danny going to do? Sleep under a tree?”

Probably.

“That is not our problem.”

“Yes, it is!”

“Lower your voice,” Yassen says. Danny can’t decipher where the tone lands—between admonishment and annoyance, maybe.

“We have to get to a bigger city,” Alex says like it’s final. “At least somewhere with a bus route. Here, give me the map.”

Yassen tightens his grip as Alex tugs on it.

“We’ve already wasted enough time and headway today. No detours.”

“Fine. Let’s take him right to Salt Lake City with us, then.” 

“The answer is still no.” Yassen pulls the map away completely. “Our friends are likely paying more attention after the commotion you left behind us.”

He heads towards the door. 

Alex glances at Danny. “Come on, we’re not leaving you here.” 

Alex scrambles after Yassen. Danny follows more reluctantly. Outside, the parking lot is empty. The rain has finally started, and the air smells like it; rich and heady.

Yassen stands impassively beside the car. The shoulders of his gray coach jacket are getting wet as Alex’s voice carries towards Danny.

“Okay, yeah, they’re on guard. So what? It’s not like having Danny with us will make us any slower or more conspicuous. Isn’t he going to throw off our profile, anyways? Two teens and one adult instead of just the two of us. Let’s subvert their expectations.”

“There is subverting expectations, and then there is being foolish.”

“Sometimes, doing something foolish is the best course of action.”

“Rarely.”

“I’ve lived this long by being foolish,” Alex snorts.

“You have nearly been killed for the same reasons just as many times.”

“Oh, so you were there? Keeping count?”

Danny hangs back, at the edge of the diner’s awning. The treeline isn’t far. If he wanted, he could walk away, right now.

He stays rooted.

“Do not argue with me,” Yassen says. “Say goodbye. I will wait in the car.”

The driver’s door unlocks with a click. 

Alex drops a heavy palm against the window. Braces it shut before Yassen can pull the door open.

“I’ve done what you said for an entire month,” Alex says. There’s heat in his voice. His free hand is curled into a tight fist. “I haven’t complained, I haven’t talked back—much—and I haven’t taken any crazy risks. I know this is how it’s got to be, and that’s fine. But for the love of god, just let us get to Salt Lake so Danny can get on a bus or sleep at a shelter or something.”

The unreadable stare Yassen fixes on Alex would’ve made Danny quail.

Alex works his jaw a moment, and lowers his voice. “Please. I’m not asking for much.”

The staring match breaks when Yassen inclines his head.

Danny watches Alex’s stance relax minutely.

“He can stay with us until we reach the city.” Yassen pushes the car door open, forcing Alex to step back as he gets in.

Alex grins at Danny.

Danny blinks.

“What are you, a signpost?” Alex calls. “Let’s go!”

.

Yassen hasn’t said much since the argument. It makes Danny nervous, and not just because Yassen is the one with both guns. 

Danny can’t tell how angry Yassen is. Or if he is angry to begin with. 

He feels bad. Clearly, whatever relationship these two had was fine before his presence threw a wrench into it. 

But his powers still aren’t back. He’d be a sitting duck if he was on his own. A bigger city is actually the last thing he wants, but it could be convenient—he’ll need energy, and a lot of it. Alex got him a night—hopefully that’s all he’ll need. Then he can get out of their hair…

He tries not to think about it. 

They pull into the parking lot of a Best Western. Yassen puts the car in park and gets out without a word, headed towards the check-in desk inside. The way he walks is easy and sure of himself. For some reason, it puts Danny even more on edge. 

“Don’t mind him. He’s just grumpy because he’s paranoid,” Alex says, British accent back again in the privacy of the car.

“Doesn’t seem like a bad trait to me.” 

“The grumpiness or the paranoia?”

Danny snorts. “The paranoia.” 

“Yeah, well. Guess it has its uses.” 

Danny rubs the fabric of the jacket Alex gave him between his fingers. It’s quiet for a few seconds as Danny watches Yassen talk to the man at the front desk through the window. 

“Who exactly is Yassen… to you?” 

Alex looks at him, brows furrowing into something conflicted. It’s dark, and for anyone else, it’d be hard to see. 

“Just curious. You don’t have to answer…” 

“He’s my… Uh. Mentor of sorts? It’s complicated.” The lingering heat of the car is dissipating, making the window fog where Alex is sitting close to it. 

Danny nods. “That makes sense.” 

They sit in silence for a bit.

“I’ve never heard a name like ‘Yassen’ before. What is it?” 

“Russian.” 

“Oh.” Danny didn’t hear a Russian accent, but then again, Alex had switched accents three times already. 

“You saying you couldn’t tell? Then again, I guess we’ve dyed our hair since we’ve been here in the States. But seriously, he’s blond haired and blue eyed, the whole deal.”

Danny huffs a laugh. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Just don’t go around saying his name to people. If you do, I can’t confirm your safety.” Alex says it like a joke, but something tells Danny that it isn’t.

“Noted.”

Yassen looks like he’s wrapping up at the front desk.

Danny hurries to speak before he comes back. “Thanks for today, by the way. For all of it. Sticking your neck out for me.”

“Psh, no worries mate, seriously. Being hunted by government institutions isn’t easy. Honestly, I was thinking I was the only bloody teenager in the world in a mess like this.”

Danny gives Alex a weak smile.

“Yeah, no kidding.”

Alex catches Yassen’s eye as he emerges from the automatic glass doors and unbuckles his seatbelt. Danny hesitates before following him out of the car, into the ongoing drizzle.

In another lifetime, it might’ve been laughable how few possessions the three of them have to gather. Yassen locks the car manually.

Alex yawns as he passes his mentor-of-sorts, and Yassen gives him a look that borders on—frustration? Danny wishes he knew.

Maybe… maybe none of this is a good idea.

Danny checks over his shoulder. The Best Western is just off the highway. There’s a gas station up the road. A few houses.

He realizes it’s just him and Yassen, standing outside the lobby. Yassen is studying him.

Danny doesn’t want to meet his eyes.

“I won’t prevent you from leaving.”

Danny grimaces. 

“However, I did tell little Alex you could stay,” Yassen continues. “I will not go back on my word.”

Little Alex. There it is again. A pretty affectionate term for someone who’s only your student-of-sorts. 

Something about it loosens the knot in his chest. He doesn’t exactly trust Yassen, not really, but by now he trusts Alex… So. 

He takes a breath, stuffs his hands in his pockets and enters the hotel.

Their hotel room is on the second floor, and it’s the same as any other chain hotel room. The bathroom is on the right side as they walk in. There’s two double beds and a couch with a little wooden coffee table.

Danny shuffles in after Alex and Yassen, not sure where to stand or what to do with himself. Alex makes for the bed furthest from the window and flops backwards onto it. 

“Take the other bed,” Yassen tells him.

He blinks, rubbing a hand down his left arm. 

“Oh, uh… Okay.” 

Yassen drops his duffle bag onto the coffee table and Danny slips past him. 

He sits on the end of the bed and the mattress creaks under him. He slides his hand over the comforter. He doesn’t remember the last time he slept on a bed. 

Yassen pulls the blackout curtains over the windows.

Alex fishes around in the bedside table drawer, retrieving the TV remote. He flicks the TV on and starts browsing the channels while Danny kicks his shoes off. 

“Do you want to check the news?” Alex says, directed at Yassen. 

Yassen pulls the ecto-gun from his waistband and Danny can’t help but tense. 

“With the Foundation involved, I don’t expect there will be any media coverage.” Yassen sets the gun down next to his bag with a thunk. “Even so, it couldn’t hurt.”

Alex shrugs and slumps against the pillows of his bed. The news flits on the screen and Alex turns the volume up enough to hear. 

Alex takes a deep breath—Danny does the same, slower, so it’s not obvious. He’s out of practice with it; been using Alex as a reference. He wonders how long it’ll take for breathing to feel natural again.

Exhaustion pulls down on Danny, making him feel heavy and sore. His arm still hurts. Not as sharp as before, but enough to make itself known anytime he moves. 

He lies down on top of the covers, feeling too warm for comfort. A sudden part of him misses being outside. 

Salt Lake City… he’s never been before. Bigger city means more light pollution.

He thinks about stars and the quiet of a forest. He closes his eyes.

The newscaster murmurs indistinctly. Dull colors shift against the dark sheet of Danny’s eyelids; blue, orange, red…

Yassen moves quietly around the room. Danny distantly wonders what he’s doing, but his imagination stalls and fails.

Alex’s breathing slows, evens out, then deepens. Within moments, he’s asleep.

Danny can feel every disused muscle, every smarting bruise. On his side, largely ignored until now, is a pulsing knot where he was hit by whatever new concoction the Foundation has cooked up. A disruptor that targets ecto-energy, if he had to guess… His parents had just started working on the concept. 

He remembers their echoed voices down in the lab—

—Theoretically, it would be possible.

—It’d be a game changer for the spectral field of study.

Reliable capture and containment was the Department of Spectral Phenomena’s biggest adversary, after all. 

A lot can change in a year. 

He shifts and presses two fingers to his side. A sharp wave of pain spiders out from the point, making him grit his teeth.

Right. Healing the old-fashioned way.

For the first time in a very long time, Danny is present in his body. 

He exhales slowly, again in time with Alex. His easy, sleep-heavy pace is comforting. The pain dulls minutely.

If this is how Danny is feeling, Alex must be in a rougher shape. He’d been taking direct blows from Mu-13, not to mention the burn—

But they’d left the Foundation behind, at least for the time being, and right now, Alex feels safe enough to sleep.

For now, that’s enough.

Inch by inch, the toll of the day pulls him under. 

.

Danny doesn’t know where he is. 

Sensations drift towards him like honey added to cold water. The air is thick and all he knows is that it’s raining.

The street is narrow and unfamiliar and for some reason he’s on the ground, staring up at streetlights. Cars roar past and he can taste the exhaust in the back of his throat. 

He fights to lift his head, prop himself up. 

This isn’t really his body, it’s too awkward—heavy. Pain beats like a drum through his leg and side. It all feels distant, too much like a memory. 

His clothes are plastered to his body. There’s an odd sense of urgency burning through him. 

Is he in danger? 

A wave of fury froths up, and it feels so misplaced. 

There’s movement, and this time when he goes to look, this body that’s not quite his, responds. 

He shouldn’t be surprised by what he sees, but he is. 

Looking down at him is Alex. The barrel of a gun glints in the overhead light—and Alex’s eyes are dark and empty. 

“Alex—?” he tries, but the words don’t make it out. 

Maybe he tries to get away. 

Or maybe he takes this moment to try and hurt Alex. Because Alex took everything from him. 

It was all supposed to be his. 

Alex ruined everything.

He feels himself, pulled taut against his bones. Two moments exist at once.

Alex is a coward.

Alex is pulling the trigger—

He lurches unwillingly from the darkness, pain throbbing through his skull. His eyes skip around the room and he remembers where he is, who he’s with.

His heart slows, but the dream lingers behind his eyes.

Yassen is repacking his bag. Danny watches as he takes out a silver handgun, checking the weapon over. He pops out the clip and checks the ammo. Seemingly satisfied, he moves towards Alex on the bed across from him. 

Alex is lying on his stomach, faced towards the wall.

“Alex.” 

Alex groans in response. 

Yassen nudges the bed with his knee. 

“Get up. We need to get moving. It is already nine.” 

That gets Alex to prop himself up. “It’s what?” His voice is thick with sleep. 

Yassen turns and walks across the room, yanking back the curtains and letting in a shaft of light. Danny turns his face away from it, screwing his eyes shut. 

“Nine AM. I let you sleep.” 

Danny cracks an eye back open.

Alex rolls over and sits up, rubbing his face. 

“When did I fall asleep?” 

“Almost immediately.” 

“Oh. That’s… huh.” 

Something passes between them, some sort of understanding that Danny isn’t privy to. 

Alex shakes his head. “Um. I call the shower first.” He gets up and stretches, attention moving to Danny.

“Did you sleep?” 

Danny hauls himself into a sitting position, rubbing sleep from his eye. He nods, still wading towards wakefulness. “Yeah, I did.” 

Alex hums and then he’s drifting off towards the bathroom. 

Danny turns bodily away from the light streaming in, the brightness pounding against his eyes. Despite the light, Danny hears rain still pattering against the window pane. 

Yassen continues packing. With Alex gone, he realizes all at once he’s alone with Yassen again. Nerves squirm up through his stomach like worms. He doesn’t think Yassen would do anything, but he isn’t sure of that. 

Danny still doesn’t feel anything from Yassen. 

It’s the not knowing that bothers him. 

His core feels colder in his chest this morning. He wonders…

He reaches for it, gently, nothing more than a prod—which is why when it lurches, slides like an avalanche through him, it leaves him reeling. 

A familiar tingle spreads out from him like oil over the surface of water. He’s so relieved that he doesn’t jump on it fast enough. 

The next thing he feels is the sharp spike of unease through the air. Familiar. It’s how all living people feel around him… but the amount of energy he’d just accidently pushed into the air is the amount he usually uses to make people drop everything and run for their lives.

Shit.

Yassen stiffens across the room and turns to face him—his arm moves towards his gun. There’s the hot ember of fear laced through Yassen’s emotions.

Danny forces himself to move, scrambling up to his feet.

Just as fast as it came, his core spasms against his ribs and falls back underneath an impenetrable surface. Pain pulses through his chest and down his arm. He’s plunged back into the dark—cut off from the colors simmering in the man’s brainstem.

Yassen stops just before he pulls his gun, but Danny could feel it—there had been an instant and mutual understanding of each other. Yassen deemed him a threat. His instincts had switched directly to fight, and Danny can’t even say he blames him. 

His sluggish heart pounds in his chest and he sucks in a breath. He makes sure his hands are visible to Yassen. “I uh. I think I’m gonna head down to the…” He swallows. “The free breakfast.” 

Yassen says nothing, his blue eyes boring into him. Danny just wants to sink through the floor. Does he know? is the only question that slams around in his skull. 

But how could he? 

Yassen doesn’t seem the type to believe in ghosts. 

Danny shuffles past Yassen, half expecting the man to snatch him by the arm and demand an explanation. But Yassen lets him go. 

The door slams shut behind him. He fully accepts that Yassen might not even let Alex say goodbye. Either way, he figures they’ll be leaving without him.

He stares at the ground as he walks down the hall. Tries to convince himself he’ll be okay with that. 

Tries to convince himself that he doesn’t like Alex—that he hasn’t enjoyed the taste of being alive again. 

He takes two flights of steps down to ground level and loiters at the mouth of the stairwell, taking stock of the lobby. He waits until the lone rumpled businessman picks up his newspaper and leaves, and the concierge answers the phone.

Danny sticks close to the wall.

He avoids the continental breakfast options and drifts to the instant, pre-packaged stuff. Oatmeal in packets, bagels, the like. Makes Danny think of school day mornings, the memories so fuzzed over they could’ve happened to someone else.

He picks a bowl and stirs together oats and hot water. The mix looks bland and unappealing, but he chooses a spot with a decent view of the room, and forces one spoonful into his mouth at a time until the bowl is cold.

There’s still an ache at the pit of his stomach, softer than regret. It hasn’t fully subsided.

He eventually finishes his food. He’s not hungry anymore… but his eyes go back to the tables regardless. He gets up.

His fingers twitch over a Nature Valley bar. It’s one of a dozen, dumped haphazardly into a shallow, chipped display dish by some underpaid motel employee. 

The neighboring dish is yellow, and stacked with only enough care that the prepackaged muffins don’t tumble out. A few rolls of dollar store mini donuts are hidden underneath. The clear-front mini-fridge further down displays an array of yogurt and milk.

He feels a little more like himself this morning, but he’ll need human food a while yet.

He picks a granola bar, slides it into his sleeve.

“You learn quick.”

Alex’s Americanized voice is sudden enough that Danny jolts before he pivots. The microwave at his elbow beeps and splutters. The light overhead blinks. 

Fuck.

“Uh…”

“Means you’re a good student,” Alex reassures him. His hair is sticking up at odd angles, like he hadn’t bothered to comb it after getting out of the shower. Not that Danny has any room to pass judgment. 

Alex beelines for the bowl of fruit, doesn’t seem to mind Danny watching as he deliberates between two equally pitiful apples. He bites one, then scowls. There’s a fresh bandage on Alex’s hand, but he’s not treating it delicately. 

In the density of Danny’s breastbone, his core buzzes. Promising, but not enough.

Danny slides another granola bar up his sleeve. The wrapper crinkles against the other.

He tries to occupy himself by reading muffin labels. 

Banana. Blueberry. Double chocolate…

They can only distract him for so long. 

Danny shifts to look past Alex, who’s closer to the window, having wandered over to the cereal. He glances out the window, squinting against the mid-morning sun. “Is it still raining out?”

Alex stops and turns to look. When he faces Danny again, his brows are knit in confusion. “…It hasn’t been raining,” he says slowly. “Not since last night, I don’t think.” 

“Huh. I thought… nevermind.” Danny surveys the breakfast bar again. The options haven’t changed since he last looked. “Maybe we should… get back?”

Alex glances out the window again, then shakes his head. “Yeah. Let’s take this to go.” Alex turns back and gives him a mild look. “You know, check out isn’t till ten, so there’s still time if you wanna shower too.”

Danny can’t help but snort. “I can take a hint, jeez.” 

Alex shoots him a lopsided smile. “Look, I didn’t wanna be a dick about it, alright?”

Danny rolls his eyes and fights down the growing pit in his stomach. 

He’s not staying. It’s not safe for them.

He has to remember that.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

His computer chimes, loud against the after-hours quiet of the department HQ. 

Derek Smithers’ attention snaps to one of his many monitors, heart leaping into his throat. On the screen is a flashing window. 

MATCH FOUND 

MATCH FOUND 

MATCH FOUND 

He drags himself towards the computer, chair wheels rolling over the cement floor, and he fumbles for the mouse. He clicks open the facial recognition program and a static CCTV image stares back at him. 

Weeks of running this software in the background… Smithers almost can’t believe his eyes. 

It’s Alex.

After nearly a month of no contact, Smithers was sure things had gone terribly wrong. Alex hadn’t used the emergency locator that Smithers had personally slipped to him when the boy was shipped off to Malagosto. He was worried that it’d been lost, or worse, been discovered.

Scorpia has been in chaos for the past ten days. Still no word from Alex. 

Smithers had been about ready to give up hope. 

He’s glad he didn’t. 

The computer screen stares back at him: the image shows him one Alex Rider, alive and well, in a car crossing the Canada-U.S. border. He’s in the passenger seat. He looks exhausted, but unhurt. Heart soaring with hope, he looks to the driver’s seat and—

—his blood runs cold. 

The program displays the name in large letters.

YASSEN GREGOROVICH 

The S.O.S. stud in Alex’s ear catches the light. 

Not much perplexes him anymore.

Except for when it comes to Alex Rider.

Smithers scrambles to pick up his phone. Despite the late hour, it rings only once before Jones picks up. 

“Yes?”

“I got a hit. It’s him.” 

It’s like a switch was flipped.

Yassen can’t put his finger on what exactly was different about the boy that morning, but something had changed. The boy had looked at him, and every single survival instinct hardwired into Yassen roared to life, burning under his skin. On reflex, he had reached for his gun—stopping just short of drawing it.

The boy beat a hasty exit from the hotel room, as if he knew.

The half-baked excuse he’d fed Alex in the parking garage—a “medical marvel”—was either entirely false or a gross understatement. Yassen isn’t sure which yet.

Yassen slides a metal file against the side of the mysterious Foundation firearm. With every pass, the serial number laser engraved on the side becomes less and less visible. He considers dismantling and tossing it. That way, it can’t be traced back to them. But an anomalous weapon could come in handy should Scorpia decide they were worth the risk of deploying their own anomalies. 

Or in case the one in the room should turn against them.

Alex pushes back into the hotel room with his new shadow in tow. 

“Danny’s gonna take a shower,” he announces.

Yassen looks up at the two of them—the boy still avoids his eyes as the door swings closed behind him.

Yassen nods towards the plastic bags of new clothing sitting at the edge of Alex’s bed.

“Use those. I bought enough,” Yassen says.

“Here.” Alex digs through the bag and tosses random items at the other boy. He spares a moment to pull the tags off a pair of jeans. “These should fit.”

Yassen goes back to his task, listening as the boy says, “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, man. Now, go take a shower and get changed.”

From the corner of his eye, he sees Alex shoo his friend towards the bathroom. Were it not for the way Danny hurries as if being chased, it would be as if nothing ever happened.

He already regrets his promise to bring the boy with them to the city.

The bathroom door closes. Alex plops down on the couch next to him, taking a noisy bite of an apple.

Yassen slides the .22 towards Alex.

“Strip and clean.”

“Can’t I eat first?”

“You can eat in the car.”

Alex groans, but puts the apple aside and drags the gun over by the handle. Yassen had anticipated more pushback—he is still trying to break Alex’s general hesitance around handguns. But Alex silently checks and then disarms the clip.

The sound of the shower sputters to life, muted by the bathroom door.

“Recoil spring away from you,” he reminds him. “And don’t forget your rear trigger function test.”

Instead of arguing, Alex just nods. 

He is in an improved mood this morning. Are teenagers really so easy to deal with when fully rested?

This morning’s rest was a stark departure from Alex’s norm. He doubts his convenience store jaunt yesterday qualified as tiring enough, considering the life he leads.

And the last few months have proven that exhaustion is irrelevant to the whims of Alex’s problems.

Alex’s motions still. Yassen stops filing.

“I just realized something,” the boy says slowly, putting the half-assembled gun down.

Yassen stays silent. Alex’s eyes dart around the room, searching for something.

“Julius didn’t bother me at all yesterday. Not now, either.”

“He is not?”

“No…” Alex furrows his brows. “Maybe because those Foundation blokes were around? You said they deal with freaky shit. But… he hasn’t been back. I mean, it’s probably nothing,” he says, scattered, “It’s just…”

Yassen waits.

The light flickers out in his eyes. “Never mind.”

Whatever leap Alex had been trying to make fizzles out. Yassen returns to filing the serial number from the new pistol as Alex cleans. Alex eyes the weapon in Yassen’s hands.

“Did you figure anything out about that thing?”

“I will need to find a place to test it before I can confirm more.”

Alex hums. He jerks his head back towards the bathroom. “We should ask Danny about it. He knows something, I think.”

Alex shares his suspicion then. Yassen looks at Alex’s hand. “Doctors that know how to stitch bullet holes do not necessarily understand the guns that put them there.” He hadn’t missed the way Alex had tried to bury his grimaces of pain when Yassen had cleaned and rewrapped the burn. The only thing that had soothed it was warm water.

“I mean,” Alex says, “it was his idea to shoot the lighter. He knew exactly what kinda reaction we’d get.”

Hm.

Yassen flips the strange pistol in his hand, thinking. It’s large for a handgun, meaning two hands will be required to keep it stable.

Alex has a point. A layman would see nothing more than a gun.

The sound of the shower stops.

“We’ll speak of it later.”

Alex rolls his eyes.

The bathroom door opens. Instead of emitting humid heat, the damp air that spills out is cool. The boy is recognizable from yesterday, but a shower and new clothing have made him look much less wild. Still gaunt at the edges, but passable as an aspect of teenage rebellion.

The boy pauses where he is, taking in the scene. Stiffens when he spots what’s in Yassen’s hands.

“We are leaving as soon as this is done,” Yassen says to the room at large.

The boy nods jerkily, shuffling along the edge of the room and pausing to fiddle in front of the wall mirror.

“I can only go so fast.” Alex scowls. He’s avoiding much use of his injured hand, despite the delicate process requiring both.

Yassen inclines his head. “Nearly there, little Alex.”

Alex grumbles, but doesn’t stop working.

Yassen gets up and begins to sweep up what little they had unpacked. When he picks up the Foundation pistol and clip, the boy tenses, gaze flickering between Yassen and the window. He’s trying to hide his reaction, but his fear is far too conspicuous.

He thinks about what Alex said. Maybe because those Foundation blokes were around…

He stows it away in the bag, on the top. The boy’s shoulders sink.

“Done,” Alex says. Yassen turns to him and accepts the .22. When it’s stashed beside the other pistol, he zips up the bag.

“It is best if we get back on the road now,” Yassen says. “Wait outside.”

The boys leave him to check if they’ve forgotten anything. He’s about to finish his final sweep of the room when he pauses by the wall. He leans closer.

Like feathering nerves, the mirror glints in a fractal pattern. Yassen presses a finger to it and feels it melt.

Frost.

He wipes it away and the door clicks, relocking behind him, feeling the boy’s gaze on his back the whole way to the car.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

There’s a lightness tethered behind Alex’s eyes. He can’t quite place it, not until they’ve been on the road for a few hours, and he realizes he’s not fighting off an unpleasant nap.

Because he’s actually slept.

He didn’t even dream.

One night can’t undo weeks of damage; he still feels unfocused at the edges. Too aware of his heartbeat, quick and high under his tongue. But there’s a little less lead in his skull than yesterday.

He’d forgotten what it was like.

He sighs and sinks further into his seat. His ribs twinge and he draws his next breath more shallowly, carefully. Good thing he’s sitting behind Yassen; otherwise he’d notice.

To his right, Danny is fidgeting with the buttons of his new flannel. Back and forth, twisting between his thumb and forefinger. Danny sighs, too.

Alex watches his profile. Danny must feel Alex’s gaze. He starts worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

Maybe it’s Alex’s imagination, but he could’ve sworn there were more scratches on his face yesterday.

Then again, Danny is a “medical marvel”, in his own words. Maybe healing a few scrapes is part of that—not like Danny deigned to explain anything. Just insisted that neither of them would have to deal with his weirdness.

Not for the first time, Alex wonders. There had been too much Foundation manpower on the ground for a kid who could repair a few cuts overnight. 

In Alex’s experience, organizations like that didn’t lift a finger more than absolutely necessary. So why the rangers, the SWAT team, and multiple vans? The persistence?

Why hadn’t they recognized “6377” when they’d been face to face?

“Hey, Danny.”

“Hmm?”

“Where’d you learn to shoot?”

Danny’s eyes dart over to Alex, but he doesn’t turn towards him fully. “What makes you think I, uh, I know how to shoot?”

Alex scoffs. “Um, because I saw you? Could rival me, mate. You took down more of those soldiers than I did, and I’m not being humble.”

Danny makes a little noise. Alex catches half a smile before Danny rubs it off with the back of his hand.

“Besides,” Alex goes on, “you handled that plasma pistol like you knew it. Where the safety was, what the recoil was like. Exactly how many shots you could get out of it.”

Danny hums, noncommittal.

Alex fights his seatbelt to lean closer to Danny. He lowers his voice, but he knows Yassen is listening regardless. He hopes the show of discretion will put Danny more at ease, because that’s all it is: a show.

“Because you have handled it, haven’t you?”

“I… might. Might have.”

“When?”

Danny jerks his shoulder. A generous person would call it a shrug. “I don’t know. A while ago.”

“Where’d you get one of those pistols?”

Danny eyes him. “Where’d you get one?”

“Touché.”

Danny folds himself against the window, and Alex eases off. “So, what. You stole one, taught yourself?”

“Basically.”

“Self-defense?”

“Yep.”

Terser and terser replies. 

“Okay, but there’s one thing I still don’t get.”

Danny doesn’t prompt him to go on, but Alex does anyway. Holds up his hand, which still throbs under Yassen’s perfectionist bandaging.

“Why can’t they use regular bullets on you?”

Danny’s eyes skitter to Yassen, and the road beyond. Alex knows for certain that whatever Danny’s going to say next is going to be a lie.

“I don’t know, dude. Why does the Foundation do anything?”

“Huh.” So there is a reason, and Danny knows it. “Okay, so you’re immune to normal bullets, or something.” It’s not impossible. Alex has seen it before.

“Um… no, I don’t think so?” Danny squeaks on the last two words.

Alex laughs.

Danny flushes, and clears his throat with a glare. “I’m only immune to bullets if you are.”

“I am.” If you ignore the once.

“If only that were true,” Yassen mutters.

“I don’t get shot at that much.”

“Key words,” Yassen replies.

Alex kicks the back of Yassen’s seat. He can feel Danny still watching both of them. It makes his skin prickle, ever so slightly.

“They shoot at you with real bullets,” Danny surmises.

“Sometimes.”

“Why?”

Alex should have seen this question coming, but… tit for tat. “For fucking up their plans, mostly.”

“Little Alex is a thorn in many people’s sides,” Yassen contributes. Alex hears the “including mine” that goes unsaid. “I believe he takes pride in it.”

“It’s not my fault they want to take over the world or nuke countries,” Alex mutters under his breath. Not quietly enough, if the questioning eyebrow Danny raises is any evidence.

Trying to dig up Danny’s past is suddenly a lot less appealing.

He cranes around the front seat. “Can we turn on the radio?”

Yassen wordlessly hits the power. He sighs when Alex leans over the center console to tune the dials to something good, but doesn’t stop him. Alex stoically keeps the regret off his face when the position strains his bruised ribs.

He finds a station playing classic rock, though the signal is bad. The guitar fizzes in and out on the solo, but Alex accepts that and retreats into the back seat.

The day’s been far too quiet. He’s nearly felt—normal.

It’s disconcerting.

The radio breaks up a little more, and Alex squints at it. The music slides into pure white noise.

“Is the signal dodgy or something?” he mutters, leaning forward. “What’s with the static?”

Yassen’s fingers, idly drumming on the steering wheel, still.

“There is no static right now.”

Alex doesn’t look at Danny. He can’t. “Must’ve misheard,” he says, completely level, and leans back. Closes his eyes. Dread rises in his chest like water.

The more he listens, the more the white noise sounds like rain. Pattering. Endless. His clothes cling to his skin.

God, why now.

He breathes. He has to. Even as he feels the grip of a gun nose at his palms.

He digs his hands into the car seat. Soft pleather. It’s soft, dry pleather. He can feel his nails cutting into it. He can see the back of Yassen’s seat. He can see the highway moving outside the window.

It’s dry, he says firmly.

It’s dry.

It’s—

It’s wet. It’s the hard, wet grip of a gun.

He closes his eyes in defeat.

Water rolls into the crevice between his palm and the seat. In the crevice of his clavicle. In the crevice of his eyes. Blinding him.

It’s raining. It’s raining again, and he can hear him laughing.

One, two, three, four fingers and a thumb wrap around his neck.

“Hiiii, Alex,” Julius breathes.

He doesn’t reply. Turns to look out the window. His own reflection looks back and grins, wide, so wide he can see it split open the muscles of his face—

He closes his eyes.

“Aww, come on. Aren’t you happy to see me? I know I am. Look at how big I’m smiling!” Julius snarls. “Look at it.”

Four clammy digits dig in around his eyelids and stretch.

Julius really is smiling. With all his hundred teeth, he is smiling. His face melts, warps. First Alex’s face, then Tom’s, then Jack’s.

Yassen says something and it sounds like it’s through five feet of glass.

“Aren’t I pretty, Alex?” When Julius speaks, it’s with Jack’s voice.

“Fuck off,” he barely breathes.

“That’s no way to speak to your beloved nanny,” he says, and it’s heart-stopping how much he sounds like her.

“I said fuck off,” he says, just a little bit louder.

Julius smiles wide enough that Jack’s face sloughs off and hits the floor of the car with a wet sound. Like peeling pork belly.

“Oh, but you know I’m never going to leave you.” Julius is wearing Alex’s face again, laughing. “You, you tied me to yourself. This is your fault. All your fault.”

“No, it’s not,” Alex whispers.

“Yes, it is,” Julius says. “Who held the gun?”

Alex is silent.

“Who shot first?” Julius whispers.

Bile rises in Alex’s throat.

“Which one of us is dead?”

Alex opens his mouth. Snaps it shut, too hard.

“That’s right. That’s right,” Julius giggles, “it was you! You fired. You lived. You, you, you.” The word turns into a snarl. He rises up taller than the car should let him. “And you didn’t deserve to.”

The rain is drowning him.

He’d been able to fight Julius, once. Twice. But Julius had been tangible, then. Alex had known what would hurt him: fire, fists, guns. The same things that would hurt anybody.

He tries to take a deep breath. It stutters under his bruised ribs.

“No? Nothing to say for yourself, Alex Rider?”

Alex can barely hear himself under the torrent. “That’s not true.”

“Oh? It isn’t?”

“S’not.”

“Then what?”

Alex bares his teeth in an ugly snarl. “Well, I’m definitely the prettier one between us.”

The grip that slams around his throat bruises him breathless.

He hears himself starting to wheeze. Thin and raspy. The next one whistles at the edges. He curls over his lap and tries to force air in and out of his lungs. Everything in his head is getting disjointed.

Something in Alex gives.

Julius all but squeals in delight.

“See? Right there. Hold on to that feeling. You know it’s true.”

He just wants it to stop.

“I’m here for the rest of your life.”

Alex fails to draw the next breath.

“It’s going to rain forever.”

Yassen says something and all Alex feels is—

—cold, like an open window?—

“—pull over? Alex. Do you need me to—”

The world crashes into resolution. He sucks in air, desperately. His heart hammers in his chest. He can breathe, and it hurts like hell, and it’s never felt better.

He’s dry.

He’s—dry?

“Alex, I’m pulling over.”

“No,” Alex says quickly, “I’m okay.” 

His voice sounds like it went through a blender. Burns when he swallows. He digs his fingernails into clammy palms. What the hell… he left so quickly.

And Julius had actually touched him this time… Not just the taunting.

“You are not.”

“I’m fine—”

“I need to use the bathroom,” Danny announces.

A cold stone drops in his stomach.

Alex doesn’t dare look at him. Doesn’t want to see how desperately he probably wants to leave.

Nobody would stick around after—that.

He’s still surprised Yassen does.

Yassen pauses slightly. Checks the signs. “The next exit is in one mile. We will stop there.”

.

Alex crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the hood of the car. He can’t hear what Yassen is saying on the phone under the covered visitor center. He can wager a guess, though. 

The breeze whisks past him, rattling tree branches and stubborn leaves, still holding on despite it being late fall.

Yassen finishes his call and walks back to the car. 

“Are you sure about this?” Alex asks as he approaches. He speaks in French, voice low, sparing a cautious glance at a family shuffling around in the boot of their car a few spaces down. 

“Yes,” Yassen answers in the same language.

“I’ve dealt with it this long, Yassen. I’ll be fine. MI6, Scorpia—that’s what you should be worrying about.”

“You were not breathing several minutes ago.” Yassen leans against the car next to him, fishing a box of cigarettes from his coat’s breast pocket. Because of course he’s that stressed out.

“It was like a panic attack.” He shoves his fists deeper in his armpits, but they’re still shaking. “Which I can handle.”

“Is this confidence because you slept last night?” Yassen taps the box against his thigh, pulling a cigarette free before tucking it away again.

“Yeah. It is.”

“Of course, my mistake,” Yassen says. The metal of his Zippo lighter clanks as he flips it open. The flint wheel sparks and Yassen lights the end. He takes a drag. “Eight hours of rest solves everything.”

Yassen holds Alex’s glare. Then, for the first time in a long time, Yassen’s guard lowers.

“I know that you are unhappy. I know that you do not like feeling weak. I also do not like facing an enemy that I cannot touch.” Yassen goes on, “But a ghost is a problem that does not go away on its own. Especially not one as persistent as Julius.”

So that’s what this is. A display of vulnerability, of some sort, one meant to coerce Alex into cooperating again. 

Alex averts his gaze, finds a loose rock to kick. He watches it jump and roll towards the visitor’s center. Shivers as the wind sharpens, colder than before.

“You never met him,” Alex mutters darkly. “He was like that before, too.”

“You are forgetting. I did.”

“Yeah, sure, through a scope.” He can’t stop the way his voice turns harsh. “It’s not your face he’s wearing.”

“I managed Doctor Grief’s requests. I can guess what kind of a creature Julius was, if he was anything like his progenitor.”

Alex looks at the ground. “Did you even know for sure which one of us you were aiming at?”

Yassen takes another pull off his cigarette, the wind stealing the smoke away as soon as he exhales it. “I knew.”

He laughs, bitter. “Sure. He definitely did a bloody good job of making everyone else think otherwise. He ruined my reputation at school. Even Tom thought I was—” Alex closes his eyes. “I mean, it’s not like I blame them. What could I have even said? ‘A madman’s evil clone stole my face and tried to kill me?’ I’d get institutionalized.”

“He has been causing you pain for a long time.”

“Yes. Thank you, Yassen. Very observant of you.”

Yassen flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette.

Alex scuffs his shoe on the tarmac. “I’m just… tired. Of all of this.”

“That is why we are here, little Alex.”

He furrows his brows. “But MI6—”

“Will not be a problem if you drop dead first. How many weeks has it been since you’ve gotten a full night’s sleep?”

“Last night—”

“Last night was a singular, isolated instance.”

“But it wasn’t just last night,” Alex protests. He gets up from the car, turning to face Yassen. “In the car just now…”

Yassen’s gaze sharpens. Alex cuts himself off.

“Just now?” Yassen prompts.

“Nothing,” Alex mutters. “Never mind.”

“Shared information is the best way to—”

“Why do you even care, Yassen? About me and my problems?”

Yassen’s cigarette hovers near his mouth. Alex watches the end, flickering red.

“This matters, little Alex.”

“Really? Enough to flush your career down the toilet?”

“I’ve been doing this for many years. Retirement is not uncommon for someone my age.”

“You’re thirty-five, Yassen. You really want to spend the rest of your life as a wanted man?”

“I was already—”

“You know what? It doesn’t matter,” Alex spits. “I just don’t even know why we’re doing any of this. What’s the bloody point? You said it yourself, Julius is determined. I doubt your contact can do anything about him. And then what?”

Yassen seems content to let Alex ride out his frustration, and it only sparks Alex’s anger further.

“Why aren’t you worried about anything else? You’re one man against Scorpia and MI6. That’s mental. You can’t tote me around and hide me forever and—what’s even your endgame here?”

“My endgame,” Yassen starts, infuriatingly even, “is for you to not end up dead because a government agency deemed it so. For you to go back to the life you had before MI6.”

“Back?” he barks. “Back to what? Jack is dead, the house was taken by the Department. God, why do you even care? Nobody asked you to do this; nobody asked you to be my fucking nanny, alright?”

Alex thinks about Jack. Her smile over the dinner table and the circle of her arms.

He hears her screaming from some far off place.

“It will not be the same, but—”

“Yassen.” Alex doesn’t know what kind of face he’s making right now. “Don’t you get it? It’s impossible. I don’t legally exist anymore. My file is in a fucking black box in Blunt’s office. It was over a long, long time ago for me.”

“Legality is no hurdle.” Yassen takes another drag.

Alex runs a hand down his face. “That doesn’t change the fact there’s only one way this all can end. It doesn’t even matter that I picked up Danny or whatever. Sooner or later, MI6 will catch up, or Scorpia will, and they’ll kill you, and sell me off, and that’ll be that.”

“If you think I am so easy to kill, perhaps my reputation is not as spotless as I would have hoped.”

Annoyance flares in his chest. “That’s what you took away from that?”

Yassen tilts his head. “Of course not, Alex.”

A sudden wave of fatigue hits Alex, and his shoulders slump.

Yassen doesn’t continue right away. When he does, his voice is exactly as calm as always.

“I did not anticipate that you would be the more pessimistic between the two of us.”

“It’s not pessimism, it’s realism.”

Yassen blinks impassively. “Is it?”

Alex sighs. “Listen, I’m glad I didn’t have to kill that poor bloke back in Venice. I’m glad you’re trying. But face it. You’re not going to get anywhere at this rate. You’d be better off ditching me and saving yourself while you still can.”

Yassen just looks at him. “Is that what you want? For me to leave you on your own?”

Alex is about to respond with a heated retort when Yassen continues.

“If you thought it was truly hopeless, you would not have come with me. We would have gone our separate ways in Venice. But I haven’t known Alex Rider as one to give up so easily.”

The words soak in, and Alex wants to be angry. He wants Yassen to fucking be wrong for once. He wants Yassen to just make sense.

“Maybe I just wanted a holiday.”

Yassen breathes out through his nose. “The odds are against us. This is true. But I believe we have both dealt with worse.”

“You still don’t have to be doing this. You’ve already paid any leftover life debt you owed my dad, or whatever.”

“Perhaps.” Yassen looks at Alex for a long moment. “But consider: this is no longer about Hunter.”

Alex huffs. “Yeah, right.”

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Danny’s heart is pounding.

He’s never faced another ghost in this form before—the reactions of his body feel alien. Too immediate, too inescapable, pressing down. Adrenaline wriggles sourly in his stomach.

Every throb of blood and oxygen in his veins evokes skittering pinpricks from his core. Like waves, they build and crash but never subside completely, gathering in knots in his left arm, side, and chest.

He wasn’t in a proper state to intimidate, but after what Alex had done for him… with Mu-13, with Yassen… Danny hadn’t been able to simply sit and watch.

The queasy results are, at least, well-earned.

Now, the bathroom is empty; the rest stop is half-abandoned altogether. There’d only been a handful of cars parked when they pulled in. A family under an awning eating a packed dinner. Two women exclaiming over the vending machines.

The water from the tap is ice-cold. Danny gratefully splashes his face, then lets it run over his fingers before dragging them around to the back of his neck. He laces them there.

His heart is rattling down to his fingertips. It’s uncomfortable.

Breathing. He should do that. He drops his hands back into the running water, focusing on the white-noise sensation as he tries to fill his chest.

The air in the bathroom tastes like curdled milk and gunsmoke.

In the mirror behind him, a form coalesces. Dark, shifting patches of air thicken, distorting the reflection of the scuffed silver stall doors.

The ghost is indistinct and ever shifting—unstable, if Danny had to guess. Not that it’s a hard leap to make.

Danny had felt it when Alex started to shut down, a slimy presence brushing by him, pinging danger beneath his skin. But the details had been harder to discern with his weakened powers yawning black holes in his perception. Like trying to locate a radio frequency with too many dials, he’d had to work for it. Guesswork that sent sharp tendrils of pain through his protesting core.

The effort of it was foreign, the way breathing had become a conscious effort. Pushing the ghost out was like squeezing his energy through a too-small aperture.

And now, it’s pissed off.

“Who,” it snarls, the suggestion of a face twisting in the suggestion of a head, “do you think you are?”

Its voice is garbled, echoing on the wall to wall tile, running water that skitters and splits in streams. Fury, fury, fury.

The tap squeaks under Danny’s hand.

The ghost has barely enough presence to become tangible. Its form is uncertain—by design, Danny thinks, observing the way it refuses to settle even now.

Still solidifying. Hardly a threat.

…If he’d run across it two days ago.

“Oh, me?” Danny replies. He turns, fingers dripping at his sides. “I’m nobody.”

It advances towards him. It’s not wary of Danny, the way most perceptive creatures are—instead, it’s pure indignation and anger that bunches up and then stabs out, frozen gunpowder raindrops meant to spear.

Water pelting dark streets. The black pit of a pistol’s barrel. The tell-tale sting of chemicals dusting the back of his throat. Potassium nitrate, charcoal, sulfur.

Heavy limbs, not his own.

Iron blood.

Ah. So that’s what this is.

The fog of its body shifts like a snarl. He sees a hundred teeth in its folds. “Trying to be funny? That’s how I know you’re scared.”

The lights flicker. Cute.

“Scared? Of you?” Danny snorts. “Not really.” 

“You should be.”

Its face bubbles and pops, folding inside out. Bastardized origami. When it reforms, it looks—

Like Alex.

Hair a few shades lighter with the back and sides cropped close to the scalp, eyes a bit brighter, the cheeks perhaps a bit fuller, but there’s no questioning who it’s meant to be.

The ghost wears Alex’s face with an uneasy familiarity. It adorns it with a too-wide, too-sharp grin.

He’d felt it in the car—the slimy cord strung between it and Alex.

It’s ironic. What’re the chances? The one friend Danny makes in over a year—and he’s haunted.

The ghost warps closer, bruising fury into the air around them.

“I’ve already made a claim here. If you want easy energy, go someplace else,” the ghost rattles, the staccato churn of a vicious engine, of rapidfire bullets emptied from a clip. “I won’t warn you again.”

“No.”

The ghost makes a sound like grinding glass as he takes another step. Teeth flash, contract, and disappear in fractal patterns.

“You’re going to leave Alex alone, and you’re not going to be coming back.” The words buzz with a static undercurrent that scratches discordant against Danny’s soft human throat.

Frustration burns in his stomach. He has access to his core again, but the energy he has to expend is less than ideal.

“Or what?”

Danny curls his lip in a sneer. “Wanna find out?”

With a snap, the ghost lunges.

Fuck it. He’ll push through.

Its hands are cold and wet but rough like untreated concrete. It goes for his neck, trying to wrench his body up, the rest of its form blurring out in concentration.

His hip barks painfully against the sharp edge of the sink. Danny clenches his teeth.

He reaches for the dark. Pulls the cold to him, greedy and quick. The lights go out and submerge them.

The sickly adrenaline pounding of his heart halts. In its place, a cold static works its way through him. It’s a familiar comfort, death and all its cacophonous silence.

When the lights strobe back on, Danny is weightless. He snarls. The dark divots that pass for the ghost’s eyes widen as Danny sinks long pointed fingers into the writhing mass of its body.

It doesn’t shriek so much as splinter the air. It squirms, pierced, and he feels the flesh of its body fall apart, abruptly liquefying and putrid between fingers—

The lights stutter. His hands are covered in gore.

A flicker—gone.

He tenses, tile digging into his body as he curls on the floor. The other ghost is nowhere to be seen.

Like losing a tail to get away from a predator, his mind supplies. False flesh.

He tries to thrum a pulse, sub-bass. His core whines back to him, branching pain sparking down the death scar on his left, but he gets it through. He lets it feel out the room—

—and barely manages to dodge as the other ghost drops down like a severed chandelier. It makes a sound like screeching glass and metal on impact.

“Fuck,” he hisses.

It cackles, churning. “Scared you.”

The smug bastard stops laughing once Danny lunges at it. It tries to push back, but there’s no weight behind it.

He spins—reversing their positions and slams it backwards into the mirror. It shatters. Flickering lights catch odd angles as cracks spiderweb out from the impact of its head.

“This isn’t a fight you’ll win,” he spits—shrieking feedback and garbled radio signal.

“Don’t be so sure,” it says. It abruptly falls apart into gauzy, bloody fog. He hisses as it slips behind the veil again.

Weak ghosts have one advantage to their name: they’re slippery.

He looks over his shoulder and Alex’s face is stretched in a demented grin one inch from his nose.

Danny strikes reflexively, but it dodges, cackling.

“You don’t like this?” Its laugh pinwheels through the air, spinning glass, high and sickening. Like it’ll hit the ground and shatter any second. “I can do better!”

Alex’s face starts to melt. Its fingers dig into Danny’s scalp. For a second, he sees the curve of a familiar, softly angled jaw—

and—

Danny claws into the wax face. This time he knows what to expect. It’s slick like fat with oil paint that sloughs off under his fingers. The viscera that comes away is clingy, semi-translucent. It squelches in his fist, slips to the floor, where it slumps into itself, smears back towards its center.

Another fistful. Another, before it can regenerate.

The ghost squeals. A wild noise.

“Shut up,” he hisses.

The ghost tears itself backwards, trying to get away. “What’s the matter?” it needles. “Don’t want them to hear? Imagine Alex seeing you like this.”

The ghost shoves it at him: the taste of rejection—it coils at the base of his skull.

“I wasn’t asking,” Danny says. 

The darkness presses in thicker, bleeds in from the corners of the room like smoke. As it does, the echo of the tile and brick gets swallowed up, sound sinking into unforgiving void.

The ghost twitches.

He can feel his grin splitting his face in two. “What do you know about space?” he asks. 

The temperature drops and the moisture in the air turns to fine glitter. He claws deeper through pallid skin and oxidized blood turning black. The ghost has no true face to find underneath it all. Whatever this is—it wasn’t human even before it died.

The beginnings of fear unspool in it. The realization.

If he could just find its core—

—Pay attention, Danny, sweetie. You’ll need to know this if you want to continue our work someday.

He’s reaching the end of his reserves—his own core, a weakening thrum, a growing pang. The ghost squirms, blurring at the edges and Danny’s fingers slip through it. He hisses.

There’s a mounting last snap of energy from the ghost, frantic and frustrated.

He’s close—

So close to ridding his new friend of his little pest. If one good thing can come from his death, maybe it’s this.

Maybe if he saves someone for once…

The quick and angry pulse of its core is just under his palm, somewhere in the churning mound of flesh and stolen likenesses. It writhes and slams a head like off-shoot backwards into the mirror, sending more shards raining to the ground.

Now would be a great time to have that fucking ecto-gun. This weak, this close, a single shot would do it.

A tremor starts in his left arm. Exhaustion, the pain of dragging his still-recovering core over the coals for this miniscule show of power.

His core constricts in his chest—a sharp twinge that rips all the way through him.

He falters.

Fuck, come on, come on.

His grip on the dark slips. Cheap artificial light breaks through, dappled with dead insect bodies.

He can’t—

The ghost seems to sense his waning energy. It twists with renewed strength and shoves back a final time. His grip—on the ghost, and on his form—lapses with an excruciating spasm. The impact of the tile forces a choked noise out of his throat. He just barely manages to pitch sideways instead of bashing his skull.

Danny forces himself to his hands and knees. He realizes with an acute sense of betrayal that they’re both shaking.

His mouth tastes like metal.

The ghost wavers above him—a healthy and cautious distance away from him. Despite his pathetic state, it makes his chest cool with satisfaction. 

When it speaks, its voice patters against pavement—blood, water. “What… what are you?” 

Its injuries weep, globs coming loose and hitting the floor. They don’t stay visible long before fading beyond the physical plane.

Danny barks a short and humorless laugh.

“You’re not dead, but you died.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

He forces his feet under himself, uses the lip of the counter to leverage himself up. The walls sway and swim. The tile threatens to buckle and his tingling fingers slip off the edge of the slick laminate. It jars up his arm—lightning pain—struck nerve cluster.

He catches himself with his right arm, palm slapping flat again on the grimy wet tile, left arm cradled against his side.

Fuck.

The ghost laughs. Or it tries. It’s no better off than him.

His body aches—a distant awareness as his core cramps tighter in his chest.

“You’re all talk,” the ghost wheezes, form smearing. “I can feel the way you loathe yourself. What has all that starving done for you?”

Danny brings in what ambient energy he can—electricity that hums through the walls. Revolting. It reaches hot lines through his stomach, threatens to paralyze him—ground him.  

The ghost twists with a sound like fabric dragging on asphalt.

“Some death,” it says with interest. “You taste like static.” 

Danny pushes himself up again with a harsh exhale—not risking leaning any weight on his bad arm. He sways a bit on his feet, but stays up.

“You should count yourself lucky you’ve caught me on an off day,” he snaps. He curls fingers into his left upper arm until it hurts bad enough to feel cold—to burn. 

It moves towards him and the smell of rain conceals the undercurrent of cloying death.

“You think you’re doing something good.” It barks a percussive sound—a bullet slotting into the chamber. “I despise people like you. Always have to be the hero. As if history ever remembers the heroes. We all die just the same. You’d know, wouldn’t you?” 

Danny wishes it was possible to grab it and drain it of every drop of energy. He curls his lip and tilts his chin up.

“Fuck. You.”

“Alex likes to think himself a hero too, you know.” It smiles through its voice. “Of course, that’s not the real story.”

Danny says nothing. 

The ghost laughs. “Never the real story. Don’t you want to know what he did to me?” It winds itself smaller, preserving what remains of its diminishing strength. “Aren’t you curious?”

“I couldn’t care less,” Danny bites out.

“Liar.” A giggle—high, hysterical, lilting, from something that’s just a hazy brushstroke in Danny’s vision. “It’s a good story. Right until the end.”

“Touch Alex again and I’ll make you regret it.”

“Too bad you won’t be here long enough to stop me,” it lays out like an omen as it retreats. “Tell Alex: Julius sends his regards.”

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Alex slams the car door behind him when he climbs back in. Yassen doesn’t follow immediately; instead Alex finds himself alone.

The argument simmers in his chest and he presses his fingers against his temples. At least Julius has stayed quiet…

Movement catches his eye: Danny headed back towards the car.

When he gets in, Alex doesn’t look at him directly.

There’s a beat of silence before Danny speaks. “…You alright?” he asks, voice rougher now than when he left.

“Fine.”

Danny starts to say something, like he wants to push, but hesitates.

Alex wonders what’s taking Yassen so long, then spots him still smoking. Alex rolls his eyes.

“Alex?”

Alex forces himself to look at Danny for the first time since Julius showed his face.

Danny’s expression is open, plaintive… tired? He rubs the heel of his palm against the center of his chest. 

A nervous habit? 

If so, not one Alex has seen yet. 

“I don’t… really know what’s going on, but whatever it is, you’re safe now. I promise.”

“Who said I wasn’t safe?” Alex mutters. He’s touched by Danny’s conviction, but doesn’t understand it.

Danny raises both eyebrows.

Alex briefly replays their last twenty-four hours together, and relents with a small huff of laughter. “Okay. I get it. Thanks, mate.”

“…Yeah. You’re welcome.”

Yassen returns, starts the car and cracks the windows. Alex can still smell the tobacco. He closes his eyes and listens to the wind as they merge back onto the highway.

His head is a knotted mess. He breathes, ignores the way it makes his ribs and throat sting in twin protest, and tries to untangle one thread at a time.

He’d gotten intimately familiar with Julius’ patterns. Last night—today—hell, the day before, even—broke the mold. Julius leaving his dreams alone; Julius backing off within minutes…

What had changed his one-track mind? What was different about today?

All the variables were consistent.

Except for Danny.

.

They only drive for another hour—an hour that crawls silently by, like it’s treading through amber—before Yassen pulls off the highway. Any other day, Yassen would probably have insisted on finishing the last hundred-odd miles, reaching the outskirts of their destination, before stopping. 

It’s not even that late; the light is still dying when they pull up.

Golden hour, he can hear Tom saying. 

Alex thinks the reason they’re stopping early today is the severity of the Julius episode.

The idea makes him rankle. They have more important things to worry about than Julius being a pain. He thought Yassen would understand that. Babying him will get them nowhere. 

The night’s hotel of choice isn’t much more exciting than the cookie-cutter Best Western, but it does have slightly more character in the form of peeling wallpaper, florals on the bedspreads, and a bathroom that hasn’t been remodeled since the 70s.

The buildings form a ring around a fenced-up, off-season pool. Danny gravitates towards it like it’s magnetic, wordless. For once, Alex is the one following.

The gate creaks as Danny pushes it open.

“Wanna go for a swim?”

Alex laughs, but Danny looks half-serious when he asks.

“Dude, it’s like thirty degrees right now,” Alex says. “We’ll freeze our asses off if we go in.”

“Right, right,” Danny says. “I was just kidding.”

“Yeah.” A second passes. “I bet the pool covering can hold up your weight, though. You’re shrimpy.”

“What?” Danny huffs. “Fuck off, dude, you’re like five inches shorter than me.”

“Nah, nah, have you looked in a mirror? You’re like a beanstalk.”

“And you’re a hobbit, so you first, Frodo.”

Alex can’t even pretend to be mad at that one; he cackles. “Fine, fine,” he says. “I’ll take my big hobbit feet and test my luck.”

“Maybe they’ll help you float.”

“If I fall in, I’m dragging your sorry ass down with me. We’ll freeze together.”

Danny breaks into a real smile, one that stretches all the way up to his eyes and dimples his cheeks.

“I mean it,” Alex says, stepping cautiously onto the vinyl. It crinkles under his feet dangerously, but it seems to hold. He takes one more step. “I’ll drag you—fuck!”

The covering starts to give. Out of pure, harebrained adrenaline, Alex starts running. The water only keeps encroaching, threatening to flip him under.

He eats shit on the other side of the pool, tripping onto the unforgiving tile. The pool covering at that side must’ve given way; his trainers and pant cuffs are soaked.

“Son of a bitch,” he says, wrestling his ankles free. The water is freezing.

Danny is wheeze-laughing on the other side of the pool, completely dry. Arsehole.

Alex cups his hands around his mouth. “Fuck off!”

“What was—” Danny chokes— “what was that about dragging my sorry ass down with you?”

“I will end you,” Alex threatens.

“Yeah, have fun with that.”

“Cocky, aren’t we now?” Alex stands, and makes a dismayed sound at the realization that the water is seeping into his socks.

“I’ve seen you fight,” Danny calls back. “I’m not worried.”

“Shows what you know.”

Danny walks around the pool towards him, hands in his pockets. “That was awesome, you should do that again.”

“Yeah? How about I go after you this time? Since it was so awesome.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

A violent shiver wracks through Alex. Damn—if he gets sick from a little bit of cold water, he’s never going to hear the end of it from Yassen. “You’d have to be mental to want to swim in that.”

This time, Danny doesn’t volley an immediate response.

The water is soaking up his legs now; his jeans stick uncomfortably to his skin. Alex looks over, curious at the extended silence.

But Danny isn’t looking at Alex. His gaze is tracking something else.

Frowning, Alex glances to his left.

Across the expanse of the pool, Danny’s eyes follow something in short, jerking bursts. Alex is reminded of a cat, staring at something no one else can see.

His expression is—

A chill jolts up Alex’s spine.

The way it looks almost relaxed on Danny’s face, no effort exerted—it reminds Alex of just how dangerous Danny had been, Delta’s pistol in his hand. It strikes Alex, the uncanny resemblance: the other boy looks like Yassen, the way his eyes follow a moving target just before he takes the shot that puts them down. Not cold—not even uncaring—just calm and calculating.

Danny’s eyes narrow. His head tilts to the side.

“Danny?”

“Hm?”

As far as Alex can tell, he’s still peering into the middle distance.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

Alex wonders if that’s what it looks like to someone else, when he deals with Julius. Reacting to nothing.

But no one else can see—

The lights around the pool fence—more visible now as the sun sinks—abruptly flicker out and die.

Alex starts a bit, scrambles back from the edge as his eyes adjust. The smooth gray paving with inlaid blue tile is like ice against his palms, chill soaking up through the denim. It’s like the sloshing of water in the pool gets louder for a moment, ears taking precedence over eyes, the cold of his wet feet biting like a dog.

“Fuckin’ hell—”

The lights come back on.

“…The power here seems pretty inconsistent,” Danny says.

“Yeah. Yeah, cheap hotels,” Alex says, “gotta love ‘em. Maybe we should—” He jerks a thumb back up at their room. He doesn’t know why he feels so off-balance.

“Yeah, let’s get back before you get hypothermia. You know, since it’s so cold out here,” Danny says, smiling again.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Shut up, man,” he says, rolling to his feet to follow Danny.

He stops halfway through the motion.

“Something up?” Danny calls from the gate when he doesn’t follow.

“Nothing,” Alex says blankly. “Just got something in my shoe. I’ll catch up, just gimme a sec.”

Danny lingers a moment longer in the threshold, but leaves once he sees Alex slip off a shoe and tap it against his thigh.

His bone-dry shoe.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Danny doesn’t know if he dreams. If he does, at the very least, it isn’t about Alex holding a gun.

He knows that he’s on something soft, warm—still too warm. 

And then there’s hands on him.

His eyelids fly open and he recoils from the touch.

Alex is leaning over him.

“Danny,” he whispers.

He blinks, and even in the dark, Alex’s eyes are bright—if troubled. The dull shapes of the hotel room come back to Danny.

Right. They’re in the hotel, almost to Salt Lake City.

He sits up and glances at Yassen, lying on the pullout couch, unmoving. He looks back to Alex, confused.

Alex holds a finger to his lips and gestures for Danny to follow him. His stomach sinks.

He hesitates, sparing another pointed glance at Yassen.

Alex gestures more incessantly, moving towards the door. Danny follows, picking up his shoes, careful to make as little noise as possible. Yassen probably won’t be too happy if he wakes up to find them gone.

They’ll cross that bridge if they come to it, he supposes.

Danny, at least, has faith in whatever soft spot Yassen apparently has for Alex. Thinking about it makes warmth needle through him. He bites his lip.

Alex eases the door open, white light from the hall spilling in, and lets him go first. The hall stretches on either side of them—impossible to tell the time of day or night with the glaring fluorescent bulbs overhead. He blinks against them.

God. He really hates all the lights.

He pulls his sneakers on while Alex closes the door just as gingerly as he’d opened it.

“Okay, we have at least three hours,” Alex says in a low voice. Then, he’s grabbing Danny by the sleeve and hauling him down the hallway.

He stumbles a bit before falling into step behind Alex.

“Three hours?”

“Yeah. He only sleeps like four hours a night.” Alex lets his sleeve go but continues at the same determined pace.

“Where are we going?” he asks, trying to keep the nerves out of his voice.

“Pool.”

Danny swallows. His core is a comforting and present sensation. He’s drawn in some ambient energy since the rest stop; hotels are always good for it, after all. It’s not much, but it’s enough. 

He doesn’t have to do this. He knows that.

And maybe before today, before he knew, he’d have been able to convince himself to finally leave. But now…

Now he knows just how much danger Alex is in.

Danny follows Alex down the stairs and through the hall to the door that leads outside. Cold air rushes into their faces as they walk out and Danny can’t help but relax into it with a sigh.

Alex gets to the side of the pool, right where Julius had been lurking earlier. He stops and looks up at Danny, eyes so intense his half-baked lies dry up on his tongue.

“Tell me what was here.”

“Alex…”

“I need to know what you saw.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t see anything.”

“Bullshit.”

Danny twists the cuffs of his sleeves between his fingers. “I saw… an empty pool.”

“Cut the crap, Danny. What did you see?”

The only lights are the runners near the fence. The pool itself is a black void, the vinyl cover dampening the sound of shifting water with the occasional plasticky rustle.

“I didn’t…”

The air shifts behind him and a dull pain crops up behind his eyes, through his skull. 

Shit.

“This is adorable,” Julius murmurs.

Across from him, Alex doesn’t react.

“Do you really think helping him will make you hate yourself any less?”

“You didn’t what, Danny?” Alex demands. Danny can feel the slowly mounting desperation, filling Alex up.

Julius slips around Danny, a faint distortion hanging in the air.

“It’s fucking hilarious, actually. You’re seeking absolution from a murderer,” Julius says. He smiles and Danny hears the bang, so loud he barely contains a flinch. The pain in his head turns white hot.

The lights around the pool fence flicker. Shit.

“I didn’t see anything,” Danny forces out, ignoring Julius.

“He knows you’re lying. Come on, you can’t be this stupid.”

Alex makes a tight sound in the back of his throat, a bit of a groan, a bit of a growl. He paces alongside the pool.

“Mate, I swear. I’m not asking for a lot here, okay? I haven’t pushed much about you and your situation, yeah? That’s your business. I just…”

Julius laughs, form shuddering, impressions of a back rounding and fingers twitching.

“Are you really going to ignore it? He did this to me.”

Danny closes his eyes.

Julius’ death saturates the air and Danny smells the blood mixing with the rain.

Everything is different now. He can’t let Alex die.

It would be his fault.

He can’t let anyone else die because of him.

It was his fault.

He can’t.

He can’t.

When he opens his eyes, Julius has sidled up next to Alex.

“He deserves it,” Julius spits. “He ruined all of it. His life was always meant to be mine.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Danny mutters.

“Yes, you do!” Alex says, exasperated. The desperation sloshes louder, the beginnings of panic twining within it. He can see it in Alex’s eyes.

Something has to give.

Danny twists his fingers into his left arm and grits his teeth against the ache—the pins and needles.

“Fine,” he breathes. “I… I saw him, okay?”

Alex blinks. So many emotions pass through him that Danny can’t even begin to name them all.

In the end, the confusion wins. “How? I thought… I thought I was the only one who could see him.”

Julius looks at him too, a pulse of anger. “You’re wasting your time. Do you honestly think that they’ll let you stay if they find out what you are?” Julius laughs again. “You’re a monster, just like me.”

“Does this have to do with why the Foundation is after you?” Alex presses. He closes the gap between them.

The answer must flash over his face because Alex’s expression brightens.

“It does,” Alex answers himself.

Against Danny’s better judgment, he allows himself to ask, “How long has he… been around?”

“…A few months now.”

“Yeah, ever since you killed me.” Julius grins, slimy and discordant against Alex’s ear. “Isn’t that right, Alex?”

This time Alex reacts, flinching away, his sour fear leaking into the air.

A tar black feeling simmers in Danny’s stomach.

The lights around the pool shutter and the vapor from his breath hangs in the air. He might not be back at one-hundred percent yet, but he doesn’t need to be.

Julius’ attention snaps to him, and this time Danny doesn’t let it slide. He knows a few ways to stop the rain.

The lights go out.

It doesn’t take much. It’s still painfully obvious who’d won the upper hand in this dynamic. Julius tries to keep up his opposition, but he’s still weak after their scuffle, the weight and the cold eventually make him cower. He backs off with a wet hiss and Danny feels him retreat to a place he can’t see.

Alex’s lingering fear clutters the space as the lights flicker back on one by one.

“How do you do that?”

Danny shrinks. “Do what?”

“Make him go away like that?” This time Alex’s desperation is bright with hope. He grabs Danny by the upper arms, grip tighter on his right arm than his left. “Earlier, and just now. You made him go away, didn’t you? Is that what you meant, when you promised I was safe?”

Danny winces. He knew he should have kept his mouth shut in the car.

But seeing Alex like that…

He fumbles for a reply. “He, uh. He might just be spooked that I can see him too.”

Alex makes a face. It’s pretty clear he isn’t buying that.

Danny gently breaks Alex’s contact, taking a step back. He rubs the back of his neck. “Listen, you can’t tell anyone about this, okay?”

Alex lifts a brow. “How many people d’you think I talk to?” Alex looks around them at the empty pool. “I mean, come on.” But Alex is smiling and Danny takes it as permission to smile back.

“You know what I mean,” he mutters.

Alex takes a breath. “Yeah. I do. You mean Yassen.”

Danny looks away, back towards the water. He resists the urge to get in for the second time today. He didn’t realize how bad he’d miss the cold. It’s like a mosquito bite. Since he noticed it, it hasn’t gone away, gnawing at the back of his mind.

This is the most he’s been in human form since he died.

“Listen, I know he’s… the way he is, but you can trust him, alright? He… he knows about this.”

That gets Danny’s attention. “He does?”

“Yeah. Why do you think we’re here in the bloody States? Yassen says he has a contact that knows about ghost shit. Being haunted and that. Says they can help.”

“…You don’t think so?”

The look in Alex’s eyes gets dull, too tired for someone their age.

“What do you think?” Alex kicks a plastic lawn chair, not hard, but enough to make it screech over the smooth pool tiles. It falls silent, nothing but cars driving in the distance and the wind tugging the plastic of the tarp.

But Alex is still looking at him. It reminds him of the look Alex gave him in the 7-Eleven: considering. Somehow, that already feels far away.

“We should go back.” Danny says, shifting from foot to foot. “Before Yassen finds us.”

Alex looks like he wants to say more, but he sighs, nodding. “Yeah. Alright.”

For the second time in as many days, Yassen lets Alex sleep in.

This time is less for the novelty of it, and more for the utility. Teenagers are meant to get a nightly minimum of eight hours, yet these last months, Alex has been sleeping less than Yassen himself.

After the previous day’s episode with Julius, Alex will need all the strength he can gather.

But his patience has its limits. Not for the first time this morning, he checks his burner phone. Same as before, it displays a message received last night: a simple confirmation of their meeting time with the contact in Salt Lake.

Yassen brushes aside the blackout curtains and pulls the rickety screen door. On the balcony, the air is crisp and sharp. Yassen leans against the railing and lets the wind rustle his hair and clothing.

Yesterday’s argument at the rest stop echoes against the bones beneath his ears. He’d be lucky to escape a repeat performance today. Unfortunately, Yassen is not a man who relies on luck. 

He understands all too well why Alex doubts the usefulness of their connection. Yassen himself is displeased. He’s been forced to place complete trust in an intermediary; it’s a bad position, to be so reliant.

He’d become accustomed to Scorpia’s resources. The ability to vet people’s veracity and skill from afar, everything just an inquiry away. Having the time, the power, to wait and watch… to make his decisions fully informed.

But they do not have another lead.

And Alex does not have the luxury of time.

He straightens. Dials.

The conversation is brief—Yassen memorizes the address for today’s meeting, and hangs up.

Tension in the back of his throat begs for a cigarette. Yassen ignores it.

There is another matter at hand.

Last night, the boys had snuck out. Or rather, Alex had snuck out and taken Danny with him.

But to what end?

Below, a family of tourists are packing camping gear into a van. A housekeeper is pushing a cart between two buildings. A security guard is napping with the brim of his hat canted low.

At the center of the courtyard, the pool sits inert beneath its cover.

They hadn’t been gone long enough to get far. If the goal had been to escape Yassen, they could have easily fooled themselves into thinking it possible, and reached the highway overpass, after which the buildings peter out to trees, rocks, and deer tracks. There, the hike would have slowed them enough for Yassen to catch up.

He’d categorized the lack of soil on either boys’ shoes from where they’d been strewn at the door and foot of the bed, respectively. No leaves or sticks tracked in; no scratched or scuffed clothing.

If he hadn’t woken upon their return, he may never have realized they’d left.

They’d made no attempt to walk away completely.

Instead, they had returned. Both of them.

There’s a mixed sense of relief in Yassen’s chest at the fact.

He is not willing to part ways with Alex, not quite yet. Not until Julius has been destroyed, or banished, or dispersed beyond the ability to harm him. That is the bare minimum. It won’t do to say their goodbyes, only for the boy to drop dead days later.

The other boy, however…

It’s time for him to go.

The Foundation found him once; the Foundation will find him again. He and Alex cannot afford to draw their attention—because if they notice Danny, they will notice Julius.

If they notice Julius, they notice Alex.

Best not delay the inevitable any further.

The curtains rustle as he steps back inside.

“Alex.”

Alex mumbles into his pillow and rolls over.

Yassen taps Alex’s ankle and withdraws before the boy can kick him.

“Get up.”

“No.”

Not once in his life had Yassen pictured himself trying—and failing—to get an unhappy teenager out of bed. At Malagosto, at least Alex had the motivation of punishment were he not to comply. Yassen sometimes curses the fact that Alex has figured out that Yassen is not so inclined to hurt him. The threat would have been useful.

“You have two minutes.”

He hooks the strap of Alex’s bag and drops it on the bed. Alex knocks it off with his knee, and Yassen sighs.

“Alex—”

Alex groans expansively. “Why should I get up to see some random person when I could actually be sleeping for once?”

“They are not random.”

“Yeah, right.”  

“Get up.”

Alex levers himself into a sitting position, pushes a shallow breath slowly through his nose.

“How are your ribs healing?” 

Alex looks at him, the faint spark of surprise overtaken by annoyed resignation at being caught.

“Fine,” he murmurs, squinting around the room, tense, until he sees his friend. 

Alex must feel the weight of Yassen’s continued attention, because he shifts. 

“Just bruised. No big deal.”

Given how Alex has moved since the incident in Montana, Yassen believes him. It still does not excuse the fact that he attempted to hide it from him.

“Concealing your injuries and not allowing them to heal will only make things more difficult.” 

Alex waves his still-bandaged hand. “What’s me complaining going to do for bruised ribs?” 

“I am not asking you to complain. I am asking you to outgrow the habit of downplaying injuries.”

Alex squints at him. “You never take sick days.”

“I have not had a need for them.”

Alex rolls his eyes.

Yassen pointedly drops his bag on the bed again.

Alex sighs dramatically, but this time shuffles over to claim it. He drags his feet all the way to the bathroom, but to his credit, he doesn’t go as far as to slam the door.

Yassen spares a moment to close his eyes.

There has always been tension between himself and Alex. Its absence would have been stranger, what with the way they’d met, and Yassen’s history with the Rider family. But this particular friction is—new.

In Malagosto, Alex had been a bundle of nerve and wit, dangerous like a live wire. More than capable of keeping up with fellow students, many twice his age.

That hadn’t changed after Malagosto, but he’d been more… cooperative. It had seemed some of the fight had abandoned him, siphoned out by Julius.

In that case, Yassen should be more glad to see the return of the same Alex Rider who’d met Yassen’s eyes for the first time, from the other end of a windy rooftop. Who had not hesitated to declare them enemies.

Instead, it is only putting him on edge. That Alex Rider is unpredictable, to say the least.

He allows himself a slow breath, not quite a sigh, and opens his eyes once more.

The other bed is still occupied by their temporary stray. He’s asleep on top of the covers again, one arm beneath a pillow. He’d only fallen asleep at daybreak, when the blackout curtains had begun to glow golden at the edges, though he had mimed sleep for far longer.

His chest rises minutely. Yassen watches as the boy exhales, hardly audible. His hair is dull despite his shower yesterday—a lacking diet, not surprising for a child on the street. It’s overgrown. Yassen would place his last hair cut at a year or more ago.

What was the boy doing so far north if he had been on his own for such a period? He was far from any major city, in a town with scarcely more than a population of ten-thousand. 

It strikes him as odd. The anonymity of a city lends itself well to the plight of a runaway. Paradoxically, less people will recognize you as an outsider or a lost child. Easier to steal and slip into crowds—onto a bus or subway. 

Yassen learned much from his time on the streets, despite it being so long ago. Despite it happening to a version of him that no longer exists.

The plazas and nooks and crannies of Moscow drift towards him, echoing voices and the smell of street food.

He looks at the boy before him now, sprawled on the hotel bed, lanky form swimming in the fabric of the clothes Yassen had bought for them.

Had it been in his apartment that he found a vagabond child looking to steal, eating from his refrigerator, what would he have done?

Yassen is not a good person. He made peace with that the moment he accomplished what Hunter thought he could not. He is, for many people, the last person they see—provided they see anything at all. Morality is not a luxury afforded to someone in his line of work. 

That notwithstanding, Yassen knows at least that he is not a man like Sharkovsky.

When they arrive in Salt Lake City, he supposes it will be simple enough to make a small withdrawal. A thousand is not an insignificant amount, but not excessive. If spent wisely, it could keep him fed for a time. And provided the boy not flaunt it, he would not be an obvious target for mugging. It would at least somewhat satiate Alex’s appetite for charity.

He would perhaps tell him the safest places to keep money where people aren’t likely to notice before leaving the boy to it.

Yassen sighs and forces his attention away from the boy to double-check their bags.

Sometime later, the shower shuts off.

Alex’s hair is dripping across his shoulders when he shuffles back into the room..

“Wake your friend. We leave in twenty minutes.”

Alex moves past him and to the other bed.

Yassen watches from the corner of his eye as Alex nudges the other boy’s shoulder. He wakes with a start, recoiling from Alex’s touch. Awareness and recognition follow a second after and the boy relaxes again. 

The boy’s gaze meets his, and while he doesn’t outright flinch, the way he stills is telling enough.

“We gotta get going,” Alex tells him. 

Danny blinks heavy eyes and sits up with a nod.

It takes a bit to get the other boy moving, but soon enough they’ve gathered their things and wiped down the hard surfaces for evidence.

After a brief amount of time at the hotel breakfast, they are in the car and bound for Salt Lake City.

Alex once again elects to sit in the backseat, rather than the front. They chat for the first fifteen minutes, though after twenty, Danny has fallen asleep against the window. 

“Not much of a morning person, is he?” Alex says conversationally. 

Yassen glances in the rearview mirror at the two of them.

“It would appear not.”

Alex hums.

“I can’t believe Americans drive this much,” Alex says, unbuckling his seatbelt.

Yassen sighs as Alex climbs into the front seat with a great deal of effort.

“Your ribs.” 

“‘M fine. Not gonna make you pull over for that.” He drops into the seat and fastens the belt. Now that he’s up and around, his eyes are bright and alert, a look Yassen has not seen in him since the beginning of their time at Malagosto.

If given the chance, they should make the most of Alex’s energy and get some training in.

“So what’s the plan?” Alex asks. Yassen is not deaf to the thin core of anxiety in his words, however well he tries to keep it hidden.

“In Salt Lake City, we will get a new car. I need to make a withdrawal. We will check into a new hotel and then meet with the contact this afternoon.”

Alex worries at a hangnail.

“Mhm.”

There’s more that Alex wants to say. Yassen can guess as to what it is.

“I was thinking, right?”

“Do tell.”

Alex shoots him a look. “I was thinking, since we’re already staying the night in Salt Lake City, that Danny could spend one more night with us.”

Yassen glances at the speedometer, ensuring he’s going exactly the speed limit. He reaches up and rubs his temple. 

“Alex…” he begins, long-suffering.

“I’ll go see the contact with you. No more complaining. Not another word. Just—please?”

Negotiation. Not an awful strategy. And with the appeal to emotion at the end.

Yassen glances at him sidelong. With his hair a bit darker from dye they’d used before making land in Calgary, and his age sharpening his features—he’s the spitting image of Hunter.

It would make parting in the morning easier, if only because he could get them a day’s drive away, where Alex would be less likely to make any stupid decisions.

“You agree to see the contact.”

Alex perks up. “Yes.”

“You will not continue to whine?”

Alex rolls his eyes with a scoff. “No.”

Yassen nods. “Satisfactory.”

.

When they pull into a parking garage to switch cars, their stray wakes up, blinking unfocused eyes. He stays out of their way just like the first time, and in less than a few minutes, they’re back on the road with a new car from the long-term parking.

Yassen makes a stop at an international bank to withdraw money, using one of his aliases unknown to Scorpia, both for the contact, and for Danny.

By noon, Alex is complaining of being hungry and the three of them stop for pizza. Their tag-along is just as nervous in the pizzeria as at the diner, but Alex compensates well enough with his own liveliness.

The presence of a peer invigorates Alex. His gestures grow larger, comedic, less restrained; not so much so that they attract unwanted attention, but enough that he can see a smile peering through the runaway’s curtain of nerves.

“And like,” Alex says, mouth half-stuffed with underwhelming margherita and cheese, “I was telling him, ‘Don’t bring your camera along, dude, you were just telling me about how expensive it was,’ and guess what he does?”

“He brings the camera to the water park,” the other boy fills in with a grin.

“He brings the camera to the water park,” Alex confirms after a huge swallow. His manners could use work. “But get this—”

Danny’s eyes flicker to Yassen, observing. He shrinks inwards again. Alex certainly notices, though he keeps talking, not showing any discomfort.

On their way out of the gimmicky western-themed parlor, Alex attempts to lift Yassen’s wallet. He catches him at the last second, fingers around his wrist just as he was tipping the wallet to not get caught on the seams of his pocket.

“Your follow-through is sloppy,” he informs him, loosening his grip.

Alex squints, then he slips away, retreating to walk on the other side of Danny. Yassen can see the curious look in the boy’s eyes, but he says nothing.

They stop at a clothing store, in need of nicer items more fitting for blending into a city.

“Cover?” Alex asks as Yassen parks the car.

“I have brought the two of you along with me on a business trip.”

Alex makes a thoughtful noise. “So, the type of dad that would give us a wad of cash and say ‘don’t tell your mother. Find something to do, just don’t bother me’?”

“Think you can manage?”

“The cover? Or not bothering you?”

Yassen shuts off the car, pulling the spare key from the ignition. “I have no doubt in your ability to do the former.”

“Ha ha,” Alex says, popping the door latch.

Yassen selects items that are business casual, something a man of stable means would have with him in a nice city for a small business gathering.

He listens to the two boys lingering between the clothes racks.

“Hm. What says ‘our dad is a bastard with no time for us, but he said we had to dress nice otherwise we couldn’t come’?” Alex murmurs, more or less aimed at Danny. 

“Uhhh… I dunno?” the other boy says, sounding lost.

Hangers rattle as Alex pulls something respectable, something very un-Alex-Rider. Muted colors and academic, with a loose collar.

“It could use some more rebellion, but I’m working with what I’ve got. Maybe untuck the side and wrinkle it…” Alex appraises it for a moment and then shrugs.

He turns his sights on Danny. Yassen watches over them with an impassive eye, distant but still close enough in case he’s needed.

“What about this for you?” he hears Alex ask.

“Um…”

“Or in red?”

“Maybe… like that one. With the long sleeves.”

“Sure. It’s fall anyway, right?”

Yassen wonders what exactly the boy must be hiding. Given the way he favors his left arm, it’s not presumptuous to think it may have to do with visible scarring from his “old injury”. He won’t press; identifiable markings should stay hidden.

Alex himself has a purple and green mottled bruise to hide on his forearm—now a little more than a day old.

Eventually, Alex picks out something for the other boy adjacent to his own but in a darker navy blue. The two tote their choices up to the counter, and Yassen gives a cursory glance to approve them.

After a quick change at a public restroom, they check into their hotel: Courtyard by Marriott, right in the heart of downtown. It’s a nicer hotel than they’ve been in the past few days, fitting of their new upper-middle class cover.

He and Alex give the room a standard security sweep. Danny watches—silent, same as always.

Despite his own logic, Yassen is hyper-aware of his attention.

The boys settle; Alex flips on the television, finds a film, and launches into a critique that’s clearly second-hand.

The other boy is engaged but Yassen doesn’t miss how stiff he holds himself—sitting next to Alex against the headboard of the bed. Alex has told him he can stay tonight, but no doubt the reality of it is more pressing now that they’re here.

.

An hour and a half whittles by.

Yassen preps his .22, screwing in a silencer once he’s done—a precaution he never goes without. He tucks gloves away in his coat, and conceals a simple bowie knife as well. It’d be far messier than he’s willing to contend with, but being underprepared for such an important and uninformed meeting isn’t an option.

He feels, rather than sees, their stray’s gaze as he works.

Alex is either unphased by the routine and its implication or is too absorbed in the television to care. Perhaps both.

“It is time, little Alex.”

Alex drags his attention away from the film, making like he’s about to protest, but Yassen gives him a pointed look.

A deal is a deal.

Alex heaves a sigh and moves past Danny to get off the bed.

Danny perks up. “What’s going on?”

“Yassen and I are meeting someone,” Alex says. There’s an unspoken understanding that passes between them, and Yassen has the sneaking suspicion that Alex has told Danny why they are in Salt Lake City. 

“Oh, uh, when will you be back?”

“Hopefully soon,” Alex says.

If the boy is anxious about being left alone, he doesn’t say anything.

Alex tugs his shoes on, and then, almost as an afterthought—

“Actually,” he reaches into his pocket and produces his burner phone, “take this. Just in case.”

Alex spares Yassen a glance, and when he makes no move to discourage him, his offer to Danny gets more insistent. Regardless of his approval, Yassen imagines Alex would have offered anyway.

Danny takes the burner, cautiously, like he’s breaking a rule.

“I’ll call you from Yassen’s phone if anything comes up,” Alex says.

Yassen moves towards the door. 

A second later, Alex falls into step behind him.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Alone in the hotel room, Danny can’t help but be nervous.

The curtains are drawn, though rimmed in yellow; it’s dim inside, save for the light of the TV and the glowing time on the microwave. 2:13.

The action movie Alex chose has long since ended. He’s flicked between all the remaining channels: the news, the daytime talk shows, the eighties movies that are somehow always at the exact same point halfway through.

He tosses the remote aside and paces the length of the room, worrying at his lip. He can’t stop thinking about Julius—about Alex.

The guilt eats at him. He should be there right now, playing defense. But if the contact is truly competent, he might out himself entirely by tagging along while the contact sorts out their situation, or severs the connection.

But if the contact can’t do anything, and Danny left them defenseless…

His guts twist.

But after all the running he’s done, he can’t afford to risk getting caught. Not now. He can’t throw it all away. The effort Alex has been expending to keep him alive. Free.

It’s bad enough that the other two know he’s anomalous at all. Looking after himself isn’t…

He looks at his hands.

He can barely even believe his own words. Not after everything he’s done.

Looking after himself right now is the height of selfishness. Alex being alone with Julius around is a bad idea. The only thing that’s probably kept Alex from being possessed already is the fact that Julius is such a new ghost. But the more energy he takes from Alex, the worse it’ll get. Julius will get stronger and Alex will get weaker and then—

Danny glances at the phone Alex left him, sitting on the desk, reflecting the faint light from the room on its black screen.

He should say something.

What would he say? Would they even listen?

…Alex would. But Yassen?

He’d have to explain how he knows what he does, and it’s not like he can tell the truth.

The lights fluctuate above him and the TV screen glitches with bands of multicolored static. The audio, turned as low as it goes, jumbles and distorts into nothing.

Goddamnit.

He’s never had to control this shit before. There aren’t all these lights and electronics out in the middle of the fucking woods.

The thermostat across the room reads forty-three degrees. He inhales deeply and breathes out. It fogs in front of him. He threads his fingers through his hair.

His chest aches and the darkness murmurs to him from the corners of the room.

Energy. Whatever happens today—whatever comes next—he’ll need energy.

When they part ways… maybe Danny could still tag along unseen. Even if just to deal with Julius. He can’t let anything happen to Alex. Not if he can stop it—not after everything.

It’s a lot of effort to squash down the nausea. He stops in front of the phone.

The shadows grow deeper, stretching out towards him with delicate feelers.

A few minutes. A quick feeding. That’s all.

He closes his eyes and relents, drawing the inky shadows over himself like a blanket.

The pain in his arm slips into the background, the slow beating of his heart disappears, and it’s silent. Cold.

He lets out a small murmur of static like a sigh.

A hotel is as good a hunting ground as any. It’s a newer hotel, meaning little competition. Daytime adds a level of challenge, but nothing he can’t contend with.

He brushes past the door and into the hall, invisible. It’s empty, but he can feel the litany of emotion coursing through the building. Blood through a vascular system.

He moves between the walls and floor like an eel through water, following the promising thread of someone stressed and alone.

It brings him to a room with a man—middle-aged with dark hair. He’s sitting on the bed using the hotel landline.

“What do you mean you’re not coming?” he snaps into the receiver.

Danny watches him, head lolled to the side.

There’s a reply from someone—a woman—on the other end.

“I told you I could only see you today,” he says. The anxiety and frustration rolls off the man in waves.

Emotions like anger and fear are siblings—a positive and negative electrode. Arcing from one to the other is so easy with the right push.

Danny isn’t very interested in some strangers’ sordid love affair.

White noise crackles out of the phone speaker. The man pulls it away from his ear and looks at it with confusion.

“Hello?”

Icy tendrils pool in Danny’s chest—makes him giddy.

The man tries again with the phone, putting it to his ear and checking the panel. The buttons clack uselessly.

“What the hell,” the guy says. He hangs up and tries to redial. It’s no use.

Danny grins.

Maybe he should feel bad.

Darkness creeps up the wall and along the window, choking out the light. The man stops, phone in hand. Unease starts to move in.

The man can feel him in the room—he knows deep down he isn’t alone. With uncertain slowness, he replaces the receiver in its cradle.

The shadows grow.

The man bolts to his feet and fumbles at the lamp. It switches on with a soft click.

Danny slides along the ceiling and down the wall. The light casts his shadow for a moment before he kills it.

The man stumbles back, tripping over his shoes by the bed and landing on the floor. His breathing is picking up pace, wet. Ragged. The whites of his eyes flash as they dart for something to focus on. 

An animal cornered.

There’s the first sweet burst of fear. Danny basks in it, drinks it in, his core humming with pleasure. Cold water on a hot day.

The man hauls himself up. “Fuck, what the fuck.”

Danny rumbles a laugh.

He slinks closer. He can feel the quickness of the man’s heart in the air; with every beat, a new pulse of fear. He reaches in and he flips that switch: fight or flight, prey or predator.

Wide eyes dart towards the door.

Thick darkness closes off the direction of escape. As fun as it’d be to watch him run, he can’t have that. In the dark, he grins.

It’s been so long. Weeks? Months?

The man trembles. Holds for a long moment, then caves, and bolts towards the windows.

It feels so nice, lapping against him like an incoming tide—whetting his appetite…

The man hits the window with his hands. Glass and flesh make hollow, low sounds while he fumbles for the latches. His breath comes in fast gulps.

He can’t get the lock—the window doesn’t open. He slams his shoulder into its dark surface. When it doesn’t give, he tries again. His breath is faster still.

Hopelessness bleeds in, an undercurrent. This man thinks he’s going to die here.

Danny hums a low sound. The air is saturated with the fiberglass sting of terror.

He wants more.

He wants to be full. He wants the man to scream.

He pushes in, close enough to touch. The man turns and presses his back against the window.

“You can’t get away,” he mutters in a way the living can understand, voice cracking with static.

The man’s knees buckle and he sinks down and down the wall to the floor. Whimpers.

A viscous glee oozes out from his core. The feeling of it pouring strength back into him, every inch. It’s good. It’s so good.

“That’s it.”

More.

This one has so many tangled emotions. All boiling up and evaporating. Terror. Confusion. Helplessness. He drinks it in. He pulls it from him like thread from a seam. 

The man’s head downturns, like he’s struggling to keep it up. 

More, more, more.

He wants it all—He—

He pulls himself back, taking the darkness with him. The lamp flickers a few times and then comes back on.

No.

No.

What’s he doing?

He can’t.

He can’t risk that again.

He turns tail and leaves, straight back to the hotel room he should be in. The new energy vibrates through him and for the first time in days, he feels better: awake.

He needs to stop going so long between gathering energy. He knows, but—

He gets back to the room, coiling in the air, making a low sound of distress.

Fuck.

What’s he doing?

More energy—more likely he’ll keep losing control of his ambient influence. The more people he drains from… the more of a trail he leaves, the more likely he’ll draw the Foundation’s attention again. 

He twists. Alex and Yassen are bound to figure something out sooner or later.

But with more energy, he could deal with Julius.

Fuck, he doesn’t know—he doesn’t even want to leave. Maybe he’s had enough of being alone. Maybe he likes—

The phone lying face up on the desk lights up and starts vibrating.

Danny stills.

On the screen it displays: INCOMING CALL. UNKNOWN NUMBER.

Shit.

That could be Alex.

Or Yassen.

His core flares in his chest.

What if something happened?

He shifts forms and drops to the floor. He grabs the phone and swipes up on it.

The voice that comes through is neither of them.

“I know you said not to call this number, but you haven’t answered a single text today—what the hell is going on? Did you know MI6 has a lead on you and your new Scorpia BFF? I should think that’s worth talking about,” comes the very angry voice of a girl with an accent—not British, something else Danny can’t place.

Danny’s brain bluescreens. Alex has never mentioned anyone else, not someone who knew… anything, anyway.

What should he do? If Alex trusted her with the burner phone’s number, then surely…

“Alex?” the voice comes again.

He panics.

“Uh. No—Alex left his phone with me. Can I take a message?”

It’s silent for a terrifyingly long beat.

“Who’s this?” she says.

Danny raps his fingers against the back of the phone. He hums, eyes skipping along the ceiling and the shitty landscape painting hanging over the desk.

“Um. A friend?” His breath still turns to vapor when he exhales. “And who’s this?”

She doesn’t answer. She does the exact opposite, actually—

—the line disconnects.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Site-78’s mess hall is starting to clear out by the time Casey Sakamoto and the rest of the Mu-13 squad sit down. It’s a quiet affair as they start eating—French dip, soggy fries, and mushy green beans that taste like bacon.

After they’d all been ripped a new one by Commander Briggs for the past hour during the debrief, Casey hadn’t expected much else.

His head feels a bit stuffy, pounding when he moves it too fast. The nurse at the infirmary told him he had nothing to worry about. “If you still feel dizzy or off tomorrow, come back,” he’d said, checking the clock for the fourth time since Casey’d been there.

He sure hopes he doesn’t have to go back. 

After a few minutes, Alvarez is the first to speak. “That could have gone better.”

“Gee, Alvarez, ya think?” Sykes says from next to Casey, leveraging a glare over her cup, before setting it down and going back to eating. 

“Which situation are you referring to? The mission or the debrief?” Jelani asks, inspecting a bent prong on his fork. 

Alvarez shrugs. “All the above, hombre.”

“Yes, thanks. We were all there,” Grant says, arms folded on the table, sparse food untouched. There’s the dark shadow of facial hair along his jaw and circles under his eyes. 

They’re all tired.

“Yeah. Technically.”

Casey feels Alvarez’s eyes linger on him for a moment. Heat prickles under his skin—a colony of fire ants.

“Leave the rook alone, Alvarez. Your ass was in a dumpster, you have no room to talk,” Sykes says. 

“I wasn’t the only one in fuckin’ dumpster, eh, Vince?” 

Hughes looks up from his meal for the first time, unimpressed.

Alvarez isn’t deterred. “Dumpster’s not too bad. At least I remember it.”

The table exchanges glances—hardly concealed amusement. 

“It was a lucky shot,” Casey says.

Grant coughs, a smirk wiring his lips tighter. “Yeah? How do you know that again? I’d love to hear.”

Casey flushes hotter as Alvarez, Sykes, and even Jelani snort.

“Seriously, amnesticized on your first deployment? By some kid, no less. That’s gotta be some type of record,” Alvarez says.

Hughes smacks Alvarez upside the head. “That’s enough, Diego.”

“Ay,” Alvarez yelps. 

Sykes laughs harder and claps Casey on the shoulder, giving him a shake. “Don’t worry, rookie, first missions never go to plan. Just take your lumps.”

Casey scoffs. “Last I checked, this unit was the damn Ghostbusters, not… whatever the hell was up with those kids. And from the debrief, it doesn’t sound like any of you did any better.”

“Sakamoto is right,” Hughes says, using the tone of voice that reigns the unit members in. Casey’s been here long enough to see it in action a few times, at least. “Montana wasn’t what we expected, but that’s no excuse for the mess it turned into. We’re a Mobile Task Force. Whatever was up with them, if it wasn’t spectral, it’s not our job. We needed to apprehend them and do what we were sent there to do.”

“Sure, boss. But the mission going sideways wasn’t all on us. That shit the Spectral Department gave us didn’t exactly work wonders like they said it would,” Grant says, fingers tightening in the sleeves of his fake military uniform. “It just took the skip’s sig offline. Which is so helpful for tracking and containing it, especially when we’d finally gotten in close enough range to pinpoint it accurately.”

“I read the preliminary R’n’D report. It should have grounded that thing. I dunno how the hell it slipped us like that,” Sykes says, sliding a hand over her dark hair, tied back in a tight military standard bun.

Jelani spears a few green beans but neglects to eat them; they stay hovering a few inches over his plate. “Okay, but those children were nasty. I never want to take another ectoblast to the face again.”

Jelani had been hit twice—though protected by his helmet, the first blast had nearly busted an eardrum. The second had been directly to his visor. Casey had gathered as much, confined in the infirmary and surfacing from the amnestic; he’d listened as Jelani was forced to endure a number of hearing and visual impairment exams.

“What kind of kids take headshots at real people?” Grant moans. He’d sat through the seeing-eye tests, too. “With real guns?”

“Ones with something wrong with them,” Jelani grunts. 

“Hear, hear,” Alvarez says.

“And if one of them saw 6377?” Casey asks.

“Doesn’t matter at this point,”  Sykes says. “And they probably didn’t, anyway. We got distance scans and neither of them read high enough to be possessed, so that lowers the chance of exposure.” She swigs her water. “That makes them somebody else’s problem now.”

“They made themselves our problem when they disarmed Hughes,” Jelani says. “That was personal!”

“Yeah, but can we talk about Hughes’ pistol going MIA?” Alvarez snorts.

“At least we recovered ours,” Grant agrees.

“Think the kids kept it?” Jelani asks, morbid curiosity clear.

“They seemed like punks, so probably. Guess we’ll know if we hear they’ve held up some mini-mart with it.” Alvarez shrugs.

“You sure those were just some street kids, man?” Grant says with a lifted eyebrow. “In a rinky-dink town like that?”

“They acted like they’ve had at least some measure of combat training,” Jelani points out.

“They could have a tough old man,” Sykes says, thoughtful. “Mine taught me how to throw a good punch as soon as I was old enough.”

“Throwing a punch is one thing. That’s schoolyard. Disarming Vince like it was nothing and trashing him? Plus what he did to me?” Alvarez sucks his teeth. “Shit’s embarrassin’, man.”

“Maybe this’ll keep you humble, Diego,” Hughes says.

Grant scoffs. “As if.” 

“I can be humble,” Alvarez protests.

“Sure, buddy.”

“I’ll show you humble.”

“Oh, no, I’m shaking in my boots.”

Casey turns his shoulder on Alvarez and Grant, giving his attention to Hughes. “What really happened with you and the kid?” 

He’s sparred with Hughes. The guy’s no slouch when it comes to hand-to-hand, and he’s the longest standing Mu-13 member. For all accounts and purposes, he never should’ve been disarmed; let alone the fact that they’d been unable to recover his weapon…

“Caught me by surprise,” Hughes says curtly. 

“How?” Casey presses.

Hughes shifts—weary, but too well-trained to show it very obviously. “I rounded that alley anticipating 6377—we’d gotten a momentary read on its signature, just enough to roughly triangulate its last logged position before it vanished again. You know that part. But it wasn’t ‘77 we ran into—I think those kids were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” 

He sounds resigned. He’s probably told some version of this story a hundred times over already, though there hadn’t been time during the briefing to focus on minutia. There’d been larger issues to focus on—next steps.

He shakes his head. “I hesitated, and the kid took advantage of that. You don’t remember, Sakamoto—they were young. Fifteen or sixteen, maybe. My daughter’s age, at most. But that boy didn’t waste a second. I barely got three words out before he downed me.”

Casey can’t help but whistle. 

Grant mutters, “Don’t remember teenagers being that fuckin’ strong.” 

When Casey glances at him, Grant elaborates. 

“I collected a few bruises. Had the pleasure of going hand-to-hand with the same one that got Hughes.”

“Maybe we could turn this whole thing around,” Alvarez says, half-sarcastic. “Let’s recruit ‘em. Ey?”

Sykes shakes her head. “There’s one thing that kind of bothered me.”

“What was it?” Hughes asks.

“I grabbed the other kid, the one who was a crack shot, shaggy haircut,” she says. “At first, he went limp. It was weird, because normally civilians flail around and freak out, but he just… gave up.”

“Huh,” Alvarez says, but he doesn’t sound like he cares much. “Maybe don’t recruit that one, then.”

“Then,” Sykes goes on, “as soon as we were shooting at his friend, he did a complete one-eighty.”

The table considers that a moment.

“Kid’s protective and has his own problems,” Jelani eventually decides the verdict. “So?”

“Just thinking about it, is all,” Sykes says.

“You know what I think?” Grant says. “Whether or not they saw ‘77, they know a thing or two about anomalies. Did you see how they blew up our containment van?”

“You don’t have to be a genius to blow up an accelerant, you’ve just gotta be kinda fucked up,” Alvarez says. “Bet they’re the type of shits who threw cherry bombs at frogs.”

“Speaking from experience?” Jelani drawls.

“I think Sykes knows what I’m talking about,” Alvarez says.

“I told you that in confidence, you little shit,” Sykes hisses.

“Let’s move on,” Hughes says. His tone conveys that it’s less of a suggestion, and more of a command; their time to bitch has come to an end. “They caused enough trouble as it is—distracting us enough for ‘77 to get away again, and then keeping us occupied with amnesticizing an entire town. They won’t occupy us any longer.” 

He stands, picking up the plate of food he—like the rest of them—hardly touched.

“We need to get our rest. If 6377 pops back up, we need to be ready,” Hughes says. “See you all at 0600.”

They all make to get up, and as Alvarez passes, he claps Casey’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. 

“Make sure you reread 6377’s file, rookie. Since, you know, you probably don’t remember it.”

Casey stares daggers into the back of his head as he walks past, falling into step with Muhammed Grant.

Asshole.

“Sakamoto.”

Casey stiffens, snapping to attention towards Hughes.

“Sir?”

“Diego’s just picking on you because he isn’t the lowest man on the totem pole anymore. Don’t take it personal.”

They should be past schoolyard antics by now, but rather than complain, Casey just nods at Hughes.

Hughes is hands-down the most experienced of their crew, and certainly wisest—maybe the same age as Briggs, if Casey had to make a wager. His close cut hair is silver in a single streak at the front, and his face collects fine lines like a veteran’s medals.

“Walk with me,” Hughes says.

“Yessir.”

Hughes’ face pinches. “And quit with that ‘Sir’ shit. Seriously. Makin’ me feel older than I am,” There’s a faint smile as he starts walking out of the mess hall. “We’re Mobile Task Force operatives, the best the Foundation’s got to offer. We’re a team.”

Casey nods. His boots are stiff—not broken in yet. They squeak against the epoxy floor. The pressed uniform bunches weirdly—doesn’t sit right on him.

“What branch?” Hughes asks. 

“What?” 

“Of the military.” 

“Oh, um. Air Force, Sir. I mean—”

“When we’re not deployed, you can call me Vincent. Or Vince. Most do.”

“Alright.”

“How long?” 

“Ten years.” 

He never thought he’d be here. How could he? He was seventeen, straight out of highschool with no way to pay for anything more. There weren’t many options. 

Then, on his fourth tour in Iraq, shit hit the fan. Not in the way that he was readying for. ADT had him ready for blood and the end, and service took that nail and hammered it bone-deep in his skull.

He can still remember the way the anomaly twisted, warped the world. The sounds of the screams. He was one of the few that didn’t have a psychotic break.

The next thing he knew, he was sent back to the States and offered a new job. 

Few years of training later and here he is. On a specialized unit that chases down the things that go bump and kill people in the night. 

His family still thinks he’s out there, fighting the good fight. As if any of that human conflict means shit when you know what’s really lurking in the shadows.    

“I was in the Army for over twenty years,” Vincent says. 

He pushes the door open and lets Casey go first into the hall, waves at Sykes and Jelani, still finishing up at the table they vacated. When they wave back, Casey lifts a hand, too.

“When you come into the Foundation, they tell you to forget all that,” Vincent goes on. “I think they’re only half right. No matter what Specialists or Containment personnel cycle in and out of Mu-13, we’re tactical. You, Diego and I. More people get assigned and reassigned and so there may be more or less of us at any given time, but—”

The door swings closed behind them. Vincent nods to where the rest of the team is reaching the end of the hall, turning towards the commons.

“—it’s on us to watch their asses—keep them safe so they can do their jobs.”

Casey swallows and nods. “I understand.”

“How much time did you lose?”

“About twelve hours.”

Their footsteps echo down the hall, lights buzzing overhead.

“That explains it.” There’s a smile in Vincent’s voice. He shakes his head. “Diego is on edge because of 6377.”

Casey grinds his teeth. He’d read 6377’s up to date article en-route when they’d found out what skip they were being sent to bag and tag. He decides to ask anyway.

“…Why?”

Vincent’s face pulls into a grimace. “During your MTF orientation, I’m sure they gave you the whole ‘expect to be amnesticized. Expect there to be times you’re the one asking for it’ spiel?”

“They did.” 

“Diego had only been Mu-13 for a month the first time we were deployed to catch 6377, about a year ago. We didn’t know then what we know about it now.”

“We didn’t even really encounter it, did we? In Montana?”

“No,” Vincent says. “Read 6377’s file again. Keep in mind your first deployment could have been worse than getting an amnestic dart.” Vincent puts a hand on his shoulder. “Goodnight, Sakamoto.”

Somehow, he feels better and worse after this conversation. “Casey,” he offers with a smile. “Thanks, Vincent.”    

Looks like he’s got some late night homework to do.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Alex says little during the drive, content instead to watch the passing buildings and traffic outside the window. 

As much as Alex would like Yassen to believe it’s attitude, he knows better: Alex is anxious.

“What names are we using?” Alex asks.

“None. The contact is on a need-to-know basis,” Yassen says.

Their destination is a parking garage. They go up level after level until the sun erupts across the dashboard again. On the roof, it’s mostly empty. Yassen eases them into a parking space in the far right of the complex. 

“Any idea what they drive?”

“A black van.”

“Oh, wow. Reassuring. I have such good luck with those.”

Yassen gives him a wry look. “I am not expecting trouble. Nothing that cannot be easily handled.” 

Alex unfastens his seatbelt with a click. “Yeah, because your way of ‘handling’ things is so easy.”

Yassen says nothing. Silence is just as effective as any other response.

Alex sighs. “I know, I know. Sorry.”

Yassen nods, attention shifting to their surroundings. There’s an elevator as well as a staircase, but little else by way of identifying features, cover, or escape.

Were this meeting Scorpia-related, he never would have agreed to such a tactically-disadvantaged meeting place. It would be remarkably easy to bottleneck or trap them on one of the floors, and the roof is vulnerable to snipers from adjacent buildings. But the nature of this contact means it’s more important no one overhear them, and for that, it’s efficient. It’s an older parking garage, with surveillance only at the entrance.

The car idles while they wait. Alex fiddles with the air vents, but Yassen stays attentive.

A few minutes past the agreed meeting time, a black van rolls up into the lot. Yassen makes eye contact with the driver, a young man in his thirties with dark, neatly kept facial hair.

The van parks with a space between them.

“Stay here,” he says, popping the latch and stepping out of the car.

Past the city skyline, the snow-capped mountains shape the horizon. The sun burns high in the sky, and despite it being fall, it’s unseasonably warm. A cool breeze drifts in from the north, but the sun-baked concrete of the parking garage is more than enough to even out the chill.

The passenger door of their car swings open as Alex gets out.

“I said—”

Alex settles into a defensive stance next to Yassen. “I’m not staying in the stupid car. I’m not helpless. Besides, if shit goes down, we’ll be screwed up here anyway.”

So the last few weeks have not robbed him of his observational skills. Or perhaps the recent rest restored his ability to draw educated conclusions about his surroundings? Yassen makes a mental note to drill Alex on potential scenarios on the way back to the hotel. 

“Fine.”

Together, they watch as their contact gathers his things from the passenger seat. When he lifts his head, he meets Yassen’s stare. 

Hesitantly, the man nods, raising his hand in greeting before getting out of the car himself, careful not to jostle his duffle bag. There’s a scattering of parked vehicles on this level, but none on their side of the rooftop. Regardless, he takes them in with a frown.

“I doubt the cars over there can hear us at all,” says Yassen, affecting a faint East Coast lilt. The man jumps a bit.

“Doubt it, yeah, but let’s—” The contact nods at an outcrop of concrete that houses the stairs. “Behind there.”

“Agreed.” Yassen tilts his head, and Alex follows in step behind him.

Their contact has the crumpled posture of someone trying to seem smaller than they really are. His black windbreaker crinkles, anonymous; he wears round, modern glasses with a black rim and an olive green ball cap. It’s the way spies dress: layers upon layers, to be taken away and repurposed within seconds to change a profile. This man is used to being hunted, if a bit amateurish in his execution.

“So you’re John Doe and John Doe Jr.?” asks the man. “Nice to meet you. You can call me Dusty.” He doesn’t move to shake hands, and neither does Yassen.

“You can call us John and Junior,” he offers amiably, feeling Alex’s muted offense from behind him. “For simplicity’s sake.”

“Your son?”

“My nephew.”

“Hm.”

The other man, curiously, slaps a piece of paper face down on the ground between them. Yassen can faintly see the marks of Sharpie seeping through the other side.

“A ward against eavesdroppers,” says Dusty. “My buddy Evie drew that one. Should start burning if anyone is paying attention.”

Yassen regards the paper neutrally. 

Were his profession different, he may be more dismissive, but it takes very little skill to notice that the only assassins that stay alive are the superstitious ones. Ghosts were one of the first things Hunter had taught him about. 

This is a world in which night terrors often bite harder than flesh and blood. 

They do not live in a world where they have the luxury of pretending otherwise.

Alex stares at the paper skeptically, but stays quiet.

The silence grows awkward. Dusty coughs.

“Well. Describe what you’re dealing with? To me?” he says.

“My nephew’s being haunted by a sick bastard,” Yassen says bluntly. “Revenge is the motivation.”

“For?”

Stony silence.

Dusty sighs. “You gotta give me something to work with,” he mutters. “But alright. Let’s start with the diagnostics to get a feel for how powerful the spirit is.”

He rummages inside his duffle bag. Yassen watches him carefully. His hand isn’t quite on his concealed gun, but it’s a close thing. 

Dusty resurfaces with a blocky device in his hands. There’s a small LCD screen on the face of it.

“What’s that?” Alex asks.

“It’s an EMF detector,” he replies. “Stands for electromagnetic field. Powerful ghosts can affect electronics—lights and things.” He flicks it on with an audible click. Static starts pouring out the plastic ribs of the speaker. He shows them the screen’s readout. “With this thing, we can get some forewarning in case we get a different eavesdropper—whatever’s haunting you.”

It emits a warbling noise. The readout flickers uncertainly, peaking high and then crashing low when Dusty shakes it. Dusty frowns at it.

“Mechanical error?” Yassen inquires dryly. 

“Look, it’s not exactly like my group is swimming in cash,” Dusty says, tight with consternation. “Weird fuckin’ ghost, if this is what it’s reading…”

Dusty starts making a tight radius around the ward, holding the reader aloft.

With every passing minute, Yassen rues how little options they had in Europe—how little options they have at all.

“Then again, we burn through these pretty quick. Ghosts aren’t very conducive to the health of your electronic devices,” Dusty explains, looking back at them as if to reassure them. “They emit frequencies, which is why this thing can pick up on them, yeah, but with the side effect of, uh. Tending to fry them real quick.”

The EMF reader shrieks, almost mockingly. 

“Whoa,” Dusty murmurs, his eyebrows knitting. His eyes flick up towards them.

The EMF flanges, jerking up, then back down to complete normalcy when Dusty tilts the machine.

He breathes out a heavy sigh.

“Okay,” he starts lowly, and turns the machine off. “This isn’t working, I think. I’m going to try something else that should give me a more reliable and in-depth reading of whatever’s going on. But… I’m gonna have to touch the kid.”

Yassen does not take a step forward.

“Just! Just putting my hands on his shoulders,” Dusty says hastily at the sudden ice in the air. “No weird blood sacrifice chanting bullshit. I’ve just got some…” He looks down at the ward. “I’m a bit like Evie, okay? Different skill set, but. There’s a reason why the Channelers do all the cloak and dagger shit when we’re trying to help people. We don’t want to get caught, either… the Foundation isn’t to be fuc—messed with.” He chuckles, nerves apparent. “But yeah, physical contact, it’s, uh. It helps me do my thing.”

Dusty trails off into mumbling, shoving his hands into his coat pockets.

Alex meets Yassen’s gaze. He nods, ever so slightly.

“I’ll do it,” he says, breaking the silence.

Dusty nods, noticeably relieved, and walks closer. “Alright. Just relax, nothing’s gonna happen to you.”

Alex takes three steps to meet him. Tension is strung through his shoulders like wire.

His hands touch Alex’s shoulders. Dusty closes his eyes.

The man breathes deeply, once, twice. His face wrinkles, but his eyes remain closed.

“Okay, this is… interesting. There’s—wow, okay.”

Yassen doesn’t care for the sound of that.

“There’s… him and. Something else. Someone else…”

Alex blinks at that. “Someone else?” 

There’s something like hope in the way he asks it.

“I don’t know. I haven’t felt anything like it before… Uh. But. It’s not. I don’t think it’s really a threat, so I’m going to focus on… the other thing. That’s super present.”

Dusty inhales, rolling his shoulders.

“Alright, ugly,” he breathes out, almost like he’s not even aware of Alex and Yassen anymore. He tilts his head. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Yassen feels all the hairs on his forearm stand on end, like an approaching thunder front.

Some unnameable emotion breathes in his lungs, curls around his brainstem. It pushes over his mind like chloroform. There’s a distortion in the world, like looking through glass marred with water. Liquid prism, shattering kaleidoscopically.

He suddenly knows he has to separate them. He knows he has to step forward and raise his hands.

Yet the momentum rots and dies in his limbs.

Yassen feels like nothing more than a toy soldier, left in the rain. Water rotting through his seams and grinding his gears to a halt.

Frozen, Yassen can see what Alex and Dusty cannot. The ward on the ground is turning gray—no, translucent. Wet. From the center, spreading to the edge. It warps, blackening.

Rot blooms across the ruined ward like a tick bite.

“The ghost is… on the verge of manifesting physically,” Dusty says, brows furrowing. “He wants revenge. Death-vengeance. Wants… You…”

Alex makes a muted sound.

Dusty’s fingers are digging into his shoulders. One, two, three, four divots on each shoulder, mirror images.

The world is fragmented glass. Everything is wrong.

“You… are mine—his—I—” Dusty abruptly lets go, clutching his head, eyes screwed shut. “No, you’re not me, shut up—”

“Shut up—” Alex choruses in time with him, suddenly pale. He twists halfway towards Yassen, motion aborted. “Yassen. Yassen, rain—”

Alex’s knees give out and he topples, hitting the ground on all fours. 

The spell breaks abruptly. Blessedly. Yassen sucks in air, lurching to Alex’s side, one hand going to his back.

In Malagosto, it started mildly. Moments of inattention that would have been forgivable if Alex was anywhere else. Looking tired, drawn. A change in personality; something of his spark being smothered. Dissonant moments of self-hatred, of anger, of sadness. Yassen had thought it was… anything else. Everything else. Everything MI6 did to crush him under their heel, to use him like a dog, Rothman breathing down their necks—

Then the hallucinations started, and Hunter’s most esoteric lessons became sharply relevant.

“Stop it,” Alex hisses, staring up at Dusty. “Stop it—no!”

Dusty starts coughing on his mantra. Keeps coughing. Sinks to the concrete floor. The mantra gutters out.

Alex’s fist curls, nails scraping over the smooth pavement. “Leave him alone, Julius.”

The EMF flicks on. Static bursts out between the ribs of the speaker.

Yassen distantly names the emotion making a habitat of his body.

Horror.

Horror like looking up from a pilfered fridge to find a rich man staring at him with hot, dead eyes. 

Horror like the billowing of smoke at his back, and an endless forest ahead.

It is with that horror that Yassen realizes the static sounds like rain.

“HA—STUPID—miss me?—PATHETIC,” the EMF gargles between the raindrop patter.

“You s-sound like a fucking idiot through that thing,” Alex snarls. His fist resolves into a pillar, pushing his body up defiantly. “Let him go. It’s me you want, isn’t it, you bastard?”

“WHAT—IF—HE’S—MORE— fun.” Julius’ voice pitches high on the last word, childlike, disconcertingly clear before it dissolves into static again. He giggles in manic, mocking hiccups.

“F-fuck you,” Alex spits.

The EMF shrieks, so high even Yassen flinches. Alex clamps his hands over his ears. 

“THIS—FLESH IS—SOOOO—COM—FOR—TA—BLE.”

He drags out the words as Dusty twitches unnaturally.

Alex doesn’t relax his grip. Doesn’t close his eyes. “No, no. God. Just—go after me.”

Unacceptable. “Do not—”

The world fractures again with the weight of the ghost’s mocking interest. “WHAT’S—IN IT—FOR ME?”

“Come on,” Alex says. “Who’s the one you died to? Me, not him. You know it. He’s nobody.”

Dusty twitches some more.

“Julius,” he says hoarsely. His face wrenches bitterly. “Please.”

There’s a terrible moment of silence. Then the ghost speaks again.

“—WELL—IF—YOU—INSIST.”

Dusty gasps like he’s coming up for air as Alex full-body flinches.

Yassen suppresses the muscles that want to reach for his .22. It’s not the solution to this problem.

The solution to this problem is crumpled on the floor, gaping like a fish.

Bitter anger pools like poison in Yassen’s stomach. 

Inaction has been a death sentence since he was a child. Inaction would have cost his life in Estrov, in Moscow, in the dacha, in Malagosto.

To put yourself in the hands of Fate willingly is to make yourself its plaything.

Yassen has been subject to its whims for his entire life, try as he might. Fate sent him as a child stumbling into the cruelty of the adult world. Fate put John Rider into his path—a revolver with five bullets into the palm of his hand. 

Here he is again, caught out at sea, battered by unseen forces. 

Men, he can shoot. Money, he can procure. Politics, he can negotiate. But here… 

Alex isn’t breathing, staring catatonically at Yassen’s forehead, fingers twitching—Dusty is there, wide-eyed, watching—

“Shrike.” It tears out of him.

He at least has this.

“Shrike, do you hear me?”

Alex spasms under his hands, directionless but violent. 

“Shrike, look at me.”

“C-can’t,” Alex wheezes, eyes watering. His arms strain like they’re the only thing holding his body up.

“Shrike.”

“…S-sir.”

And Alex looks up.

The EMF reader screeches.

“YOU—ARE—WEAK,” Julius cackles through the static. “HELPLESS—DOG—NOTHING—”

“Breathe with me,” Yassen says. “That’s an order.”

“I—” Alex chokes and gargles on phantom water. Coughs his lungs out and gasps desperately and it has never been this bad before, Yassen doesn’t—

“C’sck,” Alex wheezes. “Can’t. W-water—”

Alex makes an aborted grab for his shirt and Yassen cannot take this anymore.

He crushes Alex to his chest and lets him hack his lungs out, shielding the boy from the drowning rain in the cavity of his chest, leaning over him. Alex whimpers and presses his face into Yassen’s shirt, chasing dry cloth. Dry air. He sucks in breaths so hard the fabric over his sternum flutters upward.

Alex coughs and coughs, fingers scrabbling and catching as the EMF shrieks cacophonous laughter.

All at once, the static disappears.

Julius speaks three words. They’re clear. Slow. Deliberate.

“THIS. WAS. FUNNNN.”

The EMF reader switches off by itself.

The silence is deafening.

Alex wipes his mouth and freezes, his eyes trained on the ground below him. Yassen looks down, too.

They stare at the tiny, slimy, indisputable puddle of black rot together.

Yassen tightens his grip on Alex’s shoulder.

Beyond the pitiful excuse of a ward, Dusty draws himself to shaky feet.

“This—this is really bad,” Dusty mutters, voice rough.

Yassen shoots Dusty a thunderous look. Alex is still against him, shaking, but his breathing evens out with every new inhale.

“He’s becoming real,” Dusty continues. “Too real.”

“He was already real,” Yassen says.

“No.” Dusty’s face is serious. He fiddles with the cuffs of his sleeves, eyes darting around erratically. “Anomalies, anything that doesn’t fit in this world—they have a weaker grasp on this reality. It takes energy, enormous amounts of energy, for them to even exist. If he’s growing powerful enough to make you choke, to ruin Evie’s ward…”

He starts pacing.

Yassen watches impassively.

“With every haunting, he’s feeding on your fear. It’s making him more real. Soon, he’ll be able to manifest physically,” Dusty says. “Everything today? The hallucinations? They’ll slip into reality. Whatever he made you see, he’ll do more than make you see it.”

Alex shifts, attempting to stand. Yassen pulls him up, allowing him to lean his weight against him until his strength returns.

What Dusty is implying… The chances are slim, but he’d be remiss not to ask: “As he gains the ability to interact in this plane—is the physicality mutual?”

Dusty takes off his hat and rubs a hand forward and backward over his hair, mussing it. He swallows, eyes darting towards Alex. “I—I’m not sure what you’re asking.”

“Could physical means be used offensively?”

“Like fighting back?” Dusty asks, face contorted in disbelief. “No, it—it doesn’t work like that. Interaction with spectral entities happens entirely on their terms. If they don’t want you to touch them, you won’t, especially as they get stronger. Physical—er—weapons, in the traditional sense, don’t work.”

Alex leans away, supporting his own weight, but doesn’t move far.

“In the traditional sense?” Yassen asks.

“Yeah, like… have you,” Dusty says, and Yassen is already narrowing his eyes. “Have you considered reaching out to—them?”

Whatever expression he’s making is cold enough that Dusty reads the answer immediately. He backs up a step.

“Look,” he says with his hands in the air like he’s calming an animal. Maybe that’s an accurate assessment; the gesture makes Yassen feel his teeth more keenly. “Pulling out the big guns might be necessary here. They have weapons to deal with cases that have… progressed this far.” He nods towards Alex, as if he needs to emphasize.

“Minutes ago, you were acknowledging the danger the Foundation poses to the anomalously affected. Why the change of heart?”

“It’s hardly a change of heart,” he defends, “I just know what our limits look like, and John, or whatever the hell your name is, there’s no point in trying to keep a corpse safe from the Foundation.”

“The Foundation is not on the table.”

“Better with them than dead.”

“And you think being the Foundation’s lab rat isn’t a comparable fate?”

“I, yeah, I hear you, man, I’m just saying the best course of action at this point is—”

“Unacceptable.”

“We don’t have the resources for Alex to survive this,” Dusty beseeches, and Yassen’s blood freezes.

Alex edges away from Dusty.

“I,” he says, “never told you my name.”

“I… know.” Dusty blinks, gaze far away before snapping back to him. “You’re Alex. Alexander John Rider.” Cocks his head like he’s listening to something. “Lil’ spy.”

The world tilts and fractures again. This time, it’s familiar.

Yassen shifts forward, using his arm to sweep Alex behind him. He doesn’t protest, shuffling on heavy feet.

Dusty shakes his head like he’s flinging water off of himself. “Fuck. Damn you,” he hisses under his breath. “Sorry. Give me a second.” He holds his head in his hands, breathes heavily. “Fuck. He’s really—you have to get help that can actually help. It’s… Do you know what vengeful ghosts do to their victims? Do you know?”

Dusty isn’t looking for a reply. He peers out from the bars of his fingers, eyes wavering.

“They can turn their victims into puppets, meat and bone and strings. They rot them from the inside out. They completely overtake you—tie your spirit here—to them, so that even in death, you can’t escape.”

Dusty exhales harshly, doubling forward.

“You can’t escape,” he says.

He chuckles, a sound that sends ice directly to the base of Yassen’s spine. Behind him, Alex is ramrod stiff. 

“You can’t escape,” Dusty sneers. He straightens, the movement of his body jerky. It looks painful.

Around the palm of his hand, Dusty is grinning, white and sharp.

“You sealed your fate the moment you pulled that trigger—”

Dusty groans a low, pained sound. His hands fall away to his sides, swinging too limp.

Yassen can see the internal battle, the terrified light of Dusty disappearing behind a thick sheet of something dark and crazed—Julius.

“You’re mine. I’ll take back everything you took from me, Rider, and I’ll make it hurt.”

The words pitch up at the end, almost like a question.

Dusty—Julius—reaches behind him and it’s a motion that Yassen would recognize anywhere.

Time slows in amber.

—In this line of work, subconscious reactions are vital. Hunter’s steel eyes, pinning him in place before focusing through the scope of his rifle.

Yassen draws faster.

The round echos with a muted snap.

The body drops to the cement mid-motion like a counterweight with its rope severed. A CW380 pistol clatters onto the cement, spinning from its fingers.

For Alex’s sake, he went for the throat. The shot is clean, directly into the spinal cord.

He is not in the habit of requiring more than a single shot per target.

“Fuck,” Alex breathes, voice coming up hoarse and trembling. He turns away, eyes screwed shut. “Jesus fucking Christ, Yassen.”

Yassen tucks his Ruger away. 

“You didn’t have to—fucking—”

“He was compromised by Julius,” Yassen says simply.

He surveys their now expired contact, the pool of blood beginning to stretch, obscuring the cracked yellow paint lines beneath it.

“He had friends, family probably—people that cared about him. Christ, are you even listening?” 

“Even if he had not gone for a weapon, he would’ve likely remained possessed. We have no way to contain him, and his group does not have the means to handle Julius regardless.”

Alex is silent for one damnable beat.

“So? We could have left tonight. Tied him up or— fuck.” Alex threads his fingers through his hair. “You said you wouldn’t kill innocent people. You promised.”

Alex brandishes the betrayal in his voice like a weapon.

“I said I would only eliminate active threats,” Yassen corrects.

Alex is shaking, eyes still closed. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve—” His breath hitches. “Shut up, Julius!”

Yassen, for a moment, can’t help but wonder what Julius is saying, despite how unproductive such thoughts are; now that he’s heard Julius, he has a much better understanding of what Alex has been up against.

Alex grabs at the front of his shirt, like it will relieve some unseen pressure. “I can’t—” His shoulders hunch, and he gasps. “Off. This roof. Yassen, I need to ge—to get off this—”

Yassen turns to Alex and places his hands on the boy’s shoulders.

“Again?”

“No—not him. Just. You fucking—”

“Look at me.”

Alex’s panicked eyes meet his.

Yassen takes a slow deliberate deep breath. 

Alex, after a still beat, follows him.

He exhales just as slow.

“If there was another viable solution, I would have taken it,” he admits.

Alex looks back at him, searching, like he doesn’t believe him.

Yassen watches the emotion gradually yield, melt away into a hollow understanding. 

“Come. We need a new car.”

Alex swallows and nods. He trails behind him despondently, an echo of his usual self. 

It twists something inside Yassen. Had he been given the option, he’d have dealt with this entire mess on his own and saved Alex the additional trauma. The heaviness begins to heat like the element of a stove, clicking and creaking.

He picks one of the other cars on the roof. A four door black sedan.

“Do you see the black Honda?”

Alex nods.

“Wait for me there. I need to tie things up.”

“Okay.” 

He goes back to the body. He pulls on the pair of gloves he brought and relieves the rapidly cooling corpse of its valuable personal effects: wallet, digital watch—staging a drug deal gone wrong, the way he has many times before. His experience, however, is not license to be overconfident. He is every bit as careful and deliberate as he is on any wetwork job. 

He pulls his firearm again and places a few more bullets into the body cavity, one to the head—making his initial shot look like one of many from a sporadic grouping of shots. The low caliber ensures the bullets leave no exit wound. As long as no one looks too closely, the case is open and shut.

He spares a moment to debate about the van and its contents. If this had been a planned job, he would have made sure to factor in extra time to stage the van and “steal” items from it as well. But with Alex to worry about, the bare minimum will have to suffice. 

One piece of technology he does take, however, is the EMF reader. The way it lit up before and during Julius’ attack on Alex could prove a useful alarm at the very least.

Yassen grabs his gear and wipes down their previous vehicle. He listens for the slightest sound of tires or an engine rolling up to the roof—but it’s silent. The only sound is the murmur of the city below.

When he gets to their new car, Alex is leaned against the side.

Yassen pulls the slim jim from his bag and within a minute he pops the lock. He opens the passenger door and ushers Alex into the seat. He drops into it, rigid, as if he’s in physical pain.

The phone is already ringing by the time Yassen gets into the driver’s seat.

Alex says nothing, seemingly still focused on every slow inhale and exhale. 

It takes a while, but eventually the call is accepted.

“Gregorovich. How’d it go?”

He puts the phone on speaker. “Unsatisfactory. You claimed this contact was reputable and unaffiliated with your organization. I would reconsider your methods of reaching such conclusions.” Yassen keeps his voice dangerously level.  

The hotwired engine purrs, and Alex pulls his seatbelt. He moves slowly. His eyes are distant.

On the other side of the line, Gray sighs. “With all due respect, this isn’t exactly my area of expertise. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find credible people in this neck of the woods that don’t already work for us?”

Yassen stays silent. He’d made it explicitly clear when he’d reached out that this had to stay away from the Foundation. It’s enough of a risk that he’s in contact with one person that works for them.

Yassen pinches the bridge of his nose. He supposes it only makes sense—contacting a smuggler for issues of this manner and expecting useful results.

In the passenger seat, Alex looks small. He always does, like this. 

They’re back at square one with Julius. Again. Even if he hadn’t been possessed, he couldn’t let Dusty go with those intentions, not when he knew Alex’s name. Who he was. Yet they’re rapidly running out of viable options.

How much is he willing to risk for Alex’s freedom?

—No point in trying to keep a corpse safe.

Yassen is not yet out of ideas. Their contact has proved at least somewhat useful.

“What do you have for weapons?”

“Spectral weapons? Hm. It’s a bit more risky, but I should be able to find you something. Can’t guarantee what I can get my hands on is going to solve your problem though. From what I know, this department is all about their gadgets.”

“Just make it happen, Gray,” he says. “Tomorrow. 0800 hours.”  

He hangs up. It’s about time they get rid of these burners—five days is already more than he’s comfortable with.

“Bit hypocritical to not want anything to do with the Foundation and then have one as a contact, don’t you think?” Alex mutters. There’s no real bite to it. 

Yassen reads Alex’s tone for what it is.

“The major stipulation of our agreement was discretion, not allowing this to reach the Foundation at large.” Yassen pulls slowly from the parking garage.

“Who is he?”

“Damon Gray. Head security officer at a large scale Foundation facility in Michigan. For several years now, he has facilitated and overseen a smuggling ring that provides Scorpia with weapons, anomalies and intel, as it is a major sorting and storage facility. I have worked with him on a few occasions in the past.”

Yassen looks at Alex from the corner of his eye as he joins the flow of traffic.

Alex nods absently.

“Does he know you’re no longer… affiliated? If Scorpia finds out—”

“Gray is too valuable to burn or otherwise dispose of. More trouble than it would be worth.”

“Are you sure? The board is probably well pissed off after what you did.”

“Scorpia is not the only organization that runs business through Gray’s ring. He understands the risk. He knows only that this is a personal inquiry, and his payment reflects as such.”

“You could have told me.”

“I first contacted Gray before we left Malagosto.”

Alex exhales sharply, white-knuckling the sleeves of his sweater.

Yassen turns onto an on-ramp, merging onto the highway towards their hotel.

“Whatever.” Alex shakes his head. “Have you found a broker for new identities yet?”

The passports and IDs they used to cross the Canada-US border worked in a pinch, but would not hold up to as high a level of scrutiny as international air travel. Those identities are as good as burned; Yassen doesn’t want to use them any longer than necessary. But without Scorpia’s resources, new and thorough identities are going to be difficult to obtain. Not impossible by any stretch, but far more of a pain.

“I’ve found a few freelancers that seem to do promising work. Outside of Scorpia’s network.”

“Where?”

“Atlanta. New York. In the meantime, I have found someone here for new state IDs.” He doesn’t miss the attempted subject change, though. “Before that, we are leaving your friend here and we are headed east to meet with Gray.”

“I can deal with Julius,” Alex mutters.

“We are not having this discussion again.”

“What if the weapons don’t work either? We might just be wasting more time. You heard Dusty. I’m probably as good as dead. At this point, maybe you should just hand me over to the Foundation. Easier that way, innit?”

Yassen grips the steering wheel harder. “Alex…”

“Or we could try the solution that’s right in front of us.”

Yassen says nothing. 

“The two nights that Danny has been with us, I’ve slept,” Alex says. “And did you forget what happened in the car yesterday? Julius left. Do you really think it’s a coincidence?

“Correlation does not equal causation.”

“It’s more than correlation.”

He taps the brakes as they get into late day traffic. “And you have proof of this?”

“I do.”

“Which is?”

Alex says nothing for a long moment.

“I just think we should look at what we’ve got before we try another contact.” Alex wrinkles his nose.

“A certain level of trustworthy evidence is required in order to take any action,” Yassen reminds him. “And you are proposing something quite risky.”

“I swear I’m not making things up,” Alex says. “It’s not just correlation.”

“Evidence you cannot share is hardly evidence.”

“Why can’t you just take my word for once, Yassen?” Alex snaps.

Yassen allows himself one heavy breath out his nose. “I would like to, Alex.”

That makes him quiet down for a moment.

“Despite what either of us may like to do,” Yassen goes on, “we cannot act rashly. Whatever proof you think you may have, if it is not replicable, it is circumstantial. You need to consider more than just yourself at this moment.”

“Myself? How am I the one being selfish here? Danny obviously has nowhere else to go, no money, and he’s in danger.”

“So you will risk putting him in the sights of Julius? Scorpia? MI6? If he is caught, it will only be a matter of time before he is in Foundation custody.”

At this, Alex is silent once more.

“He is like you. I understand your attachment. You have not seen your own friends for many months, and you may never see them again.”

“Now which of us is being the pessimist?” His voice is dull—world-weary.

“Realism, not pessimism,” he says, but there’s no hardness to it. Yassen takes no pleasure in his small victory. 

Alex lets out a shaky breath.

“I get it, alright? I just thought… I dunno.”

“That you could protect him.”

In Yassen’s peripheral, Alex nods. Yassen, not for the first time, nor the last, he suspects, wishes he could kill Ian Rider again.

“Despite what MI6 has made you believe, it is not your responsibility to save anyone. You are a child.”

“Yeah, fine. But if I can help someone, why shouldn’t I?” Alex says, the smallest flicker of his usual attitude returning to him.

“That is your choice. But so are the consequences that follow. For yourself and others.”

It’s quiet, nothing but the white noise of the tires over the road, the radio too low to hear.

“Like Rothman?” Alex asks, voice quiet. “Like Dusty?”

Yassen spares a glance at Alex. Alex is looking back. Both hopeful and afraid of Yassen’s answer, maybe.

“Yes. Like them.”

Something settles in Alex’s eyes. He looks out the windshield.

After a moment he says, “Danny’s been helping me too.”

Yassen says nothing, waits for Alex to say more if he decides to.

“With Julius,” Alex clarifies softly.

Yassen pushes down the urge to light a cigarette.

As if Alex can tell, he follows up quickly with, “I know what you’re going to say. But I swear this is the truth.” Alex cards his hand through his hair, tugging past a small tangle.

“Then elaborate.”

“Danny can see Julius,” Alex murmurs. “Like Dusty.”

Yassen slows to let a car into the lane in front of him. 

“That’s my proof,” Alex goes on, “that it’s more than just correlation.”

See Julius? Even Yassen had only heard the ghost for the first time today. The only evidence of his presence was Alex’s reactions. If Yassen hadn’t already been in this line of work and known Hunter’s son…

“When was this?”

“Last night. By the pool when we first got to the hotel.” Alex takes a breath, holds it for a few seconds before he lets it go. “He saw Julius. And then I got him to admit it.”

That’s why they snuck out, then. So Alex could question his friend where Yassen wouldn’t hear. And Danny had gone with him and still come back.

“I get the feeling Danny knows more than he’s saying, even after we talked about Julius. About how he got Julius to go away in the car, then again at the pool. I don’t know how. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but whenever it happens…”

Yassen considers this new information. He takes an exit for downtown.

“Do you ever feel unsafe around him?”

“Danny? No—Well. Unsafe isn’t the right word.”

“Unsettled, then.”

“I guess? When I saw him fight those Foundation operatives…” Alex picks at a loose thread on his jacket. “He knows the basics of hand-to-hand, I could tell that much. But… other than that… One minute he was just some street kid, and the next he felt—” There’s a long pause as Alex casts for the right word. “Dangerous. But not to me.”

Yassen nods. Over his years, he has met many people who were not what they seemed.

He suspects that Danny is the same.

Alex shakes his head. “I just think that before we go looking for other solutions we should find out if Danny knows anything useful.” Alex glances over at him, a look that betrays his age. “Couldn’t hurt, right?”

It could, in fact, hurt. The longer he entertains this, the harder the let down will be for Alex, and the more trouble for Yassen to manage.

The cash intended to fund Danny’s next few weeks burns a hole in Yassen’s pocket.

But… he cannot deny that the boy is a potential lead; at least an option to square away before Gray gets back to him with something useful.

As Alex has pointed out, it’s not a shot in the dark, either.

He believes Alex when he says that Danny had something to do with the swiftness of Julius’ exit yesterday. Just before Alex had gasped for air, there’d been a tension—an electricity, like thunder about to snap. It had pressed the atmosphere of the car tight and wide. Unease clawed at Yassen’s diaphragm, pinged primal corners of his brain.

He’d only felt that exact sensation once before.

If that wasn’t evidence enough, the boy had known, without saying, that something had been going on, and provided his badly delivered, though effective, excuse to stop the car.

A medical marvel, was it?

“We will speak with him when we get back.”

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

The jet touches down in DC at 0600. It’s foggy, the dawn leaving them in a blue haze as they taxi to a stop on the runway.

Ben Daniels can’t help but fidget. He rolls his finger underneath the band of his watch and neglects his long-forgotten paper cup of Earl Grey.

“Nervous?” Jones asks him from across the table. When he looks up, she’s giving him a faint smile—but the inset lines under her eyes betray her.

“That obvious?” he jokes.

Mrs. Jones tilts her head, resting the side of her face against thin fingers. Her short hair swoops above her forehead in her usual style: not a hair out of place.

“You’ll do fine, Daniels. This is no different than any other operation.”

He glances down at the file laid out in front of him. He hadn’t slept well last night—nor the night before. Not since the initial briefing.

“That’s not true, though, is it?”

Ben finds himself wishing that Smithers had come—he, at least, brings a peculiar optimistic spin to any situation, no matter how grave.

Mrs. Jones’ lips press into a thin line. She looks out the small oval window over the tarmac.

“No, I suppose it’s not.”

.

By 0716, he and Jones walk into a secured CIA briefing room.

It’s cold in the way all briefing rooms are. Grey carpet, a long wooden table, and bone white paneled walls. There’s a projector screen on the far wall. A handful of people are already seated.

It’s never good news in meetings like these.

Jo Byrne, Security Director of the CIA, is the first to greet them. Her clothes are crisp and perfectly in-line. In her eyes, Ben recognizes the flint of someone who’s been in this profession for a long time. 

She extends a hand. “Jones. It’s nice to see you again.”  

Jones takes it. “I wish it were under different circumstances.”

Something passes between them, a barely perceptible tension.

“On that we can both agree.” The look on Byrne’s face solidifies into something Ben finally places: disapproval. “I’m sorry to hear about your agent.” 

“Thank you.”

Byrne’s gaze moves past Jones, raking over Ben, and then towards the door. “I take it Blunt will not be joining us.”

“That’s correct,” Jones answers, her voice brittle. “I will be handling this personally. Blunt and the rest of the department have their hands full with the ongoing Scorpia situation. I’m sure you understand.” 

“I do.” Byrne’s attention draws back to Ben. “Excuse me, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Agent Ben Daniels. Nice to meet you.” He leans in to greet her properly. Her handshake is as firm as her demeanor. She’s not to be underestimated, that’s for sure.

“Ben Daniels is both former SAS, and Special Ops for the department. He’s recently finished his training and is the department’s newest intelligence agent,” Jones says. “He and his former Special Ops unit have previously worked with Alex.”

If these were normal circumstances, Ben doubts he’d even be here, as green as he is.

Byrne appraises him with trained neutrality. “Nice to meet you,” she says with a nod.

There’s noise by the doors as a small group of well-dressed agents file in. Whether they’re FBI or more CIA, Ben isn’t immediately sure.

Another woman walks towards them, and as she does Byrne gestures to her. She has long black hair and olive skin. “This is Head Security Officer Tamara Knight, she’ll be acting as Junior Manager in my stead for the bulk of this operation. Ms. Knight, this is Tulip Jones, Assistant Director of the Department of Defence.”

Knight gives them a smile, and offers her hand. “I look forward to working with you,” she says with a faint Spanish-speaking accent.

Jones shakes her hand. “Knight. I’m glad you were available for this operation. Alex had only good things to say about you.”

“I’m glad to be here,” she says, and her smile seems complicated.

Ben isn’t surprised to find that the room is slowly filling with agents who’ve met Alex personally. He wonders when exactly Knight met Alex—on what mission of his.

It’s sobering to realize it could have been any of them.

Byrne, Jones, and Knight move to seats at the front of the room, continuing with their formal pleasantries. Ben is about to follow a step behind, when a familiar group of people arrive.

He locks eyes with Wolf. Faint surprise creases his brow. His eyes skate over Eagle and Snake, hanging behind him, before going back to Wolf.

“Fox!” Wolf exclaims, as they clap their hands together, pulling each other into a side hug. “What’s this about? Jones pulled us mid-assignment. You request us personally?” 

“I don’t have that kind of power,” Ben half-laughs, leaning back.  

“Sure about that?” Wolf gives him a half-grin, buried in his scruffy beard. “We haven’t seen you since your intelligence training started. Here I was thinking you’d just been missin’ us.”

“I have, but…”

Arrayed in the clean-cut CIA briefing room, Wolf, Eagle and Snake look out of place; uncomfortable, and faintly confused. 

A frown pulls at Ben’s lips.

“You really don’t know?” he asks, feeling cold. 

“Know what, Fox?” Eagle asks.

“I—”

“Thank you all for coming today,” Byrne calls from the front podium, and the room quiets. “We’re all here, so please take a seat and we will commence today’s briefing.” She motions to the upholstered grey office chairs lining the table. 

“Fox,” Wolf mutters, a wary question held back.

Ben can only shake his head and gesture to the table. He unbuttons his suit coat and sits, the rest of K-Unit following, Wolf at his right, Eagle at his left, and Snake finding a place across from them.

For a moment, everything feels the same way it did more than a year ago.

He may not have had the power to request his old team for this mission, but he would have in a heartbeat. He’s absurdly glad they’re here.

Within a few moments, the sound of shuffling peters off into a bated silence. Bryne leans forward at a podium at the head of the conference table.

“As I’m sure you can tell, this will be a large-scale joint operation between the CIA, FBI, MI6’s Department of Defence, as well as Homeland Security. This is an extremely sensitive case and requires the utmost discretion.”

To Ben’s right, Wolf shifts, trying to catch his eye.

“You have all been chosen especially for this operation based on your background involving these individuals of interest, or expertise in similar operations. That said, I will now hand it over to the Department of Defence’s Assistant Director, Mrs. Jones.”

Jones stands with a nod and takes Byrne’s place behind the podium. The projector screen flares to life, showing the CIA’s seal. The lights dim, saturating the room in a cool blue.

“Thank you. This operation concerns a missing British intelligence agent who went MIA approximately six weeks ago while working undercover in the international terrorist organization known as Scorpia.” 

The faint overhead lights flash across the surface of Jones’ thick framed glasses. On the screen, Ben watches with a clench in his stomach as the headshot takes up the screen. 

“Alex Rider.”

The ripple of surprise and discomfort that passes through the room is nearly palpable. Next to him, he feels Eagle and Wolf stiffen. He doesn’t look, but he’s sure Snake is in a similar way.

They all have a soft spot for Alex. It feels like just yesterday they were pulling him from Point Blanc Academy, dazed and traumatized—but somehow still with the wherewithal to insist on going back in.

“They sent him into Scorpia?” Wolf hisses, the words almost a growl. 

“As of seventy-eight hours ago, we have a new lead that suggests Agent Rider was taken hostage after Scorpia Board Member Julia Rothman’s assassination twelve days ago.”

The slide changes: security feed still of Alex in a car. Grainy and disguised, but identifiable.

“Given this security footage captured at the U.S.-Canada border, we have every reason to believe that Agent Rider is currently being held against his will by one of Scorpia’s top contractors, Yassen Gregorovich.”

If the briefing room was cold before, it’s icy now.

Yassen Gregorovich is a name no one wants to hear: a hired killer with a perfect record, and no concrete evidence to directly tie him to any of his or Scorpia’s criminal activity.

And he has Alex.

Ben had read it in the initial briefing. But he still has to coax his hands out of tight fists against the cool surface of the table.

“Gregorovich should always be considered armed and exceptionally dangerous. At this point in time, his motives are unknown to us, and for that reason it is imperative we act as quickly as possible,” Jones goes on. 

“If I may,” a man with gelled salt and pepper hair speaks up. There’s an FBI badge around his neck. It dangles loosely on top of his black tie, swaying with him as he lifts an arm onto the table. “This agent looks remarkably young. How old is he exactly?”

There’s a moment of dreadful silence. 

Ben can tell who around the table has met Alex—worked with him before—and who hasn’t. Eyes cast downward, the hardly perceptible pursing of lips.

Jones, to her credit, doesn’t back down. Unflinchingly, she says, “Alex Rider is fifteen years old.”

The man’s face contorts before he can get control of it. “And it was your decision to send a child into a terrorist organization?”

“Agent Rider’s initial mission is irrelevant to finding him now.”

“With all due respect, ma’am, I think it’s very relevant,” the man says, sitting forward. “I have been chasing Yassen Gregorovich and Scorpia for over ten years. Knowing what I do about how this organization operates, frankly, I’m shocked this boy has survived at all. Our criminal profilers suggest that Gregorovich is nothing short of a psychopath.”

“Our Agent has a remarkable track record, Agent…” 

“Senior Special Agent Adam Foster.”

“Agent Foster. Whether or not you agree morally is outside the scope of this operation.” Jones’ voice is sharp, wielding every ounce of authority she has behind it. “Need I remind you of your own organization’s usage of underage operatives in intelligence?” 

It drops like an anvil into the middle of the room. A definitive silence follows.

Special Agent Foster sits slowly back in his seat.

“Your concerns are well founded,” Jones continues, the barest hint of kindness back in her tone. “You are correct. While Agent Rider is in the company of Yassen Gregorovich, he is in danger, and it will not be easy to locate either of them.” Jones’ eyes roam the table. “They are traveling under false identities, and we should expect those to have changed since they crossed the border. We’ll be looking for a completely new profile.”

“I have some questions, if that’s alright,” Tamara Knight says.

Jones looks at her. “Please, go ahead.”

“Thank you. I’d like to make it clear that I mean no disrespect in this line of questioning, but could Gregorovich—and by extension, Alex Rider—be on a Scorpia assignment?”

The corners of Jones’ mouth tighten. “We don’t believe that’s the case, no.”

“Your provided intel states that Alex was undercover in Malagosto. Scorpia’s premier training facility. Are you saying it’s not a possibility that Alex graduated? Given the legacy of John Rider, it’s not a stretch to assume the Department of Defence is hoping for another double-agent.”

When Knight concludes, the tension in the room is thick—oppressive. To Ben, it’s like the heat of the sun, a physical, inescapable weight across his neck and shoulders the way it had been when they were stationed in Saudi Arabia. 

It takes a moment before Jones replies.

“No,” she says. “This mission was an intel op, and an intel op only.”

“An intel op regarding what, exactly?” Agent Foster cuts in.

Jones’ face doesn’t visibly change, but Ben can feel the steel behind it. “The specifics are classified. However, he was on assignment to uncover crucial information that could have allowed the intelligence community to finally topple the organization.”

Foster opens his mouth, likely to poke further, but Knight speaks up first. “Did Agent Rider uncover anything before going MIA?”

“Contact with our agent was severed immediately upon his arrival at the Malagosto training facility,” Jones says. “His intended extraction was fourteen days later. Extraction was complicated by an abrupt change of our agent’s location to Venice. We were unable to adjust to their new security layouts in time.”

Someone from the back speaks up. “Why didn’t you start extraction immediately after contact was severed?”

“It was within mission parameters,” Jones begins. “Our agent was aware it was a possibility, and so did we. We of course did everything in our power to reestablish communication as soon as possible. However—” Jones stands up straighter “—the current affairs of Scorpia and Agent Rider’s situation are far more pertinent than what has transpired in the past. If I may continue the debrief?”

It isn’t a request.

Jones nods, satisfied, and continues. “The recent assassinations of Rothman and Chase have changed the situation drastically. As I’m sure your agencies are aware, it has caused a significant shift in the internal power structures of Scorpia.”

Snake raises a hand. At Jones’ nod, he speaks.

“Can you elaborate on the circumstances of Rothman and Chase’s assassinations?” he asks curtly.

Ben can’t help but wince at his tone; he’s clearly unhappy with K-Unit’s poor preparation, though it’s no fault of theirs. Likely, Jones hadn’t seen it fit to send sensitive information over potentially unsecured lines.

“Twelve days ago, Chase and Rothman were found dead in Venice, shot and killed by a 9mm pistol at close range—one shot to the head, one to the throat. A handful of Scorpia operatives and known contractors also died in a similar fashion both inside and outside the structure that this took place.” 

“Sounds like Gregorovich’s work,” Foster mutters.

“Rothman was said to favor Gregorovich as a contractor,” Byrne adds.

“Meaning what?” An agent Ben doesn’t know the name of asks.

“Meaning the situation is still unclear. We do not know if Rothman’s assassination was an action taken by a competitor to weaken Scorpia, or the deliberate move of a rival board member to gain more power and influence.” To Foster, she adds, “We cannot confirm if it is Gregorovich’s work, whether independently or bought. It is just as likely a copycat, or another Scorpia-trained operative. As the situation develops, we are inclined to believe it’s a bid for power. That being said, it leaves many of Rothman’s subordinates as loose ends.”

Agent Foster breathes heavily out of his nose. “Gregorovich is far too valuable to qualify as a loose end. I see no reason why Gregorovich wouldn’t continue service as always. I think Ms. Knight is onto something.”

“Are you insinuating that Alex defied mission orders to willingly work with Scorpia? With Gregorovich?” Wolf says, voice low, leveling a dark glare at the FBI Agent.

A younger agent next to Foster shifts. “It sounds to me like a very real possibility. He’s young, they could’ve—”

“Agent Ian Rider, Alex’s uncle, was assassinated by Yassen Gregorovich,” Wolf snaps. “With all due respect, you don’t know Alex. If you did, you’d know he would never go with that maniac willingly.”  

Another murmur moves through the attending agents.

Foster jumps to his colleagues’ defense, gesturing a hand in front of him before he can reply. “I think the point we’re trying to make is that with Scorpia, more than likely, Rider has had no choice. Scorpia doesn’t take too kindly to betrayal. That’s not even considering the fact that younger people are much more susceptible to brainwashing tactics. I think it’s likely we could even be dealing with Stockholm syndrome.”

A queasy feeling squirms around in Ben’s stomach and he can’t keep himself quiet. “Given what you know about Gregorovich, is there a history of him being a danger to children?”

Foster frowns. “Do we have evidence of underage victims? Not necessarily, but there’s a history of him being loyal to Scorpia for fifteen years. It’d be monumentally stupid to think that wouldn’t include him being a danger to anyone Scorpia or their clients deem as targets. Scorpia has its hands in everything, including child trafficking.”

Agent Knight speaks again. “John Rider and Yassen Gregorovich had history in Scorpia. It could be possible that Gregorovich is acting on a personal vendetta, if not to get back at John, then MI6 as a whole.” 

Jones clears her throat. “Whatever the circumstance, we all agree that Alex Rider must be recovered. We cannot afford to assume we know anything about this situation or Gregorovich’s motives. We have facial recognition going as we speak on every American CCTV we can access, as well as every airport and border crossing. The second we have a lead, I expect all of you to be ready to drop everything. In the meantime, I think it’s a good idea to look into the theories we’ve discussed today.” 

A pause, a breath. Jones takes the moment to look around the table, each moment of eye contact sticking before she continues. 

“You will all be assigned to teams, reporting to your respective higher ranked officers. Should a lead come in that gets us a location, I would like K-Unit, The Department of Defense’s Special Operations Team, to take point in Agent Rider’s extraction.”

Foster follows Jones’ gaze to them. His face is carefully neutral. “I hope this isn’t an issue of trust between our agencies.”

“Not at all. I request this for the simple fact that we do not know what state our Agent is in mentally. Agent Rider has worked in direct collaboration on missions with K-Unit. Alex trusts them.”

Foster nods, looking satisfied.

“If there’s no more questions, then let’s get to work.” 

.

According to his paperwork, Ben is assigned to a team with Agent Foster, his subordinate Agent Zach Marks, and a Homeland Security Officer by the name Sarah Walsh. She’s a middle-aged woman with shoulder length blonde hair and a Southern drawl that Ben’s only heard in American films until now. Their group is headed by Tamara Knight. 

To say he feels intimidated to be working alongside such experienced agents would be an understatement.

K-Unit, meanwhile, is on standby until there’s a need for their tactical skills in the field. 

That doesn’t stop Wolf from grabbing him by the arm and pulling him to the side of the room before he can convene with his temporary team.

“You knew about this, Fox?” he says with all the grace of a ripped off band-aid. 

Snake and Eagle quickly close off their little group. Ben tries not to miss the familiarity.

“I only heard about this when I got back from my last mission,” Ben admits. It’s a strange kind of guilt. Completely unfounded, he knows, but he feels like somehow he should have stopped this. 

“What the hell game is Blunt playing, sending Cub into a place like that?” Wolf growls.

“Using Cub was wrong even before all this… but Scorpia?” Snake says, shaking his head, looking nothing short of distraught. “Scorpia.”

Eagle nods along—has always been better about concealing his emotions. 

“I’m thinking I should have a talk with Jones,” Wolf says, eyes drifting to where she’s conversing with Byrne.

Ben rubs a hand over his face. “Being cross with them isn’t going to change anything now.” He grabs Wolf’s shoulder. “We just need to focus on getting Cub back.”

“And away from that bloody murderer,” Snake says.

The room is too crowded for much conversation.

“I’ll catch up with you soon,” Ben promises. He catches Wolf’s eye and taps the side of his nose. “First round’s on me, then?” 

“Damn well better be,” Wolf says. 

Then, with a few claps to his shoulder, Ben leaves. He feels his old team’s eyes following him as he locates the rest of his task group—Marks, Foster and Walsh, at least. Knight is missing, but a quick search reveals her deep in conversation with Jones and Byrne, their heads bowed together with the intensity of their discussion.

Introductions go around, but without Knight, their cluster turns to small talk. Marks and Foster keep to themselves, leaving Ben to entertain Agent Walsh.

He flounders for a polite topic, but she doesn’t. 

“To think they called me all the way out here to find some kid,” Agent Walsh says. 

Ben rankles at the callousness in her voice, rough like gravel. She’s speaking again before he can get a word in, her eyes narrowing on him.

“Your Assistant Director, she said you’ve worked with ‘im?”

“We have, back when I was a member of K-Unit.”

She gives him a long look. Ben catches the whiff of stale tobacco smoke off her clothes.

“Must be some kid.”

“He is.”

That’s really all it takes for Ben to realize again that he shouldn’t have to be.

“You got any?”

“Pardon?”

“You know. Kids. Little hellions of yer own?”

He feels his face warm. Given his career, he hasn’t considered it too far. Always figured if it happens, it happens… “Oh, no. No children.”

She snorts. “Bless your heart.” She tucks her hands into the pockets of her well-pressed pants suit. “No kid needs a parent that does what we do, that’s fer damn sure.” Her jaw works and her eyes move away from him.

He doesn’t answer immediately, lets her stop being angry about whatever it is she’s thinking about.

She pins her gaze back on him. “Take it from a lady who’s done it. It don’t end well for anyone.”

Ben clears his throat and shifts on his feet. He spares a glance at Agent Knight.

“I’m sure this kid, Alex, would agree,” Agent Walsh adds. 

Ben looks at her. 

“His uncle, right?” she asks.

His mouth twists. “Yeah.” It’s heavy, sinking like a storm over his head. “His dad, too.”

A raw and genuine sympathy passes through her eyes. “Poor thing.”

Alex is the last person who wants to be pitied—too much fire and quick wit. He crosses his arms over his chest. “He gets on well enough.”

Knight turns and starts walking towards them.

“Kid’s like a bear trap. He’s tough,” Ben reassures his new colleague. 

Agent Walsh hums, and some tone in it strikes Ben as sardonic.

“I’m sure that’s exactly what he wants people to think,” she says.

It’s been a very long time since the sound of viscera bothered him.

Squeamishness would, of course, be an inefficient trait among his associates. Their work demands a rigorous constitution, and his field in particular benefits from a reaction of curiosity rather than nausea.

He hears wet noises: a meaty rip. It echoes down the dim hall. Tendon, perhaps?

He anticipates the answer.

People are gloriously complex systems. Both in the mind and in the body. It’s rare for Dr. Three to find a true peer in his field of work, one who can set aside their baser instincts in order to understand the art of it all, let alone a peer of so many talents.

He remembers once being unable to appreciate the art of breaking.

What a fool he was.

What a privilege to understand better, now, and to be entrusted as Scorpia’s master of this division.

He slides his keycard in the door’s reader. A formality, as very few would enter this chamber willingly. Its function is to keep unwanted visitors out, rather than presume it could keep its occupant in. It cycles through several layers of administration before unlocking with a click.

The smell of iron fills his nostrils, warm and familiar.

He enters the room.

Dr. Three recognizes the body swaying gently from the hook in the ceiling. An MI6 agent they had acquired. His agency declined to submit to their requests for ransom. Rather reasonably, in Dr. Three’s opinion; even after torture, the information they had extracted was of no importance. He is as naked as when Dr. Three had completed his procedures a few hours ago.

His compatriot handles the bleeding corpse with admirable precision. Ordinarily, such a procedure would be done with the subject on a horizontal surface, but when offered such, it had simply responded that it had always done things this way.

Loathe was Dr. Three to impede its work.

It has gone by many names. The Hunter, the Skulker, the Stalker. They simply call it the Skinner.

He has learned much from it in their time working together.

The white light of the room makes the pallor of its skin that much more deathly.

It does not face Dr. Three as he enters. He clasps hands behind his back, content to watch a skilled artist at work.

It’s using a scalpel today—has taken a liking to a few of the modern instruments Dr. Three has afforded it. It peels the skin of the corpse with a measured tug. It comes away from hypodermis cleanly, leaving the section of its back glistening—red, white unrendered sections of fat. 

Only once the ceremony of the motion is complete does it respond.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” the Skinner murmurs in its low voice, a click of its jaw, not pausing as it eases the skin from the body’s thighs and down its legs from vertical slices. Long, thin arms move elegantly, like a spider spinning its prey into captivity.

To those unused to the sight, Skinner is often described as grotesque—the wide barrel of its chest leading into a thin elongated neck, leathery skin pulled tight over its skull. Its eyes are deep set, lacking eyelids, a nose or lips.

“A new hunt,” Dr. Three says.

The Skinner slows its work.

“Loose ends?” it rumbles.

A faint smile curves across his face. “Something far more interesting. Traitors, on the run.”

Skinner says nothing.

“They are proving to be formidable prey,” he continues. “Dogs in need of a reminder of who their masters are.”

“I have not known you or your faction to be forgiving.”

Dr. Three hums. “Forgiveness is relative. This will be nothing more than a negotiation of punishment. An evaluation into the continued future of a valuable asset.”

All things considered, the removal of Rothman was, for him, a welcome shift. She had been blurring the line between personal and business interests for far too long. A messy end was the inevitable conclusion for her. On the other hand, Chase’s death is slightly more problematic, as far as the board is concerned. Several of his assets will be difficult to salvage.

The true surprise had been that it was Cossack who pulled the trigger—further, that he was not contracted to do so by any of the remaining board members. 

Dr. Three had visited Venice and, by extension, Malagosto, to help sort through the aftermath. D’Arc and Ross had been quite informative. What he learned was fascinating indeed.

Their most reluctant operative, Alex Rider—Shrike, as Rothman named him—was set to have his final assessment on the day she and Chase died.

Cossack was Alex’s personal mentor, charged with ensuring the notoriously wily teenager behaved by any means necessary. Dr. Three himself had sided with Rothman and Chase on the terms of the agreement that allowed Rider into their prestigious school.

And as far as Cossack is concerned, well, there was no operative more qualified to ensure MI6 was not attempting to pull the proverbial wool over their eyes.

Dr. Three can’t help but be fascinated by the recent development. It seems all of them had been tricked.

Cossack’s defection poses an incredible security risk to Scorpia as a whole—but Dr. Three, unlike the rest of the board, has a sneaking suspicion that Cossack being compromised has everything to do with young Alex Rider and nothing with actual betrayal.

Rothman surely thought herself quite clever, pairing Hunter’s former mentee with his orphaned son.

Dr. Three has always known Cossack to be reasonable. Before any final decision is made, he’d like to speak with Gregorovich, and if he is truly compromised by Alex Rider, then the solution for how to flush their wayward Cossack from the brush has been served to them on a silver platter.

“I have need of your skill, Skinner. To lure back the traitor, we need bait: a child spy that has slipped the clutches of many organizations.”

“A child,” Skinner says.

“Yes.”

“It has been some time since I added the pelt of a child to my collection.”

Dr. Three grimaces. “The child must be kept alive and in good condition… for now.”

The air shifts with the Skinner’s displeasure.

“Rest assured, your work will be repaid in kind with a new prize one way or another. I was under the impression that a good hunt alone is enjoyable for you.” 

All the Skinner needed was an object belonging to its target and the hunt was on. A police bloodhound catching the scent of a criminal. Warped in just the right ways.

The Skinner is silent for a long moment.

“I will do it.”

Dr. Three smiles. “Excellent. The preparations will be finalized shortly. We will leave tomorrow morning.” 

When deploying the Skinner in the field, they needed an interference team to ensure the Foundation gave them no trouble. Such are the terms of Scorpia’s agreement with the Skinner. It’s a delicate and risky operation; the chances of Skinner being caught increase with every use. 

For this, Dr. Three deems the risk well worth it.

The Skinner makes a breathy clicking sound. “Very well. Now leave me.” 

Dr. Three nods. With a last appreciative glance at the skinless spy, he exits the room.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

The rest of the way back to the Marriott, Julius is blissfully silent. Yassen disassembles his gun and gets rid of it on the way, along with Dusty’s wallet and watch. 

The quiet changes when they pull into the hotel parking lot. Alex hears a familiar and insistent beeping.

The EMF detector.

The phantom of cold wet hands slides over his shoulders—there, but not.

“I know you think your new little friend can help you, but he can’t,” Julius says. He’s faint. Far away for once, like his voice is being carried to Alex on a sharp gust of wind. “Dusty couldn’t help you, either.”

“Just piss off, would you?” He doesn’t bother to keep his voice low, pops the door latch and swings his legs out.

His head hurts and he’s tired. He just wants to curl up in bed and forget everything.

He wants to be anyone but Alex Rider.

Yassen regards him closely—has been watching him like a hawk since the rooftop. His gaze burns. 

His hands itch with the imprint of Yassen’s shirt. Christ, clutching at the man’s shirt like he was a scared toddler…

Dusty’s knees buckling and his limp body tilting toward the ground flashes in front of his mind’s eye. He bites down on his lip, hard, before the wet thud can reach his ears.

The rain wasn’t real yet. It’s only a matter of time.

“Danny isn’t what he says he is,” Julius says, slithering by with the impression of a grin. “He’s lying to you, and you know it. Don’t you?”

Alex’s head pounds, but he can’t find the energy to argue with Julius this time. He just ignores him like always.

They pass through the hotel lobby and hang a left towards their room, and there’s a shift in Julius. Something… frantic. Alex can see him faintly, caught still in the middle of the corridor ahead of them. Buzzing and flickering, his attention almost split.

Alex squares his shoulders as they pass. It’s enough to draw Julius’ focus, enough to elicit a snarl that prickles the back of Alex’s mind.

“If you think you’re better off with him than me, you’ll be in for a nasty surprise.”

He says nothing.

“Don’t believe me?” Julius lights up a cackle that Alex feels, more than hears. His words are distant but echoing. “You’ll see.” 

The hotel room is a walk-in freezer. Frigid air rushes out to meet them when Yassen pushes the door open, the card reader still flashing. The room is dark.

The EMF detector starts up again in Yassen’s coat pocket.

Yassen stops short, hand on the knob.

The hair on Alex’s arms prickles as gooseflesh dimples his skin.

Julius is a liar. The definition of untrustworthy.

At that moment, Alex can’t help but doubt his own convictions. 

Alex can’t see Yassen’s face, but he imagines it’s the thin-lipped and barely-furrowed brow look he makes when he’s assessing a situation for threats.

Alex peers around him, searching, but he doesn’t see Danny. His stomach clenches before Danny pokes his head around the wall.

“H-how’d it go?” he asks. 

He looks nervous—but then, Danny always does.

Yassen stays still for another long moment before he shifts. His guard is high, shoulders rigid. 

But Alex is too worn out to care about Yassen’s excess paranoia. He steps around him, into the room. “Not great.” His voice is flat to his own ears. The chill works deeper into him and he shivers, rubbing the back of his arms. “Why’s it so fuckin’ cold in here?”

Behind him, Yassen flips on the light.

Danny averts his gaze and wrings his hands. “Oh—I, uh. I think the A/C must be busted or something.” 

Alex hums. “Yeah?”

Danny still doesn’t look at him. “Yeah.”

Christ. Danny is a god awful liar. They’re going to need to do something about that.

Alex plops down into the desk chair. Wonders if he should put his trainers on the desk just to bother Yassen. Can’t quite muster the energy. 

Yassen moves across the room and checks the aircon. Danny watches him, biting the inside of his cheek.

Click. The machine rumbles to life. Warmer air exhales into the air through its register.

Huh. Interesting. Alex thinks idly about moving closer to the heat source, but can’t be bothered to move again quite yet. When Danny shifts closer, he seems to bring the room’s chill with him.

From his jumper pocket, he offers Alex’s burner phone back to him.

“Um. Here’s this. You, uh, got a call from a girl with a weird accent.”

Alex’s heart plummets like a stone. Adrenaline rises like a tide to meet it.

Shit.

Danny looks like he’s about to say more but stops, startled eyes darting to Yassen who steps forward in place of Alex and accepts the phone. 

“Alex?” 

The way Yassen says his name, he knows he’s screwed.

Why the hell did Kyra call?

Yassen turns the phone in his hands, slowly, carefully. Alex knows he’s lost before they’ve even begun.

Still facing Danny, Yassen addresses him in French, “Tell me, what languages do you know?”

Danny’s brows twitch inward. “Uh—what?” he fumbles.

Yassen hums, and then he’s turning towards Alex.

“Care to explain?” Yassen says. The switch to French is as sharp as a knife’s edge. 

Yeah. Totally screwed.

“We’re not compromised,” he says, following suit with the language change. He keeps his voice even and holds Yassen’s gaze without flinching.

“You seem very sure about that.”

“I knew what I was doing.”

“Did you? Risking direct communication with someone who is very likely being monitored by your prior handlers? Your hacker friend, I assume?” Yassen shifts his body weight, and Alex is hyper aware of Yassen’s profession—of what he just did not forty-five minutes ago to Dusty. 

“I left her a coded message on an anonymous forum. From there, she contacted me. She makes sure our conversations can’t be traced or accessed by anyone. She’s a hacker, Yassen. She helped me with Cray.”

“I am well aware.”

“Then you know I can trust her.”

Yassen takes a slow breath. His calm gaze is like stone—unchanging.

“Her parents were eliminated by my former employers. How did she take the information that you are traveling with me?” 

The way he asks suggests that he knows exactly what Alex is about to say.

It’s not like he can lie, then.

Alex sighs. “I… didn’t tell her.”

“And how do you think she will react provided she finds out?” 

Alex narrows his eyes. “She’s my friend. She knows not to go to MI6. I just wanted to let her know I was okay, alright?” Tom too, but Yassen doesn’t need to know that part.

“Her closeness to you is precisely what makes her so dangerous.” Yassen’s voice gets rigid. “Do you think for a moment if she believed you were in mortal danger that she would not reach out to your previous keepers?” 

“No,” Alex says. “You don’t know her like I do. It was a calculated risk.”

Annoyance flashes through Yassen’s expression. “No. If you had taken the time to actually think, you would have not done something so astoundingly stupid.”

Alex’s heart beats harder in his chest, rings into his ears. Hot anger bubbles up in him, and hand-in-hand with the adrenaline, they fully mute his headache and exhaustion. He surges to his feet and closes the distance between himself and Yassen.

“Well, maybe I didn’t care. Maybe I cared more about the fact that my friends at worst thought I was dead, and at best thought I had joined a terrorist organization,” he spits. “So yeah, when we escaped Malagosto, I got in touch, and guess what? We’ve been fine.”

Yassen’s lips thin.

“We will be getting new burners tomorrow. You will not make this mistake again.”

Alex makes a grab for the phone.

Yassen is ready. He catches him by the wrist before he even gets close. It doesn’t hurt, but it promises pain in the form of a vicious joint lock if he pushes his luck. 

Alex knows he can’t win a fight against Yassen. In all his time at Malagosto, he never even got close.

He glares up at him regardless. 

“What happened to all the ‘it’s my choice’ shit?”

“We are in a very precarious position, Alex. We could pay with our lives for a single error.”

“And whose fault is that?” Alex hisses.

“I will do what is necessary to keep you alive. Your opinion of me is irrelevant.”

“I never asked you to do that! You made that choice for me.”

“Would you have rather failed your final assessment? Or alerted MI6 and then gone back to your servitude to them?”

“No,” Alex snaps.

The helplessness swells like a tide and he yanks his wrist from Yassen’s grip. Yassen lets him go too easily. 

What was he supposed to do? He was dead either way. He isn’t like his father.

Or maybe he is. John Rider didn’t survive to make a homerun happy ending, either. Seems to run in the family.

“I don’t know, okay?” His voice drops, barely above a whisper. He exhales a shaky breath and glances over to Danny, who’s watching them with anxious and confused eyes.

Yassen follows his gaze. He tucks the phone away in his inside pocket. 

“We will discuss this later.”

“Whatever,” Alex says, going back to English. The loss of this contest of wills stings, and if he can do nothing else, he can be surly about it.

Yassen turns towards Danny, who shrinks back, as if he’s in trouble too. 

“Take a seat,” Yassen says, gesturing to the bed.

Danny swallows, but does as asked—not even a flicker of protest. 

“I’m going to ask you some questions and I expect you to be truthful.” Yassen’s voice is calm but immovable. 

Yassen is giving Danny his space, but even Alex can feel the walls of the incoming conversation closing in.

Danny says nothing.

“Do you understand?” Yassen prompts. 

Danny nods, staring into his lap.

“Good. I have been made aware that last night you claimed you were able to see the ghost that has attached itself to Alex.”

Danny’s head snaps up and he shoots a dismayed glance at Alex—the hint of betrayal there makes his skin flush hot.

Alex rubs his face. Guilt swirls into the anxious, defeated mass that’s sitting deep in his chest. “I’m sorry, Danny, but he still wasn’t listening to me. I—”

Yassen holds up a hand. “Let him speak.” 

“I…” Danny’s shoulders sink. His voice is thin. “Yes. I can see him.”

Yassen nods slowly. “Tell me more.”

Behind Yassen, the light flickers, and the EMF goes off for a few shrill seconds before falling silent. He doesn’t turn, but Alex knows he must have noticed, too.

Danny grimaces. “Uh…”

Yassen pinches the bridge of his nose. “I am not so easily manipulated. Claiming you can see him will not change my mind about how long you can stay.”

“He’s not lying,” Alex says.

Yassen levels him a look that makes him stop there. Because Danny is lying.

About a lot.

Just not about this.

Yassen’s attention goes back to Danny and his gaze softens, near imperceptibly so. 

Most likely, Danny can’t even tell. Six weeks ago, Alex had hardly been able to read Yassen with his current semi-accuracy.

“I am not saying this to be cruel,” Yassen says. “I have sympathy for the danger you are in. However, traveling with us, you will only be in more. Alex’s situation is very serious, not a joke or a tactic you may use to—”

Alex is about to jump to Danny’s defense again when Danny stands abruptly.

“I know it’s serious,” Danny snaps—the most fire Alex has seen from Danny thus far, “and this isn’t about that. I was fine on my own.”

Alex doubts that. 

Yassen doesn’t react either, not even as Danny continues.

“It’s not a tactic, I wouldn’t do that,” he insists, vehemently. “I can’t…” 

His right hand is curled into a fist at his side. Then, he blinks and the sudden heat starts draining from him. 

“I know it’s serious,” he repeats, softer. His eyes move to Alex. “I’m not sure you know just how serious…”

A pit opens up in Alex’s stomach.

“What do you mean by that?”

Danny shifts closer to the wall. He glances sideways at Yassen, but then his eyes drift away from him like he’s looking at something else across the room— someone. “I mean that Julius isn’t going to stop.”

A fresh chill ripples across Alex’s back as the EMF reader starts whining again. Yassen looks at the device, but it levels off quickly. 

“We are aware. Little Alex is convinced that you know something that will help him. If you—”

“—Wait.” 

Alex suddenly feels like he can’t catch his breath. He ignores the tremor that races through him, threatening to make him unsteady on his feet. 

He knew it. He knew Danny had to be like Dusty.

“I never told you his name was Julius.”

Danny just looks more helpless. 

Yassen’s silence is heavier than words could hope to be.

“Are you like a medium?” Alex presses. “Is that how you can see him? How you know his name?”

Danny closes his eyes, twisting his hands. “I’m… I guess you could say that, yeah.” 

Had it not been for what happened today, maybe he’d be skeptical. But if ghosts exist, then so do mediums. Simple as that. 

“How? Have you always been able to do that?” Alex presses. 

Danny shakes his head. “No… The, um. The thing that made me sort of a medical marvel… it was also like a near-death experience. And since then I’ve—” He gestures vaguely. “You know.” 

For once, something Danny’s saying actually makes some sense.

Somehow.

“How does it work?”

“That’s… hard to explain. I don’t really know.” 

It’s silent for a moment and Danny’s gaze moves towards Yassen. “You don’t believe me. Not completely.” He doesn’t say it like a question.

“It is not outside the realm of possibilities.”

Something like surprise—or hope—flickers on Danny’s face. Clearly, that wasn’t the response he’d anticipated.

“But,” Yassen goes on, “that ability is merely another liability of your presence with us.”

Dusty could happen again, he means. As if Alex needs the reminder too.

But he can’t allow himself to consider anything like that happening to Danny. It seems absurd in a way that’s hard to articulate.

“I’m not a liability,” Danny insists. “I’m—” He cuts himself off, agitated, but unwilling to say whatever is on his mind.

Silence hangs in the room.

C’mon, Alex thinks. You’re—what?

But Danny volunteers nothing else.

“He’s been around Julius a lot longer than Dusty was, and he’s fine,” Alex says finally, over the humming of the aircon as it makes its futile attempt to warm the room. “I told you. I don’t know why, but Julius goes away around Danny.” The words twist like sour poison on his tongue—a child begging to be believed. To be trusted.

Danny pushes his right hand through his hair. Exhales something like a sigh. “Yeah, I—I’ve pushed him away. A bit. And I can keep doing it. Keep him at bay.”

“So it has been intentional?” Yassen asks.

“I—yeah. Yes.”

“How?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Danny says again.

“Try. Is your method reliable?”

“Yeah. It’s… so, listen, there’s different kinds of mediums,” Danny says it all in a rush. “I don’t know what exactly happened with—Dusty?—but I can guess.” His gaze flickers to Alex. “He invited Julius in. Didn’t he.”

Alex doesn’t like the intensity in Danny’s pale gaze, the way he doesn’t need Alex’s confirmation. It unnerves him. Enough to admit, “Yes. And—Julius was stronger than him.”

“He’s not stronger than me,” Danny says plainly. Quiet confidence lines his words—the way it had informed his lithe movements against those Foundation operatives. “And I’m not going to invite him in. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to. What I can do is push past the barriers Julius puts up against interference. I can already see and hear him when he doesn’t want to be seen or heard by anyone other than you—to keep him out, it’s sort of like… putting up barriers of my own.”

Yassen hums slowly. “Barriers can be broken. His. Yours.”

“Not completely,” Danny says. “The way it is for me, information can… leak through, passively. Like his name. And because I’m—a medium, he can show me things. Memories. But that’s it. Nothing else.”

Danny moves his gaze back to Yassen.

“Next time Julius shows up, he won’t touch Alex, I swear. He won’t be able to.” 

There’s tension in the air that makes it hard to swallow as Danny stares Yassen down.

Alex thinks about what Yassen asked him in the car. 

—Do you ever feel unsafe around him?

Alex doesn’t want to look at him and find out.

“We are not going to simply wait for him to return,” Yassen says evenly. No response to the coiled live-wire Danny’s become.

“I’ll prove it. If—if I told you what I know about Julius—things neither of you have told me, more than his name, you’d see what I can do. That it’s safe. That I’m not lying. Right?”

Yassen lifts an eyebrow, but gives Danny a nod. 

Danny’s eyes find the floor. The confidence he’d gathered before seems to be faltering, but he still stands his ground. “Okay. Fine.” 

Alex sucks in a breath and holds it.

He remembers Tom, flashlight to chin, cackling under their tent. Making silly shadow puppets together, huddling under the covers after watching films not at all appropriate for how old they were. The only consolation he had was that the stories weren’t real.

“I know how Julius died,” Danny says, with no preamble. His eyes are closed.

The air leaves the room.

“He shows me Alex killing him. It’s raining. On some street. I don’t recognize the area. It doesn’t look like the U.S., but it was… warm. Um.” Danny gestures with a hand over his body. “His side and leg were injured. Car, I think. He…” 

Danny opens his eyes and looks right at Alex. “He really didn’t think you had it in you. He thought that you were too goody-goody to pull the trigger. You defied his expectations, and he hates you for that.”

Alex’s mouth is dry and his skin is clammy. He can feel Yassen’s eyes on him too now, but he can’t make himself look up.

“It was self-defense,” Alex says, voice weak.

Danny gives him a pained look—like he understands exactly what that night did to him.

The breath shakes in his throat. He can’t see Julius right now, but he can feel him. He can always feel him—hanging over his shoulder, sinking his fingers into the parts of his brain he wishes he could cut out.

“What does he even want from me?” he asks Danny, voice tightening.

Danny just looks at him. His expression is unnerving again for reasons Alex can’t pinpoint. “You know what he wants, Alex. He wants the same thing he did when he was alive.”

“To kill me?”

“To take over your life.”

Alex squeezes his fingernails into the palms of his hands.

“You mean like…”

Danny’s lips twist. “Yeah. He wants to possess you.”

Fuck. He really didn’t want to be right. A laugh works its way up his throat, harsh and short. His ribs protest sharply.

“Of fucking course. Why wouldn’t he?” He swallows bitterness down like bile.

“And he will keep trying until he succeeds?” Yassen asks without acknowledging Alex’s outburst.

The corner of Danny’s mouth twists. “Yeah, but Julius is newly dead. Relatively speaking, he’s still weak—”

“Then what the hell do you consider strong? He was plenty strong enough to possess Dusty,” Alex snaps.

Danny winces. “Like I said, that’s because Dusty channeled him. If Dusty’d been sensitive enough to tell what he was really dealing with—what kind of thing Julius is, he never would have done that. Julius isn’t strong enough to overshadow anyone unless they let him at this point.”

“But there will come a time when he can?” Yassen asks.

The grimace Danny answers with doesn’t inspire confidence. “He’s been draining Alex’s energy, getting stronger. It’s only going to get worse as he gets more physically present. Nightmares, insomnia, fatigue. If he keeps doing it then, yeah. He could get strong enough to possess any living person.”

Yassen’s expression is dark.

“But I can keep him from doing it,” Danny hurries to say. “All that has to be done is limit the amount of energy he can take and it’ll keep him weak. Whenever he manifests physically, he’s expending energy. If I keep him from getting it back, soon enough, he won’t be as big of a threat. It’ll buy Alex time so he can be dealt with.”

“Then you are saying you know how to get rid of Julius?” Yassen asks. “More than just keeping him at bay?”

Danny frowns. “Yes. There’s… one or two ways. Neither are perfect. If you want to go old school? An exorcism. But that isn’t guaranteed. It would cut Julius’ cord to Alex, but might not get rid of him… exactly. Meaning he could come back. Maybe not right away, but…”

Yassen presses his lips together. “What else?”

Danny’s eyes traverse the ceiling and he wrings his sleeve. “Well. I… you sorta already have it?”

“Meaning?”

“You could… shoot him again.”

Alex stiffens. “What?” he asks, voice strained.

Danny winces. “Not with a normal gun. And I wouldn’t recommend Alex do it.”

Yassen seems to follow Danny’s vague track. “The Foundation gun.”

“Yeah.”

“Wait—You’re saying that the gun we took from the Foundation, the one they were shooting us with—is the kind that works on ghosts?” Alex can’t keep the incredulous tone from his voice.

“Yeah, that’s… that’s what they’re for.”

“They were shooting at you,” Alex says. “At both of us.”

“W-well. I’m. I’m a medium, right?” Danny hedges. “After I, uh, after I nearly died, and all this started up, it… it drew some attention. Some ghosts tend to get… interested in me? Follow me around, wanting help.”

He fiddles with the cuff of his sleeve, eyeing both of them.

“Yes?” Yassen prompts.

“So—so, they’ve been hunting one of the ghosts attached to me right now, I mean, and they consider people who are getting haunted as sub-instances. The Foundation does. Sorry.” Danny winces. “That means you too, Alex. If they find out. Julius has attached a cord to you. Wherever you go, he’s able to follow. Especially because he isn’t very corporeal, containing you would be the only way they could keep him contained. And when it comes to hunting down anomalies… the Foundation—the Mobile Task Force for ghosts, Mu-13—is ruthless.”

“…I’m gathering as much.” It prickles through his stomach like he’s just swallowed steel wool. 

Alex casts a look towards Yassen. To anyone else he would look exactly the same, but Alex sees the tiniest tightening around his eyes.

To Danny, Alex says, “So that’s why they didn’t recognize you. They were looking for the ghost.”

Danny scratches at the back of his neck. “Basically.”

“They must have a way to track ghosts.” Alex remembers something from the alley. “The thing that sounded like a Geiger counter—was that like an EMF detector?”

Danny’s eyes dart towards Yassen, down to his pocket. He worries his bottom lip but nods slowly. “Kinda. They use short range readers, mostly. Only accurate within a quarter of a mile or less.”

“Is the ghost attached to you also a threat?” Yassen asks. 

Danny’s face scrunches. “No. It’s… not vengeful.”

“You know for a fact that it won’t also try to take energy from anyone?”

Something like panic flashes across Danny’s face before it smooths over into rigid conviction. “You and Alex are safe. It won’t bother us. I can promise you that.”

Yassen doesn’t look so sure, but he lets it drop. 

For now, Alex suspects. 

Yassen refocuses them, drawing the Foundation weapon. “What can you tell me about the gun?”

Danny, where he sits, goes still.

With a soft click, Yassen removes the cartridge. He places the now lifeless gun on the bedspread beside Danny, who slowly unwinds the tension from his shoulders.

“It’s an ecto-gun,” he begins, reaching for it. In his hands, it looks just as natural as it did the first time.

He flips it over, examining the dull lights. Alex’s eyes skim over the place where Yassen already filed down the serial number—wonders if that’ll prevent Danny from giving them more information.

Danny looks up at Yassen, holds out an open hand. A silent question.

After a moment, Yassen places the clip into his palm.

Danny deftly slots the pieces back together. The room is quiet enough that Alex hears the little pistol buzz to life before flatlining back into silence, even as the green indicator up the handle begins blinking.

“Twenty percent,” Danny mutters. “That translates to about five good shots—six or seven, if you’re light on the trigger. Then you’ll need to find enough ecto to recharge it.”

“Ecto?” Alex can’t help but repeat.

“Yeah. Only thing that can injure a ghost—ecto-energy. Or, it can if they’re at least somewhat physical.”

“And to access it?” Yassen asks. 

“Not easy. The Foundation is, from what I know, the only organization with the technology to manufacture it.”

Yassen nods, expression smooth and considering.

Danny sighs. “It’ll be tricky to use this against Julius—he’s smart. He doesn’t like to show himself to anyone but Alex, and you can’t hit what you can’t see.”

“You can see him though,” Alex says before he can stop himself.

Danny’s gaze flits up to him. “Yeah. Which means he’d see me coming, too. I’m a decent shot, but he’ll use you as a human shield the second I go for it. Sort of a catch-22. And that brings me to the second issue, actually… Like any other gun, an ecto-gun isn’t a sure thing.”

He double-checks the safety and sets it back down on the bedspread.

“Ghosts aren’t easy to kill. You need a hell of a shot. Otherwise you just weaken them or piss them off.”

“You want us to kill a ghost?” Alex can feel his earlier exhaustion creeping back in.

“I guess ‘destroy’ is a better word,” Danny mumbles. “But it’s the same concept.”

“Huh.”

“Anyway, the Foundation has stuff that’ll pack way more of a punch than this little pistol. If you had one of those…”

It’s quiet for a few long seconds. Alex can see Yassen thinking, updating his plans in real time, probably. 

“Good thing you already called Gray,” Alex says.

Yassen gives him a look. As if a random name drop matters at this point.

“…Who?” Danny asks.

“The guy who set us up with Dusty.” Alex can’t keep his voice completely neutral. “Apparently he’s pretty reliable. He might be able to get us some more of these weapons.”

“Oh,” Danny says. “Great.”

Alex arches his brow, ready to broach the elephant in the room. He studies Danny for a moment. “You sure know a lot about the Foundation. Their equipment. How they operate.”

Behind Alex, the TV flicks on by itself and the EMF detector starts up. He forces himself not to look but instead focuses on Danny. 

Ghosts. Julius?

Or Danny’s?

“I, uh. You learn a lot when you’re on the run from people like them,” Danny says, looking pale.

Alex can see that Danny is fishing for their mutual experience, hoping he’ll back him up. A jittery and uncomfortable feeling sits in his stomach. It’s out of place.

Alex knows what it feels like to be haunted by Julius.

This feels different.

Yassen is a shadow at the edge of Alex’s vision, not intervening. Danny doesn’t trust Yassen, Alex knows that, and Yassen must know too. 

He swallows the feeling and pushes on.

“Yeah. You do,” he agrees. He’s learned a lot on the run. He wonders if that’s more due to the fact he’s on the run with Yassen. “But you know more than just… whatever you might pick up along the way. You know their equipment ranges, mate.”

Danny hunches his shoulders.

There’s one thing that makes sense. Danny is his age—too young—but that didn’t stop MI6.

“You’ve worked for them. Right?”

“No…” Danny says, voice resigned.

But Alex is close.

“No?”

Danny closes his eyes and takes a breath.

At the same time, something dark and consuming washes through Alex. He’s painfully familiar with it. It makes him unsteady and forces him to suck in a breath of his own.

It’s the same thing he feels when he thinks about Jack.

“My parents…” Danny mutters. He wraps his arms around himself.

An understanding settles on Alex then. He looks over at Yassen. Wanting reassurance or permission or both—he doesn’t know.

Yassen’s expression is mostly unreadable, but Alex takes comfort in it anyway, especially when he steps back in.

“Your parents are employed by them?” By Yassen standards, his voice is gentle.

Danny moves even closer to the wall—cornering himself by the bed and the bedside table. Alex watches him swallow hard. He shakes his head.

“No, not—it—it doesn’t matter.”

The lights overhead sputter.

Danny doesn’t look at either of them. It’s still cold in the room, despite the warm air now running.

Alex’s chest is hollow.

“Your parents work for the Foundation,” he says softly. “That’s why you’re on the run, isn’t it? Because they would turn you in?”

Danny pulls into himself even closer. “No—I—I don’t know,” Danny snaps. He has that same wild animal look in his eye that Alex saw on their first day together. “You don’t—It doesn’t matter now.”

The entryway light goes out.

Alex’s heart picks up in his chest and panic rakes its claws through his stomach. But somehow it feels… odd. Too sudden.

Alex forces himself to take several slow breaths, Yassen’s voice at the edge of his mind.

“Sorry, Danny, it’s okay,” Alex tries, through the tide of unexplainable panic. “Forget I asked—”

“It was my fault,” Danny croaks, sounding breathless. He moves backwards again, the movement knocking the lamp over with a crash.

Deliberately, Yassen starts forward. His movements are slow, clearly advertising what he intends to do, as he sits on the bed across from Danny, not close enough to encroach on his personal space, but enough that Danny doesn’t have much choice but to focus on him.

Danny’s chest doesn’t move. He watches Yassen with a blank intensity.

“Danny.”

He says nothing—he hardly even blinks.

“You do not need to talk about your family. We will not make you do that.”

Silence.

“Take a deep breath.”

Danny hesitates—but Alex watches him blink, and then take a slow breath.

“I will not ask about your life before this. Only what is relevant to helping Alex, and destroying Julius.”

Danny’s eyes skitter to Alex.

The air in the room is still cold, but it’s a bit warmer than when they walked in. Alex fills his chest deeply. It feels like relief—or a desperate bid for something like it.

Danny mirrors him.

“I get the sense that that is what you want, correct? To help Alex?” Yassen says.

Barely, just barely, Danny eases. He gives Yassen a tiny nod.

“Then we are on the same page,” Yassen concludes.

“Y-yeah,” Danny says, voice soft. The wild look behind his eyes starts to fade.

Alex regrets prodding about Danny’s family. He’s already asking a lot of Danny. Asking him to fend off Julius.

Julius isn’t someone—something—Alex would wish on anyone else.

Who knows what kind of toll Julius will take on Danny?

“You don’t have to stick around if you don’t want to, Danny,” Alex blurts out before he can stop himself.

Danny’s gaze snaps to him.

His mouth goes dry. 

“This—this is my problem. And there’s people more dangerous than the Foundation after Yassen and I. People that don’t want to just catch us. You don’t deserve to get caught in the middle.”

Danny’s expression softens, some parts uncertain, but genuine.

“Alex, what you did for me the other day…” His brows crease. “I want to help. It’s the least I can do.”

Alex’s stomach clenches.

Danny looks at Yassen, the uncertainty taking front and center.

“I can still deter him, and weapons are a good thing to have if something were to happen, but honestly, an exorcism might actually be worth looking into…”

“He could come back,” Yassen reminds Danny of his own evaluation.

“Yeah, but… If we cut his attachment to Alex, he’ll be vulnerable. I could…” Danny’s gaze flits between the two of them. “I could essentially force him to move on.”

Alex has no idea what that would involve, but Danny is telling the truth—he knows that at least. He pulls in a breath and looks at Yassen.

“Do you think Gray can find us someone who does exorcisms too?”

Yassen is silent for a moment before he stands.

“I will go make a call,” he replies. “Stay here.”

He leaves the room. They both watch him go, and when the door swings closed behind him, they look at each other.

Alex leans back in his chair.

In the quiet of the room, Danny rights the lamp he’d knocked over.

“Well, I hope you meant what you said, because it looks like you’re stuck with us for a little while longer yet,” Alex says.

Danny smiles weakly. He flicks the lamp on and then off again, making sure it still works. “Not like I have any conflicting plans.”

Alex laughs.

There’s a silent beat before Danny starts talking again. 

“Sorry about the phone. I didn’t know…” 

Alex waves a hand, cheeks warming at the fact that Danny had to see his and Yassen’s spat. He’d felt so indignant, so frustrated—but now, under the tide of adrenaline, anxiety, and exhaustion, it feels like it happened in another lifetime. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah… I don’t wanna be the bearer of bad news here, but she, uh…” Danny plays with the cuff of his new sweater—twisting it.

Alex searches his expression and an awful feeling surges up in him. “She wasn’t in trouble, was she?” If Kyra is in danger again, because of him—

Danny shakes his head, putting his hands up. “No. No, I don’t think so but she said—and I quote—that ‘MI6 had a lead on you and your new Scorpia BFF’.” 

Alex’s blood turns to icy slush.

“And then she realized it wasn’t you that answered, and hung up.”

And here he thought this was a shitty enough situation. He shouldn’t be surprised. He’d told Yassen this was pointless, afterall.

A lead. What kind of lead?

“That’s all she said?” he asks.

Danny nods, watching him anxiously. “Are you going to tell Yassen?” 

“No,” Alex replies, almost fast enough to cut him off. “Not yet.” He paces in front of Danny’s bed.

He needs way more than that to bring it to Yassen. With so little info, if he tells him now, it might just prove Yassen was right—talking with Kyra might have compromised them. Alex is not giving him the satisfaction.

A lead.

Was it because of what happened in Montana? Or had they been picked up on surveillance somewhere else? MI6 would have no reason to request access from the CIA and the FBI to watch the U.S., right? They probably would have focused on the border crossings in Europe. If they were spotted anywhere, it had to have been the flight from Madrid to Calgary—but that had been days ago now. 

Yassen’s broker in Madrid could have sold them out. There could’ve been a mole listening in on Damon. Or extra surveillance on Kyra; maybe they’d gotten wind of the forum posts—what if she’d been bugged, in a way too clever even for her to spot? What if Smithers lied about the real capabilities of the S.O.S beacon, the one Alex is still wearing right now?

The possibilities make his head spin.

Okay.

It’s alright.

Everything’s fine.

He’s just a rogue agent traveling with an internationally-wanted contract killer and terrorist. No big deal.

He pulls in a slow breath, trying to order his thoughts and quell his own anxiety.

If it was as bad as that, they’d already be in custody. They never would have made it over the Canada-U.S. border, or even out of the Calgary airport.

Plus, the last few days, they’ve had Danny with them. That’s sure to throw off MI6, even if they do figure out he’s with Yassen and not dead somewhere in the Venetian Lagoon.

He forces the shaky feeling in his gut down as far as he can manage. If Yassen senses anything is off, MI6 will be the least of his worries.

“I need to get back in contact with her. I need to find out how we were compromised—when,” he says. “Then, I can give Yassen solid information, and not just rumours.”

Danny tilts his head. “Do you need the phone back?”

Alex slows and looks at him. The way he says it makes it seem like he thinks that would be easy. He shakes his head.

“No, Yassen’s probably destroying it right now. Or he will before he goes to sleep. And the one he’s using too, probably.”

Shit. What are his options? There’s a computer in the hotel lobby but that’s way too public. Not to mention if Yassen catches him…

“We’ll probably get new burners tomorrow,” Alex says, thinking aloud. “It’s not ideal, but… it’ll have to wait.”

“Whatever happens, I'm sure it’ll be fine,” Danny says. “Something tells me that you and Yassen aren’t ones to go down without a fight.”

Alex snorts. The memories of their escape from Venice feel white hot, breathing down his neck.

“Mate, you’ve no idea.”

Danny smiles back, and then after a second—“Alex?”

“Yeah?” 

“Does MI6 want you because of what you did to Julius?”

Alex blinks, and then he just feels tired.

“No. They…” 

They want him back because he’s theirs. Even if Jones gets that look on her face and says that’s not how it is. 

They want him because he’s useful, because his age makes him a priceless asset in the field.

They want him because if he’s not an asset, he’s a liability. A dangerous one.

Alex rubs his eyes. “I’ll tell you about it later, yeah? Promise.”

“No worries,” Danny says, almost too gentle.

.

By the time Yassen comes back to the room, Alex has calmed himself down. It still doesn’t stop Yassen from giving him a long and calculating look.

Alex struggles not to give anything away.

“Well?”

“Gray will get back to me tomorrow about both inquiries.”

He nods.

Yassen’s gaze moves to Danny next. Thankfully for them, they have the advantage of Danny always looking guilty when Yassen looks at him.

Maybe Alex should try that, just to throw him off.

Yassen definitely suspects them of something, but to Alex’s surprise, he doesn’t comment. He just sweeps back the window curtains.

Danny winces against the light, turning his face away from it.

When Yassen turns back, there’s a different kind of considering look in his eye.

Alex has the mounting suspicion that he didn’t escape punishment after all—

“It has been several days since we have practiced your Russian.”

He groans.

In Russian, Yassen says, “We will practice until dinner.”

Sleeping at night in hotel beds is not getting any easier, the second day in.

The muscles in his neck and shoulders twist themselves into cords that braid further down along his spine, attached to bone like spiderwebs.

He presses down on something like a shudder. Flesh—chained fibers, wet organs, sluggish weight… That hasn’t been him for a long time. Every minute of being like this is a reminder. His muscles are rusty, underused.

All that said, the lingering wound on his side is well on its way to fully healed, with the energy he’d gathered yesterday. The skin is less tender—less discolored, probably, if he were willing to look at it.

He watches the time on the clock tick by. Gravity tugs at his skin. The mattress is soft, softer than the beds at the last two hotels they’ve stayed in. 

It doesn’t help like he thought it would.

Alex is awake, too; he heaves a breath every once in a while, like he might finally throw in the towel and get up. He doesn’t. Instead, he tosses and turns in his tangle of sheets.

Danny lies still enough he can pretend he doesn’t have a body at all—still enough that he starts to forget which way his limbs are positioned. The more he forgets, the better he feels. It’s familiar. Hazy.

There’s a soft click of the room door’s inner mechanism a moment before it’s pushed open.

Yassen, returning from whatever errands had pulled him out at the crack of dawn.

So much for sleep, then.

Danny rolls over to see what’s in the shopping bags Yassen drops on the settee. He places things on the coffee table, one after the other.

The first thing Danny recognizes are the boxes of dye.

A previously dormant memory jolts through him—a prickling mixture of warmth and guilt fuzzing in the air around him. An echo of ammonia itches at his nose. 

He remembers bunching silver foil between his hands as they waited for her dye to set. Remembers the way the aluminum peaks and valleys rolled idly across his palms, a comforting pattern. Sam’s hair was thick enough that she’d insisted on letting the dye sit a full forty-five minutes before she’d even consider rinsing.

He cuts off the memories like slamming a door shut.

Alex yawns, sits up like a zombie. He mumbles a good morning to Yassen, who nods his greeting.

A presence crowds into the room, humid, sticky. Smug. 

Alex doesn’t react outwardly, but Danny can feel the sour twist in his mood as the pressure in Danny’s sinuses grows heavier. A tang of copper leaches into the back of his throat.

It’s a pattern he shouldn’t be getting used to: sleeping in muffled hotel rooms during the nights. Dealing with Julius.

Danny doesn’t give Julius the pleasure of acknowledgement, either.

Yassen walks past the beds. “I’m opening the curtains,” he says.

Danny closes his eyes. The runner squeaks across the rod. Faint red blooms on the other side of his eyelids, and he waits a few seconds before cracking open an eye. 

The painful process of trying to get his eyes to adjust—as Danny has been discovering, is just another one of the lovely side effects of having spent the last year primarily nocturnal.

He can’t help but tense as Yassen passes in front of him. 

Danny thought by now he’d be… desensitized to the feeling around Yassen. But after his powers had come filtering back, it became harder and harder to ignore.

He knows that Yassen is dangerous. It’s obvious from the look in his eye to the way he moves—and Danny doesn’t want to believe Julius, whispering into his ear, arm creeping across his shoulders—

—That contact they went to see yesterday? He didn’t end up being very useful, so Yassen killed him.

Yassen is haunted, too.

—If you fuck up, you’ll end up shot through the throat. Hey, you know what’d be fun? Let’s try and guess how many people he’s killed. I’ll let you go first.

Just not the same way Alex is.

These ghosts come and go like hazy memories, individuals never staying long enough for Danny to get a distinct impression of them. Some are in their death state, stuck in the moments of awareness between their hearts stopping and their thoughts slipping into disarray. Some are in pain. Others aren’t. 

It’s like an electromagnetic field of its own, with Yassen at its heart—the dark and heavy sinew of death.

Danny is surprised Yassen doesn’t feel it.

Or maybe he does. Danny probably wouldn’t know; even with access to his fluctuating emotions, he’s no closer to being able to read Yassen than he was before. Yassen’s face is always a calm mask. His voice is steady and smooth and limned with something cutting and hard on the inside.

Being around Yassen is like being at war with his senses and logic. The parts of Danny that can still feel scared keep his back close to the walls. Those parts of him always feel watched, feel disassembled, try to keep track of where the guns go.

Maybe that’s why Yassen feels the same way around him. Why Danny feels so watched. He can see it: the two of them, circling each other like solitary predators.

But it’s not fear all the way through. He knows fear pretty well by now, and he knows when there’s something trying to hatch its way through it.

It’s the whiplash. 

The death around Yassen almost mummifies him, flickering out of the corner of Danny’s vision like smoke. But under everything else—the gray calm, the flares of sour annoyance, the curling, creaking death—there’s something there when he looks at Alex. Something extending roots.

What kind of man amasses that many ghosts but has something like that growing underneath?

Danny doesn’t know what to do.

It feels wrong—misplaced, to trust a man like Yassen.

But Alex does. 

Why? 

Alex gets out of bed; his light footsteps traverse the room. The tap runs.

The dark cloud of Julius searches for a crack to worm through.

Thin plastic and fabric rustle. Two stacks of new clothing are appearing at the table under Yassen and Alex’s hands: jeans dark enough to keep decent company. Collared shirts, like what they’d picked up yesterday. More buttons. Danny doesn’t relish the idea of wrestling with them.

Alex drops a nice wool coat onto what must be his pile of clothes. On Danny’s, a mid-weight windbreaker. A pair of sneakers each—simple, black; not exactly the same, but similar enough.

Danny averts his eyes, rubbing at his chest. It does little to quell the static that’s starting to crowd him out.

Across the room, that damned EMF detector cries. Julius murmurs—clicks his teeth together. The light fixtures pulse a little bit. 

Danny breathes in. Out.

Don’t focus on it.

Instead, he catches eyes with Alex, who’s pushing hair out of his eyes where he’s lingering next to the settee. He already looks tired.

“Yassen got you something,” he says. Attempting a smile.

“Huh?” Danny finally levers himself up, rubs at his eyes. “The clothes?” He tries to catch Yassen’s gaze, but is the one that doesn’t manage to hold it long. “Thanks.”

“Yes. Clothes, shoes, and…” Yassen nods to Alex.

Alex digs into one of the bags and tosses Danny a thin box that he fumbles to catch.

Tracfone BLU View 2. It’s a low-grade smartphone, similar to the one Alex left him with yesterday.

He opens the front, turns it over. The copy on the back boasts more than thirteen hours of talk time, a decent processor, and 4G capabilities.

“It’s…”

He feels like there’s a braid in his stomach, strands knotted around each other. 

This isn’t the kind of gift you give to a stray.

“You know,” Julius murmurs, voice edging in and out as he hazes properly into this plane, “if you get rid of me, they won’t need you any more.”

He’s just outside of Danny’s peripheral vision, wafting like a draft as he solidifies. Close enough that Danny can all but feel the giggle on his shoulder.

“Security risk,” Julius says. “That’s you. You know their names… their faces.”

It’s like having spiders under his shirt, dragging their little bodies along with barbed legs.

“You can’t keep this up. You’ll slip. You’ll fail. And I’ll have Alex.”

A sharp snap of cold fizzles in his chest. The TV on the dresser flicks on, spewing white noise that almost sounds like Julius’ smug little cackle. 

“Do you really think they’ll trust you after that?”

Danny bites the inside of his cheek. The split flesh stabs him with relief.

He shouldn’t listen. He wishes he could stop listening.

He won’t let it happen. If that’s all he can be sure of in this whole situation, then he’s fine with that.

“Oh, Danny, Danny,” Julius croons. He touches his shoulder—it’s nebulous, but it’s tangible. A mockery of comfort. “Just like always. You’ll lose.”

Vitriol surges so sharply that Danny can taste it on the back of his tongue. Metallic pain races a linear path through Danny’s skull.

He responds with a spike of energy, sudden and dark. Little more than a warning, but a strong one. 

A reminder.

The detector, before a low whine, screeches at full blast. An alarm.

Julius hisses, spits—the lancing pain in Danny’s skull pounds and sparks for a moment—but ultimately breaks.

All at once, the TV blanks. The EMF reader cuts out. The room rings with the silence.

Danny exhales, careful and measured, through his teeth. There’s still a box in his hands.

There’s still Alex, and Yassen, watching him.

“…You good?” Alex asks. The question is taut—loaded. 

Danny wonders how much of that he heard, and swallows.

“I’m fine.”

He can’t force himself to face their assessments.

He picks at the clear sticker sealing the Tracfone, and digs his fingers in to pop open the smooth, perfectly-fitted phone box.

It feels a bit like a promise. 

A bit like a tether.

“Thank you.” He can’t force his voice much louder than a whisper.

Julius isn’t wrong. One way or another, pretty soon, he’ll be on his own again. He needs to remember that. 

“A method to keep in contact if we are to be separated again, whether intentionally or not,” Yassen explains. His eyes bore into Danny. “I expect you will use it wisely.”

The second half of this is directed, pointedly, at Alex. 

Alex rolls his eyes, flops himself down onto the overstuffed couch hard enough to bounce. “Yassen only got me a flip phone.”

“It can call and text. You do not need anything else.”

“Text?”  

Alex brandishes the phone in question. It’s bright red—presumably all the harder to make secretive calls with. 

“Look at this thing! You’re sending me back to the year 2000! Isn’t our new cover story supposed to be that we’re too rich for you to know what to do with us?”

“The best cover stories lie very little. You were disobedient, and I decided to embarrass you with an outdated cell phone purchase.”

“So you’re admitting this is for your own amusement.”

“I am admitting it is a punishment. Nothing more.”

Alex groans. “I’ve been punished enough already.”

“So you say,” Yassen says, deadpan but for one lifted eyebrow. He points meaningfully towards their new purchases. “Do not stall. Start your hair.”

He vanishes into the bathroom.

Alex sighs, looking over the boxes lingering on the coffee table. 

“What do you think’ll suit me best, Danny? Ultimate black, jet black, or blackest black?”

“What’s… the difference?” Danny asks.

“Beats me, mate.”

Danny shrugs. He’d never really understood Sam’s debate about ‘violet soft black’ versus ‘amethyst black’, either, though at the time she’d been pretty invested in the whole thing. Tucker had agreed with Danny—the only one who saw any difference was Sam. 

“I think they’ll look the same,” he says.

Alex grabs a box at random. “Yeah, how many shades can there really be?”

“As many as they can sell, I think.”

Alex snorts.

Yassen returns from the bathroom, peeling off two darkly stained plastic gloves. His hair is slicked back like an ink spill.

Alex hurriedly tears open his chosen box of dye.

“Choose another and mix them,” Yassen says.

“Why?” Alex asks. 

“It creates dimension,” Danny says, remembering that Sam used to do the same with her chosen ‘Amethyst Black’ and ‘Xtreme Orchid’. The words are out before he can really think about them, but afterwards, they twist uncomfortably at the pit of his stomach.

Alex grabs a second box. “Huh. You’re full of surprises,” he says to Danny, and takes his turn in the ensuite bathroom.

Danny can’t escape the smell of ammonia while Yassen and Alex both wait for the dye to set. The way it combines with the copper coating his tongue almost makes him gag. He keeps himself at the edges of the room.

Yassen looks at him across the room, gaze appraising.

“An assignment for you,” he says.

Danny can’t help the confusion. “What?”

“We will be using cover identities. As such, you will be expected to lie proficiently,” Yassen says.

Danny winces.

“Give some thought to your story, and how it fits in with myself and Alex as a family,” Yassen says. “Veiled truths will be easiest to remember and deliver convincingly.”

“Like… what?” Danny asks. “What, um… kind of details?”

“Minor things—hobbies and the like,” Yassen says. “But I am most concerned with the story of the family. You will likely only pass muster as half-brothers, which adds a layer of complexity to the story.”

“Ah,” Danny says, his throat dry and scratchy. “Okay. Um…”

Silence stretches between them, sticky like taffy.

Half-truths about his life. His family.

As if he isn’t telling enough of those already.

“Think about it,” Yassen says after a long moment. “We will discuss the details when Alex is present.”

Danny nods.

Yassen studies him. It’s the dangerous and sharp watchful gaze of a predator. Just not the kind Danny is familiar with.

Against his instincts, he forces himself to visibly exhale before turning away to stare out the window.

Yassen’s lack of faith in Danny’s acting ability is warranted, but it’s a stinging reminder of how little he fits here.

After maybe twenty restless minutes, the shower shuts off, and Alex shoulders back into the room. 

His hair—now just a shade or two off from Danny’s—is sticking upright in places from being vigorously toweled dry. There’s a smudge of dye on his temple, and when he moves past, he smells more of the hotel’s almond-scented conditioner than ammonia.

But it’s not until Alex has dumped his clothes on the bed and looked up that Danny realizes, with a start, that his eyes have changed from a honeyed brown to a cool blue.

Alex grins.

“Contacts?” Danny asks, even though he knows they must be.

“Yep. It isn’t weird for siblings to have different eye colors, but you and ‘dad’ both have blue eyes. It’s better if I match.”

“They’re different shades, though.”

Alex shrugs. “As long as we look related, it’ll be good enough for a while. Besides, the less I look like myself, the better.”

Danny can’t argue with that. “Right.”

“It’s your turn in the bathroom,” Alex says. “Yassen wants out of here yesterday.”

Danny gathers up an armful of new clothes—and isn’t that still a novelty of its own—but hesitates before he closes the bathroom door.

Yassen and Alex are bustling around the room, talking quietly in French. Cleaning up, sweeping the room for god knows what.

As long as they look related. To Danny.

He shoves the train of thought away, and shuts the door.

Showered, changed, and having attempted to tame his hair into a different style, Danny re-emerges, and they head out. While Yassen is returning the room key, Alex steers Danny towards the sliding doors.

Danny tucks his right hand into the pocket of his new jacket only to find it empty—the phone Yassen had given him no longer taking up the space. He stiffens, for a moment afraid that he’d dropped it without noticing.  

But Alex catches his eye and winks. Pats his own pocket.

Despite himself, Danny huffs a laugh. “Couldn’t you just ask?”

“Nah,” Alex says. “More fun this way. Let me know when he’s on his way, yeah?” Alex opens up a browser tab and sets to typing in some URL. 

“Sure.” 

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

They sit for some minor disguise makeup, then for photos at a local CVS.

“Can we see them?” Alex asks as they climb back in the car.

Yassen entrusts the envelopes to Alex before starting the car. “Do not bend them.”

Alex scoffs, but doesn’t bother retorting. As Yassen starts the engine, Alex flips the top of the envelope and shakes out their pictures.

He’s had probably a dozen illegitimate IDs at this point, but these are the strangest. In part, it’s because MI6 never altered his appearance much—his hair, sure, and the earring… the clothes, the attitude, but not the planes of his face. MI6 hadn’t spent the time to teach Alex that particular skill.

No, he’d needed to pick it up at Malagosto.

Even the rudimentary training paid off. Even if he’d need to reapply it, his new photos look suitably like someone else’s.

At a glance, he resembles Danny, or Yassen, or both. 

Besides the hair dye, his face is slimmer, his eyes sharper, his nose a little longer. He’d even put on the smallest squint and tilted his chin down just enough to mimic an expression he’s seen Yassen make more than once.

Yassen, in his photo, is perfectly neutral. Bored, clean-pressed.

Danny, meanwhile, looks a little wild around the edges. Wary, like the camera is liable to bite. 

Alex can’t help but laugh.

“Dude, look.” He leans across the center to show Danny his picture. “You photograph so bad.”

Danny barely glances over the photos that Alex is holding out before gluing his eyes back out the window. “I know.”

In the photo, Danny’s hair has been pushed back behind his ears; it’s a stark contrast to the way it usually hangs limply in his face. It’s a little jarring to see his entire face at once, but what really drives it home is that the camera flash has rendered Danny’s pale blue eyes almost colorless.

It’s not the same as Yassen’s light blue, or the similar shade of Alex’s contacts.

“It’s a little eerie if you look too hard,” Alex murmurs, tapping the glossy paper.

“What is?”

“Your eyes.”

Danny doesn’t reply.

“Well, whatever,” Alex says. He straightens all three sets of pictures and slides them back into the envelope. “Yassen and I look pretty different from our last ones, and nobody has anything to compare you against, so you’re fine.”

Danny acknowledges that with a small sound, but nothing else.

“Yes, they’re satisfactory,” Yassen says. He opens a hand, and Alex passes the envelope back.

Something occurs to Alex. “Are we getting new passports?”

“No. In this moment, staying within the United States will benefit us. To travel domestically, the two of you only need state IDs,” Yassen says. “For myself, a state driver’s license.”

“I can’t imagine we’re going back to the same kind of place we got the last IDs.”

Yassen adjusts the mirror minutely. “No. We will be using a new resource.”

“It won’t be like the last ‘new resource’, will it?”

“No. I have found a fairly reputable local network.”

“Fairly reputable,” Alex repeats.

“The majority of the work is not up to our usual standards, but that is a boon as much as it is a detractor,” Yassen explains. “The less likely they are connected to my former employer, the better.”

“Can you be sure they’re not connected?” Sometimes, it feels like everything is under their thumb, one way or another.

Yassen inclines his head. “There is always risk, but there are few other options. As we are leaving the city immediately afterwards, it is a risk I am willing to take. The IDs are important, and we only need to buy a little time to source better ones.”

“Do we get to pick our own names, at least?”

Yassen regards Alex. 

“Come on, I never get to pick.”

“Alright,” Yassen says. “You may choose, within reason.”

“What’s within reason?” Danny asks.

“A cover name should be easy for you to remember, but far enough from your own name to not inspire any suspicions in others,” Yassen says.

“So like, same first letter?” Danny asks.

“Whatever works,” Alex says. “Honestly, anything you can think of will be better than some of my past ones. Not that I came up with them.”

“Like what?”

Like one of the first ones. The ill-fated mission at Point Blanc. His mouth twists. “Alex Friend.”

“Friend?”

“Real surname, believe it or not.”

“I’ll take ‘or not’, thanks.”

“I know.” Alex shakes his head. “Well, got any ideas?”

Danny’s eyes latch onto the floor. He hums. “What about Damien?” 

Alex wrinkles his nose; Damian Cray comes to mind. “Why that?” 

Danny shrugs, the fabric of his jacket shifting.

“Movie character?” he says, not looking at Alex. “First thing I thought of. Sounds cool.”

There’s probably more of a reason than that—Alex can tell as much from Danny’s body language. But what lies underneath could be anything.

“As long as no one can connect the name to you, it’s just as well,” Yassen says.

Danny glances at him. “No direct connection to me.”

Yassen looks at Alex and waits.

“Ugh. Fine, then. What about…” He shifts, tilting his head. “Hm. What about Adrian? Adrian and Damien,” Alex says. “They even sound like brother names. Rich parents with kids whose names rhyme.”

“Then your names are Adrian and Damien Clark,” he tells the boys. “Ages fifteen and sixteen respectively—”

“Wait, Danny’s older?” Alex asks.

“Yes. You are both—”

“Why?” Alex interrupts again. “Just because he’s a little taller? That doesn’t make him older.”

“Is this the detail you would like to negotiate on?” Yassen asks.

“Yeah, duh,” Alex says. He turns to Danny. “How old are you?”

“Um… fifteen?” 

“Me too. What month?” 

“June.”

Alex lights up. “You’re younger than me!”

“…When’s your birthday?”

“February,” Alex says in triumph.

“But we’ll have fake ones, does it matter?” Danny scoffs, looking at the floor. 

Alex doesn’t miss the faint smile, though. Satisfied, he says, “It really does, trust me. I’m an expert.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Danny says.

“It matters that you two remember, and that it is plausible,” Yassen interjects. “Nothing more.” 

“See? It’s settled then; I’m the elder brother.”

“And I’m the younger brother,” Danny says softly.

Alex doesn’t get the chance to examine his tone.

“Adrian and Damien Clark,” Yassen resumes, “half brothers with the same father, ages sixteen and fifteen, respectively. You grew up in a middle-class home in the state of Indiana.”

“Ah, right. Half-brothers,” Alex says. Having examined their photos, it’s easy to see that Alex’s features—despite the makeup—are still a bit of an outlier compared to the sharpness of both Yassen and Danny. “Indiana… that’s pretty far, eh? So my mom probably lives out here.” He thinks. “Her name’s… Susana. Susana Richardson. She does, um… legal counsel, or something? Yeah. I only see her a few times a year because it’s so far. It’s been like that forever. She wants me to stay with her in the summers, but I don’t want to leave my brother or my friends in Indiana.”

Yassen nods, and directs his gaze to Danny.

Danny fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve.

Maybe he’s drawing a blank—Alex opens his mouth to offer something, but Danny speaks up.

“Is this really going to come up?”

Alex shrugs.

“It is better to prepare for the possibility that it might happen than to be caught unawares,” Yassen says.

Danny’s eyes flicker to Alex, and he presses out a long, slow breath.

“Wouldn’t it be easier if mine wasn’t in the picture?” he asks. “Something happened… um, maybe recently, and I don’t like talking about it if anybody asks.”

“That’s fine,” Yassen says. “However, we will still need to agree on a story.”

“…You really like to be thorough, huh,” Danny says. 

It’s probably meant to be light, but Alex can hear the strain.

“Trust me, man,” Alex sighs. “Overprepared is better.”

“Okay,” Danny says. “Um… let’s say… she passed away.” Danny’s eyes flicker away from Alex. “Not that long ago. That’s why we don’t talk about it.”

“How?” Yassen asks. “You may be vague, but one or two details are necessary.”

“An accident,” Danny says.

“Car accident?” Alex suggests. “That’s common.”

“Sure.”

In the front seat, Yassen inclines his head.

Alex watches Danny for a beat longer, but Danny ignores him. Danny has been reluctant to divulge anything surrounding his family—and while this story likely isn’t true, Danny’s discomfort is.

Yassen shifts the car into park. “We’re here,” he announces. The engine falls silent around them.

Danny undoes his seatbelt. He doesn’t look at Alex. “Where’s here?”

Yassen gestures towards a nondescript bakery across the street. The windows are tinted but otherwise, it’s perfectly passable.

Alex doesn’t miss the confusion in Danny’s expression. “It’s fake,” he says. “Well, probably they do sell bread and what have you, but not just.”

“Oh.”

Outside, the wind carries the sharpness of winter and the thick grey cloud cover makes it all the colder. 

The crosswalk light switches, and Yassen walks briskly. Alex and Danny both trail behind, Danny peering through at the bakery windows curiously.

A little bell announces their arrival. Yassen takes a number from the ticket machine. Alex picks up a sandwich from the cold case, and nudges Danny to do the same.

“Might as well fuel up,” he says. “We’ll be here a bit—this stuff is never quick.”

“A lot of hurry up and wait?” Danny guesses.

“Nailed it in one,” Alex replies.

They linger in front of the drinks—Danny takes his time selecting a soda, the door propped against his elbow and the whole thing leaking cold. 

When their number is called, they both trail Yassen up to the counter. Alex pushes their food across the surface, eyeing the older man behind the till. His mouth is buried in an off-white beard, and his eyes are dull.

Yassen also places a wrapped sandwich beside the register, and a plastic water bottle.

“We’ll take these,” he says with a nod, “and I’d like to place a wholesale order as well, with rush delivery.”

The cashier’s eyes spark, but no other muscle in his face moves. The register clicks and chimes.

“Food’s twenty-three fifty,” the man says. “Cash or credit?”

“Cash, please.”

The man turns and hollers over his shoulder. “Vinnie! Catering call.” He jerks his chin to the back. “Give it a minute,” he says, eyes flickering to Alex and Danny for just a moment.

Yassen interrupts his assessment. “You boys go start lunch without me,” he says with a smile. “I’ll just be in the back for a minute.”

“Gotcha, Pops,” Alex says, giving him a lazy two-fingered salute, already walking to the small tables at the back where a few other people are seated. “C’mon, Dami,” he says, just barely giving Danny’s sleeve a tug when he doesn’t follow immediately. 

By the time Alex looks back, Yassen has already disappeared through the yellowed plastic strips concealing the back of the store. Danny hasn’t unwrapped his sandwich yet, picking at the sticker instead and looking at where Yassen went. Dull Eyes at the counter isn’t staring outright, but Alex feels the prickle of attention on them anyways.

“Eat, man,” Alex says around a mouthful of his own tuna salad. 

Danny’s silent for a long moment. He blinks and looks back up at him. “Yeah,” he says belatedly, and unwraps the wax paper.

A cold breeze blasts down from the air vents.

A part of Alex wonders if that’s really the air conditioning. He tunes it out, chews harder.

Eventually, Yassen joins the table with his own food. They spend another hour waiting around until their documents are ready. Then, it’s back on the road.

.

Alex presses his cheek against the cool window glass as Yassen steps on the pedal.

Streets pass by. The city is laid out in tangled threads. Alex thinks of a necklace chain—convoluting in on itself. Wrenching tighter. Clover-shaped highway interchanges that layer and build and press heavy against Alex’s sinuses as they spin in and out of them.

He frowns as they pass by an unfamiliar landmark. It’s some kind of art installation—circular, shiny. Maybe he didn’t case the city as well as he should have, because even with something that distinctive, he can’t place what street they’re on. Buildings rise up, familiar but unfamiliar.

The travel’s been getting to him. Too many cities here look the same.

He checks the time. 2:20 PM. They left fifteen minutes ago, he’s just being paranoid.

Yassen’s brows furrow. He takes a left turn.

Alex watches the buildings, wearily.

The car feels too silent—increasingly stifled.

He tries to catch Danny’s gaze, ready to crack a bad joke and lighten the mood. But Danny’s eyes slide off him, distracted. There’s something uncomfortable in his body language—stiff, like he’s holding himself on the edge of his seat, balanced on an unstable ledge.

Alex settles back without saying anything.

The car is filled with the quiet click-click-click of the turn signal.

He checks the time again. 2:40 PM. 

They left twenty minutes ago. It hasn’t been that long.

He relaxes.

They’ll be out of here soon.

Ahead of them, three cars swing through sharp U-turns, one after the next.

There’s an unfamiliar landmark. Yassen’s grip on the steering wheel tightens as they pass by the red metal contraption.

Something wrong? Alex almost says, but thinks better of it. 

He checks the time again. 2:50 PM. He knows they didn’t leave that long ago. They’ll be in the clear soon. 

More downtown core. He’ll never get over the way the buildings in America seem to stretch—like there was no sacred skyline they were mandated to protect.

“Huh,” Danny mumbles.

“What?”

Danny dips his head towards the window. Alex cranes his neck, but nothing is out of place. Sidewalks, city buildings, cars whizzing past.

He arches an eyebrow.

“We just passed a street that was totally empty,” Danny elaborates.

“Maybe they’re doing construction?” Alex suggests. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. He settles back into his seat.

His fingers twitch into the seat, briefly, and he doesn’t—

“I don’t think so,” Danny says.

Yassen hums, and flicks the turn signal on. Its repetitive clicking grates against Alex until it shuts off. 

“Wait. The other street.”

“What other street?”

The car rolls at a stoplight. The other cars around them pause to let the traffic flow.

Danny’s frowning, now. “No, look, do you see—there’s no cars crossing right now. The other street is empty too.”

He tries looking and his eyes slide off and his fingers dig into the seat, and he doesn’t know why.

“It feels kind of like there’s… a smudge,” Danny says. “Like this city’s all… blurred.”

Blurred… Now that Danny mentions it, yeah. Blurred is a good way to describe it. It’s not hot enough for heat mirages and yet, when he catches glimpses of the salt flats, the skyscrapers, it’s hard to hold onto the image in his mind for long. 

It’s motion sickness. A headache crawls up his neck and settles behind his eyes. The food from earlier sits too heavy in his stomach.

He’s used to cities. The London skyline bunched together and reaching towards the sky, sentries above the wide, flat surrounding areas. 

But this is different. It’s like they’re in a bowl. The mountains burst from the horizon like an unbreakable spine, walls boxing them in.     

The late day sun shimmers through sparse gaps in dark gathering clouds, reflecting off some kind of art installation—circular, shiny. It leaves spots in his eyes, chasing after the center of his vision.

Something finally clicks.

They’re driving in circles.

It’s a whispering knowledge: here, he’s trapped, by borders unreachable. By gray skies threatening to rupture.

In a car with Yassen again. 

And Yassen is driving in a circle.

Surely, he has a reason and just isn’t deigning to share it, but frayed nerves bubble in Alex’s throat regardless.

He drops his head back against the headrest. His bruised ribs murmur with every breath. He flexes his hand, fresh bandages compressing and pulling. 

A police car streaks past them, sirens swooping below the radio. The lights shine blue and red against the cold concrete, the cloudy glass windows.

Danny shifts to watch it weave through traffic.

They snake through the crawling lanes, merging and making a handful of turns. 

Alex hopes for the highway. He wants out of this godforsaken city, with all of its unfulfilled promises, its snow-capped mountain ranges looming closer and closer everytime he looks. Watching him. Like they know what happened at that parking garage.

Alex drags his eyes back to the concrete jungle. Up ahead—a smear of red metal. 

That fucking abstract monstrosity, again.

“Yassen, is there a reason we’re still downtown?” Alex groans.

Yassen clicks his tongue—a rare noise of frustration, or annoyance. Alex jerks his head around to look at him, but he seems no more on edge than normal.

“Vans,” Danny murmurs.

Alex tugs on his seatbelt, too constrained. 

The ominous word doesn’t do a single thing to settle his anxiety.

“What? Where?” he asks.

Wordlessly, Danny taps his window. Alex and Yassen both check the trajectory of his motion. The van is white.

Alex looks between them, and checks the vehicle again. It’s completely innocuous, unmarked. While the agents back in Montana had been just as forward with their cliched vans, there’s nothing that should say this one is anything out of the ordinary.

“The Foundation,” Yassen fills in. Monotone.

“How can you tell it’s them?” Alex asks, then turns on Danny. “How did you even spot them?”

Danny shrugs, and doesn’t meet Alex’s eyes. “Practice?”

Alex frowns at the obvious dismissal, but Yassen only sighs.

“I suspect there has been anomalous interference in this area,” Yassen says. “I have not been able to steer the vehicle as intended for quite some time.”

“The Foundation is doing it,” Danny mumbles. “They don’t just ‘secure and contain’ anomalies—they use them, too. I’m guessing there’s something in the city they’re trying to capture, and they’ve locked everything down.”

“Why not just clear the area out?” Alex asks.

“Damage control,” Danny says. “Keep everyone in location A, and they won’t wander into location B. But, usually, it means they expect to need a large-scale amnestic…” He shrugs stiffly. “It could be for a number of reasons.”

“Which Foundation units have the resources to place a barrier of this magnitude?” Yassen asks.

“Depends,” Danny says. “Mu-13, maybe? But it’s not a given. If it’s just these few blocks, that’s one thing, but if it’s the whole city…”

Yassen considers this, then nods. “We will need to determine the affected area to make an informed decision about our next course of action.”

“Even if we know the range, I can’t accurately tell you what unit set it up,” Danny says. “But, if we can get around the edges, I might be able to sense a big enough spectral anomaly. If I don’t sense one, we could wager it’s something else.”

“Perhaps the EMF reader will also alert us.”

“That thing needs to be in close range. It won’t pick up anything until it’s too late.”

“And the range of your abilities is broader?”

“Yes.”

“How broad?”

Danny’s brow furrows as he thinks. “Maybe about a city block, at maximum? Maybe more, if the thing is really fucked up. But with the EMF detector, we’re talking about, like, a few feet.”

It’s the most Alex has seen Danny and Yassen speak with each other so willingly—openly. It’s interesting to see them collaborating. Danny is sitting at attention, clear with his answers, and unafraid to contradict Yassen.

It’s quite the contrast to the attitude he’d adopted when they’d all but interrogated him in the last hotel room.

It’s like this kind of business—facing the unknown threat of an anomaly, or the Foundation, or both at once—comes naturally to Danny.

Or maybe, he’s just had plenty of practice.

Alex is reminded of the easy way Danny handled the ecto-gun.

What has Danny learned on his own?

And what did his parents drip-feed him from their jobs within the Foundation, before Danny left?

The questions are sour on the back of Alex’s tongue.

“Don’t have a conversation without me,” he mutters. “You’re both missing something.”

“Which is?” Yassen asks.

“Are they here for us?”

“I don’t believe so,” Yassen says. “We do not warrant such measures.”

“Yassen is right. This is too big an operation for just some hauntings.”

Yassen’s eyes flicker over both of them in the rearview mirror, before locking on the stop-and-go traffic again.

“So what do we do, Yassen?” Alex asks, a sharp edge to his voice. “We have to leave.” 

“I am aware, Alex,” Yassen says. “Danny, how is this type of containment usually broken?”

“Well, whatever they’re using to do it could be taken out,” Danny says. “But that hinges on a lot more knowledge of the situation than we’ve got.” He tugs on his lower lip with two fingers. “…Sometimes, being able to acknowledge it is enough to push through the mental block.”

“We can not force our way through,” Yassen says. He sounds like he’s thinking aloud rather than already decided, for once. “We will only draw attention, should we be the sole car making its way out of the city.”

“So, what?” Alex says. “We wait it out? Lay low?”

“We will have to,” Yassen says. “We can not risk further attention on either of you.”

He swings the car in a tight U-turn. Alex sways against the window.

The pulse in his temples is tired, weary. But there’s nothing to do but ride this out.

“We need an inconspicuous location,” Yassen says. “Alex?”

There’s a beat of silence as Alex tries to wade through his exhaustion to find the answers Yassen is quizzing him for. 

“Easy exits,” Alex adds. “On the off chance it is Mu-13, they’ll be able to pinpoint us because of Julius—” his gaze flicks to his right— “and whatever Danny has going on. So we’ll need to be prepared to leave quickly.”

Yassen nods. “A modern hotel will provide up to code emergency exits—”

“Actually…” Danny seems to regret interrupting when both Yassen and Alex look at him. “Um. The best place to hide if they’re looking for a ghost is somewhere with a shit ton of residual energy. It won’t take much to mask Julius’ signature—and… mine’s. Somewhere like that, we could blend in, essentially.”

“There is inherent risk in that,” Yassen says.

“It’s the best we can do,” Danny says. “Like hiding a needle in a haystack.”

Yassen is quiet. Considering their options. Running scenarios.

“And,” Danny says, “I’ll check for anything malicious. If there is, we won’t stay.”

Yassen inclines his head.

“So…” Danny’s eyes slide off Alex, to Yassen. “Know of any haunted hotels nearby?”

.

“Built 1892,” Alex reads off the little State of Utah Historic Site placard. “Burned down in 1918… two people died trapped in the cellar. They rebuilt it the next year. Well, that should do it, eh?”

“That should do it,” Danny agrees softly.

Alex reads the rest of the plaque. “Supposedly, there’s no such thing as the afterlife in Salt Lake City.”

“What do they know?” Danny snorts.

“The city was founded by Mormons. I guess they don’t believe in the afterlife,” Alex says wryly. 

“Boys,” Yassen calls from the courtyard—tone, posture, and attire the perfect picture of an impatient father. “Pick up the pace.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Alex mutters back, only halfway playing his part. He bumps his shoulder against Danny’s arm, and together they trail after Yassen.

The Calahan House Bed & Breakfast is a Victorian-style mini-mansion, surprisingly close to the heart of downtown. The courtyard is half-bare in the cold of late November, but Alex can imagine it a vibrant green in the spring. The bushes lining the wrought iron fence are still full and leafy, even if the sprawling tree branches overhead are losing their leaves.

Inside, Yassen points them to a set of armchairs to wait while he acquires their rooms. Alex moves towards them, but Danny hesitates in the doorway.

Alex nudges the side of his foot with his own, and Danny steps sideways enough for Alex to shut the door, sealing out the persistent chill.

Danny’s face is pinched, mouth small and drawn like he’s smelled something sour. The line of his shoulders is tense.

Alex takes it for the warning it is.

He shifts in front of Danny and quickly scans the room. Nothing seems out of place—and Yassen hadn’t flagged anything odd.

Ahead, there’s a little desk and someone to check guests in; that’s where Yassen is now, conversing pleasantly with the smiling woman. Beyond them is a hallway and a staircase that winds up to the second floor, and to the right is an open archway to the sitting room. 

The front door is right behind them, but besides it there are plenty of exits. Large bay windows are on either side, a number dotting the edges of the sitting room. The staircase, a doorway to the left that Alex suspects might lead to a kitchen, and several other doors down the hall provide more options to get away.

It doesn’t take much for Alex to figure that whatever’s getting to Danny isn’t something that Alex can perceive.

“You good?” Alex grins, turning back to Danny. 

“I’m okay.”

“Headache?”

Danny shakes his head.

“It’s been a long day, we should chill.” He hopes Danny picks up on the cue.

Danny pulls his feet from the floor, slow, like it’s flypaper. 

This time, when Alex steps towards the sitting area, Danny follows and sits slowly beside Alex on the overstuffed couch. Alex keeps an eye on him, anxious despite himself.

Danny shuffles his feet. It’s quiet for a beat, until he speaks again. “We wanted to hide a tree in a forest,” Danny murmurs. “Here’s the forest.”

“Is there…?”

“No, no, uh, it’s no big deal,” Danny says. “It’s all… residual.”

Alex wants to press, but—he doesn’t look around at the strangers in the foyer—this isn’t the best place.

Voices carry softly from the check-in desk.

“It’s cold out there today, isn’t it? I heard on the news we’re supposed to get a few inches tonight,” the woman is saying.

“That right? And after the weather was so nice yesterday?” Yassen says.

Alex tunes out the small talk, eyes wandering over to the sitting room. This B&B is easily one of the coziest places they’re ever going to stay on this criminal road trip, so he feels like he ought to enjoy it while he can. It’s a welcome break from the monotonous chain of motel rooms, if nothing else.

They’re not the only guests, either; there’s an older woman with a book and a teacup on a saucer throwing off curls of steam into the air. At her feet is a golden retriever, lying with its chin on its paws.

When he makes eye contact with it, its feathery tail gives the ground a few solid thumps, big round eyes looking up at him from across the way.

The woman peeks over the arm of her reading chair at the dog and then up to him. She smiles, eyes crinkled with crow’s feet, and closes her book. “You can pet her if you’d like; she likes people, kids especially.”

Alex chooses not to be rankled by that last bit and instead jumps at the chance to pet a dog. He glances at Yassen. Still busy. He crosses the room with a grin.

He crouches down and offers his hand. The golden immediately forgoes the sniff test, and jumps right to licking his palm, nuzzling closer in a clear bid for affection. 

“Okay, okay,” Alex chuckles, working his fingers into her cheeks and behind her ears. Her fur is soft and silky. He looks up at the woman. “What’s her name?”

“Maisie,” the woman says.

“Hi, Maisie girl. You’re so cute, aren’t you?” he coos, watching his accent even now. Maisie’s tail slaps the rug like a drum beat. “She’s adorable. How old is she?”

“Almost a year now,” the woman says, leaning an elbow on her chair.

Maisie sits up, nosing at Alex’s face. Her whiskers tickle his chin as he turns his head away and laughs. He looks to see Danny still sitting stiffly on the ancient couch where Alex left him.

He purses his lips and squishes Maisie’s face. 

“Is it okay if my brother pets her, too?” he asks. 

“Of course, sweetie.” 

He swings back to Danny and grabs him by the sleeve. Danny’s eyes go round, and he pulls back, but he’s not braced to resist. It takes only one sturdy tug for Alex to get him on his feet.

“You gotta pet this dog, dude, she’s so nice,” he says, moving Danny along with him.

Danny stumbles. “Al—Adrian, that’s not a good—”

“If anybody needs to pet this dog, it’s you.”

Alex pushes Danny towards Maisie, and Danny goes stiff. 

Is he afraid of dogs? Alex has just enough time to wonder, before Maisie reacts in kind. 

She stands slowly and despite the fact that Danny makes no further move towards her, she lets out a low sound, hair lifting at the base of her shoulders and tail. 

The tension breaks when her jaws snap open and shut in a high pitched bark—loud enough to hurt his ears in the enclosed space of the sitting room.

Maisie scrambles backwards, getting tangled in her own leash. Her hindquarters hit the central base of the table and rocks it substantially enough that the tea cup falls. Tea splatters the white tablecloth, only half caught by the saucer. 

The woman gasps. “Oh, shoot—”

Maisie’s tail is tucked between her legs and her head is low. The furrows on her snout grow deeper and each bark shows a flash of pearl white teeth. 

She’s afraid of Danny, Alex realizes.

Under the table Maisie lets out a growl that morphs into another pitched bark.  

“Maisie!” the woman exclaims. “Hush!”

But the dog doesn’t calm down; her barking only turns to nervous whines as she cowers beneath the table.

Danny backs up. His steps are slow and measured.

“I’m so sorry,” the lady is saying. “I have no idea what’s gotten into her.”

“It’s okay,” Alex says, hoping to diffuse the situation. “We probably just startled her. Too many people.”

Danny is behind him, and as if removing him from Maisie’s line of sight did the trick, she falls silent, though she doesn’t leave the safety of her chosen den.

“We’ll get going,” Alex says. “Thanks for letting us say hi to her.”

They retreat back towards the counter and he can already feel the look that Yassen has pinned onto them. 

Alex just broke rule one of fucking espionage, after all. 

Don’t stand out. Don’t be memorable. 

His skin burns and nervous sweat prickles on the back of his neck. He shoots Yassen a glare of his own. 

It’s not his fault. 

Except it is. Danny was reluctant. He should have paid attention. 

Stupid.

“Sorry,” Danny mutters, shoulders hunched. Quiet enough it stays between them he says, “Animals can sometimes… tell. Ghosts ‘n stuff.” 

Alex spares a glance backwards. “Uh. Yeah… Makes sense.” So why didn’t the dog go mental when he pet her? “It’s okay. Shit happens.”

“Shit happens,” Danny mumbles back.

It’s been a long time since Danny was inside a house. One actually being lived in, by living people, at least.

It’s nice enough. Quaint—that’s the first word that comes to Danny’s mind, floating in from some dusty part of him that hasn’t had to describe anything as quaint since Sam’s grandma showed off her collectible statuettes of cats in old-timey clothes. 

The floors are well-worn, aged wood peeking out from beneath sprawling rugs. There’s a draft that brings chilly air in from the badly fitted single-pane windows.

The temperature has plummeted over the course of the evening; Danny is enjoying the promise of snow in the air, and the fact that the sun has already dipped below the mountains on the horizon.

What’s less enjoyable is the haunting.

He’d suggested hiding a tree in a forest. He’d known what that would entail. 

Houses like this aren’t allowed to be secretive. They aren’t allowed to sink down into themselves, with all their echoes writhing quietly inside like maggots. They’re open wounds that don’t heal.

Alex had read the information on the house’s historical placard. Even before he did, Danny had felt the heat of flames flushing his skin. The smell of burning hair secreting from between the baseboards. 

Burning, burning, burning. Why did it have to be burning? 

It’s not the same. 

He forces his lungs to expand and contract.

There are other restless dead here, aside from the burning. People who succumbed on or around the property, either to disease or natural causes. Somehow, focusing on them makes him less queasy. 

None of them are hostile. That had been a gamble Danny couldn’t mitigate, bringing them someplace like this. He’d been prepared to handle that possibility, though it wasn’t something he’d been looking forward to doing in such close quarters to Yassen’s eagle eye.

All the same, it’s unpleasant to tread where others are tethered.

More than that, the land itself is… sorrowful. It holds onto the dead as if it can’t stand the idea of being without misery. It’s soaked with conflict—old conflict, before the house was even built. In that way, it’s not unlike any other place he’s been through in the US. That’s what makes it sad. Who needs history class when the dead exist outside of it? When the dead are stuck in it like rats in glue?

Yassen goes through their things again. For what, Danny isn’t sure. Obsessive habit more than anything else, maybe? The thought almost makes him snort. 

Yassen and Alex are good at hiding it, but their anxious energy and paranoia fills the room like a thick mist. Danny’s not sure if it’s the situation as a whole, trapped here like sitting ducks, or if it’s because they’ve been around him for so long. Their room is actually two, separated by a conjoining door that Yassen has decreed be kept open. His room has a king bed, while theirs has two twins—the perfect setup for a real family. 

Alex is telling him about some samurai movie that his friend loves. 

“Did you know it was the origin for the dramatic blood spray thing? Like a few seconds after the death blow, you know what I’m talking about, yeah? You’ve seen it before. It’s been in tons of films and TV by now,” he says, sprawled across the bed spread.

“That’s cool, actually.”

Alex goes on, and Danny stays as engaged as possible, not a simple feat when residual flames lick at the back of his mind. It’s like having a radio on in the background. The moment he starts paying attention to it, it’s all he can hear—the screams of agony that peter off once the fire consumes the last of their nerve endings.

His headache still hasn’t gone away. He figures it won’t anytime soon.

“You know, I’m not exactly one for sharing,” Julius says, as if on cue. And here Danny was thinking they’d have a peaceful evening.

Alex doesn’t react. 

He’s dragged the complimentary notepad off the side table, and he’s drawing some kind of diagram to illustrate the point he’s making about cinematography. Doesn’t look up, doesn’t waver.

Danny focuses on the drawing. He’s not sure what it’s of.

“So before they had digital editing, there were all these really cool tricks for special effects,” Alex is saying.

“It’s crowded here, and none of them are even cognizant enough to mess with. Guess it’s still just you and me, eh?” Julius breathes, matted up and swirling in a place some distance behind him.

Danny ignores him.

The EMF detector sits on the nightstand between the beds, inert but at the ready.

Julius’ presence is a low-lying fog. A yellow, ghosted breath against a smeared windowpane. Not enough to trigger the detector. 

It’s likely Julius won’t expend the energy to manifest further, or fuck with the machinery. Not now, when his only intention is to annoy Danny rather than Alex. 

“Alex ignored me a lot in the beginning too,” Julius says. “I got him to break eventually.” 

Danny has seen the strength of Alex’s will.

He wonders how long it took Julius to chip away at it, even just a little, and icy anger slithers through his stomach.

He doesn’t plan to give Julius the same satisfaction.

.

Dinner is from 6:30 to 8. 

The tables are decently sized, three of them, all with six chairs squeezed around them. They sit tightly in the large dining room. The center of each table is decorated with a cornucopia, spilling brightly colored squash and dried corn—little figures of pilgrims and Native Americans situated together. 

The prepared dinner is tri-tip, mashed potatoes, and an assortment of salad and vegetables, all presented in silver trays with lids that slide open and closed. They’re lined up on a narrow table against the wall. It reminds Danny of a buffet, the kind his dad used to enthuse over at any chance. Usually during family vacations. 

They make plates and sit. Danny stays quiet. The steak feels like rubber between his teeth as he listens to Yassen and Alex, improvising casual conversation.

Sound and energy press against his senses, a high-pressure bubble against his eardrums.

Being around the living is hard. Pretending he’s something he isn’t is hard.

He’s not sure how Alex and Yassen do it so effortlessly.

A man wanders up to their table and introduces himself as “Kathy’s husband” and the other owner, Mr. Ellis. He stands with a hand on the back of Yassen’s chair, a friendly smile carved into splotchy red cheeks. He reminds Danny of a mall Santa. 

Winter means Christmas, Danny supposes. An inevitability. 

In an adjacent room, he hears someone coughing—the memory of someone coughing. His own lungs are heavy. The ground whispers skin lesions. It whispers something like dry earth breaking apart into a hole filled with bodies. 

There’s crosses hung on the walls. 

Danny isn’t very hungry.

“So what brings you guys into Salt Lake City?” asks Mr. Ellis.

What brought them, Danny can’t help but wonder. There’s bodies buried under the floorboards that would love to ask that question. Ask why there’s other people stepping on their spines, on their home soil.

“Just getting outta dodge for a while before they spend Thanksgiving with mom,” Yassen replies. He’s a bit like a mirror, reflecting the perfect picture. It’s not exactly the cover they talked about—not that he expects Yassen to spill every fake detail.

“Ah, I hear ya. Nothing like good ‘ol father-son getaways,” Mr. Ellis says, looking at Danny and Alex. 

He wants to turn invisible. Slide into a dark corner.

“That’s right,” Yassen carries on. “You have any sons?” 

It’s odd to see Yassen with anything other than a neutral expression, but he smiles and walks directly into a conversation that Danny would see only as a minefield. 

“Grown and flown the coop by now. One, my oldest, lives in Alaska now, can you believe that?”

“Beautiful scenery. If you like the cold, that is. What’s he do up there?”

“Fish and Wildlife Service! He never could sit still. Always out doing something or other.” He shakes his head, propping his other hand on his hip. “What about you guys? Doing anything fun while you’re here? The ski resorts just opened for the season.” 

Alex perks up. “We haven’t been to them yet. How are they?” 

“It’s great, if you like the cold.” He winks at Yassen and they both laugh like it was funny. “What’s your name, son? You like skiing?”

“Adrian,” Alex replies easily. “Yeah, I’ve only tried it a few times but I like it a lot. Actually, I’m better at snowboarding.”

“Well, we’ve got some great slopes, you guys should check them out if you have time.” Mr. Ellis smiles.

Alex grins back, and he chatters on about skiing versus snowboarding, the picture of a perfectly average teenager.

When he speaks—when him and Yassen both speak—they sound the part. American.

Alex especially has easily fit himself into the part of a well-off, if somewhat free range kid from midland America. Like the kids that Sam’s parents always wanted her to hang out with.

His stomach lurches. 

He’d understood, of course, they would be masquerading as a family from here on out. But this is… this is almost too familiar.

All of it.

They sound like people from— before. It’s a jarring part of the family playacting he hadn’t expected to be thrown by, hadn’t even thought of it.

As if this wasn’t already weird enough. Calling himself a younger brother again…

“What about you, kiddo?”

His fork slips from his grip and clatters on the ceramic plate. His heart stutters in his chest and the lights in the dining room flicker. It’s been a long time since—

There’s a moment’s silence—a moment that Danny realizes is attention shifting to him. He looks up from his plate and panic flashes through him at the expectant look. 

Shit. What’s a normal vacation thing?

How’s he supposed to think when some stranger just called him—

Salt Lake City is a big city, there’s gotta be some sort of space museum right? 

“Uh, the Space Museum?” he forces out before the silence gets too awkward. 

For a horrifying second Mr. Ellis looks confused. Then he snaps, smile back in full force.

“Oh, you’re talking about the Clark Planetarium! Great place, the wife and I haven’t been since the kids were little.” 

Danny lets out a half breath, and Alex bumps his leg under the table. Alex isn’t looking at him, but the warm reassurance that glows from that single point of contact is a much needed relief.

Yassen shakes his head. “Museums and slopes,” he says. “It’d be great if you two would ever agree on one kind of vacation.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not a nerd,” Alex laughs, elbowing Danny.

At least he doesn’t need to fake talking to Alex. “Better a nerd than a jock.”

“I’m not a jock.”

Danny levels Alex with a flat look, thinking of how he’d scaled up a building and down a crane, and just hoped Danny would follow.

“…Not really,” Alex relents under his stare. “Come on, that’s for football players. I play soccer.”

“I think it’s possible to be a soccer jock.”

“Well, I think you can be a space nerd.”

Mr. Ellis laughs, and aligns himself fully with Yassen on the other side of the table. “Listen, you really gotta treasure the years when they’re young. You blink and,” Mr. Ellis gestures to the two of them, “Look at ‘em, all grown up.”

Yassen plays the part. He appraises the two of them with a perfect replication of pride. His gaze lingers a few seconds longer on Alex than Danny. 

His stomach cramps and he stuffs a piece of now room temperature tri-tip in his mouth, chewing and hoping he’ll stop feeling like he wants to throw up. 

“Time flies,” Yassen says. “It’s like just a short time ago they weren’t even here.” 

Everyone is downstairs, conversations layered one on top of the other. Above them, the floors creak with heavy footsteps. A few people look up and exchange hushed questions of “Did you hear that?” and “It’s just the house settling, relax”—a thin ripple of excitement.

Mr. Ellis’ smile slips.

“Hope you’re not here with ghost hunting on the agenda,” Mr. Ellis scoffs after they pass out of earshot. “Too many of our guests come here looking for devils. The Lord keeps that nonsense well and away from this house.” 

A spike of discomfort travels around the table. Neither Alex or Yassen let it show.

Somewhere in the background, Julius slinks between the space of the walls—a leech without water.

Yassen is quick to answer, an easy breath, less harsh than their host’s disdain. “Our family isn’t interested in any devils, no.” A rigid sliver of the Yassen that Danny has been coming to know is visible for a moment. It soothes over, gone fast. “Historic places have their fair share of ghost stories. But you know kids. Curious.”

“True skeptics then? I’d say you’re in the minority for our clientele.”

Danny would be thrilled if the conversations he got trapped in weren’t about ghosts for once in his life.

“That so?”

“Oh, yes.” Mr. Ellis shakes his head. “Kathy said it’d help us out, being able to advertise this as a haunted location.”

“You don’t agree?”

“It sure gets us business, but…” Mr. Ellis trails off. He hides behind his halting thoughts with a smile. “Well. People come from all around to try and record the goings on in this house.” His previous mirth flickers out like a flame. “Don’t tell the wife, but to be honest with ya, I don’t care for ‘em. Up at all hours, loud and dragging in all their little devices. They disturb the place.”

The disdain is bitter, the true force of it is concealed—only just.

“When I was a kid, we knew better than to be poking at the paranormal and occult.”

“Is that why you had the place cleansed?” Danny says it without thinking—aforementioned curiosity squirming its way out of his mouth. 

They all look at him. There’s a sharp feeling that spikes from Yassen and Alex that Danny doesn’t want to try and find a word for. 

The lights flicker again, a writhing sputter. He grits his teeth.

Mr. Ellis just laughs. “Seems like you did your research.” 

His mouth is dry. “Uh, yeah,” he stumbles. 

“I didn’t catch your name,” Mr. Ellis says.

The scrutiny of eyes back on him makes his skin crawl.

“Damien,” he says. 

“Well, Damien. Yeah, we did. Had the priest from our church come in and say a few words some five years back.” 

This time it’s Alex’s turn to not be able to hold off on his curiosity. “But it didn’t do anything?” 

“For a little while, it did. Things got quieter, but we already had the reputation.” 

“Huh,” Alex says, seemingly satisfied with the non-answer. 

“Anyway, I’ll let you get back to your meal,” Mr. Ellis says, flashing them that cheery grin of his. “Nice talkin’ to you. Let us know if you need anything and we’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”

The rest of dinner passes with less incident.

Danny’s body doesn’t get the memo. His senses stay on high alert.

Their room is peaceful when they return after dinner. Well, as peaceful as it can get.

In this house his skin feels flushed, burned—too hot. The desire to drop the temperature of the room—the house— to something more comfortable begs from a small dark place in his mind. 

It’s the last thing he should do.

Yassen vanishes into his conjoining room. His footsteps are a consistent patter through the connecting doorway.

Alex sits on the corner of one of the beds. The springs creak. It’s quiet, but it still makes the corners of Danny’s mouth pinch.

“How could you tell they cleansed the house once?” Alex asks. 

He should have figured he would, after how Alex and Yassen reacted to his incredible lack of ability to hold his tongue down there. Stupid.

With a shrug of his shoulder, he says, “It wasn’t… right. Not for this location. It needs more than just some priest.” 

Alex tilts his head. “What does it need?”

“Someone with a connection to the land, I guess. Someone to remove the residual energy that’s sticking around. It’d feel lighter.”

“How does it feel now?” Alex asks.

His curiosity is open—genuine. Danny glances toward the doorway Yassen vanished through. Can’t help it.

“Warm,” he says. “Too warm.”

“Stifling?” Alex says quietly.

Danny nods.

It occurs to him—a few sentences in. In the privacy of this room, low voices, Alex sounds British again.

“I’ll never get used to how easy you can do that,” Danny says.

Alex accepts the change of topic with only a minimally confused tilt of his eyebrows. “Do what?”

“The accent.”

Alex laughs, a little. “You should hear Yassen. He can switch even better than me. And he always sounds like a native speaker.”

“How do you do it?”

“It’s subtle, but if you spend enough time listening to the way people talk, you learn how to listen for the differences, break them down, and apply them—there’s always tells.” Alex shrugs. He’s American again, just like that. “Right now, I’m copying you.”

“Do I… sound like that?”

“Mostly.” Alex says. “I’m also making it a little more pretentious. After all, we’re rich.” He works the burner flip phone out of his pocket and brandishes it. “Remember?”

No wonder he sounds like the kids Sam’s parents approved of.

Danny shakes his head. “Rich—right. With the dinner parties and all.”

Alex smiles. “Now you’re getting it.”

A noxious pressure crowds against the back of Danny’s skull. Humid. Stinging like steam off a boiling pot. The EMF detector on Alex’s night stand beeps. 

“Look at you two, pretending to be a little family. How precious,” Julius purrs.

His voice rolls down the walls like condensation. Leaving trails like snail slime.

Alex stiffens, and before Danny can say anything—

The pain is a sudden burst. More intense than before. It shoots from a sting to a starburst. There’s rain in the back of his throat.

Julius snorts.

Danny closes his eyes and breathes through it. It gives him something to focus on; in this form he can’t exactly self soothe pain the way he usually does. 

More than anything, it’s annoying.  

“Danny?” Alex asks, haltingly. He shifts, reaching out with concern written all over his face. But he stops, and there’s no question why.

Julius wavers into the plane, a grotesque heat mirage, just the suggestion of a humanoid shape, the sharpness of carnivorous incisors. Rending apart the molecules in the air, centimeter by centimeter.

Julius prods Danny at his edges, needling, searching. For what, he isn’t sure. 

“It’s almost too bad you can’t feel the things your new little brother can,” Julius announces, a smile ringing in his voice. There’s a tenor to it—put on for show. Meant for Alex, even as he eyes Danny. “You know, the flames here remind me of a certain someone.” 

Alex’s jaw tenses, like a wrench pulled taut. Danny can feel the effort it takes Alex to keep his response behind his teeth, pulling at his larynx.

Whatever Julius is talking about, it twists Alex up inside. Ugly, gnarled grief, solid like the knots of a tree trunk.

Danny clenches his hands into fists. His nails prick the overwarm fleshy base of his thumbs. There’s sweat on the back of his neck. Uncomfortable and salty.

Julius’ voice goes floaty. “You ever wonder what that was like, Alex? Tongues of heat, isn’t that an interesting phrase? Licks you up. I think—”

Alex twitches. It’s minute, but Danny sees it through the muscle of his jaw, and Danny’s heard enough.

He takes a step forward. The skin across his knuckles is thin. 

Alex’s eyes flicker over.

“Ooh, the attack dog is coming,” Julius stage-whispers. He wavers close to Alex’s ear—too close, shifting Alex’s hair against his temple. “Think he’ll bite this time?”

Danny’s lip starts to curl.

“Ignore him,” Alex says flatly. “He’s just taking the piss.”

Danny knows—he knows— but it’s difficult to squash the building kernel of fury in his chest.

Julius slinks closer to Alex. A snake in the undergrowth, fangs grinning—a wide mouth, spiraling and snarling.

It’s Alex he’s reaching for, but it’s Danny he’s watching.

Danny knows exactly what Julius is trying to do.

Danny moves before making the conscious decision to, and then he’s between Alex and Julius, slamming a wall down and snatching the outstretched limb. 

Julius’ wrist is sharp, thin bone. Badly concealed under the gelatinous fog of his body—or the idea of it. It’s like uncooked fat in a pan.

The EMF beeps faster and Julius freezes—the energy turns staticky and heavy around them, dancing along the edges of something close to a full physical manifestation. 

“See what happens.” Danny says it like a dare, like a cold promise.

Julius squirms—trying to make distance. His desperation is sudden and strong, high and sweet. 

Danny doesn’t give an inch.

Julius’ eeling veers into desperate yanking, and in turn, Danny tightens his grip. In this all-too living form, his fingertips are dull, with too much give. Julius’ unrotted flesh digs under his nails like mud, the stuff that’s sludgy from a storm, that’s slick like bile.

Staring down at Julius like this, Danny sees him for exactly what he is.

There’s a moment of understanding in Julius—Danny can feel the rancid hatred, the bluff called.

Julius cowers, hissy and petulant in his defeat. He wrinkles out of the visual spectrum as soon as Danny lets him.

His hand feels wet. Dripping and slimy, and he can still smell the rot. But it’s not—not quite.

He shakes his hand out, scoffing under his breath. “Asshole.”

The room breathes. Like an exhale, a tension eases out of the four walls. Danny lets his shoulders loosen with it.

And all at once, he becomes aware of a different presence; there’s no sound that gives it away, no shift in the shadows, but it’s there all the same.

Yassen, watching him.

When Danny turns, slowly. Yassen is standing in the open doorway that conjoins both rooms. Drawn by what, Danny isn’t sure, until he remembers the beeping of the EMF that had underlined Julius’ words.

Yassen stares at him, like a scientist studying patterns under a microscope.

Danny shifts away from Alex, flushing under the scrutiny.

Alex is the one to speak. “That was… How did you—” 

Danny’s mouth is dry. He drags a hand along the back of his neck.

“I said I wouldn’t let him…” He shrugs. “You know.” 

He glances at Yassen, trying to catalog his response. His emotions are harder to grasp than Alex’s—contained, kept close.

Yassen only inclines his head slightly, and the taste of appreciation, gratitude even, makes Danny’s stomach churn.

“Shit man, no kidding. Thanks,” Alex says, still looking disbelieving.   

“Yeah. No problem.”

.

It’s fifteen minutes after midnight when Alex slips out of their room.

Danny has been pretending to be asleep for hours, listening to Alex and Yassen breathe—wishing he could be sprawled out on the roof, breathing in the freezing air and watching idle flakes of snow spiral down on top of him.

Yassen had fallen asleep an hour ago after settling down. His breathing is even slower and deeper than normal—faint, with a wall separating their rooms, even with the door stoppered open. Danny has done his best to sync his own breath with it, just for a change of pace from matching his timing to Alex.

Alex gets up carefully and slowly, Danny’s burner phone still tucked away. Danny knows exactly why he’s sneaking out. 

He waits ten seconds after Alex eases the door closed before he sits up himself. His head pounds as he pushes himself off the bed, and he pauses to let it subside slightly. He’s not sure if it’s because of Julius or lack of sleep—probably both. 

He’s well hidden by shadow as he slinks out of the room, stepping carefully over the thin carpet so as not to alert anyone. He phases through the door and watches as Alex walks slowly down the hall to the stairwell, one hand trailing along the banisters. The floorboards creak, but then, they’d been creaking on and off since they’d arrived.

When Danny slips down after him, he can hear the dial tone of the phone echo faintly in the enclosed space of the hallway. Alex cuts through a living room and shoulders out the back, easing the old squeaky door along on its hinges. 

He waits on the porch, phone against his ear, other arm pulled close around himself. 

Danny lingers a few paces back, lets himself fade to invisibility, and nudges the door open a crack. It’s mercifully silent for the inch he needs, but he’s careful to make sure his sneakers don’t scuff on the hardwood. Even if he can’t be seen, he can still make noise.

The call gets picked up, and there’s a familiar feminine voice over the tinny speaker.

“You better have a damn good explanation, Alex.”

Alex grimaces, but it doesn’t overshadow the concern in his expression. Danny can only see it in profile, but that’s enough.

“Kyra, I—” 

“—I have to find out through MI6’s database that you’ve been AWOL with a Scorpia assassin this entire time? And you just decided not to tell us?”

Scorpia? Probably the name of Yassen’s “former employer.” Danny can’t find it within himself to be surprised at the “assassin” aspect. 

Alex breathes out heavily through his nose and closes his eyes.

“Listen, ‘m sorry, yeah? I told you I was okay, and I meant that. I don’t exactly have time to explain right now just—”

“Okay? Mate, what part of this is okay? You’re with the bloke that killed Ian.” It’s a new voice that says it, a boy their age. British, unlike the girl. 

Alex’s face creases and Danny can feel sadness bleed into the air.

Ian. Yassen killed someone Alex knew?

“Where are you? We can figure out a way to come get you.”

Panic strikes, sudden and raw. “No. Don’t come looking for me. I’m serious, Tom. Either of you. The last thing you lot need is getting mixed up in my shite again.” 

These are clearly Alex’s friends from back home. It sends a slow and burning pain through Danny. 

What he’d give for a phone call… To hear Sam and Tucker’s voices again and let them know that he’s okay.

Technically, he could. He still remembers their cell phone numbers, and beyond that their home landlines. Has had them long since memorized from the days before he had his own cell phone. 

The idea sits in a haze of soured nostalgia.

He imagines that call would go somewhat like this. He’s dead, and he needs to stay that way. 

“Are you being held against your will?” Kyra cuts back in.

Alex drags a hand down his face. “Fuckin’ hell. No, I’m not. I just need to know what MI6 has on us.”

“By ‘us’ do you mean the fucking assassin? Or whoever the hell picked up the phone yesterday?” Kyra asks.

“Both—neither,” Alex stumbles.

“Alex, if you’re in trouble, we can help. We always have.” It’s Tom again, and Danny doesn’t have to know who he is to hear the ache, the desperation in his voice.

Danny can feel this conversation—these people—ungluing Alex’s carefully-assembled composure.

“I told you, I’m fine. But I won’t be if MI6 finds me, so please. What do they have?”

“What the hell do you mean you won’t be if MI6 finds you?” Kyra asks.

“We just won’t be—I won’t be.”

There’s a hesitant, heavy silence on the other end. “Because…?”

“Shit went down, alright? A lot of shit. But I made my fuckin’ choice to go, and MI6 should be thanking us for dropping Scorpia in their bloody lap. A pretty damn good retirement gift, if you ask me.” 

“Aren’t they the lesser of two evils right now?”

The heat of Alex’s his vehemence makes the air taste like gunpowder. “No. I’m sick of being their dog. They don’t give a shit, they never have.” 

“And Gregorovich does?”

“This isn’t about that,” Alex snaps.

A sigh and shuffle scratch out from the phone. “Okay. Fine. About MI6, I’m with you, mate, but seriously? This is a little extreme, don’t you think? I mean I know… After… what I mean is—if this is about Jack—”

“How could it not be about Jack?!” Alex snarls. “I’m fucking done, Tom. I’m done. I saw a way out, and I took it.”

There’s a tense beat of silence and then Kyra speaks. “Yeah, okay. So you keep saying. But what does that mean? This way out of yours is… what exactly? Becoming an assassin? Working with one?”

Alex shakes his head, pacing on the porch. The old wood rumbles lightly beneath each step. “No. Listen, I appreciate your offer to help. I really do.” Alex’s voice drops, raw and sincere. “But I’m done putting people in danger. I won’t let anyone else die because of me.”

Danny can’t help it. His grip on his core slips and the low lights in the side living room and porch erupt into fitful shuddering. He doesn’t need to breathe, but it’s like the wind has been knocked out of him, leaving him floundering for it back.

Alex goes still. 

Danny can taste the recognition in his gut like an oil spill.

Shit.

“Look, just—text this number any info you can tonight, and then don’t call—don’t text again. Not unless I reach out first. And stop worrying about me,” Alex says.

“Alex—”

Alex hangs up.

Danny cuts his losses and backs up a few steps, retreating around the corner, out of sight from Alex. At least for now. He lets visibility take hold of him again and slouches against the wall.

Alex turns the corner, not looking surprised in the least to find him standing there.

He really needs to get his shit under control—a pretty sorry excuse for a stealthy ghost.

He says the first thing that comes to mind. “Sorry… Curious.” 

Alex sighs, shoving the phone into his pocket. “How much did you hear?”

“…Enough.”

Alex turns, heading right back outside.

Danny hesitates. He’s sure he’s not invited to follow, but…

Alex doesn’t look back when the door squeaks under Danny’s hand. 

Alex watches him, but he’s carefully neutral. Non-reactive.

It would work on anyone other than Danny, but Danny can feel it; like choppy waves, rippling.

Danny shifts. He worries at his lip and decides to sit down next to Alex on the first step off the covered porch. “Friends of yours?” 

Alex lets out a breath, casting him a sideways glance. “Yeah.”

“Mm.” Danny is quiet for a moment. “Seems like they care about you. A lot.”

Alex swallows thickly, eyes down at the ground between his feet. Guilt winds through the air, acrid like smoke. He nods.

Danny moves his attention away from Alex into the dimly lit backyard. It’s filled with faint shapes of bird feeders, a metal birdbath and a water feature that probably stopped working years ago.

The snow is falling harder now from a faintly orange sky, sticking to the blades of still green grass but melting on impact with the black stepping stones that lead off the back steps.

“I get it, you know,” he says. 

He feels rather than sees Alex’s attention move to him.

“Why you don’t want them involved,” he adds. He turns back to Alex and meets his gaze. 

What Alex feels is tangled up in the air around them like a ball of yarn,… but it’s more positive than negative. It sharpens to a point and Alex takes a breath like he’s going to speak—ask something—but he stops. The guilt prickles back. Whatever it is, he lets it go.

“I, um…” Danny rubs a hand up and down his left upper arm—as if he could work a feeling other than pain or numbness back into it. 

He shouldn’t say what he’s about to say.

“I left friends at home, too,” he admits. 

Faint surprise comes from Alex. About what, he isn’t sure, but it’s followed by something softer—trust? Gratitude, maybe. 

“If… something happened to them, I…” He wants to say that he couldn’t live with himself but—well. He already can’t. He squeezes his arm, burning starbursts of pain, forcing his mouth to move again. “So, yeah. I get it. I don’t blame you.” 

Alex’s gaze lingers on him awhile, that whispered feeling growing into a murmur.

“Thanks,” Alex says, eyes moving to the backyard. “They’re great. And I appreciate that they want to help, but…”

“Yeah. How much do they… know? About you.” He tries to keep himself from asking but sue him, he’s curious. “Seems like a good amount.”

Alex shifts, tugging at his earlobe and a half-smile taking up his face. “Yeah. They know most of the shit that’s gone on. Up until recently, that is.” The smile slips. “My best mate, he’s been with me since the beginning.”

“Beginning of what?”

Alex winds tight.

Danny stiffens alongside him. “Uh—sorry. Don’t. Don’t answer that.”

Alex shakes his head with a soft breath. “Nah, you’re alright. We’ve been friends for years. So, yeah, since the beginning of my… time with MI6.”

“And the girl?”

Alex shrugs a shoulder. “Met her about a year ago or so.” He folds his arms over his lap and something flickers through his expression—something more—something bad. “She’s a hacker. Knows her shit. It’s why, despite what Yassen says, I trust her to watch my back. Not let anyone trace us when I reach out to her.”

A hacker. For a moment he allows himself to wonder if Tucker is still hacking into the school network to change his grades. It’s a bittersweet thought.

“She got into MI6? ‘Knows her shit’ sounds like an understatement.”

Alex snorts. “The first thing I ever learned about her was that she hacked the Tokyo stock exchange, so yeah.”

Taking the corporate world down a peg? If Sam was here she’d probably have that devilish smile on her face. Danny can almost see it—her turning to Tucker and whacking his shoulder, See? Why don’t you do that sorta thing? 

Uh, because I don’t want to go to federal prison? Damn.

Please, we’re minors, they’d let you off easy.

“…don’t know much about hacking ‘n that,” Alex is saying. “Basic principles. But she…” 

He trails off and gives Danny a look. 

Danny can see the weighing of options—of trust—happening behind his eyes. 

“She gave herself a backdoor into the MI6 database when she helped me, and by extension the Department, take down some whackjob that wanted to nuke half the countries on Earth.”

Danny blinks, not sure what to do with that information. He’d heard Alex mention it in the car, but…

“So you were… what? A spy?”

Alex’s face darkens and he looks away with a sigh. Lukewarm helplessness squirms through the air—fingers of gray tainting every other emotion.

“Dunno what else you’d call it.”

Danny has more questions. A shit ton, actually. First being: isn’t that super fucking illegal? But given the infected mood, he just hums in response.

Alex clears his throat. “What about your friends?”

Danny tries not to let it show on his face—he really does. But he can’t. 

And he knows Alex sees it.

“What about them?” he says, stiff.

Alex shrugs. “I guess… What do they know about you and your situation?” 

Danny swallows. “Nothing. Better that way. I left after… after it happened.” 

Alex’s lips twist and opens his mouth to say something but the phone in his pocket vibrates a single time. He stops, exchanging a look with him and retrieves it, swiping open the message. 

Alex makes no effort to hide it, so he reads it too.

“THEY HAVE BORDER CROSSING STILLS. U.S.-CANADA. 6 DAYS AGO. THEY PULLED K-UNIT. THEY’RE PROBABLY IN THE US ALREADY. IT’S A JOINT OPERATION BETWEEN CIA, FBI AND U.S. HOMELAND SECURITY NOW.” 

“Shit,” Alex breathes, his grip on the phone tight enough it makes his flushed hands turn white.

Another message comes in as they finish reading the first.

“I SURE HOPE YOU KNOW WHAT THE FUCK YOU’RE DOING.”

Alex’s anxiety is raw—palpable. He turns the phone screen off and shoves it back into his jacket pocket and drops his face into his hands, rubbing at his eyes.

“Awesome—just fuckin’ great,” he mutters.

Danny swallows, grasping for words, for something to help. “That was six days ago though, right? You could be anywhere in the US by now.”

“Yeah,” Alex heaves. “That works in our favor. Plus we’re dragging you along with us.” He sends Danny a smile.

“We can always ask her for more updates too, right?”

Alex nods, tilting his palm. “It’s not a guarantee that MI6 will have updates on everything. You’d be shocked how much they hide even from themselves.” 

“Well, it comes with the territory, right?” Danny scoffs. “Spies, innit?” he says, mimicking Alex’s accent. He leans over and bumps his shoulder against Alex. 

Alex makes a face, something between cringing and laughter.

“Have you gotten any James Bond jokes before, or would I be the first to take a swing at it?”

“Mate, you’ve no idea. Tom was insufferable.”

He laughs. “Good, cause I was really struggling to come up with one off the top of my head.”

Alex laughs too. The conversation settles into silence between them.

With a groan, Alex slumps backwards, lying flat on the porch, staring up at the underside of the porch roof. Danny looks up too. He spots an old, abandoned wasp nest tucked in one of the corners of the support beams.

“I’m gonna have to tell Yassen.”

Danny grimaces, looking over his shoulder at Alex. He doesn’t exactly envy him.

He fights off a yawn to say, “He’d be more mad if you didn’t tell him though, right?”

“Yeah.”

Danny hums, kicking the side of Alex’s shoe with his own.

“He doesn’t stay mad at you for long, though.”

Alex quirks a brow up. “What makes you say that?”

“Pf, because it’s true?”

Alex searches his face for a second before his eyes drift off. He stays like that awhile. Danny can feel him sorting through another onslaught of tangled and conflicting emotions.

He leaves him to it, focused on watching the snow fall, building up on partially bare branches. The yawn he’d been combating finally pushes through and he blinks the water from his eyes. The quiet yard is entirely too tempting right now.

The snow numbs the hiss of flames.

He’s still staring sightlessly into the streaks of white smudging the sky when he hears Alex sit up again. Alex’s attention is a solid weight, sinking into him.

He turns and tilts his head.

“You look tired,” is what Alex says.

Alex’s anxiety has become far too familiar already. He looks away.

“Have you been sleeping?” Alex presses.

Huh. Has he?

The hotel from this morning hardly feels real. None of this does. It was before that, he thinks.

Twenty-four-ish hours, then? He’s gone longer. He’d gotten emotional energy, anyways.

“I’m fine. I’ve always been a night owl,” he says, waving a hand.

He hopes that Alex will say something to tease him. Instead, he seems all the more severe.

“Is it…” He falters, chewing on his bottom lip. “Is it Julius?”

“What?” That gets him to look at Alex again.

“Julius. Is he…” 

“No.” 

“Why not? How can you be sure?”

He tries to soften his expression. “It’s not. I promise. My sleep schedule is just fucked right now. That’s all.”

Alex raises a skeptical eyebrow, but something stops him from pushing further, nudges him off that path. His face settles into something wry as he inclines his head.

“I know how that feels,” he says, and it means I won’t press right now. “Nap when you can, and you’ll get used to it eventually.”

Danny hums. “Yeah,” he says a little bit too late.

Alex doesn’t comment on it. He huffs, sitting up again. “It’s fuckin’ freezing. How’re you not cold?”

Danny grins. “I think it’s nice.”

“I’m not joking, it’s like my knees are locked in place, man.” He stretches out his legs and rubs his palms over his jeans.

Danny rolls his eyes with a scoff. “Now you’re just being dramatic.” He stands up. “But fine, let’s go inside. Baby.”

He offers Alex a hand to help him up—his left hand.

Alex takes it, and he tugs Alex up onto his feet, steadying him for a second on the slick steps.

“Christ, are you sure you aren’t cold? Your fingers are like ice.”

Danny pulls away with a small laugh. “They usually are.”

He’s reaching for the door when Alex says, “Oh. Wait. Let me give you back the…” 

Alex’s hand goes to his left jacket pocket. He stops, brow wrinkling, before he looks up. Danny flaunts the phone.

“When did—” His confusion shifts to understanding and then a slow smile.

“Fast learner, remember?” Danny says. And the intangibility doesn’t hurt. But Alex doesn’t need to know about that.

Alex rolls his eyes. “Alright, show off.”

Danny slips the burner back into his hoodie, shooting Alex one last smug grin before he pulls the door open and they walk back inside.

Yassen wakes on high alert, which isn’t unusual—no, what’s unusual is Alex’s hand on his shoulder.

The room is dim. One of the boys flicks a lightswitch, bathing the room in overwarm light. Deep shades resolve into figures, resolve into detail.

Alex’s mouth and eyes are pinched. Jaw held like there’s glass between his molars.

When Alex is on edge, it tends to be for good reason.

Yassen sits up sharply—Alex draws back a step, his heels crunching over the old carpet underlay. Yassen hadn’t realized just how his adrenaline had spiked until the rough grip of his handgun settles against his palm, a grimly reassuring presence.

He doesn’t flick the safety, but it’s a near thing.

“Typical Yassen,” Alex says with false levity. He turns to Danny. “If we ever see him unarmed, it’s probably an impostor.”

“Noted,” Danny says. His voice is a rasp, and he hovers past the curve of Alex’s shoulder. A dark shadow.

The way he glances over the gun is not skittish. It’s cut-and-dry, informational. Nothing like the wary discomfort he displays when Yassen handles the Foundation weapon.

“Alex,” Yassen says, sharp. “What is it?”

“Well,” Alex says, “it might be bad.”

“Bad,” Yassen repeats.

“No, no, not that bad,” Alex rushes to say, then pauses and grimaces. “Well… maybe a little that bad.”

“Alex.” Yassen flicks a warning into his tone. “A field situation is not the time for indirect—”

“I have intel,” Alex cuts him off. His attention slides to the wall behind Yassen for a moment, before it hardens. “It’s really important, so don’t be cross about how I got it.”

Tension coalesces between Yassen’s eyes. “And just how did you get it, little Alex?”

“…I think you know,” Alex says. “And before you say anything, no, I don’t regret it. Kyra isn’t going to sell me out.” 

Yassen levels Alex with a stony stare, just long enough for his defiance to crack, before he says, “I suppose we will see.” 

What’s done is done. He won’t turn down valuable information, regardless of the source.

He throws back the scratchy blanket and swings his legs off the bed. On the dresser, the alarm clock glows red numbers that reflect vaguely on the surface of the wood. It’s only been three hours since he fell asleep, but he’s seen situations in the field change more dramatically in less time.

“There are terms that you will need to adhere to in your future communications with your… friend,” Yassen says. “We will discuss them soon.”

“Okay, sure,” Alex says.

“Now, report,” Yassen says, switching to French.

Alex’s face immediately creases again. “Really?”

“Yes. Begin—time is precious, little Alex.”

Alex groans and throws an exasperated look over his shoulder to Danny, who looks confused. 

“We don’t have to do that. Danny already knows everything,” Alex says.

“Everything,” Yassen repeats, dry. He’s certain that’s not the case.

Alex frowns at him. “The important stuff,” he says. “This involves him too, now. Isn’t that what you told me?”

He gives up. “You are misconstruing my meaning.”

“I don’t think I am,” Alex says.

“Does it really matter?” Danny asks.

Yassen and Alex both look to Danny, who rubs his upper left arm. 

“I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere for a while,” Danny says. “Anyway, who would I tell?”  

“Yeah. And even if he did tell anyone, who would believe him? They’d think he’d broken out of the fuckin’ mental hospital.” Alex swings a hand out towards Danny. He double takes. “No offense, mate.” 

“None taken.” 

It was naive to think that Alex would not immediately form a team with someone his age—someone who shares more of his experiences than even Ms. Vashenko-Chao.

Yassen catches Alex’s self-satisfied gaze. “That’s no longer the primary concern. Not all dissemination of information is willing.”

Alex’s expression shutters, smirk draining. His eyes travel along the wall behind Yassen. Yassen knows the particular dark hallway Alex’s mind goes down.

Danny looks between the two of them. The underlying implication seems to not affect him to the level it should. 

“Yeah, alright. Point taken,” Alex sighs. “But because of Julius, Danny knows plenty already, yeah? We’re wasting time, dancing around all this shit. He deserves to know what he’s dealing with if he wants to stay.”

“Which I do,” Danny says. “I told you, I owe you.”

Yassen rubs a small circle into his temple.

If nothing else, at least Alex has reasonable taste in friends.

“Do not expect me to answer any questions beyond necessary information,” Yassen says. “I expect discretion and respect. These are serious matters, even if Alex—” he looks pointedly at the boy, who is studying a corner— “does not always treat them with the gravity they deserve.” 

Danny shrugs. “Okay.”

Yassen studies Danny. His hair hangs around his face tangled at the long ends, like he’s still learning what it means to be civilized. He holds himself just a little bit more like a wild animal: wary, ready to run. It is familiar. 

What is less familiar is his static demeanor. Alex, when not undercover, holds himself on his sleeve. He’s a teenager, rough around the edges—a little xitrožopy anytime he can get away with it. Danny, right now, reminds him of a different wild animal: Alex, in Malagosto, eyes flashing, quiet and placid like a coldwater lake. Rothman’s little Shrike.

Hunter’s little Cossack.

Danny said he was the same age as Alex. Yassen wonders if he was accurately representing himself or not. Either way, he’s old enough to know better than to show his cards to them before securing enough trust in return. Old enough to know how to be scared.

Yassen can’t afford to be overly choosy with his allies at this juncture. 

“Fine,” Yassen sighs. He turns his attention back to Alex. “What did she uncover?”

Relief flashes quickly over Alex’s face, but it’s soon covered. “It’s MI6. They know when and where we entered the country, and they’re collaborating with U.S. agencies—and they know I’m with you.”

Cold fingers rake up Yassen’s spine. He knew it was only a matter of time. He only wishes it was not while the Foundation was crawling through the city and ensuring they could not leave. 

“Go on.”

“They probably think I’m being held against my will, or something. Kyra and Tom sure did.”

He’s not surprised that this is the baseline assumption. At the very least, it’s the most likely cover story the Department has fed to the US to gain their help: dangerous assassin kidnaps vulnerable child. “I’m sure they do. But what they think changes very little for our situation.”

“They sent me to Scorpia, and they still think I’m a child who can’t protect myself or make my own decisions.” Alex throws up his hands, voice tilting into hiss. 

“They are choosing the narrative for their own conveniences. It is fruitless to think about.”

Instead of calming, Alex scowls harder still. “I know that, but it doesn’t make it any less fucking condescending.”

“Then let this be an advantage to you: they will be underestimating you. It will be satisfying and tactical when you prove them wrong.” 

This, at last, garners a smile from him.

“When did MI6 receive this information?”

“Six days ago,” Alex says. “And because of the border hopping, we get the other agencies, too. CIA and FBI, to start. Homeland security….” His face twists. “And she said they pulled K-Unit.”

“Then both Scorpia and the Foundation already know our approximate whereabouts as well.”

“…Maybe they don’t. You can’t be sure.” Alex asks it hopefully—but the grimace of his mouth tells Yassen it’s a false hope.

“They have their sources,” Yassen says dryly, more for Danny’s benefit. “We must act as if they know.”

Alex sighs heavily. “Fine. That makes sense.”

With so many fingers in the metaphorical pie, Yassen can’t think of a channel that won’t be compromised in some way—

“If it’s K-Unit,” Alex starts again, expression hard, “you can’t kill them.”

“Alex,” he warns. This is the same argument they’ve had before, hidden in a different disguise.

“No. You don’t know them. They’re probably only doing it because the Department fed them the same story. Fox—Wolf, I might be able to talk to them. They just want to make sure I’m safe.” 

“Their intentions mean nothing when the end result will be the same.” 

Alex’s jaw flexes. Like he wants to speak, argue—of course he does.

The urge to tense zings through Yassen’s shoulders. He is not interested in wasting time going in circles with Alex; if he needs to force the issue off the docket, he will.

But Danny shifts before the argument can catch. It’s a short movement, but sharp—his fingers snag Alex’s sleeve. His gaze tracks through Yassen, then beyond.

“Something’s here,” Danny says. His voice is low, urgent.

Alex turns. “Wha—” 

The EMF in the other room kicks on and starts its wailing. 

Unease settles into Yassen’s chest, shifting like a bird in a nest.

The ecto-pistol is tucked away in the side of the duffle bag, within reach of the bed. He retrieves it in a swift movement.

“Other than the… other ghosts,” Alex surmises. There’s a wavering, urgent note at the back of his voice, just like the one that wrapped its cold fingers around the base of Yassen’s spine. “Like—Julius?”

“Yes. Kind of. But stronger. Older.” His eyes are flickering. “Malicious. It’s—”

He doesn’t finish his description.

The feeling settles over the room like a cloud of neurotoxin. Yassen, despite not being a stranger to it, has never had it aimed at him. 

The stillness of his chest—of the entire room—makes the movement of their visitor all the more noticeable.

It emerges through the ceiling, head first, heedless of the matter.

Its limbs reflect dull lamp light, pallor skin and deep set eyes. Its weight shifts like water over rocks as it crawls, ropy muscle bunching and rolling.

There’s a part of Yassen that wishes he could be so naive as to not have seen this coming—he’d known this was a possibility since they left Venice. It just seems that he’d miscalculated how likely it would be. 

Scorpia has found them.

Dr. Three has found them.

Their limited window of time—their movement in the true shadows of the world—gone. Spent. Curse their useless contact.

Apparently, they really are so valuable as to warrant the skill of Dr. Three’s pet. It is rare that he deigns to dirty his own hands directly. He should, at this point, have his hands clasped behind his back, that amused nothing in his eyes, telling them they should count themselves so lucky.

Chert.

“Found you, my prey…” it says, its voice low and distorted. There’s a quality to it that’s almost mechanical—filtered.

When it drops to the floor in front of the boys, there’s hardly a sound, just a soft thump and whine of wood. It pulls itself on all fours in a circle around them.

“I was told there was only one child,” it says.

Alex’s eyes are stretched wide, looking at the Skinner for the first time. His breath is tight, whistling from his nose.

It can’t stand at its full height. It hunches on its long limbs, neck craned down to look over them as it comes to a stop. Its attention moves to Danny. His posture is rigid, still next to Alex. Despite the obvious fear, his eyes are also dark, looking directly at Skinner—a look that echoes the expression he’d worn when he put himself between Alex and Julius.

“Now you are interesting,” Skinner says, its head tilting and closing the gap between them. Mimics as though pausing to think. “I see no harm in retrieving both specimens.”

Its voice—its very being—digs Rorschach fingers into the soft, vulnerable tissue folds of Yassen’s brain. A toxin, soaked up by all the soft, living parts of his body—tendons, heart, brain. Air is something that is in short supply.

He still remembers the refrigerator in Vladimir Sharkovsky’s apartment.

Can taste bittersweet kartoshkas. Cold blinis piled with a jam so purple it’s black. Olivye salad. The first tomato that burst between his teeth, the freshest thing he’d tasted since—

Yassen stares into Sharkovsky’s plate.

Fine china, thin at the edges. Gold-rimmed, and decorated with a leafy vine.

The herring is plated elegantly, befitting a New Year’s banquet. The cut displays fish, potato, and onion. Vivid beet turns the top stark red, but for a sprig of garnish placed diagonally.

Two dozen identical plates array down an endless table.

Two dozen sets of eyes drill into him.

“Get on with it, boy.”

The fork in his hand is like a death sentence.

Sharkovsky grins.

“Well? We’re hungry.”

The skin of Yassen’s knuckles feels thin, strained. The fork handle digs deep grooves into his palm and fingers. He forces every emotion into his hand instead of his face as he meets Sharkovsky’s eyes.

He steps forward.

Carefully, he separates a single mouthful of the fish from the corner of Sharkovsky’s generous serving. Shreds of beet paint the metal pink.

The first thing that hits his tongue is the creamy richness of it, almost overwhelming. It’s sweet beneath that, with sharp vinegar right on its heels.

The tongs of his fork clink as he sets it down. The table is wood, but a vast pane of glass lays overtop. His own face reflects up at him.

His birthday had passed at some point, unmarked. He certainly feels older.

Perhaps he won’t make it to sixteen.

Perhaps this is the mouthful that will land his corpse in the freezer downstairs.

The fish is like glue in his throat. He forces it down.

The roiling in his stomach is one he knows well—it’s not from poison.

To Sharkovsky, he nods. He takes his fork, and slides backwards to melt into the wallpaper once more.

“Yassen. A moment.”

Sharkovsky, apparently, has other ideas.

It’s the first time Yassen has been addressed by “name” during one of the house’s formal dinners. He already knows it doesn’t mean anything good.

He steps back into place, polished shoes near silent on the wood floor.

There could be a hundred dishes on the table: mixed salads, roasted vegetables, Cornish hens, salmon, caviar, bread… decadent things. Champagne, vodka, coffee. Desserts would come next. 

It’s the most extravagant feast Yassen has been to yet. Perhaps that’s normal for the New Year. This is Yassen’s first. Perhaps Sharkovsky wants him to demonstrate the safety of each and every dish before the dinner commences.

If only Yassen were so lucky.

Sharkovsky leans back in his chair. He already looks like the cat that got the cream. Chatter at the far end of the table falls away. 

“Tonight we are celebrating something more than the New Year,” Sharkovsky announces. “This coming month also marks one year of my newest employee’s service. A toast!”

Sharkovsky reaches for his vodka. The heavy-bottom glass is already near empty.

“To Yassen’s first year of survival!” 

The guests laugh. Uproarious.

“May it also be his last!” A heavy-set man seated to Sharkovsky’s right chimes in. It sets off a new wave of chortles through the crowds.

Yassen’s face burns.

To move—to disobey—is to die.

Escape. 

It used to scream out in him—that word. It’s nearly lost its meaning. 

Escape.

But if this is what it takes—

—the air in his lungs curdles.

He is not a child, and this is not the dacha. 

Escape. It works itself up and seeps out between his ribs. He pushes. The ecto-pistol is cold in his hand. 

He’s fought far harder mental battles than Dr. Three’s pet. 

Yassen breaks the hold like a drowning man breaks the surface of water.

His first movement is automatic. Safety. Aim. Trigger. Three shots.

Skinner lets out a distorted human-like shriek. It staggers sideways, hand coming up to cover the side of its face. When it swings toward him, he sees the split in its skin like overripe fruit, the side of its head, throat, and chest, chunks of flesh charred dark green.

Well-placed shots, but not enough. Not by half.

Its expression twists. Disgruntled, warping bone. Fingers stab and peel apart the soft, fatty layers of his mind again, viciously.

“Ah, yes, the Doctor warned me you would be a pest.” Skinner regards him like an insect. “But I am not here for you, nor am I allowed to kill you… yet.” 

It grins.

When Skinner wants, it moves like a whip cracking the air, slinging itself off the nearest surface. It wouldn’t be enough to say that its claws slash like knives; they slash like nothing less than claws, curling and cruel, as it throws Yassen aside.

His hip slams into sharp corners—the writing desk—an instant before his back and shoulder take the brunt of the wall’s immovable solidity. It knocks out what little breath he’d had left, which registers for only an instant before his head cracks against the wooden door frame that separated the boys’ room from his own. He hits the floor next.

Pain lights up across his body—wide and bruising on his hip, back, shoulder. Cold and wet down his side. But the pain is grounding.

The ecto-pistol blocky angles bite against the flesh of his palm as he forces his head up. He can see that even Danny, here in this moment, is crumpled against the fear, chest unmoving.

Skinner already has Alex. Pulled tight against its side, he’s stiff as a board, eyes so round they’re almost nothing but whites.

It snatches Danny more loosely—the back of his neck and jacket.

With them, it leaves the way it came—the ceiling.

The oppressive force of Dr. Three’s pet slackens, then rips away. Like sucking mud, there’s a moment of resistance before it’s gone so completely that it feels like whiplash, like the kickback of firing an unexpectedly strong weapon.

Outside, a series of car doors slam before their wheels spin in the dirt, peeling out before squealing on pavement.

Chert.

The empty hollow where the fear was fills in with something dark and cloying. He grits his teeth and pushes it down. Rage and guilt will not help him right now.

Yassen pulls himself to his feet and takes stock. The pain in his hip and back is dull and throbbing, which tells him nothing is broken, only bruised. The bigger issues are the slashes and the blood that’s already soaking his shirt. The wounds are limiting his mobility even as he takes a singular step.

He needs his full range of motion to face Dr. Three’s ire.

As he steps past the EMF meter, its little green light catches his eye. It’s on, sensing. But it is completely silent, murmuring only background static.

He strips his ruined shirt—he’ll need to dispose of it, and anything else that has his blood. For the time being, he tosses it in the sink. The wounds are bloody, but not deep enough to be life threatening.

He makes quick work of his bandages with supplies from their packs, skin glue to keep everything in place—if these need stitches, that’ll have to be attended to later—then goes about collecting his arsenal and checking his ammunition. 

Knowing Dr. Three—knowing Scorpia—there will be no interest in killing Alex just yet. No, not until they’ve had their fill of threats and back-handed deals.

But Dr. Three won’t think twice about Danny.

The landline rings—jarring in the broken space of the night. But he knew it was coming.

The receiver is a curve of unfeeling plastic against Yassen’s palm as he answers.

“Dr. Three.”

“Why, hello, Mr. Greogorovich,” Dr. Three replies pleasantly. He sounds entirely unsurprised that Yassen knows who’s on the other end of the line. “I see you’ve gotten my message.”

“It was not subtle.”

“No, hardly,” Dr. Three agrees mildly.

“I suppose you want something.”

“Indeed—I’d quite like to negotiate,” Dr. Three says. “Why don’t you come for a meeting?”

Dr. Three rattles off a location—Yassen’s recently updated mental map tells him it’s on the edge of downtown SLC.

“You have an hour,” Dr. Three says.

“You will see me in less than half that time,” Yassen says.

“Of course,” Dr. Three replies, a genial smile obvious in his tone. “I’d expect nothing less from the great Yassen Gregorovich.”

Yassen hangs up the phone without bothering to give Dr. Three the satisfaction of a reply.

He has a job to do—and a rather familiar one, at that. Starting with the loose ends here.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Being forced into intangibility feels nothing like doing it willingly.

This itches like mosquito wings, brushing paranoia straight to the bottom layers of his skin—a full-body quivering that jolts nausea up into the back of his throat and spins his vision fuzzy at the edges.

He’s jerked sideways, torn away from the ground. The sky appears, tilts, drops. Danny’s stomach flips a semi-circle before floating unpleasantly.

For three horrible seconds, Danny loses his bearings.

He’s no match for this creature. Not now. Maybe not ever.

Being alive, even partially, comes with drawbacks.

That’s all Danny can think about, crushed under the weight of this anomaly. It has his mind in a trap. It’s pulling out and strumming the same strings he does to keep the living too afraid to move or run or fight back. He’s not used to fighting this battle from the other side.

And—

Where’s Alex?

—there. The familiar flavor of Alex’s emotions. They curl into the back of Danny’s sinus cavity without him having to draw a breath. Fear, predominantly—but a tired, resigned kind. Anger seeping out from the lid it’s kept under, rattling and hissing.

The entity’s all-consuming weight slams back into him.

It’s how Danny imagines it would feel to be hit by a truck—an impact so full that he couldn’t discern individual sensations if he wanted to.

But Alex is here, with them, and that’s—well, not a complete relief. It’s terrifying, actually. What this creature could do to Alex, whose defenses are infinitely lower than Danny’s own…

But at least this way, Danny can keep an eye on him. Somehow.

The world stills.

Danny registers three black vehicles: two cars and a van. The anomaly dumps them unceremoniously into the van— through the metal, searing warm and prickling all over. Rough gloved hands are on them in an instant—living humans—twisting back his arms. When Danny’s left arm spasms, he’s rewarded with even rougher treatment than before. Zipties hiss, choke his wrists together.

Bags are yanked down over their heads, though it was dim in the van to begin with—not that it bothered him. Beneath them, the van’s engine shifts gear, its tune rising. 

It’s only then that the feeling of the anomaly’s heavy paralyzing weight eases.

Alex’s breathing has the slightest rasp to it. He’s trying to stay calm, and doing a decent job. It’s muffled by fabric. Two layers of it.

The road is the only other sound. 

The van bumps and sways, and for once, Danny resents being submerged in darkness.

The anomaly isn’t gone. Its grip has loosened, but Danny can feel it above them. 

He’s locked in his own body. The too-living pounding of his heart is heavy, weighing him down, sluggish in his fingertips. Static creaks, more feeling than sound. 

It’s not about to let him break out. Not even for an instant. The one blessing he can count is that Alex is escaping its attention. Both are in its range, but its focus is on Danny.

The van ceiling flexes. 

In his mind’s eye, he sees it, upside down, watching them—watching him. He wants to poke; he wants to know just what kind of thing he’s dealing with. 

It’s not human. Not anymore. It’s… like the earth. It takes up more space than he can fathom.

Trying to get more is a risk he can’t take, not now. He’d be exposed to it poking back. As strong as it is, that would be more like disembowelment.

The air is thick enough with Alex’s swirling tension, anxiety, fear, desperation, guilt, that it makes it hard to breathe. Danny does it anyway—synched to Alex’s. Fast, shallow, start and stop. If he was a normal person in a situation like this, he might honestly be breathing faster. 

Alex shifts and bumps his shoulder into Danny’s. “You alright?” he breathes. 

Danny’s surprised how even Alex’s voice sounds when he says it. “Mhm,” he hums. 

The anomaly does nothing. Its influence fills the van with the heady smell of roadkill, but it no longer holds them tight. For now, it’s a reminder. 

 “Gonna guess these are yours and not mine then?” Danny asks. From what he’d seen, the humans’ gear hadn’t been Foundation-issue. There’d been no notable symbols at all—just lengths of thick gray. Camouflage for the night.

The anomaly still does nothing.

“Yep. Lucky us.”

Across from them, one of their captors moves, fabric against fabric, zippers and buttons against metal. “Stop talking.”

Alex snorts. “Please. If your orders were to kill us, you’d’ve been done with it already.” 

The movement is sudden: a sharp thud and Alex recoils next to him, breath sucked in between his teeth.

Danny goes rigid, shadows bubbling in his stomach. “…Alex?”

The smell of blood hits the back of Danny’s throat. He and the anomaly both stir, air turning thick.

“‘M fine,” Alex bites out.

“You—”

“I said no talking,” the guy barks.

Danny bites his tongue, hard.

“Yeah, yeah,” Alex mutters.

But he doesn’t speak again after that.

Danny’s mind skids, tires on ice. Where did they hit him? The jaw? Was the blood from his mouth? His nose? Or did they hit him with something sharp, cut him? Did—

Alex shifts, and his knee bumps Danny’s own. It’s brief enough to be excused as an accident in the eye of their captors, but lingers long enough for Danny to understand its intentionality.

He draws a deliberate, slow breath, to signal to Alex that he’s calm.

He could get them out of this. Or he could if it wasn’t for the thing watching their every move… 

His head pounds and his stomach muscles twirl tighter and tighter concentric circles around his gut—his core.

He can’t beat this thing, not in an all out brawl. Not in close quarters like this without risking Alex as collateral…

…But making a move while Alex still has the hood over his head would be ideal.

It sits like a bottomless pit in the cavern of his chest: he doesn’t expect to scrape out of this without having to show his hand. He swallows. He may as well use this ride to make peace with that.

.

At some point, the car comes to a stop. The two of them get dragged out of the van by hands that close tight enough to leave shadows that’ll develop over the next hour. 

He can tell when they pass into a building by the temperature. It’s warmer inside, similar to the interior of the van. Unlike the brief, comforting cold of the night air, its tendrils reaching out, asking Danny to stay.

He drags his feet. The floor is smooth, squeaky under his sneakers. He’s shoved roughly for even the minor resistance, and when he stumbles, the heavy footsteps echo.

Wherever they are, the space is large.

He tries to count the people—by their breathing and the flickers of their emotions. Most are entirely too calm. A few are excited.

To his side, Alex is still a warping mass of anger, anxiety, fear. Coppery blood tinges it all. Or maybe that’s Danny’s imagination, stuck, still, on the fact he can’t discern how exactly Alex was hurt.

Someone presses a button, a gentle happy ping echoing around what must be some sort of lobby.

It takes an excruciating second for the sound’s meaning to register. 

An elevator. 

His breath gets hooked at the back of his throat, a bleeding carcass.

His left arm, twisted behind him, spasms. A hot wave of pins and needles race up from his palm and through his chest. 

Metal panels. Metal walls. 

The doors exhale open.

Metal panels. Control panels. Buttons that press in with brand new resistance.

Doorways are meant to be walked through, but not this one—not this one. The metal is polished, but not enough to be a mirror. Its reflections blur together shapes and colors and eat up the specific. It doesn’t let anything escape it other than the sound of footsteps. Echoing footsteps across a threshold.

Soundwaves, nothing but molecules. Squeezing themselves through the closing window.

Gleaming panels boxing in, folding, folding. Metal origami of sharp corners, razor edges, no escape.

The point of no return.

What the hell’s with the lights? someone asks.

Another voice says, The upper floors are under construction. Probably just shit wiring.

He’s shoved forward so hard he barely catches himself, bumps into Alex or someone else—the pain is a firework—not swallowed up by the night sky, but slipped through layers of skin and flesh and nestled between his lungs, under his ribcage, putting pressure on where his esophagus joins the pink bag of his stomach, and then lit.

Someone calls his name, whispered and sharp, bone shrapnel. He feels it, far away.

His left arm jerks, light behind his eyes discharging in pulses.

Top floor, a voice says. 

I’m trying. The damn buttons aren’t working. 

What? Let me see. 

Clack. Clack. 

The floor display is glitched to hell.

The Yázh doesn’t want to be in this contraption.

What? 

The full weight of its energy bears down, claws digging into the scruff of him and holding him down—extinguishing him underneath the salty, mouthwatering smell of an open grave. 

He can’t move again. He’s pushed underneath his lukewarm skin.

The vertical corridor trembles and lurches into motion. The only thing that keeps him from vomiting is the idea of it having no way to escape the black hood.

He isn’t sure how much time passes, but at some point Alex says, “breathe,” and the heat from his body chips away at the dying chill.

Yeah. Maybe he should.

That sounds like a good idea.

His chest hurts, creaking like frozen pipes when he forces his lungs to fill.

It only takes a few seconds, or maybe a few minutes, or a few hours, but the elevator slows to a stop and the doors pull back, squeaking along their tracks. They get shoved from the enclosed space and as they are, the grip of the anomaly eases.

His living instincts drop back into his own reach, bruised and tender.

If he could just switch forms—

Cold froths up into his mouth.

The carpet is thin with no give. It hurts when they’re shoved to their knees.

The hood is whipped off, cracks like a whip. Fabric snakes against his nose.

Air hits his face first—blaring white fluorescents hit second. He twists his eyes shut and ducks his head down. 

“I requested just Alex,” comes a voice. “Why is there another boy?”

The gravitational center of the room shifts, moving from behind, to in front. 

Danny blinks his eyes open one narrow slit at a time. He sees blue-gray carpet and polished black shoes. His stomach tilts, like he’s falling, but he somehow stays where he is.

“The two were together,” it says, voice splitting like skin. “If the Yázh proves no use to you, then it is mine.” 

There’s a thoughtful hum in response to this.

Beside him, Alex coils tight. “This has nothing to do with him,” he hisses. “Let him go.” 

“Alex, it’s good to see you,” comes the first voice, glued together with warmth. “Or should I call you Shrike?”

“Wish I could say the feeling was mutual, Dr. Three. And no, you shouldn’t.”

The lights hum above them. Danny forces his gaze higher. The room is—an office? There’s some kind of desk. The man—Dr. Three—is the one wearing obscenely polished shoes.

“What a shame. After all the hoops we had to jump through to so graciously offer you the best training any organization has to offer.” 

When Alex scoffs, it sounds more like a snarl.

“On the run is hardly the time to connect with friends,” Dr. Three says. He shifts towards Danny—appraises him neutrally. His eyes are monolidded and if it weren’t for the circumstances, Danny would almost describe his appearance as approachable. His suit is homely tweed cut to sharp lapels. His smile is warm like blood. 

All Danny can taste from him is cozy satisfaction.

“Take this one somewhere we can keep an eye on him,” Dr. Three says, with a wave of his hand, unbuttoning his suit coat to sit down. 

What? No—

“Alex,” he says mildly. “It should go without saying that it’s in your friend’s best interest that you behave.” 

Danny looks at Alex, heart kicking in his chest. Guards from behind grab him by the arms and haul him up from the floor. 

It takes every ounce of self-control he has to not go intangible. To not turn on them and make them regret it. As it stands, he doesn’t make it easy for them, struggling in their hands. Their grip is too sure to let him drop, but he wishes viciously for some kind of give.

“Alex—”

Alex’s jaw flexes and his hopelessness worms in, the thing buried in his chest, a fracture away from bleeding. His eyes slide off Danny.

“I understand, sir,” he says in a pleasant voice. “I’ll cooperate, as long as you let him go.”

The mirage of emotions from Alex suddenly loses all form. Falls gray and dead. Danny has felt this before—this limpness. This giving up.

It’s just like when he feeds. 

Dr. Three glances at the grunts and they stop. So does Danny.

Dr. Three crosses one leg over the other. “Mr. Rider,” he says with a little laugh, “I thought we taught better negotiation strategies than that. D’Arc would surely be disappointed.”

Alex’s face is placid when he says, “I’ll come back.” He finds some kind of surety to infuse his voice with. From where, Danny can’t fathom. “Finish what we started.”

Back. Danny doesn’t know what he’d be going back to, but his imagination works well enough to conjure an idea. Cold fear is threading through Alex’s gray like cracks in ice.

Alex shouldn’t go anywhere. Julius—

“No—” Danny starts, but is summarily punished—two sets of hands twisting into him, a promise of desire to hurt him more. He can taste it. The gray ripples.

Dr. Three lifts an eyebrow, faint smile curving up. His attention doesn’t stray from Alex, like they’re the only ones present. “Ah, but broken trust is not so easily mended. What use is an untrustworthy operative?” 

A fiery feeling wells up in Alex, and it makes Danny’s insides squirm. It’s bright, but muddied—rage, guilt, resignation. The gray blanketing it. The hate, below it all, scraping its teeth against all of his insides.

But none of that is in his voice. “You know exactly how to control me,” he says, like he’s commenting on the weather. “You always have. It would be too inconvenient for me to be anyone’s asset but Scorpia’s.” 

Danny isn’t worth this. He can’t possibly be worth this. He died too long ago for that.  

“Alex, seriously—” This time, before he can finish, a piece of cloth gets yanked around his mouth from behind.

Alex spares him a pleading look, panic finally breaking the surface. “It’s okay, mate.”

Dr. Three’s smile grows wider. “I do appreciate the politeness. I’ll think about your offer, Shrike. In the meantime, we wait for our third guest. That is, if Cossack decides you’re worth the trouble.” 

He nods, and then the two of them get pulled away in different directions. Danny’s heels drag against the thin carpet, but Alex is pliant.

“Skinner, go with Mr. Rider to ensure he keeps his word.”

The look Alex sends Danny’s way has a finality to it. It sinks teeth into him. It makes his core leech out and lights start to flicker and the temperature drop. Danny decides what he’d really like is for everyone in this building to beg for their lives. He wants the fear so pungent it soaks into the carpets and support beams and stays there.

He thinks about the limp gray and he wants to vomit.

As he’s shoved into an empty office—so hard he loses his balance and his shoulder slams into the floor—he decides that they won’t be staying here. Thick sheets of plastic drop cloth line the floor and crinkle as he levers himself up.

So he’ll have to show his hand. So what.

The question is less of a how, and more of a when.

The only real issue is the thing Dr. Three called Skinner. If he gets close to Alex, it’ll feel him. Maybe if he distracted it, Alex could get out on his own? But maybe he wouldn’t. Not if Alex thinks Danny’s safety is still being leveraged against him. Not if he’s accepted he’s going back.

Fuck.

His breath whistles from his nose—they hadn’t bothered removing the gag from his mouth. It’s growing damp with his saliva. He could forgo the breathing entirely. He phases the restraints from his wrists and then the gag from around his head. He breathes anyway. 

In.

Out.

In. 

Out.

Danny is accustomed to this. Being alone. A year is a long time. On Mars, a year is six hundred and eighty-seven Earth days. 

In this office with the door closed, nothing but plain, unfinished walls, exposed wood, it’s worse. Not even the expanse of the sky arcing past him. Reminding him the universe keeps existing, keeps turning. That somewhere out there, beyond his reach, beyond his senses, is some kind of equilibrium.

This is a box. A cage. A—

But it’s not. It’s just—a room. Gray, but a room.

He has to think. Not panic. He needs to get Alex out of here.

But even if he could get past Skinner and get to Alex, they’d have to avoid it and the two dozen or more heavily armed guards on the way out. They’re like echoes, buzzing wasps inside a nest, milling around, little hot spots of active energy. His mental layout of this place is hardly clear. 

He grinds his teeth.

He could switch forms. He’d be faster, sharper. 

…But there’s no way in hell Alex would recognize him, let alone trust him. Imagining the twisted horror on his face makes Danny’s head pound and nausea prickle the back of his throat. Switching forms would also be a neon sign for Skinner, come get me, less like a sacrificial pawn and more like moving the Queen to the center of the board—

Jazz sits across from him at the coffee table. Evening light is streaming in through the front windows. She stares at the piece in the middle of the board. 

“Ugh, Danny!” 

“What?” 

“You said you would play right.”

“How do you know I’m not? Maybe I’m doing this to psych you out.” 

“I can checkmate you in like three different ways!”

“Exactly.” He hits her with the finger guns.

She stares at him, open mouthed. “I don’t even—you’re such a little jerk.”

He slumps backwards onto the living room carpet. It’s itchy. “Come on, Jazz. I don’t want to be here for another hour.” 

“We’ve only been playing for twenty minutes!” She throws a rook at him. It hits his stomach, barely hard enough to feel it, before it bounces off onto the floor. 

“Yeah, only.” 

Her hair looks copper in the sunset. “Ten more minutes. Then we can figure something out for dinner, how’s that?”

“Bribing me with food?”

“Maybe,” she says, shrugging, as if she’s all innocent.

“Fiiiine.” He hauls himself up and returns the Queen to the side of the board. He moves his knight over to the center instead. Jazz cocks her head at his decision, like one of the sparrows that like to sit on their stoop.

“After we eat, do you need help with homework?”

“Did it already.”

Jazz moves her bishop to F5. “Sure.” Her eyes glitter and he swallows the annoyance.

“I did.”

“I’m not doubting you.”

But she is.

She always had to know everything. Stick her nose into everything he did. She was overbearing and annoying and never let him get away with anything. And now she’s—

Because of him. 

She won that game. She usually did, whether he was actually trying or not. And then they got into a fight about his homework. He slammed his door and didn’t come out until morning. She left a slice of pizza outside his room.

It was stupid.

He was stupid.

He wants to take it all back. He’ll play chess with her forever. Let her lecture him about homework and grades like she’s the parent—anything would be better than being— 

He blinks when he realizes that his eyes are burning. His chest has compacted in on itself. 

Why now? The last thing he should be doing is remembering.

He swallows. It’s hard to do. Not now. Not now, now, now. 

—Patience, little brother! That’s how you win. 

The echo of her voice lingers in the soft tissue rooms of his mind. He yanks the door to it closed. 

Fine. 

He closes his eyes and pushes his senses to their limits. Vibrations of energy, game pieces above and below. Skinner, two guards, and Alex. 

All he needs is a few minutes. Dr. Three said they’re expecting someone else. It’s not a gamble to think it’s Yassen. If Dr. Three sees Yassen as a threat—Dr. Three might call Skinner.

It’s not much of a plan, but he can work with it. 

It’s a waiting game. 

Alex hates waiting games. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what this is. 

In the corner of the ceiling, where it meets two walls in sharp right angles, is Skinner.

It’s worse than having a loaded gun pressed to his skull.

It’s hard to swallow just how real it is, every inch of bared tendon and spidery bone. Julius is different from this… creature.

This thing could lock Danny in a cage of his own mind. This thing is like nothing he’s ever seen before.

The disconcerting thing is that it’s perfectly still. Its head and empty eye sockets are trained on him, without adjustment or error. The guards that stand around Alex occasionally shift, nervous hands on their weapons, their backs never to him and never to the creature in the corner.

When Alex twitches, it tilts its head like a demented bird.

He can’t shake the sense that it’s hungry.

He tears his eyes away from it, even though every inch of him screams about the predator he’s letting out of sight. He knows the first thing he should really be doing right now: collecting intel. Immediate dangers, exit routes, number of hostiles…

Situational assessment, Jones used to tell him, will save your life.

Well, as far as he can tell, this is the fucking situation: he’s tied up somewhere on an upper floor of an unknown high-rise that’s crawling with Scorpia agents and Dr. Three’s pet nightmare creature, and his new friend has been kidnapped with him, and if Yassen had any brains left in that stupid Russian skull of his, he would leave them both here to rot and go retire already.

The details are different, always different, but the situation is the same. He’s been here almost too many times to count. He’s a pawn in a game played by bigger people.

He’s been a hostage for a very, very long time.

Danny, on the other hand… 

He doesn’t deserve this. He didn’t sign up for it like Yassen did. If there’s one thing that Alex knows, without doubt—even if he doesn’t understand why—it’s that Yassen chose this. Yassen raised his gun and fired. He chose to be here, now, on the run with Alex, targets on both their backs.

No. This is like the others. First, Kyra. Then Tom. Jack. Now, Danny.

Yassen had asked him, asked him, blunt and cruel in the way he does best, if he was willing to risk Danny and bring him into Alex’s warzone.

And damn it all, he did.

How many more people is Alex going to drag down with him before he learns his lesson? Before it sticks?

He doesn’t know what’s happening to Danny. Maybe he’s already been corralled into a dark corner and shot like an animal. Maybe they’re going to parade his corpse in front of Alex.

He knew he’d never get out of this. Why did he even try? What a fucking joke. They’ll kill Danny, or Yassen, or both of them, and then he’ll be shipped off to a mission who-the-fuck-knows-where, and Julius will finally get him. 

And maybe it’d be a good thing. Imagining the look on their stupid faces, bloated with surprise like beached fish, finding his slumped over body, water filling his lungs? Priceless. Gormless, gob-smacked, all at the fact that the notorious pain-in-the-ass Alex Rider was finally gone. Failing to deliver results like any normal teenager would have, just like he should’ve from the start. It would be so funny.

He’d be lying if he said he hasn’t thought about it before. How stupid they were to ever rely on a teenager to begin with. His survival is equal parts Ian’s training and pure, idiotic luck. It’s God’s funniest joke: the child soldier lives to keep serving because he’s too much of a coward to take the obvious, easy way out.

Like he said: he’d be lying if he said he hasn’t thought about it before. 

The blood from his swollen nose is dripping far too much. Soaking his lap. 

He feels himself blurring. It’s an out-of-focus feeling, lens misaligned. Like drowning, but quiet. Rain on glass, or through fabric. It seeps heavy through his limbs, pins him down. Lower and lower.

It’s softly familiar. If he still had a mouth worth anything, he would call it comforting. Like this, he can’t lie. Like this, blurry and limp, this is what he is: a dog that jumps when told. That bites when they bark.

—You know exactly how to control me.

They trained him well.

—Well done, Agent Rider.

They broke him well.

—Ian hands the picked lock back to him and it still sits proud on his shelf—

When he hears the steady drip of water, ceiling to ground, he’s far enough away that the panic doesn’t move him an inch.

“The fuck? Shitty goddamn ceiling,” one guard grumbles. “Water main probably busted.”

“Shut up,” another snarls.

The water starts pouring in earnest. Like it can hear them. The smell of mildew grows stronger and stronger.

Alex knows what this is.

He thinks about Dr. Three finding his body, drowned out in the rain, and how angry he would be, rot leaving a punch-hole through his bargaining chip. He thinks about Yassen’s happy retirement. He thinks about—

There is a wet, meaty squelch. A gunshot hiss quelled by something that rattles. 

The hairs on his neck rise.

“This one’s mine,”  Julius hisses. 

The mildew and water scream and die in his nose and ears. The smell of roadkill takes their place. 

“Loathsome thing,” something says, slowly. Distantly, Alex recognizes the timbre—the creature from before. “So small and stupid. Wearing pelts that you did not earn. You come here begging for a better hunter to honor you with final death.”

A swarm. Like gnats—no, like blow flies and rove beetles—buzz and fumble through his skull. Rotten things, feeding on rotten flesh.

“I earned his life when he took mine.” Julius’ voice is off, laced with interference—something inhuman, bulging, pressing against the celluloid skin of Alex’s voice.

The room feels tilted. For a clear moment, Alex imagines they’re on the deck of a boat, the waves tipping them upside their senses. 

“You were made, but know nothing of sacrifice,” Skinner retorts.

There should be nothing here, in this rancid air. Nothing should be capable of living and dying here.

There’s the sound of gun safeties being snapped off all around him. Click-click.

Harsh breathing from the guards around him. Too terrified to speak.

He shouldn’t look up.

“N-no,” says Julius, and it’s almost unrecognizable. Mimicry stripped, like old bolts removed and discarded. He’s so used to hearing Julius wearing his voice with audacity that this—clarity—is more chilling than anything else.

“Wait,” Julius says, warbling.

“Stop!” Julius says, scared.

And Alex can’t help it.

He looks up like a good little spy.

The ichor spatters on the floor, dark and thick. His gaze follows it up to the source. The hunter’s fingers burrow under Julius’ skin a little further, and more purges out of the entry wounds. It’s mealy. Half-digested.

He sees the fingers tense. Bulge with exposed tendon.

The sound of ripping, tearing. Hysterical breathing in cacophony around him.

“Rich flesh parts so easily… Something began the process but did not finish.”

A slurping sound.

Something gives: gravity. The skin jerks further down the fingers as Julius shrieks.

Alex’s voice. Alex’s face. Alex’s skin. All stretched celluloid and screaming-white over a sharp point of fear. Fit to burst, like a pustule.

Some distant part of him wonders if that’s what he really sounds like. If that’s what he looks like when he’s afraid. Some distant part of him is Tom, telling him a fascinating new fact: nobody else will ever hear him the way he sounds in his own head.

And some distant parts of him are splashing on the ground in front of him right now. Remnants of himself, eaten up by Julius, rotting inside Julius, meeting their final end on the killing room floor.

“Disgusting prey,” Skinner growls, and flexes its fingers again—

and Julius—

sheds—

It sears into his mind, the way the fatty meat of him slips inside out like a sock pulled off too fast, a grotesque afterbirth.

Julius grips at his face on the ground, desperately. Through the slots between his jail cell fingers, he glimpses something red. Bulging white. 

Blood. Viscera. Its eyes are white grapes, rolling in it. Sinking.

Skinner is eight too-long knuckles deep into a deflated husk. Beneath his shed skin, Julius slithers, writhing in his own gory mire before making the final escape.

He catches just a glimpse of it before it disappears.

Its face defies description. It is not like an anatomical drawing, comical bug-eyes cradled by comprehensible red muscles. No.

It is only flesh.

It mercifully disappears through the floor before Alex can finish losing his mind.

“What the fuck?” someone chokes out from very far away. 

“Shut it,” another voice hisses back.

Silence lapses through the room.

Alex blinks. Blinks again. The gore is gone but it’s still there, in his mind, and he can feel the grit of it if he runs his eyes over the cement.

And Skinner… When Alex looks at it, there’s something satisfied in the air, the way it sinks back to its place in a slow, too-smooth recoil. Not a grin on its rigid, bony face—no, that would be too comical, too obvious. It’s more than that, deeper.

He finds himself begging himself not to look at the fleshy, limp thing blanketing its hands. It glimmers like a maddening magic eye puzzle.

The room seems to expand, a tentative exhale. Everything falling back into place.

Everything, except Alex’s stomach, still fighting against his esophagus.

Somewhere distant is a familiar cackle. To Alex, it registers like a sinister laugh. Some layer of logic tells him it’s a radio, but it sounds like anything but.

He thinks of mechanical antenna, transmitters. Neat coils of silver wire. Miniature magnets, no larger than a fingernail. Yassen had broken down a handheld radio for him, once. Cracked its casing like a shell, disassembled it like a lobster. Efficient and easy.

Technology is dry. Boring. Too rigid and refined for the ways that Alex’s brain likes to operate. No, more of Kyra’s domain, and he’s glad to leave it to her, but now—with too much squishy flesh giving way when he closes his eyelids, he’d take dry, boring, rigid any day.

A guard steps into his field of view. He speaks to Skinner: “The Doctor wants to see you.”

Skinner doesn’t make any noise of assent. Doesn’t blink its lidless, peeled-back eyes. Just sinks away.

This should be an opportunity.

…It would be, another time. 

But Alex can barely make himself move. 

It’s unnatural. In his time as a spy, he’s seen horrible things—seen blood outside the body, seen grievous wounds, witnessed—experienced—inhumane torture methods. But this…

His pulse is rising in the soft palate below his jaw with the knowledge that he could get away, or at the very least, out of this room. Turn the tides in his favor, the guards disabled by a few choice words, a pressure point held down.

Yet he stays there and watches the guards shift minutely instead.

It occurs to him, not for the first time, that if he moves, it wouldn’t just be him paying the price. It’d be…

An image: Danny being caught in the Skinner’s grip. It rises up in his mind like bile.

He knows Danny’s not defenseless. He’s proven that. Alex trusts that. But this is Scorpia. They have no limit. They’ll send the worst of horrors, and invent new ones too, simply to break Alex over their knee again.

…And because it’s Scorpia, there’s an argument that Alex should act anyway. 

Now.

…Now.

—No, he needs a better plan. He needs to lure one of the grunts closer, enough to disable him. A headbutt, maybe. Unless they’re expecting that. He—

The lights flicker. Just a barely-there dimming. 

The Scorpia guy looks up in time for the flickering to escalate to a strobe; then he’s flinching with a sharp intake of breath. He fumbles at his ear and when he pulls the comms line out, even Alex can hear its screaming feedback. 

“Shit,” the operative growls. “What the fuck is going on now?” The guard glances down at him, the quickest flash of the whites of his eyes through the gap in his helmet and face covering.

Alex hardly dares to breathe. 

Julius?

But he—

The lights go out.

The operative reaches to palm his submachine gun.

The room stagnates into pitch darkness that somehow seems to grow thicker—colder. 

Chills run wild along his skin; he’s familiar with this sensation now. It’s not Julius, back from his escape and capitalizing on this window of opportunity. There’s no sound of rain. No breath of laughter next to his ear.

Something grabs him from behind—underneath his arms. Pulls. His first reaction, to resist, is snuffed out underneath a wave of ice. The cold reaches through him and yanks the breath from his lungs. It’s like getting punched in the gut—like he just jumped into the fucking English Channel in winter. 

It’s darkness—only darkness and cold and he has half a second to think if it’s not Julius, maybe it’s that thing, Skinner— 

—but Skinner didn’t feel like this. Underneath the stranglehold of his panic, something about this trips a switch.

It’s hard to tell. It’s hard to think through the cold and the dark. He kicks and squirms: no resistance. Not water. His jaw works open, no water floods in—no air either. 

He can’t breathe. 

Nothing to breathe. Nothing to breathe with. 

The nothing, it—

And then it’s over. The grip is gone as fast as it came.

Warmth rushes back in, filling him up and making him real. With it, he manages his first painful gasp, air cutting down his throat. 

He’s in another dark room. The floor is underneath him, bare and scratchy, but real. Tangible. Holding him up as gravity sits across his shoulders once more. He’s still alive, and whatever grabbed him let go. 

Base instinct has him scrambling backwards, away from the shadow of what grabbed him—he needs to get out of his restraints—he needs to get up, he needs—

“Alex, it’s me,” a voice says, low and hurried. “It’s okay, it’s me.”  

That sounds like—

The shadow crouches, Alex can vaguely see hands lifted. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know how else to get you out of there. We need to hurry.”

Danny?

The light above them flickers. Shaggy black hair and blue eyes. It is Danny… or at least it looks like Danny. 

“Prove it.” 

“What?” 

“I said, prove it. Prove that you’re Danny.”

It’s silent for a long, long, second. 

“...What do you want to know? I’m not Julius, if that’s what you’re thinking.” The lights flicker again and Danny looks towards the door to the room. “Listen, we really need to—”

“How can I be sure?”

He shifts. “You can’t. When ghosts possess someone, they can access their memories.”

Ghost facts. Yeah, alright, this is probably Danny. Which means Danny’s the one that…?

“Next question: What. The. Fuck.” 

Danny moves towards him. “I’ll explain later,” he says, helping him sit all the way up. Just what Alex loves to hear.

His hands are freezing. Another point in the Real Danny column, he supposes.

“I need to get these ties off you,” Danny says, shifting behind Alex.

Danny got out of his… “I’m guessing you don’t secretly have a knife that you used?”

It’s silent for half a second. “No.” Danny hooks his fingers between the zip tie and Alex’s skin. His voice goes softer when he speaks again—“It’ll be cold. Probably.”

It is. But it’s different this time. Localized. For a split second the rings of his wrists tingle, the same numbing, breath-stealing, cold. The feeling dissipates and the pressure is gone. His hands are free. 

Danny tosses the still closed zip tie loop away like it’s nothing.  

“You—but the—”

“I know,” Danny says. “I can explain later—”

He pulls the deepest deadpan he can muster while his hands are shaking. “Danny, I just felt that go through my fucking wrists.”

Danny reiterates, .“I’ll explain it all later, I promise.”

“You fuckin’ better,” Alex mutters, rubbing his wrists, trying—and failing—to bring life back into them. 

But Danny’s right—time is short, always is in the field. Too short. 

Alex twists to look at him. “At least tell me where we are now.”

“Two rooms over from where they had you before. Same floor.”

The information is good, but hardly helps Alex orient himself. “Okay. Did you get any sense of the layout here, when you were moving around?”

“Just a little—there’s conference rooms and offices down the hall. This is an exterior wall. ” Danny gestures to where the windows betray only pitch black beyond. “There’s a hallway along them, and it leads to a big open area. For cubicles, probably. I don’t know what’s beyond that.”

Shouts raise, muffled but audible through the thin, unfinished walls.

From somewhere below them, there’s the sound of gunfire. There’s the sound that pops in his ear drums and vibrates up through the floor. 

Alex grimaces. “We need to get down to the floor level. Yassen is here.” 

A detonation. 

“Yeah, I figured,” Danny says. 

“Do you know what floor we’re on?”

Danny pauses, thinking. “Something like the seventeenth.”

“Okay.” Alex rubs a hand through his hair. “Dr. Three’s keeping us properly separated from Yassen. He’ll set up their meeting somewhere advantageous for him—plenty of surveillance…”

“Yassen doesn’t seem like the type to just… meet up.”

“He’s trained in hostage negotiation,” Alex points out.

They’re negotiating over him. Whether he goes back to Scorpia or they kill him… Gunfire means Yassen is still fighting for him. Risking his own life for him. 

Did his Dad really mean this much to Yassen? That he’s willing to go this far? Through this much trouble?

Danny nudges him. “Alex. We gotta go.”

Alex shakes off the encroaching thoughts. The field is no place for them—they’re no weakness, but they make mistakes all the more possible. And Alex isn’t interested in making a mistake with Danny in the line of fire with him. 

He’s one step from the door when he hears the softest shuffle.

The door slams open and blinds them with violent light, force sending it all the way around on its hinges. The nose of a gun zeroes on them in seconds.

—Agent, neutralize.

Alex throws himself into a roll. Gunfire barks just over his head and somebody yelps. Alex moves fast—sharp of his elbow slamming into the back of a man’s knee, muscle buckling against his flesh and bone.

An opening. Vulnerable. He goes in for the final move.

The target’s head makes a crack against the concrete.

He looks up. Around. Clears their surroundings.

—Well done, Agent Rider.

He checks for the man’s pulse. Unconscious. His breathing is even-spaced.

Alex yanks the SMG off the unconscious body. He doesn’t want to have to use it, but being unarmed right now isn’t an option. They need every advantage they can get. 

He hears a soft, pained murmur.

Alex whips around.

“It’s okay,” Danny says. “I just got clipped.”

“Just—?”

“It’s nothing.”

“The fuck it is,” he says, jerks a step towards him. “You’re bleeding.” Another step, reaching out. It could be Alex’s imagination, but he can already smell the iron.

“I know,” Danny says. His left hand closes tighter around his upper arm. Blood drools sluggishly from between Danny’s fingers.

“Let me see.”

“It’s not deep.” His voice is more insistent… but steady, steadier than Alex might’ve expected. 

The blood is spreading, thin, in the tiny patterned ridges of Danny’s skin, staining it. No longer pale.

Alex forces his gaze up. Danny’s face is as steady as his voice is, as if the pain doesn’t bother him. And… maybe it doesn’t.

Danny already favors his left arm—his right being injured too isn’t ideal. 

They’ll just have to manage. No choice. 

Alex nods curtly. Like two hands on the reins, he guides his own bit back to the path ahead of them.

A quick survey of the hallway—empty. They make their way down it, feet quiet and stances low. 

Alex doesn’t miss when Danny’s bloody hand comes away from his arm.

The stairwell provides them with decent cover, and views both above and below for the time being.

“They’ll have told everyone by now,” Alex murmurs. 

“Not yet,” Danny says, quick and confident. “They can’t.” 

“What? What do you mean they can’t?”

“Their comms are down.” 

“And how the hell do you know all their comms are down?”

“Not all the comms,” Danny corrects. “Just the ones I can… Uh. Three-ish floors. Below us, above us. This floor.”

The ones he can what? “…You’re doing it? With—yourself?” Alex tries. 

Some wild, unnameable instinct has him glancing at the spot where Danny’s hand was firmly clamped over his wound, but Danny shifts so it goes out of view.

“Yes,” Danny replies. His voice tilts into something a bit pleading. “Questions later, Alex. Please.” 

Alex groans, but has to acknowledge the point to Danny’s urgency. “Fine. Which way is the stairwell?”

“Here…” Danny jerks his head over his shoulder, and as they creep steadily down the hall, keeping their footsteps quiet against the rough plywood subfloor, Alex imagines this very well might be how other people feel when they get caught up in his life. 

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Yassen hates rush jobs.

Rush jobs mean an increased risk of mistakes, of leaving evidence behind. However, he has very little choice.

Having a firearm for personal defense is useless without proper training—much less with an old and cumbersome Winchester hunting rifle. Most people do not need to fight for their lives. And if they did, the rifle would be nearly useless.

The owner of the bed and breakfast does not recover from the shock fast enough. Control of the weapon is easily won, and with a single twist the barrel presses snug underneath the target’s chin, under his lips, twisting open on a scream. 

The muzzle flash bursts like a lightbulb and turns the back of the target’s skull into a fine mist of blood and chunky brain material. 

Had the target been the only one holding the firearm, the recoil would have possibly thrown off the bullet angle, leaving him alive but undoubtedly in agony. But with assistance, the muzzle’s aim is true, and the target expires by the time he hits the floor.

A killing spree followed by suicide will be a stretch, but Yassen has little else to work with. Too many here have seen their faces here, heard the gunshots fire—would know the boys are missing. By his estimate, he has less than ten minutes to dispatch the rest of the targets before first responders reach the location.

He chambers the next round. 

—

The building is in a nondescript part of town, much of it under construction. The imposition of scaffolding and cement masons has left it bereft of citizens, especially at this hour, when not even the crews linger.

It is one of the more finished structures on the block. It stands primarily in concrete, dressed in poly sheeting. The Doctor has always been choosy about his killing rooms.

It towers above them now, an obelisk. 

Only the ground floor entrance emits light. It’s a sour white—a clear signal, intended for Yassen alone. This is where he’s expected.

The automatic doors sigh open.

The lobby is bare. A skeleton of a room, without even flooring laid over the foundational pour. It’s composed in shades of gray. Stairwells sit either side, symmetrical, on the far side of the lobby. A bank of elevators sits center, and the only furniture is a sprawling, multi-sided desk, moored in the midst of the space.

Dr. Three would not come alone—it was an easy assumption to make, but only confirmed because no effort was made to conceal the fact. Four armed guards cover each of the exits.

Several paces ahead, Dr. Three mars the scene. Dark suit and placid face like a thumbprint on an otherwise spotless pane of glass. His hands are folded behind his back, and a smile plays over his face. The picture of pleasantry, framed by the guards flanking his sides.

Two of the door guards silently step into Yassen’s shadow. Yassen feels anything but pleasant. 

“Doctor.”

Dr. Three inclines his head. “Cossack. Lovely to see you—you look well.”

Falsehood drips from the words—Yassen is sure he’s wearing the weight of the rush job in the set of his shoulder, or perhaps the lines of his jaw, or the stance that, if he does not focus, favors his bruised hip. He spared only the barest of time to tend to the injuries Skinner had so kindly imparted to him, shucking the torn and bloodied shirt to bandage the wounds it had clawed into him. 

He forces himself to relax, minutely. Pushes down every centimeter of still-throbbing pain, places it somewhere far away from himself. 

“I should say the same to you.” 

“And will you?”

Yassen does not bother to respond. 

The Doctor only smiles wider. “I do so hate stalling, so let’s cut to the chase,” he says, glossing over Yassen’s slight. He gestures to the two guards flanking him, who peel off. “I have to say, I was surprised by your choice in Venice. You’ve never come across to me as the ambitious type, Cossack.” 

Yassen knows a trap when he hears one—more than that, he knows a trap that can’t be avoided. His eyes wander the semi-circle of agents, impassive. “Rothman’s judgment could no longer be trusted.”

Dr. Three hums. “Are you insinuating she was compromised?” 

“She was mishandling Shrike’s potential.”

“And you think yourself a more gifted instructor.” Dr. Three waves a hand. “Strip him.” 

Yassen is jostled as the guards begin their brusque pat-down, no guise of gentleness.

He counts the weapons they’ve found: his handgun. His knives. Finally, they unhook the ecto-gun from his belt. The guard who extracts it from the back of Yassen’s waistband pauses minutely. He hears a soft thmp—the guard is testing the weight of it in his gloved hand. After an uneasy pause, he slides it into waistband. Yassen catches the motion just outside the corner of his eye.

This is not the ideal scenario from which to extract two hostages. Especially when neither Alex nor Danny can be counted on to sit still and await retrieval.

Besides the two guards that confiscated his weapons, there are at least ten others, perhaps twelve, in order to cover a floor this size. Had the Doctor anticipated holding two hostages, or forgone Skinner, there may have been more.

His pockets are turned out next—stray cash flutters to the floor, a stray restaurant receipt forced onto him that he did not yet discard. Then, his lighter and his pack of Parliament Blues.

The guard holds it up, showing it to the Doctor.

Dr. Three hums. “I didn’t know you smoked, Cossack.”  

Yassen holds out his hand, and Dr. Three nods at the guard. The box flexes, placed back into his hand. He pops one cigarette and stows the rest back into his pocket. 

The guards take up positions behind Yassen, now flanking the exit. 

Yassen flicks open his lighter and ignites the end of the cigarette pinched between his lips. He exhales the smoke, eyes locked with Dr. Three. He snaps the Zippo closed, its glossy metal surface showing him a warped mirror of the operatives around him. 

“You’ve dedicated many years of your life to this organization,” Dr. Three says, as though the search had not interrupted them. “The board agrees that losing you would be rather unfortunate. That being said…” Dr. Three smiles. “You’ve become quite the unreliable operative.”

Dr. Three steps forward.

“I’ll be blunt,” he goes on with a casual shrug, and it looks odd on a man like him. “An unreliable operative is really one whose behavior I cannot adjust to my liking. You and I both know how I prefer to work—it would be an insult to our years together to pretend otherwise.”

His gaze pierces into Yassen’s.

Dr. Three is a dangerous man. 

Manipulation is his game—systems, emotions. The mechanics of each working part, ticking together, perfectly fit gears for the Doctor’s enjoyment. It is especially effective on the vulnerable.

But Yassen is no stranger to the Doctor’s tricks.

The first move Yassen has in this game is that of non-response. 

He allows the Doctor to sit in silence, until he feels compelled to continue.

“You surprised me,” Dr. Three says, slowly. Joyfully. Like he’s tasting something delicious. “You surprised me, Yassen—all these years together, and never once have you been any fun.”

Yassen takes a drag off his cigarette. His hand does not shake. “I do not believe that fun was written in my contract.”

Dr. Three laughs. It’s loud, and hearty, and not a sound he’s heard before. It catches Yassen off guard. “I see Shrike has truly had an influence on you.” His voice turns to a darker shade of mirth. “And what a terrible influence he has been, indeed.”

“Irony is not solely the purview of teenagers.”

“And yet it’s undeniable you consider young Alex to be yours,” the Doctor purrs. “Your purview. Your student. Tell me, Yassen, why did you not avail yourself of the full breadth of our services?”

Their services? “What?”

Dr. Three only tuts. “Oh, Yassen. You know that if you liked them young—”

Yassen cannot stop himself from recoiling as the implication makes itself known.

Dr. Three smells the blood in the water. “Oh?” He grins. Rows of teeth, sharp and predatorial.

“No,” Yassen is compelled to deny, but the Doctor forges on.

“We all have our preferences. You need not act out to fulfill your desires.” Dr. Three paces forward. “Men like us take what we want.” 

It is the first time that Yassen has ever seen him truly smile.  

It is a terrible thing.

“I have no preferences of the sort,” Yassen spits.

“Hm? Perhaps this one is special, then. After the way Hunter betrayed us… betrayed you.”

Hunter saved him. John Rider was shackled to this life same as Yassen—just in a different way. Yassen did not blame him for that.

“Is it the gratification of revenge? Or… perhaps, for someone like you… it is about power?” Dr. Three hums. “Yes, that seems likely. You’ve had so little yourself, historically speaking. Come to think of it, weren’t you Alex’s age when we saved you from Sharkovsky’s servitude?”

We saved you. As if Scorpia did anything of the sort—as if Yassen’s own thrashing against fate and their operatives’ failure is something they can take credit for. 

Yassen was wrong. He should have never come here. This gambit of Three’s is nothing more than a sadistic desire to toy with a shiny new pawn on the chessboard. 

Dr. Three only laughs. “Yassen, come now. It is nothing to be ashamed of. After the childhood you had… I hear that it’s only natural that people replicate the circumstances of their upbringing. I’ve no doubt a man like Sharkovsky made you worth his while.”

“Your attempt at provocation is, frankly, juvenile,” Yassen spits without meaning to. 

Dr. Three doesn’t look angry at his retort—he looks pleased. Smug.

“Let us leave this matter aside, for the time being,” he says. “Do tell me about your time in Venice.”

It’s not an invitation. Yassen is in no mood to humor him, nor his directions. 

“How many months did Rothman keep you caged at Malagosto?” Dr. Three molds his tone into something synthetically sympathetic. “A man of your abilities and caliber, confined to tutoring—you must have been restless. I have to wonder if it was nostalgic.”

He takes a pull from his faltering Parliament, reigniting the warm glow. “It was not,” Yassen says simply. 

“And then, in Venice—so many bodies.” The Doctor tuts. Shakes his head. “A shame. How did things get so messy? Perhaps Shrike disappointed us, hm?”

“Shrike passed his final assessment,” Yassen says stiffly. 

“Oh, Cossack.” Now—pity. The Doctor, a shadow puppet theater of emotions. “I do not believe that for a minute. No, Cossack. What I want to know is to what degree you’ve betrayed us.” His smile is cold. Unflinching. “Whether or not your use can be salvaged. To that end… How do you suppose we fix this?”

“I’m sure you will be the one to tell me,” Yassen says. 

Dr. Three’s expression narrows—more of a closing door than a weapon. “I’ve begun to think that you’ve followed orders for too long, Cossack.” 

A muscle in Yassen’s jaw pulls taut.

“You all but left your fingerprints on the scene. But you were not hired—no other board member ordered you to remove either Rothman or Chase,” he muses, smoothing his suit coat. “You did not stay to seize their assets nor their place at the table. You had your own motivations.”

Yassen makes no move towards denial. It would be pointless. 

“Indeed,” Dr. Three says, letting the silence be his confirmation. “Now, there is the matter of the boy at the heart of this. After all, Alex is quite willing to come back to us… In exchange for the safety of his companion, that is. He’s quite predictable, is he not? Seems his training did him little good.” 

Unfortunately, this information does not surprise Yassen either.

Dr. Three wants him to flounder—in the way men like them do. Grappling for the thinnest thread, the hint of weakness and gunsmoke.

There is no doubt in Dr. Three’s mind that he can bring Yassen to that point.

The confidence is… apparently, well founded.

The cigarette smoke hangs low.

Patience was not a natural trait of Yassen’s, not as a boy, but it was one of the first true lessons the dacha taught him. He almost wishes he had less of it now, as he allows himself a fleeting spark of hatred for Dr. Three. A true desire to harm him, anything but his usual detachment. How satisfactory it will be…

“You care too much, Cossack,” Dr. Three says, the air of factual observation. “Truly, you could have spearheaded this organization one day, if not for that fact.” He shakes his head. “Instead, you’ve fallen prey to a common man’s lie.” Dr. Three sighs. “An idealist, after all this time… with all the blood on your hands. How utterly… banal. And disappointing. Truly. You were one of the best of us, Cossack. This is for the better.”

“Have we reached the end of this one-sided conversation?” Yassen asks, dry.

“Quite.”

And just like that, Dr. Three’s puppet theater of emotions is over, curtains drawn hard and fast.

“Call for the Skinner. I did promise him flesh.”

Now he strikes.

“I have something that may change your mind.” Yassen lifts his hands, slow. He flicks his cigarette to the floor and then he reaches into a pocket and the guns around the room tense. He keeps a hand palm up. He retrieves his plan. He shows it to the room: the lighter he was given back. “A parting gift from Julia. Should this situation arise.” 

Dr. Three looks intrigued. That’s all Yassen needs. 

Three nods at an operative to approach him and take the lighter.

When Target One grabs the Zippo, Yassen strikes. 

He yanks Target One towards him, kicking the side of his knee, dislocating it. The lighter clatters on the floor. The target screams, strangled and guttural. By the time bullets start flying, Yassen has Target One in front of him in a chokehold and has limited his airflow severely enough that the scream has strangled out. 

He rips Target One’s 9 millimeter from his holster, turning and downing Targets Six and Seven behind him with double-tap shots in the eye gap of their protective gear. 

Gunshots bark back.

Pain explodes through his shoulder and upper arm, but he bears down on his stagger. So long as the damage is flesh and hits no artery, taking a bullet or two in this altercation will be acceptable.

He places his fifth and sixth shot in Target Eight, making for the only cover he can—a decorative pillar. 

Target One struggles again, vigor renewed. Sharp elbow to the gut, almost winding Yassen despite the fact he’s braced for it. 

He presses the muzzle to the back of Target One’s neck and squeezes the trigger. 

The weight turns dead, and Yassen shifts both his grip and his aim.

The 9 millimeter clicks empty on Yassen’s insurance shot for Target One, and he discards it. Instead, he rips the confiscated ecto-gun from Target One’s waist band.

Targets Two through Five, Nine and Ten close their ranks. 

Skinner emerges the way it is wont to do—apathetic to the laws of physics and solid matter. The air goes heavy—souring with the smell of dirt roads and death.

Just on time. 

The lighter—

—there.

It had bounced when it hit the floor—thankfully not too far.

He kicks it towards Dr. Three and switches the weapon’s safety in the same motion. Drops the dead body, conceals himself behind the pillar. Takes aim.

The target is small, but Yassen has hit smaller.

The gun discharges. The recoil is sharp, the jaws of a viper. 

Here he is, taking a page out of the boys’ book. Well, Yassen has never denied the sense of finding wisdom in unconventional places.

He is prepared for the reaction—at least, moreso than the Targets. He’s seen it before, but from a distance. He shuts his eyes tight and turns his face from the force of the blast.

One moment, the popping of guns. The next, blank silence.

—a pressure wave that knocks his hearing askew and makes it scream. 

He’s not expecting it to be cold. Bone-chillingly frigid, sub-zero winds, worse than any Russian winter, warping around the concrete pillar. 

Before anyone can recover—he moves, aiming around his cover at Dr. Three—

Where Dr. Three was. 

He and his pet are gone. Pizdéc.

Yassen pulls additional ammo off of Target One, slotting in a new magazine.

Dr. Three’s detail are squirming on the ground, two knocked out cold, one trying to push himself up on weak arms. He looks up, and there’s a scant half-second that his eyes widen. Yassen gives him three bullets for the trouble. His helmet clicks back on the floor and stays there, oozing red from the face shield. 

Someone with more wits, rolls onto their stomach, pulling their pistol—Yassen puts two shots in. 

Now, to find the boys. 

He hopes he isn’t too late. 

Before this—before he died, before the portal, before everything—there’d been an eighth grade unit about Greek mythology.

A printout to learn, a presentation to give. Danny had been assigned the Minotaur and the Labyrinth.

He remembers the nightmares more than the assignment. The vivid sense of place—caves and tunnels winding into impossible mazes, caverns that yawned wide before snapping shut, catastrophically narrow passageways. Stone below, beside. Above.

Buried and lost, long before the Minotaur ever crept close.

He hasn’t thought about that myth in years. The dreams long forgotten. But something here digs them back up—maybe it’s the halls. Folding and omnipresent, unending. Veins, arteries, capillaries, leading—roundabout—to the monster at the heart.

Their books were laid out on the kitchen table like stepping stones, cracked open along their spines. The illustration of the Labyrinth took a whole spread. She was helping him study; her voice steady, patient. She was trying to get him to—

Focus.

“This way!” Alex barks at him.

The hallways are all identical, varied only in ways that don’t matter. They fly past—and over—debris of progress. Stretches with wall paneling still missing, leaning or scattered instead; an area where no light fixtures have been installed yet, but boxes stack against the wall; a clustering of metal they nearly skid into, its exact contents unidentifiable at the speed they’re going. 

Rebar and concrete. Ominous dark corners, stretching back, and back, and back…

Of course Alex’s supervillain kidnappers had to choose the least intuitive, most grand-scale construction site possible. Danny makes a mental note to tease Alex later about how little spy movies exaggerate.

If there is a later.

“There,” Alex says. Jerks his head towards a dead emergency exit sign.

They take the stairs two at a time. The entire thing is plain, echoing concrete. Alex’s sneakers squeak off the sharp edges of a step. His breathing is measured, accustomed to the exercise, but to Danny, it’s the loudest sound in the air. He forces his lungs to work in tandem, but the noise feels like a death sentence.

Ha.

Danny thinks, fleetingly, that this would be easier if the floors and walls and everything just didn’t matter. If he could just snag Alex’s wrist again, and let gravity do the rest. But it’s harder to control, stuck in his physical body. Even dragging Alex through one floor and two walls was like clawing through molasses—thick, resistant. He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. And losing his grip on intangibility has more consequences vertically than it does horizontally.

Besides, the more energy he uses, the more he’ll attract the attention of the Skinner.

He can still feel the heaviness of roadkill in the air around him. They’re in its hunting grounds.

Somewhere below them, a door crashes open, slams into concrete. It sounds like a clap of thunder.

“Shit,” Danny wheezes.

“Out.”

They bank out into a new hallway and start sprinting. Doorway, window, unfinished wiring—Danny’s eyes dart back and forth. An exit, they need an exit—

Alex yanks him by the shoulders in a new direction just as someone breaches the door they left behind.

It’s a room full of plastic sheeting. Unfolding before them, the opaque white tarps slice their lines of sight into narrow pieces. Like ghastly, spiderwebbed tunnels, the plastic crawls into several adjoining hallways.

Above, the drop ceiling is unfinished, allowing for dangling ventilation that crinkles into harsh right-angle elbows. Drooling, inert wiring. 

Alex directs him inwards and then stops, drops them behind a stack of ceiling tiles, and goes completely silent.

Two men walk into the room, guns raised. Danny can feel them. A coil in the air, like a finger of smoke lifting off a smoldering campfire—

Cold detachment.

—just a job, nothing to them.

It pisses Danny off. He wants to make them afraid.

Their screams would be so refreshing. His core clenches at the idea. He could make them afraid. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be more delicious for the challenge. Like cracking open a shell for tender meat.

Alex touches his wrist. Jerks his head to the side.

Right.

They creep away, twisting through blind spots and opaque plastic. There seem to be stairwells in every corner of the building; they just have to get to the next one.

He hears footfalls from the men. The click-whirr of something mechanical. The electric breath of radio static, feathering and sticking to the vertebrae of his neck.

Alex’s footsteps are completely silent, rolling gently from heel to toe before lifting carefully. His breath is quiet, too, drawn through his mouth. Every movement minimal.

If it wasn’t for the swirl of high-strung tension, a buzzing steel gray under a milky film of practiced calm, he could tell himself it wasn’t a living being just ahead of him, but something ghostly instead.

It makes Danny all-too aware of how loud he is, in the dead-breath quiet of the floor.

If Danny decided not to breathe at all—how fast would Alex notice? 

Is his lie more important than Alex’s safety?

Alex is about to walk them forward when Danny feels their pursuers turn around. It’s automatic, the way he yanks on Alex to change directions, grip almost too hard. He drops it just as fast.

A small corner, recessed for a vending machine—they squeeze there to hide from view. Sardines in a can, Danny pinned in further, and Alex with his back to one wall ahead of him.

The guards are passing by, just far enough to miss them, concealed in the shadows. Their footsteps alternate between heavy and echoey—on the flooring—and muffled, crinkling over the plastic sheeting.

Danny’s hand floats up, almost without his permission. Hovers close to Alex’s wrist. Ready, waiting.

But the men keep walking.

Danny lets the corner take his weight. His arm leaves a dark smear on the wall, from the soaked fabric of his jacket. 

He grits his teeth. He can feel the way the flesh underneath that layer of thin threads is still shredded, strands of meat sticking against each other and complaining as it all moves together. A living body is too damn noisy.

He knows what Alex must have seen, when he looked at Danny’s wound: dark, drying blood, staining his sleeve in a miasma of deep browns. The raw fabric edges rubbing against each other. And of what’s beneath—nothing.

Danny hopes nothing.

Their pursuers are still close. Too close.

They wait.

Alex’s head is cocked, listening. Tilts a few angles further.

Danny feels the guards turn back around. Met some dead end, perhaps. Exiting at the other side of the hall. 

The twin cold spots of detachment move further, until Danny can’t taste the smoke anymore.

He feels his hackles fall back down. He shifts around Alex, takes a step—

A crinkling of plastic is the half-second warning he gets before pure, instinctual intangibility is the only thing saving him from a bullet in the head.

Shit, he hadn’t even seen the tarp on the ground.

Harmlessly, the bullet passes between his ears and thwunks into the wall behind him. Ahead, the plastic sheet between them waves as if hit by nothing more than a breeze, but through the bullet hole, there’s the glint of a visor.

But the man couldn’t possibly be looking at him, so it must be— 

The sound of plastic sheeting rustling, moved aside to clear a path. The men are moving towards their position without any pretense of subtlety. 

They must’ve seen something, and it wasn’t Danny.

He jerks his head back towards where Alex was, but he’s—

Gone?

What, he mouths, feeling for Alex—

The plastic sheeting in front of him is ripped away abruptly. He flinches, but not back into visibility. This close, he can taste it in the air: a private radio line between the two of them, muffled to the outside world.

—Targets were here.

—Cover the exits now. I take south, you take north and call for backup.

Were here. Past tense.

Where’s Alex?

He lost his focus. He doesn’t even know when.

He lost Alex—

Danny reaches for the radio waves, their flowing bands and signals, and closes them in a fist. It’s something like a crunch, but weak—dead, fallen leaves revealing mulch underneath.

He has to find Alex.

He broadens his awareness, searching for the tenor of Alex’s emotions, but his own tumult is making it hard to find; fuzzy.

The men separate with no awareness of the crisis flooding Danny’s mind. One man heads towards what Danny knows is north, if he remembers the way the city was lined up with the building.

Backup. He’s the one getting backup. This situation’s only going to get worse if he lets that happen.

Danny slinks after him, following several paces behind, closing the gap a little more each time.

He’s heavier than he should be. Too real. Still, tangibility sloughs off of Danny like snow from a tin roof.

He hopes this works.

The man pauses, gloved hand hovering by his radio. Realizing, maybe, they’ve been cut off again.

It’s the only opportunity Danny needs.

It’s uncomfortable, melding flesh to flesh. The body twitches and shudders. He tastes the heart beat clutch. He soaks into the new body. He folds his hands closed over their mind.

He hasn’t done this in a while. It’s intimate, greeting him like a friend—this feeling. This control. He feels queasy. 

The body’s thoughts course within, scratching and rushing, but muted. A flowing river stream beneath the thickly frozen surface layer. He doesn’t need to dig that deep to silence them, and instead, forces the body to move, heavy legs, heavy steps towards the wall.

Still, there is resistance. That water dragging against his leaden steps. But as long as panic flows, he has the upper hand.

He knew, from the moment he took over, what he planned to do with this body.

He sticks his hand, the body’s hand, through the wall. And then he lets go of his intangibility.

Pain pushes against the boundary between him and Not Him. The grunt screams in agony. It comes from deep down in his gut as his arm solidifies, delicate fibers enmeshed with the sheetrock.

Danny moves—flows.

He tugs gently at himself and decouples from the too-warm suit—whispering out through skin and fabric and kevlar. Danny slips from his body as the screaming continues. He won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. 

He drinks in the screams, spares a second to bask in it. It’s so good. It’s so good to not be operating off of a deficit. When was the last time?

Has there ever been a last time?

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

It’s pure adrenaline instinct that has Alex dropping for cover even before he’s consciously registered the crack as a gunshot. 

The shot is followed by poisonous silence. They can’t stay here. He reaches for Danny and his hand gropes at empty air. He turns to look—Danny is gone. 

Gone. 

Great. Fucking fantastic.

Better yet—those grunts whose potshot Alex had just dodged by the skin of his teeth are stalking forward, far too close for comfort.

Staying low, he picks a direction, and moves, towards an unfamiliar hallway’s yawning mouth.

If there’s one thing Alex is used to, it’s this. Running for his life, making shit up as he goes, and pretending the larger situation doesn’t exist until he’s face-to-face with it again. Getting separated from Danny isn’t really conducive to either.

He’ll just have to trust Danny’s slippery, blatantly anomalous abilities will keep him out of anyone’s hand. After all, they have so far.

But this is Scorpia. We can’t underestimate them, the cynical voice at the back of his mind hisses.

It sounds too much like Yassen.

Real voices, not too far behind, remind him of the imminent danger.

He needs to focus. Once these grunts are dealt with, he’ll find Danny, and he’ll make sure Danny knows how risky this disappearing act is.

Alex hugs the wall. There’s not much here by way of cover, but he has to find something, anything, to turn the tides in his favor. It’s just half-painted walls and an unfinished ceiling butting up against an outer wall, lined with small, pit-black windows. A ladder being used like a shelf, paint cans precariously balanced on top, and doorframes not yet outfitted with doors.

There’s nowhere to go that they won’t find him.

…but nobody ever looks up. 

He throws himself into two running steps, jumps high, and catches himself on the lip of a high-set window.

From there, he hauls himself up onto one of the narrow drop ceiling beams. It’s thin, not built to support more than flimsy panels, but it holds.

There’s just enough clearance for Alex to fit beneath the true ceiling as he scoots into a relatively protected space between two air filters. And not a moment too soon—below, one of the operatives slinks into view, and pauses—almost like he can sense something is amiss. His gun noses the air.

Alex holds his breath.

The operative stays where he is, feet rooted, gun and visor scanning. He thumbs a button on his radio, and gets nothing. Alex hears him mutter.

He’s going to have to time the lache perfectly; if he does, it’ll buy him a few crucial seconds of surprise. 

He visualizes it once, twice—like any other challenge, and then, as soon as the operative moves again, stepping forward, Alex lunges into motion. He catches the bar in front of him, momentum following through his body from that fulcrum point, and he slams his feet into the side of the A-stand ladder. It topples, sounding the way metal does when it hits metal. From its top step, two cans of paint follow it, all crashing on top of the operative. Alex flinches against the noise.

Milky white coats the operative’s helmet. The dented can rolls away, dribbling a smoothly curving trail in its wake.

Alex drops to the floor, easy, unable to wipe the smile from his face. The operative flounders and swipes at his visor with a glove, swearing, but it’s useless. He’s trying to flip the visor up when Alex lunges for him. He focuses on the gun first, shoving its barrel up, body slamming into the enemy to unbalance him.

The grunt squeezes the trigger with a shout. The bullets punch a steady row of tidy little holes into the powder-white wall and disappear into the open ribcage of the ceiling.

Alex twists the gun in his grip and fumbles to eject the mag. Misses once. Tries again. The operative keeps a hold of it and shoves Alex backwards. His spine and shoulder smack into the wall but the pain is nothing more than an echo. 

The mag clatters to the floor and Alex drives his knee up into the operative’s groin as hard as he can. The guy grunts. If he weren’t in full body armor, it would have earned Alex more.

It gains him some space to win control of the gun and he slams the stock into his visor.   

The operative hits the ground flat on his back. Alex drops to a knee, shoves the crook of his elbow up under the man’s chin, a snug blood choke. Keeps him still. A blood choke is faster than an air choke, and he doesn’t have the time to waste. 

He tries to keep his own breath steady as the operative struggles, and then finally subsides. Alex lets him back down, but hesitates to check his pulse.

It’s still there; sluggish, but present.

He lets the relief propel him back to his feet, pilfered pistol in his hand.

He circles back to where he last saw Danny, keeping his feet silent over the tarps and keeping his center of gravity lower. He spots their cubby-like hiding spot, a black smudge anointing it. Just ahead, the hole-punched tarp sectioning the two halls—likely intended to contain floating sawdust—still fluttering.

For a moment, he’s not sure where to go.

It’s the screams that point him.

Guttural, low.

He picks up the pace.

His ears lead him down a long hall, down two turns, and—

Flat empty wall, save for the operative screaming. It stuns him. Takes him a moment to realize that the grunt’s arm is in the wall. 

So that’s what happens if Danny doesn’t pull you all the way out of something. Alex swallows down the sudden wave of nausea.

And there’s Danny, head tipped and looking at the Scorpia agent like someone would a new installation at the National Gallery.

“Danny,” he ventures. 

“Oh, Alex,” Danny says. “There you are.” Pleasant surprise. A lollygagging grin. As if there’s nothing amiss here.

The man thrashes. Alex can see the fabric of his trapped limb, pulling at the wall like its fibers are knit into the concrete. “Fuck—God, please, help me—”

The visor turns, like he’s begging Alex.

Wrong, his instinct says, this is wrong. Danny’s expression, posture… the slight, almost drunken sway when he turns around to look at him. Loose, like a ragdoll. And it hits him even though he doesn’t want it to.

Danny’s enjoying this.

It occurs to Alex for the first time that he has known Danny for barely a week.

“Why are you still here?” Alex hisses.

Danny frowns. “I’m not gonna leave without you—”

“They’re gonna hear him.”

Danny blinks, his expression a bit glassed over. “Oh…” he says. “Right.”

Alex feels like he’s finally beginning to understand the meaning behind that four-digit number he heard in Montana.

Danny blinks harder, and shakes his head. His expression narrows back into focus. Danny again. Maybe. Hopefully. “Sorry—Yeah, we gotta go.” Danny takes a step away from the operative—who is screaming less, now, just breathing rapidly.

Well. If he’s amputated, he won’t be hurting anyone else again. If Alex feels like being honest, he’s seen worse.

Danny hesitates, glances back, and almost tries to linger. 

Alex grabs Danny’s wrist and tugs. 

Danny falls into pace with him like nothing happened. Relaxed, for a bloke running from Scorpia agents through a high-rise building.

—I’m just weird. Not totally normal.

Alex is starting to realize that was a gross understatement.

Some anomalous traits his ass.

They’re back in an exterior hall, the stairwell in sight. Alex drags Danny over, and they clear a flight of stairs easily.

But if they keep heading down, blindly, their movements will be too predictable. They need to mix it up or they’ll be caught in a pincer. But where? They have to get to the ground floor somehow, and Scorpia knows it.

Two more floors down, and Alex nudges Danny. “Out.”

“We’re still too far—”

“C’mon. I have an idea.”

He wrenches the door and keeps his center of gravity low as he ducks out of the stairwell. Behind him, Danny makes a soft noise of frustration, but follows.

They make it down two hallways before unguarded footsteps tip them off. Alex shrinks back, scanning for a hiding place—an open doorway, a bit of cover, anything—but there’s nothing.

“Back.”

“No, wait.” Danny’s voice is steady—confident. His cold hand latches around Alex’s shoulder.

And the world goes dark.

“Fucking—”

“Quiet,” Danny hisses.

Alex’s teeth click audibly as he snaps his jaw shut, but his tension doesn’t ease. His breath is taut in his chest, an over-filled balloon, but he barely allows himself to release it, not with Danny’s admonishment.

This is different. Sound still reaches his ears, the floor is still solid and present under his feet. He can still breathe. But he can’t see.  

He has to trust Danny here. He doesn’t have a choice.

He floats, an infinite moment.

Then, slowly—the world comes back a vignette, black fingers reluctantly receding from the center of his vision. 

For a moment, he only knows his eyes are open because of the pull on his eyelids—miniscule muscles tugging, twitching, in tandem. His eyes remember to see colour again.

“Sorry,” Danny mouths. 

Alex swallows, trying to reign in his nerves. The smile he offers Danny is more than a little shaky. “S’okay, mate. Dealt with worse.”

Danny’s eyebrows scrunch, but he lets Alex brush it off, glancing over his shoulder, then back to Alex. “Okay, ideas man. Where to?”

“We need to get to the elevators,” Alex says. “Center of the floor.”

Danny hesitates, but it’s brief. Alex isn’t sure he’d have caught it if he hadn’t spent so much time, very recently, trying to read Danny. 

It’s all Alex needs to remember Danny’s reaction to the elevator that Dr. Three’s operatives, and the Skinner, brought them up in. It wasn’t even that long ago, but it feels like a different lifetime.

At least Alex isn’t planning for them to take the elevator again. 

“They’ll be waiting in the stairwells,” Alex says. “Would you rather we jump out a window?”

Danny’s pained expression says yes. But aloud, he only says, “No, I know. It’s fine. I can get us there. If you let me, we can slip right through all these walls.”

Intangibility. Alex remembers what that was like. And now, he’s seen just how badly it can go wrong.

Danny isn’t what he thought—he’s someone worthy of the Foundation wanting to catch. Danny has been lying this entire time. 

But that doesn’t change the facts: Danny has done nothing but help him. Try and protect him. The answer is obvious. And he’s ready this time.  

His expression hardens. He holds out a hand. 

“Do it.”

Being ready for it only helps so much. 

It slams down on him like getting hit by a car, punching out his breath, lights out. 

But consciousness stays with him, presses in close on his brain stem like a pigeon wedged in between spikes. 

Nothing. Insignificant and lost to the utter absence.

Deprivation. 

How does he know it’s cold, despite the way his body has dropped away from him?

Nothing exists but the ice—

—the snap roar of light and sound. He plunges back into reality. 

Danny tugs him three whole steps, towards another wall, and he holds his breath as he goes under again. 

And again.

Alex almost loses count of the number of walls they pass through, and corners they skirt around, before the elevators finally come into sight—he can’t help it, breaking away from Danny.

He’s shaking and his fingertips tingle with needles. He hugs his arms close to his chest and forces himself to catch his breath. Christ. Danny is looking at him, face pinched, but otherwise looking totally unfazed. How the fuck—

“Are you—” 

“Fine. ‘m fine.” He is. He’s fine. More important things. 

Elevators. 

According to the screen at the top the elevator is at the lobby. Perfect.

Next problem. Opening the doors. He tests the door seal with his fingers. Secure. Shit. Of course it can’t be forced open easily, it’s brand new. He could try picking the emergency open lock but that would take more time than they have—

He looks at Danny. Electronics, yeah? “Don’t reckon you can convince it to open?” 

Danny blinks, and shifts on his feet. “I… yeah? Probably.” He swallows and his gaze fixes on the doors. The lights above them pulse, dim and then bright again. 

The doors slide open easy as. 

Literally what the fuck. 

Inside is an empty column—looking up, and looking down, the car is nowhere in sight. Only an inky pit.

He ignores the way his stomach swoops.

Alongside both walls are guide rails for the counterweight, and in the center, the car’s single guide rail line. Wide fixing brackets span the entire length of the rails, and Alex is relieved to estimate about four feet of vertical space between each one.

If this wasn't a life or death situation, this would be a fun challenge. Story of his fuckin’ life. 

“Down this way is the best shot we have,” he says. “To the basement. Then we find their getaway vehicles. We’ll find a way to contact Yassen from there. It’s SOP for Scorpia, they always have more than—”

“Don’t tell me your plan really is to jump?” Danny interrupts.

Alex can’t help but laugh at his tone. “Don’t be daft. We’re going to climb.”

Danny balks. “With what?”

“Those.” Alex points to the fixing brackets, then steps back, scanning the wall. “We’re on—floor thirteen, so we don’t have that far to go. At least, compared to where we started.”

His eyes flicker to Danny, down to his arm—his good arm, clipped. He’s still being careful not to hold it like it hurts, but between the awkward bend of it, and the steady paling of his face…

Danny shifts his side away from Alex, again—a familiar, protective move. 

“It’s uh, just like the crane, yeah? Just don’t look too far down,” he says. 

He hugs the outside of the door, positioning himself as best as he can. Three points of contact. It’s one foot first, onto the nearest bracket—he’s confident it’ll take his weight, but it’ll be the day he doesn’t check that he falls to his death. It’s narrow, just wide enough to get his toes on; with one foot braced, he finds the bracket above with his hand, transferring himself one point of contact at a time.

Danny hovers above, a dark figure stark against the cold light behind him. It flickers and the elevator door makes to slide closed. Danny’s hand shoots out to stop it. 

“It’s like a ladder,” Alex says. “See? You can go down hand over hand. Watch.”

He demonstrates, lowering his center of gravity. One foot to the lower foothold, then one hand to the previous, and repeat.

This time, when he looks up, the open landing door is a good ways above.

Danny seems to have shrunk back.

“Just like the crane,” Alex says again. “You can do it.”

“No. No, I can’t, it’s—” Danny swallows. “This is nothing like the crane.”

His left arm is shaking.

Danny freaked out when they were brought up the elevator but he didn’t think the hoistway would be the same—but it clearly is.

Shit. 

Alex may be desperate, but he’s not cruel. He’s not leaving Danny behind.

“Okay, just—” he starts, when—

A guttering rattle, from below.

Alex looks down. A shout wrenches itself out of him.

Skinner scrambles up the shaft like rising vomit, smelling like roadkill. Wide rictus grin and he flinches for the first time in years. Pure panic response.

Its eyes are lamplights like an incoming truck barrelling at a deer.

Alex’s flinch turns into a scramble. He grabs for the bracket and hauls himself back up the sides, fuck, come on—

It presses upwards and he can feel the rancid air warm around his exposed ankles.

Jesus Christ, it’s going to skin me alive.

And like winter, Danny’s cold arms wrap around him, ice into his ribs—his shoulder taking the wind from Alex’s diaphragm with its impact—

Alex thinks, or maybe says, with desperation, get us out of here.

He’s never been more prepared for what is about to happen. 

He takes a deep breath and lets his brain succumb to the madness of complete sensory deprivation. Succumbs to no breath, no light—

They fall, solid and real, onto the ground.

Alex gasps back into reality. The concrete scrapes on his hands and on his cheek.

—Unsecured territory.

He gets up to a low crouch and scans the area. They had to have made noise. He screamed in the shaft like he lost all sense of basic operating procedure.

Different floor. Several points of cover, large concrete columns. Limited visibility around the cover.

His eyes widen.

A BANG barks over their heads as Alex tackles Danny down. A gunshot nearly pins Alex through the hand, and he scrambles away. Danny rolls over, follows. He scurries behind a pillar, Danny close behind.

They get their feet under them, their bearings.

Bullets bark around them, but the sound gives Alex an idea of their origin.

A moment of silence—reload? Repositioning?

Whatever it is, it’s a chance.

He pushes the safety on his pistol with a snick.  

He darts from the corner, firing off shots towards the last known position, and is rewarded with a low, pained grunt as he ducks back down. 

He shoves down the warm sick blanket of satisfaction that settles into his stomach. 

Danny is sticking close at his back.

The next shot he tries misses, badly; potshots force him to aim wide, low. No clear view, and he nearly gets his brains blown out. 

Fuckers. The cover could be worse, but not having Danny providing covering fire is really swinging the balance of the battle.

The way Danny used the Foundation gun—he should know how to use a regular firearm—there were plenty of times he could’ve snagged one, before; why didn’t he? Why hasn’t he—

Reinforcements are being drawn to the gunfight, boots pounding hard on some other floor. The angry chopping of guns reverberates up from below, a constant cacophony.

This isn't working.

Then he hears something strange—a yelp, “Down!”—

He can’t help himself, can’t help but look, and—

In the maw of an adjacent hallway, a Scorpia operative is grinning, stance wide and steady, Danny squirming in his grip.

Gun nuzzled, almost casually, faux-familiar, against his spine.

Alex’s heart thunders off a cold cliff.

“Stop. I have your friend.”

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

A smothering leathery grip over his mouth.

Danny can’t scream as it clamps his jaw shut. He can’t scream as something blunt scrapes his vertebrae.

Fuck.

He watches Alex freeze in place, and even if it’s only an instant, it’s all the other agent needs to swoop Alex’s legs out from under him. His head makes a cracking sound against the untreated concrete that has Danny wincing. 

She pins Alex down, unceremonious. 

That’s two agents, but Danny can sense a third, too—all bloodthirst and spiteful glee. Hanging back, behind them. And somewhere above, the Skinner still stalks, long, prowling lines. It will find them. It is full of that easy, confident knowledge.

Danny’s stomach churns.

When Alex lifts his head up, Danny can see the red print of burst blood vessels marring his chin and lower jaw from the impact.

Danny wants to tear himself in two. Split down the middle, be two places at once. To be here, and above, and gone all together. 

The agent pinning Alex leers unpleasantly. “Funny, isn’t it? The minute we got his little friend on the hook, he stopped. Look, he’s just like a little ragdoll cat. You’re really pathetic, aren’t you? Soft in all the wrong ways, just like Ms. Rothman said you were. I always thought your training was a joke.” 

She pokes at Alex, who doesn’t even snarl. Face white, blank, staring right at Danny’s navel like he can see the gun right through it. 

While the other agent talks, Danny can feel it coming off the one behind him: he doesn’t care if Danny lives or dies. It’s a boredom, cool and gray, frosted with red tendrils of irritation like frayed cables exposed to the element—or something like a fungus, betraying a growth underneath. There’s a pulsing itch to pull that trigger finger, to watch Danny’s guts spill out of him like unspooled yarn. 

The man behind him likes seeing it, the ghosts whisper. Intestinal tracts, gut wounds—they’re his favorite. The mess and the smell.

That disgusting red itch pulses again, grotesquely.

Instead of letting blood and spinal fluid paint the floor in front of him, the man says, “Let him stand up already.”

The woman complies easily, but keeps Alex’s arms pinned, maintaining leverage. Alex stoops in her grip. He can't even stand upright.

She’s something different than the man—if quicksilver was a fever, he thinks. She’s a simple thing, or calls herself such—she likes to cut and she likes the feeling of cutting. Words or knives or guns: it’s satisfying to pass through flesh. This traitor is thick with tension and such a fun little game. Fox to a rabbit.

He’s losing himself. These people have that same dark sinew of death, binding things down and down and down. Memories of pain. Memories of love, rued forever.

The man says, “You’re going to come with us. We’re going to walk you and your friend. Any funny business and he dies.” A tendril of red amusement, growing like a plant on fast-forward. He would love nothing more. They plan to kill him anyway.

The shadows beg him to drench the room in his cold. Beg him to kill the fetid thing behind him, feeding on intestines and worse things. The shadows tell him it’s been so long, there’s nothing left of a person in that man but cancer.

…He can’t. He shouldn’t.

She grabs Alex’s shoulder, surgical, and wrenches.

The echoes of Alex’s scream bounce around his head as her compatriot laughs. Alex’s shoulder juts as an angle that tells him it’s been dislocated.

It’s like the whole world is on a slant-angle, now.

He got so wrapped up in what these people were. That was stupid of him.

He’s something different than what they are. He’ll make them afraid. He’ll make them forget about everything but the fear. It makes him want to smile.

Danny lets himself stop pretending to breathe. He feels the operative’s fingers on his mouth tighten in confusion.

Siphoning his energy is like a delicacy. He goes slacker and slacker, hand dropping completely. The gun at Danny’s back falters. He grunts in tepid cool confusion as his head lolls to the side, and then finally, his mind falls into it, the tender void, like a mother’s arms.

Danny looks up, craning his neck back, creaking, and makes eye contact with him. For a moment, his head eclipses the square of light overhead, the crescent moon whites of his eyes through his mask going wider. The shadows finally have their way. 

The lights stutter and go out. Darkness envelops everything.

Danny steps out of his grip. A spark of fear and confusion, reeling out to try and get him back. He turns and puts a hand on his shoulder. He sends him down through the floor. If he doesn’t care what happens to Danny, why should Danny care what happens to him? 

One down. 

But there’s more.

He flows toward her, like water. Her skin is vulnerable when Danny latches on, palm around her wrist. Bird bones.

Danny snaps himself shut like a bear trap.

There’s the faintest resistance—heels digging in—shuddering breath. Rug burn. Too used to working alongside Skinner, maybe.

That’s fine. Danny has cowed people with higher resistance before.

He sinks deeper, expending energy with the promise of gaining it back. Ice spreads out. This fear has grime and acid to it, popping in the back of his mind like a swollen tick, flooding blood between his teeth.

She wants to get away from Danny. He tugs once and his skin pulls away, cracking at its surface.

It’s nice—all the deep bottled fears fizzing, like a diet coke in need of Mentos. It makes him grin. Another snap of emotion is his reward, making his core buzz like a hive of bees. It crawls and squirms over itself.

He burrows, searching for more. But it’s not quite deep enough. It’s all topsoil; loose and dry. He needs the moist, damp, underbelly; the part of her she’s most desperate to protect.

“—go! Danny, you can let her—”

Alex’s voice cracks through the air, like a whip.

Danny snatches his hand back. Without a tether, the agent falls heavily, away from Alex’s stooped form. She’s panting. Eyes wild. Frantic. The scent of fear—

Alex doesn’t smell it. He cracks his gun over her head—she falls over.

Her arm lolls, limp, at her side. Where her glove and sleeve have been pushed apart, her wrist is black and blue—so dark that Danny’s not sure what color her skin should have been. There’s a glass sheen on the dead tissue.

Alex’s eyes are trained on it. Danny watches his gaze waver, then draw upwards to meet his own.

It’s the thinnest snarl of smoke, unfurling from Alex, as he hesitates. Brushed with fear and frozen-water stillness.

“…Danny?”

The snap of fear is needle-sharp.

“I,” Danny says.

He doesn’t know what to say.

Danny exhales, slow and shaky. Maybe his first in a while. He’s not sure. It comes out in a thin cloud of vapor.  He wants to hold himself together, tight and small. “So. Elevator’s a no-go,” he tries. It comes out flat.

Alex’s gaze skitters away from Danny, to the elevator’s black pit, and his jaw tenses. Danny can see, can feel, him collecting himself. “New plan,” he says.

But Danny doesn’t get to learn the new plan.

“Bravo, Shrike,” comes a voice, hissing the name like its edges are serrated. “Found yourself a little attack dog.”

Shit. Danny forgot about the last agent—the one standing back—too caught up with the ones who’d hurt Alex. He whirls around, tries to press cold onto the new threat—

And somehow, inexplicably, it slides off the agent like water off a duck’s back.

Danny stills.

He steps from the shadowed hall like he was almost as at home in them as Danny is. His visor is pushed back, the protection eschewed. The self-assurance rolls off him in nauseating waves.

Needle-hot panic begins to prickle his palms with sweat.

Alex lifts his gun like it’s natural. Like his shoulder isn’t screaming. “Don’t call me that,” he snarls back. With one step, he’s put himself in front of Danny. 

“Not even a hello? Don’t you recognize your fellow recruit?” The line of his body screams threat in a way that’s personal, reinforced with hate—jealousy?

“I recognize you just fine, Helve. Do me a favor, yeah? Fuck off.”

Helve advances a step and lets out a hearty chuckle. “It’s Ardennais,” he corrects. He’s trying to walk them back towards the elevator, doors closed on this level, but the threat of Skinner prowling the shaft presents itself all the same. Hemming them in like cows in a slaughterhouse. 

“Like hell it is,” Alex bites.

“Oh, please. The rumors must be true then. You pussied out of your final assessment, didn’t you, eh?”

Alex lifts the gun higher, aiming at Helve’s head, rather than central mass. “Want to find out?”

There’s a stab of something acidic through the air—Alex doesn’t want to—

“Oh, I’d love to.” Helve grins, a gleam in his eyes, flashing with the lights overhead as they twitch in time with Danny. He’s truly closing the distance, unafraid of Alex’s aim. 

Like he can also feel how much Alex doesn’t want to kill him.

And Alex is letting him. Holding his ground, but letting him step after step after step—

They need to get out of here. He needs to grab Alex and they—

Helve reaches for a holster on his chest. Thumbs the button with a small, metallic pop. Extracts a knife, as long as his own forearm. 

Danny tries one more time, but the cold sloughs off even faster than last time. Helve doesn’t even seem to notice.

Another step. The muzzle of the gun is inches from his nose.

The emotion sparking between them is trying to extract the silver connective tissue from his skin, his ribs. 

Alex doesn’t want to kill him but he wants something. 

The desire feels like grit teeth and a bloody nose and it drags itself through barbed wire. Some part of Alex wants to prove him wrong on his terms. 

“Nah,” Helve says. “You’ve always been the product of nepotism. Hand-picked, special case, and for what? You know there’s no way the three of you walk out here alive, right? Not after all the shit you’ve caused.” 

Danny can’t… 

Alex speaks through a clenched jaw. “What do you even think you're doing here with so little backup?” He jerks his head towards the female agent, limp and boneless, and her missing partner. “You’re on your own. Weren’t you a better student than this?”

Helve smiles. Slow. Every tooth shines predator-bright.

“Isn’t it obvious, Shrike? I’m buying time.”

Danny is suddenly, brutally aware that the Skinner can pass through walls too.

Behind him, he can feel the humid heat of dead things rising up in the air, warming his back like the sun.

“It wouldn’t shut up about your little friend’s scent,” the agent is saying. “Kept talking about how the tracks were fresh—a dead giveaway. Pretty useful to us. Makes sense that a freak like you would want another freak for company.”

Fuck. The Skinner smelled it all—the bursts of power he used. His cold, his static. His hunger. 

His greed.

The shame burns through him like a brand.

More agents come out of the woodwork, surrounding them. Guns trained on them. The fuzz and chatter of radio static in his brain like a gnat.

He can hear the faint barking of bullets from downstairs, but too slowly—not fast enough. They aren’t going to make it.

And it’ll be his fault.

The very thought makes his skin ripple like a tarp blown taut over strings.

“We’re going to teach you a lesson, Shrike,” Helve says. “A lesson that you should’ve already known. If you fuck with Scorpia, we will pay that back tenfold.”

They’re at the edge of a cleaver—the point where all others intersect. A line-of-fire prism, surrounded on all sides. 

Skinner hauls itself up through the floor, creaking tendons and spidery hydraulic joints. “Give up now, prey. There is nowhere you go that I will not trap you.”

He yanks Alex behind him, away from Helve and his black-red grin. It’s easy; Alex has gone still as a rabbit, eyes just as round, fear thickening like lake fog.

Skinner stalks forward, each shift of its weight a waterfall of motions throughout its skin-tight muscles—each one bulging in turn, like too-ripe fruit straining its ruddy skin.

It eats at him. Claws its way through his core with mere proximity and strength of belief, the age and power behind the very concept of its being. It buzzes: I am a hunter. The sound of roadkill flies blurring into his static. It buzzes: I am ancient and I am no mere dead thing and you are prey and you are skin and you are mine. The hot smell of decomposition. 

My prey, it murmurs, so quietly. Almost like a lover, if it wasn’t wholly incapable of being anything other than itself. Your pelt will be mine.

It’s so powerful. He feels the way it shaves pieces off of him like the inexorable blunting of teeth, grinding him away.

Something falls down behind him. Alex.

The floor-to-ceiling windows behind it glint with the cataract ignorance of a metropolis. Skinner’s reflection hovers there, ghost on film, spilled chemical apparition. Scorpia operatives cock their guns at them, forming a ring around them and the Skinner. Trapping them, eager to watch this horror about to eat them whole. He can smell it wafting off some of them like fever breath.

This is the gullet. This is the swallowing point. This is the beginning of digestion, and it begins with their skin.

The panic rises. The Skinner scrapes deeper into him. It raises its hands, reverent for the feast before it. He can feel every part of himself become less real as it approaches, like every atom of himself is being vacuumed away.

There is no escape, it rattles. It is as inevitable as fossilized bones and it reaches forward and slides—

(He can feel Alex’s terror, pin-straight bleach-white, radiating behind him.)

—a claw into the—

(Alex, pressed into the digestive system of a world that wants to eat him.)

—meat of his left arm—

(Alex, about to watch him be skinned alive.)

—NO—

Do you know what ice sounds like when it shatters?

His face and throat open up to insanity, like an old friend.

He wails.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Yassen squeezes a bullet into another grunt’s soon-to-be-lifeless body. It tumbles down the stairs, already limp, helmeted head cracking on the landing. He gives it another bullet to be sure.

Aside from the shoddy ambush, the floor is empty. This isn’t what he would’ve expected from Dr. Three’s strike teams—this is uncoordinated. A communications issue?

No time to ponder his luck. He climbs the next set of stairs, the pain in his body packaged into a neat, tidy parcel, shoved deep to a place he will address only when it becomes necessary.

He checks the clip. Three more shots before he’ll need to reload.

He’s expending quite a bit of ammo on this, considering the targets at the bed and breakfast as well. The boys are lucky he’s not one to let supplies dwindle unnecessarily.

Seven floors have already passed, empty and eerie. The need to manually check each one is tedious, eating precious time, but cannot be helped. The landings either have signs of life, or they don’t. Lights on, grunts roaming, blocked—or unblocked—passageways. Yassen knows his presence has split their forces. It gives the boys a fighting chance to survive until he reaches them. It still grates.

A thin sound makes him pause. The length of a heartbeat and a half, before it trembles, sharpens, roars.

And then Yassen hears—

the sound—

—like the ringing of alarm bells like nuclear war like his father

slumped over a car like blood pitter-pattering onto the windshield.

What’s going on, he wants to ask. 

The sound splits like ice shattering. Estrov screams in answer.

It’s dark. It’s so dark. Every light has gone out except the faint, faint green indicator on the empty Foundation gun. The sputtering and dying—there is nothing here that is alive like electricity is alive. 

Everything is dead. He knows this because Hunter tells him. Neural impulses are pressed into the snow until they static out and become quiet.

He removes his hands from his ears. Floating.

The stairwell is an endless funnel and the sound washes over him and over him. It doesn’t end. Like being waterboarded.

And then he hears it. The sound of Estrov shatters again. The sound of his home presses into one young voice.

Alex. It’s Alex, screaming.

Sanity returns to his frontal lobe.

Danny blinks. His eyelashes catch the rough dirt on the unfinished concrete floor. His throat is sore. His ears are ringing. There’s a sound that keeps spinning in the air.

He remembers screaming. He touches his face, his throat. Human again.

Yassen is running. He doesn’t know when it happened. He clutches his rifle. He feels no pain, except the grief that has never left his body.

He gets his hands under him and gets up.

What the hell?

There is a twenty foot blast radius in front of him and everyone is on the ground. Some twitching and whimpering. Others are still. Unmoving. The city lights outside are dark for a few blocks and—breeze hits his face. The windows are shattered out completely.

He looks at his death arm and sees a wound, clawed barely half a centimeter into it.

Alex.

Bright fear.

He spins around.

He runs up flight after flight of stairs.

With his hair dyed dark and his height gaining ground, there are times—the thinnest moments—when Yassen sees Alex at just the right angle to see Hunter. With notes of his voice bending witty and low, the slope of his shoulders, the bridge of his nose—

The only true friend Yassen—

The grief has never left his body.

Once or twice, when information was scarce, and in his more morbid musings, he’d entertained the idea that the specter clinging around Alex’s shoulders could have been his father.

Alex’s hands are clutched over his ears and he’s breathing hard, eyes closed.

“Alex!” Danny reaches forward and flinches at the pulse of fear, so white it hurts his teeth. He registers Alex twitching only afterwards.

“I—fuck. Fuck.”

The loathing drowns him. He hurt Alex.

And like a prayer answered, Hunter guides his hand up. He looks up and he sees Venice. He sees the warehouse. He sees the killing room floor, tarped in Rothman’s favorite black sheets.

Rothman turns around and out of her mouth falls static, like a waterfall. Her eyes are dead air.

It’s a sound like glass when an icicle hits the unyielding ground. It’s the grief that turned to a hard white ball in his heart, when she placed a gun in Alex’s hands, sank her claws into his shoulders and said Alex, darling, please kill the man in front of you.

It’s everything Hunter tried to protect him from. Everything he tried to protect Yassen from.

Danny is almost about to scoop him up anyways and run when Alex murmurs, “She’s screaming.”

“What?”

“She’s screaming again, but it’s not—” Alex snarls. “It’s not real. It’s never real. I know it’s not real.” His face crumples. “But why am I—why am I so afraid?”

God.

Danny kneels down and does the only thing he can think of—

He siphons off Alex’s fear. Pulls the energy out of him so it can’t feed his panic anymore. It’s bitter going down.

Alex opens his eyes.

Rothman’s eyes are dead air. He’s finally close enough, he’s finally in position. Eyes on Target.

Alex is still screaming.

For a second there’s only silence.

“Are you okay?” he asks, even though he knows it’s useless.

Screams ring in his ears. Endless.

He can’t let Alex die.

Rothman opens her mouth and static waterfalls out. It was the easiest thing he’s ever done, putting a bullet in her throat.

And he’ll do it again.

Alex just looks at him, eyes wide, wordless. Terrified.

“I—I’m sorry,” Danny says. He stands up and backs away.

He raises the gun.

“We gotta—we have to run. Here, come on.”

Target is reaching out.

He reaches his hand out—

He fires.

Alex screams.

A bullet casing rolls on the ground.

The air is pungent, soaking up his fear and desire like gauze. The fear is raw in a way Danny’s never tasted from Yassen before.

Of course.

It couldn’t have been anyone but Yassen.

⨳

Each splatter of Danny’s blood is a gorged mosquito, sinking into the surface of Alex’s skin, feeding. 

The rest of it is still flowing from Danny’s neck. Sluices between his fingers. 

Blue. They’re blue. 

Or maybe that’s Alex’s imagination, the afterimage of all that red turning cool and poisonous.

His ears are ringing with the sounds of screams: long, syrup thick, trailing off to ragged ends and starting again after a breath. They sound familiar. The room feels like a blown-out shell. Like ground zero, the wreckage of an explosion.

He’s seen blood before. He’s seen this much blood before. Deep puddles of it, growing larger. Crawling, arm over arm, stomach dragging on the ground, streaks left behind to tell the tale. The smell makes him want to lose his stomach.

There’s Skinner—

Beyond. Behind—it’s laying there. Like a beached ships’ hull. Then, a twitch. Alex thinks of a stunned bird, having flown into the window, hit the ground.

And—

Danny’s jumper is shiny. The blood that pools off the hem is so bright, it’s almost purple and blue. A nasty bruise.

Plip.

It hits the toe of his trainer. Goes thin, translucent, as it spreads. Leaves behind a greenish sheen, until another drop hits.

Plip. Plip.

Alex’s hands are trembling.

⨳

The gunshot is a perfect cleansing whiteout.

Sound caves in on itself, like a black hole.

Deafening silence.

Yassen can’t see. It’s pure void. Nothing but that awful silence as he thrashes and dies in his own mind. He needs sound. He needs anything. He needs to know Alex is okay.

As if in response, Yassen’s ears ring, and then that ringing sharpens.

All of his thoughts explode out from the central point where they were contained—

—Grief.

The pain rushes back into his mind like a wave of catastrophe.

The urge to sob claws its way through his brainstem. It is uncontrollable. Alien. It surfaces like a parasitic worm, awakened under his very skin like it had always been there. 

He pries his jaws apart from their grinding. Hot warm liquid in his mouth. The path it follows—a hot line up from lip into nostril. Iron and salt. The pulse in his throat—jackrabbit quick. His hands are hot and shake with adrenaline.

He claws fingers into the inert handle of his Glock—odin, dva, tri, chetyre, pyat—again, left hand into the meat of his right arm, odin, dva, tri, chetyre, pyat. Counts to himself, like a fucking child. Anything to wake up from this nightmare.

Alex, something in him whispers.

Danny, something else says.

⨳

Oh, Danny thinks vaguely. I’m bleeding out. 

The human body is a funny thing. It reacts to shock with a sharp breath in. The thing that isn’t breath hits the back of his throat, spilling down and down. 

The human body wants to choke on it. The human body wants to breathe.

Don’t breathe. Don’t breathe.

The pain swells with the cystic burst of panic, combining and swirling until it reeks. Fingers of its infection find ways through all of him, vein corridors and nerve highways.

He lifts a hand he’s not sure belongs to him, and the pads of his fingers skim flesh, opened up like flower petals. 

Slick.

Warm. It’s warm. 

Danny would laugh—he never thought bleeding out would be warm. But it is; so hot it feels like the blood should be steaming off him. It coats his fingers in copper, thick and slippery. Like some sinister glove, the hand that would reach in to peel his layers back, see what’s inside.

He didn’t bleed like this when he died. He didn’t bleed like this when he hit the rocky—

There’s a tingling in his fingertips, like termites crawling into the wooden bones of an old house as he finds the exit wound, snug beside the vertebrae of his neck.

He thinks of other hands. Mom’s. The memory is long ago, fuzzy and half-real. Brushing sticky hair off the base of his neck, humming over his sobs, pulling the crown of his head against her sternum.

The front of him is already a mess. 

How much blood does a living human body need to function? How much before it’s a husk, a corpse?

Maybe he shouldn’t worry. 

He didn’t die then. He doesn’t deserve the mercy of dying now. 

Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised, either—this whole time—playacting with a murderer. 

As if he’s one to talk. As if it isn’t all his fault. 

⨳

Yassen blinks and he can see again. 

No—he can understand again. Sight had never been taken from him.

—Anomalies, Cossack. Tricky things. They'll have you thinking that up is down and that orange is green and that your mother is the one knocking at the door.

He scans for Alex.

There is a body up ahead. Swaying. Yassen can see the blowout of arterial spray on the ground in front of it, freshly dribbling. From the back, the clear entrance wound through the neck. A figure on the ground behind it.

No skull trauma. It’s sloppy work, not a proper double-tap. The target is—

He recognizes the sweater and the world snaps into horrible, instant focus.

Bodies everywhere. Incapacitated—babbling, holding their heads incoherently. How did he not hear them? He is standing, gun lifted.

Gun lifted.

Something cold slides up his throat.

From behind little Danny’s upright corpse, Alex makes an awful noise.

Something in his brain twinges. 

—Anomalies, Cossack.

Double-tap, his training screams at him. Double-tap. Something is wrong. Did you double-tap?

The corpse doesn’t fall.

Yassen would like to say that he is a hard man to rattle.

—Tricky things.

The corpse turns around.

Blood waterfalls from the open arterial neck spray as Danny looks him dead in the eyes.

Yassen blinks and he’s stepped backwards.

In those eyes, he can finally see it: the snow, and the war, and the sirens.

And as his mind reopens to awareness, he feels it ram into his psyche with the power of a nuclear bomb. Alien, tarry fear and swirling betrayal and agonized rage and why-did-you-do-that and an awful, thick, curdling self-disgust, like a swollen stomach. It nearly drowns him out of the horror. For a moment, he and Danny are lost in the feeling of being a monster. They are floating in it, and they are together.

⨳

The first step nearly sends Danny to his knees, the way his head swims, flips. It hits his stomach next, an airy, dizzy nausea. His weight goes heavy on his feet as he fights to center himself, shoving his palm closer over the ground meat wound in his neck. His heartbeat throbs in it, against his numb hand.

As if in retribution, a hot trickle of blood slides down the back of his neck instead.

The thing in his chest is heavy and humming, out competing the weakening pulse of his heart. Freakishly alive. Why can’t he just die like a normal person? Or even like a slaughterhouse animal? Over and over he only survives, and for what? For the sick, twisted amusement of the universe?

The anger is old. Ravenous in its consumption, but its teeth are infinitely knowable. 

Something desperate surges against it, and Danny staggers again, recognizing—

Yassen.

When their gazes connect, it’s all there, plain as if it were written in a book. The fear-rage and need-drive-horror.

What Yassen does, he does for Alex. For some kind of love.

Hot, slick, blood slides over Danny’s knuckles.

Alex is watching. The horror fills up his face. Laps at the edges of Danny, like tongues of flame. 

Everything fizzles away. 

Of course this is how it is. 

⨳

Yassen doesn’t dare look at the wound—if he’d see it closed, or see little Danny completely drained dry. He does not want to see either. The way his hand comes away says enough.

Danny opens his mouth to break the silence. 

And chokes, gurgling. He grabs at his mouth, eyes bugging. Blood bubbles and spurts out of his fingers.

Little Alex bursts into motion.

“Danny!”

Pure panic suffuses the air. Yassen fights through it. Alex is standing, desperately trying to stop the flow. He shucks off the dress shirt he was wearing on top—the movement awkward and stilted—and balls it up, half on the back and half on the front, over Danny’s neck. He looks at Yassen with an incandescent expression.

“What the fuck did you do?” he screams. Danny leans on Alex, suddenly so lifelike, blood sluggishly spilling out of his mouth and neck. “Danny. Danny, stay with me, we’re going to get you to a hospital or—” Alex’s voice breaks.

In the privacy of his own head, for one singular moment, Yassen can admit, small like a child, like Yasha—

He does not know what to do.

Danny’s red hands close around Alex’s wrist. Gently, so gently, urges them away. 

“Wh—what? Danny, no, come on, you need—” Something cool begins to creep into Alex’s panicked expression. His eyes flit to the blood on the ground, the two feet that Danny is still improbably balanced on.

Danny tries to shake his head, the tiniest motion, but stops. Agony spills across his face.

Yassen steps forward, just once. Icy perception ribbons out to the groaning masses in front of him.

If he is aware, and Alex is aware, then the guards squirming around them will soon follow.

Against the instincts still screaming danger, he tucks his gun.

He breathes in. Breathes out.

The panic flakes away. Cossack strides forward.

Surrounding enemies sufficiently incapacitated. Gunshots may bring the rest of them out of their stupor. He theorizes that he is ambulatory and aware faster due to his greater distance from the anomaly.

The Skinner is stirring, its chest expanding like a bellows.

They must exit quickly.

Shrike holds the shirt into place over the neck. Yassen, following the cue, secures it in place with the sleeves. Imperfect, but he doesn’t want to cut off blood flow to the head entirely; it seems like a poor idea.

He casts his gaze towards his apprentice. “Shrike, support his neck.”

Shrike makes a motion with his mouth as if to argue but slams it shut instead. He feels nothing at this.

Shrike does not move forward immediately, but his expression hardens and his gaze averts. He stiffly, painfully, raises his elbow over his head. 

He recognizes the injury. Shrike’s shoulder has been dislocated. 

Before Shrike can try to put it back into place, Cossack steps over. He cannot afford for Shrike to risk further damage.

With one hand firmly on the shoulder joint, he abducts Shrike’s arm perpendicular to his body with the other hand, and pulls until the shoulder re-articulates.

Shrike grunts. Cossack feels him relax, even minutely, as the pain reduces.  

Cossack turns to the anomaly. “Use your hand to indicate wellness. Can you move your legs?”

A beat. The anomaly gives a shaky thumbs up.

Exit point. Behind him is the stairwell he entered from. In front of them…

The Skinner thrashes—stirs. It lets out a scream of its own, holding its head. 

Skinner hauls itself up and he reaches for the Foundation gun; maybe its remaining shot would be more effective now that—

He does not get that far. Skinner shrieks, staggers—and then it lunges for the nearest squirming operative. More screaming follows as the Skinner sets to work. 

The elevator. Power still marks the number above the metal doors. He walks towards it. Clears the way, then calls the button.

Shrike and the anomaly are lagging behind, but arrive by the time the elevator doors slide open to admit them.

He corrals them inside with his mass. The anomaly is notably distressed, but does not lash out. A less alarmed exit path would reduce the chance of an unwanted reaction, but this is the only option.

He ignores his bodily sensations—the warm wet prickle of blood in his sleeve—and watches the numbers tick down to the underground garage.

The doors open. The anomaly tries to spill out first, unsteady. Cossack stops him with an arm. Shrike has the sense to wait.

He exits first, raises his gun overhead, and fires before the men watching the lower-rung getaway car can retaliate. Then, Shrike and the anomaly are permitted to follow.

Cossack sidesteps the bodies and the warm blood still leaking out of them. These ones are truly dead, but it can only be beneficial to ensure it.

True to the Doctor’s sensibilities, the vehicle is nondescript, black. It is an SUV, armored discreetly, only apparent from the inside. It is already running, keys in the ignition. Too easy, by all accounts—deceptively so. It can only be assumed that the vehicle is GPS tracked. No matter—they will not use it for long.

One of the vehicles that used to be here is now unaccounted for. 

Shrike fumbles with the handle of the back door. His hands are slippery with the anomaly’s blood, and shake besides.

Cossack pulls it for them. He watches their backs as they spill into the backseat, and then gets behind the wheel.

“Seatbelts,” he says, throwing the car into gear.

Neither boy responds.

⫷ ⫷ ⨳ ⫸ ⫸

Getting dispatched today, Casey didn’t know what he expected to see—a dilapidated mansion, maybe. A graveyard smelling of freshly upturned dirt. A horror scene at the morgue. But he knows he didn’t expect something like this.

He didn’t expect the dead to be so fresh when they got here.

Downtown Salt Lake City, halfway up an unfinished building. The place looks like a bomb went off; there’s not a window in sight that’s whole. Even the next building over, cracks glint along the glass wherever they look. 

The group moves in slowly, on high alert. 

Because the site is vertical, they’ll be starting at the bottom and working their way up. Cutting themselves off from main control was how most MTFs died, and Briggs wasn’t interested in letting that happen. It didn’t take a tactical genius to know that splitting their forces is a bad idea.

They’d already set up the anti-ecto perimeter shields, juiced up enough to cover the whole building, and confirmed ‘89 was contained. Somewhere in the building, it’s hiding, knowing it’s been pinned.

If anything in the building wants to escape into the city, they have to go through the MTF first.

And if they think it’s necessary, the ground agents will seal the exits with Mu-13 inside. They’re willing to make sacrifices to keep something this old and powerful under wraps.

Casey doesn’t want to take it personally. Sometimes, that’s the kindest option they have remaining. There are anomalies where you’d be better off considering those in the blast radius lost forever. There’s calls you have to make, in a field like this.

“Took us all night to find this damn thing,” Hughes mutters, before projecting his voice more. “Alright, pair up, watch each other’s backs. Charlie, with me. Bravo, with Delta. Foxtrot, you’re with Echo.”

In twos, they fan out through the ground floor entrance—future lobby, perhaps. If it weren’t for the rapidly cooling pools of blood and the black-coated bodies, anyways.

“These weren’t even killed by a skip, were they?” Sykes mutters. Nods to the body nearest her foot. “Gunshot wounds. Looks professional.”

“Interesting,” Hughes says. “We should be seeing different methods if it was ‘89.”

“You don’t have to toe around it,” Alvarez snorts. “They’d be fuckin’ skinless chicken breasts.”

On the way, Briggs had unsmilingly told them about the skip. XX89. It had been in custody before, apparently; but their hold on the thing had slipped. Briggs didn’t say why. Just that he was looking forward to getting it back between the four walls where it belonged.

For Briggs, that was practically giddy with excitement.

They’d caught wind of the thing earlier—scanners blowing up somewhere at HQ, but hell if Casey really knew how it works—and had been dispatched here to Salt Lake City. They’d first corralled the thing in the city at large, before alarms started blaring on this one particular spot.

They make their way upwards, slowly, sets of two on the stairs. The stairwell itself is a bloodbath—pockmarked with bullet holes. They find multiple bodies slumped down the steps, or in corners. Bleeding out from multiple locations—professional, like Sykes said downstairs.

But above the first floor, the floors themselves are empty. Almost eerily so—desolate in how still they stand.

They clear ten floors like this—each one the same as the last.

“I’m catching something on the radar,” Jelani reports. Pauses. “…Three things, actually.” This time, his voice is colored with confusion, no matter how slight.

“Three?” Grant asks incredulously.

“Yeah. There’s another signature, weaker—not residual, but definitely not visible at this point. It’s not on our records. As for the other one…” Jelani makes a sound like a short laugh. “Fuck. It’s ‘77.”

Casey can’t help his incredulity. “What?”

“6377. It was here.”

“You’re making shit up.”

“You wanna believe me or not, that’s up to you. But it’s right here.”

“Fuck. What is with this thing?” Alvarez hisses.

Sykes brandishes her detector, brow furrowing in a way that’s just visible through her visor. “He’s right,” she says. “That’s ‘77, alright.”

“Triangulation?” Hughes asks. It’s not a question.

Jelani’s eyes dart up. The unfinished drop ceiling hovers above them, and Casey thinks, nonsensically, about the grinning teeth of a too-large beast.

“Close,” Jelani says.

“Let’s keep going,” Hughes says.

Nothing on floor twelve—at least, nothing visible. 

“Christ—these readings are…”

Casey has a bad feeling about the numbers, just going up. You could jaw all you wanted about bad omens, but in this field of work, there’s no such thing as superstition. Only reasonable caution.

They get to the thirteenth floor—not even off the landing.

Casey stops. 

They all do.

You do a CRV test, before you’re allowed in a field like this. Get your cognitive resistance value—Casey’s is sky-high. Means there’s some thick blubber that his mind produces in higher quantities than the average Joe, and sometimes, that fucking blubber is the only barrier that keeps him from losing his mind when he sees something impossible rising out of the sands.

But it doesn’t mean he can’t feel it.

Grief. Staining the air like tar, grief in their fucking lungs. He—look. Casey’s never been a poet, never been the A’s in English class kid. He’s short on words to describe this kind of stuff. But he can feel the twist in reality. He knows the path his thoughts would’ve taken—can already feel it. The cool linoleum tile spattered with his tears as he said I’m sorry over and over to a pair of towering legs connected to no face.

Hughes puts his arm out, and everyone tenses behind him.

Slowly, he gives the hand signal: do not talk.

No noise.

He eases the heavy, fire-resistant door forward. It’s silky smooth in its newness, its hinges oiled to perfection.

Silence, quiet. And then—something ripping. Agonizingly slow. 

Sights on target, Hughes signs. Move out.

.

This whole case is fucking weird.

They watch the tactical support team take over watch on the containment field around ‘89. They’ve dosed it with the ecto-suppressant and for this one, it seems to hold. 

‘89 is all gangly sinew limbs, dull pit eyes staring off at nothing. It’s drenched in blood. The smell is so thick, like humidity from a hot shower. 

It shifts and claws at its head—its ears—or where ears should be. It makes a sound muffled by the warping and hum of the ectoshield.  

’89 is an old skip—a spectral entity that hunts and skins. It’s not a ghost proper the way 6377 is. 

The thing is, it should’ve been harder to wrangle down. Casey read ‘89’s file: it’s vicious, powerful, and has a paralyzing field effect. Casualties were involved the first time it came into custody.

Something weakened it. Or—disoriented it. Did something to it, beyond the obvious fight that left the battleground debris and shattered glass scattering the floor like so much sparkling snow.

That something had to be ‘77. That’s the only explanation Casey can think of. 

But… why?

Casey studied ‘77’s files backwards and forwards after the god-forsaken incident in Montana with the amnestics. Even with all that data—more than a year’s worth—they still have no clue what drives the thing. It’s associated with cold, shadows, static. Mimicry. There’s no place its traits or drives overlap with something like ‘89. 

…Is there?

Why would it be here, tangling with an ancient creature barely the same species as it?

And how? ‘77 may be known to be slippery, intelligent, but this level of widespread destruction is something else. As is the state they found ‘89 in—the thing was near feral. 

“There’s no ectoplasm,” Hughes says. 

And now that he mentions it, Casey realizes that’s what makes this feel so… wrong. 

“This place should be covered if they really got into it.” 

None of ‘77’s documented powerset could cause… that. Any of that. 6377 has been known to have disputes with other ghosts and spectral entities—this won’t be the first time—and yet…

This incident gets them no closer to understanding how best to trap the fucking thing.

“What was ‘77 doing here?” Jelani asks at large. With the job done, he’s staring down at his scanner again. ‘89’s signature is still present, but ‘77’s is a bright rippling green streak, still singing echoes in the air. “Thing stays well away from civilization.”

“Yeah…” Sykes waves her detector, a wrinkle in her brow. “It stays away from populated places but this is far from the first time it’s picked a fight with another spectral entity. It going this far out of its way… That might be the weird thing.” 

“What’re you implying?” Jelani asks. He asks it like he knows, and is giving her a chance to say something else. 

Sykes sighs and shoves the detector into a strap on her hip. “It must not have been feeding its obsession. What else would force it this far outside its usual patterns?” 

Alvarez laughs. When the group is silent, he tosses Sykes a glance. “You’re not seriously thinking that attacking other spectral entities is this thing’s drive. A ghost that hunts other ghosts? No manches. I don’t buy it.”

“It’s not about what you think. It doesn’t change the fact that it could still be here. We need to clear the rest of the building. 

Casey shifts uncomfortably. He’s not a big fan of surprises.

“We need to be on it,” Hughes says. “We stay together. We stay smart. We keep each other safe.” 

A mutter of assent comes from the group.

“Alright—move out.” 

.

It’s the whimpering that draws them to it. The sound is big in the emptiness of the floor.

It’s someone dressed in all black—fully kitted out—the combat gear heavier than the person themself. 

“Help…” The guy hangs from his enmeshed arm above his head, knees on the floor like they’d buckled. “Help me…” There’s a machine gun slung around his chest, a pistol on his hip. 

“Ho-ly hell,” Casey mutters. 

He’s not military or government—no visible insignias or identifying features about his gear. But he’s clearly some sort of tactical, and clearly came face-to-face with some spectral.

“Don’t envy this guy,” Alvarez mutters.

Casey nods. It’s not like they can saw a hole around the arm and pull the guy out. Even he, the total rook, has seen shit like this before; when a spectral entity decides to pull the plug on intangibility on a human—or anything, really—it’s a bad scene. The guy’s arm might as well be one with the wall now.

Hughes radios for a medic. The rest of the floor is clear; the rest of the building is clear.

Casey eyes the guy. He’s still whimpering, gasping. He doesn’t really need the confirmation, but asks anyway. “‘77 did this?”

“No doubt.” Sykes’ reader is going crazy, when Casey catches a glimpse; bright colors and ludicrously high signature peaks. Casey didn’t need to be a specialist to see them. 

“Where is it?” Alvarez asks. The question that’s on all their minds.

Sykes sighs. She’s adjusting the knobs on her reader, broadening the range. “Not here,” she says. “Based on everything I’ve gotten so far—nowhere here.”

“Fuck. We missed it? Again? How does that cabrón keep doing this?” Alvarez asks.

“Something’s different this time,” Hughes interrupts. They turn to look at him. 

“The trail is only a few hours old,” he elaborates. He leans forward. “It’s escalating its MO. I think we’re closing in on a window of opportunity.”

The car feels like a warzone. The stinging acid of blood in Alex’s nostrils—the panicked way his heart won’t sit still in the cage of his chest—the phantom screams, still rippling faintly, like they’re almost out of hearing range—

He stares holes in the pleather backseat and tries to not breathe in the coppery smell of blood.

The Scorpia-issue four-by-four is roomy, wide enough that Danny can lie down across the seats, even with Alex occupying one; his head in the middle, his knees drawn up on the far end of the backseat. In the peripherals of Alex’s vision, they sway slightly with each curve the four-by-four takes, each bump in the road.

That could easily be the only movement that exists in Danny’s entire body.

The thought inspires a panicky refrain in the highest notch of his throat. 

He has to check. He has to make sure Danny’s not dead. He has to take his wrist, feel for his pulse.

If he’s gone, it’s Alex’s fault. If he’s dead, Alex killed him.

Like something poisonous in the water. Inevitable and horrible. Rotten and putrid.

He did this.

Danny’s eyes flicker behind his eyelids, then lift. Completely, like automatic curtains. His irises, when they flick up to Alex, are pale like ice. Motion—so quick, so smooth—on a body that looks so dead—

Alex can’t help but flinch, even as relief fuzzes through his skull. Soft like velvet. 

Danny’s eyes flick away, training instead on the roof of the car. 

Right. Right.

Alex fixes his gaze on the windscreen in front of them. Endless blue-black sky and reflective wet tarmac and the shiny corners of buildings; shadows. A sleeping, ignorant city.  

Alex’s throat tightens as he sees the mountains loom above him again. It comes back to him in a crashing wave—the only reason this happened, the only reason they’d been found, is that they’d stayed too long. They’d been forced to. If he didn’t know better, it would’ve been the perfect tag-team cooperation between Scorpia and the Foundation. He braces himself for the turn, the boundary that dooms them—

—and nothing happens.

They keep driving, straight and true. 

Only highway unfolds before them.

The Foundation got whatever they came for.

He squeezes his eyes shut, keeps them like that longer—longer than he realises—and only opens them when the four-by-four comes to a smooth stop.

“Stay here.”

Yassen’s voice is tight, same as his taut knuckles on the gear stick. Alex can imagine his face is the same way—like the skin over a drum—but he doesn’t look.

He answers with stale silence. It hangs there a moment before Yassen swings out of the four-by-four. To an outsider, Alex is sure the pause would be undetectable.

He only watches for a moment, as Yassen strolls through the car park. Slow, casual. As if he isn’t casing each and every car. Which one will be easy to break into; which ones are more likely full on fuel; which ones will draw the least attention as a stolen vehicle.

It’s dark outside. Light just barely touches the horizon. Milky and weak. 

This has been the night that never ends.

This has been the life that never ends.

Alex’s throat closes, breathing coming harsher.

Beside Alex in the backseat, Danny hauls himself up.

“Hey.” It scratches like sand as Alex forces out the word. Forces himself back to the present. Away from the bottomless pit, cajoling him to throw himself in. “Don’t get up yet.”

Danny ignores him. His gaze wavers out the window—dully watching. Yassen has picked their new car. He vanishes from view as he ducks to the window.

It takes Alex a second to register when the car door’s mechanisms clunk, the door swinging open.

Frigid air rushes in. Danny’s shoulders relax, minutely, and Alex has a moment to think he’s just going to enjoy it. But then he swings his legs out and awkwardly stumbles to the ground.

Alex scrambles after him. What if moving makes him bleed worse? What if— “Oi!”

Danny keeps walking.

Alex can only follow.

Moving reminds him how much his body aches—the shoulder, only recently put back in place. The burned hand. Countless bruises. 

All of it, nothing, not compared to a fucking bullet to the—

No. No. The present. The now. He watches Danny’s trainers, which look black, mostly, but the laces are a splattered, rusty red. His steps drag and stagger. Alex has to fight against every part of his brain that wants to keep noticing, cataloging.

It’s what he’s good at, after all.

They round the car Yassen chose. He’s working the lock, and spares them a stiff glance when Danny comes right up to his shoulder. “I told you to wait,” he says.

Danny reaches out. His hand passes through the glass, and tugs the manual unlock. Even a few paces back, Alex hears its solid click.

Danny shifts away from Yassen, and slips his hand through the glass of the back door. He swings it open easily. It closes softly behind him once he climbs in and lays down.

Yassen takes it in stride, or at least pretends to, gesturing Alex to the passenger seat. “I will be back.”

Alex shoots Yassen as frosty a glare as he can manage as he passes. It might be petty, but he’s well past regulating his reactions.

He does get into the car. Not because Yassen told him to, but because he needs to keep an eye on Danny. 

The ignition catches under the twist of the spare key from the center console.

Alex turns his shoulder, huddles into the door. The leather along the door’s armrest is cool to the touch, and his breath fogs against the dark window. The car moves. Inertia on the inside of Alex’s skull. A dizzy pull.

It might be raining, outside.

.

The air in the car has a frosty quality to it—like the dry sting of a moonless night in January.

The afterimage of Danny’s wound is burned into Alex’s corneas. A bright spot, like an oncoming migraine.

Green. Like GFP. His mind floats back to biology class. Microscopes and slides. Dyeing organisms to track their movement.

Bullets are such small things.

Alex twists one of his thumbs against the palm of his other hand. His thumb—a bullet is smaller. 

That Yassen can aim an indescribably small thing with such precision. Accurate enough to pierce a centimeters-wide target at max range.

Alex should almost wonder if he’s not human. 

Unfortunately, he knows all too well what humans are capable of.

He tries to tell himself not to, fights the impulse to look back, but he loses that battle, and finds the skewed image of the rearview mirror.

He’s seen plenty of blood and viscera first-hand. More than a handful of deaths. And in the first place, growing up with Tom meant being exposed to the best and worst cinematic gore that the film industry has to offer. Now, here, all the pieces are there: Blood. Soft tissue. Long, flat muscle. Stringy pieces of fat. 

But of it all, there’s not enough.

Danny isn’t breathing. He hasn’t been. Not since…

He abandons the rearview mirror and twists around.

Danny’s flat on his back across the seats. He didn’t see it in the mirror, but there’s the barest heartbeat-like pulse in the wound. The barest twitching of flesh, on the count of every ten.  

The green of his wound that Alex had noticed were flecks, something riding passenger in Danny’s blood. Now, it’s more than that; there’s something accumulating across the surface of the wound. Filmy, slimy.  

It makes him think of unpleasant things—of rotting meat, and yet it’s somehow more wrong. At least rotting meat is natural. 

This isn’t.

Isn’t blood—isn’t right.

It’s the way the passing streetlights glimpse off it as they pass through another tiny town, a street lined with gas stations and fast food chains. It’s everything. But even still, it dries black.