The call tone sounds four times before Davon finally answers.
“Hey,” he says, his voice thick with sleep. “Are you okay? Are you downstairs?”
“Sort of?” I say. An alarmed noise and sudden rustling comes from the other end of the line, and I hurry to backtrack. “No, I mean, yes, I’m not hurt or anything. I’m okay. Sorry.”
Silence. A sigh that changes pitch as a hand passes over his mouth. “Don’t scare me like that. Where are you?”
I skip over a pile of fallen rocks and splash into a puddle of unspeakable grossness. “Ugh. No, that wasn’t at you. We’re on our way there, but we’re underground right now. Had a bit of a run-in with the cops at the train station, so we’re coming at you via sewers. Apologies ahead of time for getting you up early, and for the soon-to-be state of your carpet. Did you double-check that your keycard will get us into station twenty-nine?”
Davon hums an affirmative. “Yeah, I was scheduled to go replace some servers there in a few weeks anyway. My promotion came with a new level of access. I have the power!” he says, and I can practically hear him shaking a triumphant fist over the call. He clears his throat. “Sorry. Probably not the time.”
A million questions and apologies bubble up as a pressure in my chest, an itch on the tip of my tongue. Is he really okay with this? Is he starting to hate me? Is he disappointed? Is this going to ruin his career, his life?
“Yeah. Probably not the time. See you soon?” is all that comes out.
“Till then.”
He ends the call, and I stand there for a tense, silent moment before trotting forward to catch up with the others.
“This tap point work for you?” Remi asks, gesturing one gloved hand at the pipe they’ve paused beside.
My heartbeat picks up as I look to the familiar panels and valves.
This time is different. No one’s expecting us here and now. We’re nowhere near station twenty-nine, near either of the spots we’ve found maz-15 before. There won’t be any sabotage. No reason this should be anything less than routine. But even as Remi begins to wind down the flow, finishing the last top-off, I can’t shake the growing dread.
The feeling that something is about to blow up in our faces. Again.
Twenty-Four
POOR DAVON. I SWEAR, WE planned to take turns in his tiny shower once we all arrived, washing the stink of fear and sewers from our bodies and clothes.
Instead, while Ania’s in the shower, the rest of us crash in a pile of stank on Davon’s living-room floor, just like we used to do in the group home. Impromptu nap time. Good thing his roommates made themselves scarce for the day, because Davon would have been kicked out in a heartbeat. Who invites sewage into their home? Someone with terrible taste in friends and family, that’s who.
I wake warm and content, feeling better rested than I have in a long time. My neck isn’t thrilled about sleeping on the floor with only a throw pillow, though, and I tip my head to try to crack it—
—and gently butt heads with Remi, whose nose is pressed into my collarbone, faint puffs of breath making my skin warm and humid.
I freeze.
Am I still asleep? Or has my sleeping body decided to be totally mortifying and as obvious as possible? It figures I’d have to be literally unconscious to finally be honest about what I want.
Because I do. I want this.
I squeeze my eyes shut harder and force my breath to stay even and slow, practically vibrating with the effort to keep my legs perfectly still where they’re intertwined with Remi’s. Their stomach rises and falls with each breath, gently pressing into my hip bone in gentle rhythm, and I silently beg them to stay asleep. Let me keep this for a few more minutes. My lungs seize, and my breath catches, suddenly burning along with my eyes. Just a few more minutes, please, let me have this, please, let me—
But Remi’s breathing changes, one long breath in accompanying a shuffle of legs, a nuzzle against my neck. Awake. I hold my breath, waiting for them to pull away, to avert their eyes and push to their feet. To walk away, the way I’ve always done.
They hesitate for a long moment, then lean their weight more heavily into me.
Still asleep after all?
I tip my head down, just a bit, just enough to nuzzle into their hair, my lips brushing soft strands.
They shift again with a hum, and tip their face up farther. Their nose traces up from my collarbone, along my neck, the bottom of my chin, until their breath mingles with mine in the scant inch between us. Between our lips. They nestle closer, hips, legs, stomach, arms pressing deeper into the embrace. The closest we’ve ever been.
Is this really happening?
“Good morning,” they whisper, the words a light brush against my lips.
“Morning,” I reply, hoarse, my heart racing against my ribs in a desperate half panic. I want to run. I want to pull them closer. I want to roll over and press them into the floor, seal our lips together and give in to absolutely every almost I’ve ruined between us.
I want to take it all back and start over. Me and Remi. The way we could have been all along, if I hadn’t screwed everything up so thoroughly and consistently. The way we should be.
My breath comes fast, then faster, panic and desire making my hands shake and my mind race. DO IT, my body shouts at me, just lean in, so close. I lick my lips, and that bare flick of my tongue grazes their bottom lip, pulling a gasp from us both—
—and I jerk back like I’ve been burned, my eyes squeezed shut, breathing like I’ve just run a marathon. My brain shouts at me in alternating pitch: WHAT ARE YOU DOING? and RUN, RUN, RUN, and I feel Remi shift backward as they make to get up, but my hand darts out almost without my permission. I twine my fingers with theirs and squeeze, hard, then force my wet eyes open. When our eyes meet, I force myself to hold their gaze, though the eye contact is torture, like a continuous shot of adrenaline. I’m laid utterly bare.
But I try. Something about this past week, nearly losing them several times, seeing the professor and his husband together, feeling Remi’s sleep-warm body against mine—suddenly I want more than anything not to screw this up again.
For once, I’m actually trying.
Remi’s expression softens into a smile, and they squeeze my hand back with gentle, understanding pressure. This is the best I can do. But maybe not forever.
Maybe I can do better one day.
When I get out of the shower, Davon is waiting in the kitchen with coffee, a pile of egg biscuits wrapped in crinkly paper, and a mountain of fried potatoes. My cousin is an actual hero. The others have already dug in and are quietly scarfing theirs in the living room.
“Roof?” Davon asks, gesturing with his head toward the fire escape out the window.
“Roof,” I agree. I pull my hoodie from the dryer and yank it over my head—still warm, so good—and snag two biscuits and a cup of coffee before following him out the window. The bracing chill and strong coffee drive the last bit of grogginess from my head, and I study Davon over the brim of my mug.
“What are you looking at?” Davon asks. “Did some of your sewer nastiness get on my face?”
I roll my eyes and and finally lose the battle with the questions I’ve been holding in, all my guilt spilling over into one desperate question.
“Are you sure you’re okay with all this? For real?”
He sets his coffee down and looks out over the surrounding rooftops for a moment. “I mean, define okay? This whole thing is awful, obviously, but if you mean am I okay helping you, then yes, of course. Have I ever not helped you when you needed it?”
I think back through all the years we’ve known each other, through all the times I’ve screwed up, gotten hurt, gotten in trouble, and more. It’s true. He hasn’t always helped in the way I wanted him to, but he’s never left me hanging. He’s always been there.
“You’re right,” I say. “Thank you. Really.”
“You’re welcome. Really,” he echoes, then grins. “Now tell me wh
at I can actually do to help. You’ve been having all the fun without me for the past two years. I wanna get my hands dirty.”
I shove biscuit in my face so I can avoid the question for a moment. I hate that he even knows what maz-15 is, because even that small bit of information puts him in danger. He really won’t like the blackmail portion of our plan, though. It’s the one part that involves threatening to do harm to actual people. I trust him completely, love him dearly, but I want him to have deniability if the shit hits the fan. He’s not part of this, not really. No need for him to go down with us if it comes to it.
“All we really need is for you to get us into station twenty-nine and lead us to the drilling location. Any information you have about the facility and the drill and all that would be helpful too. We’ve got the rest.”
“Come on, Diz, really? That’s it?” he practically whines. I fight back a small smile.
“That’s it. Once we’re in, I want you to get out of there and keep an eye on things remotely. If anyone catches on to what we’re doing or starts to mobilize against us, we need to know. You’ll be our guardian on the outside. Okay?”
He sighs. “Fine. If you change your mind, though . . .”
I nod, though there’s no way in hell I will. “I’ll let you know.”
He leans over to bump my shoulder with his, then I do the same, again and again until we’re practically having a shoving match way too close to the edge of the rooftop, biscuit crumbs and coffee-breath laughs flying everywhere.
“Oi, can you not kill her, please?” Jaesin says, poking his head up from the fire escape stairs. “We kind of need her.”
Our laughs subside, and Davon offers me a buttery hand.
“So do I,” he says with a solemn expression, pulling me to my feet.
And that’s my feelings limit for the afternoon. Time to get to work.
We move through the rest of the afternoon with slow, deliberate purpose. Showers finally happen for everyone. Davon invents an IT-related reason for his badge to scan in later tonight, inserting a false tech-support ticket into the system. Remi works on a supply of combat spells for us to use during the break-in. Jaesin works his contacts to source some weapons I hope we’ll never need to use. It takes every credit left in our stealthed account, the only thing I feel confident withdrawing from with the police after us, but he manages to get us two maz-fueled stunners. At least they aren’t lethal.
My role is the most difficult, the most time-consuming, and the most likely to blow up in our faces. My tiny drone friend is getting a makeover.
“Are you sure this is gonna work?” Ania asks. She sits with her legs splayed out, socked feet occasionally kicking mine specifically to annoy me. A complicated weave of maz lies on the ground between her knees, and she threads new strands into it one at a time, ever so careful, with an occasional consult from Remi. Remi wanted to be the one to work on the spell, it being a “fun” modification of an existing design from a grad-level medical textbook, but Ania is utter garbage at any spell with a bit of an explosive side, so Remi’s stuck with those.
“As sure as I ever am about anything,” I say. “Which is, you know. Moderately?”
She doesn’t deign to respond to that, which is probably for the best, because I’m at the most delicate part of the operation. It takes every ounce of my control to keep my hands from shaking as I hold a clear glass bubble the size of an egg flush against the bottom of my little drone. The bug needed some significant modifications to be able to carry the bubble in the first place, considering it’s twice its size and almost as heavy.
Attaching the thing is a whole other challenge though. The screws are the smallest on the market, barely enough to hold the weight, but there’s no room for larger. Every spare millimeter inside the casing is taken up by chips, sensors, and power cells. A quick swipe of adhesive holds the bubble in place long enough for me to get the screws in. I turn the final screw once, twice more . . . then slowly draw my hands away, waiting for the whole thing to explode or spontaneously fall apart.
It doesn’t. It sits there, lying on its back like a dead bug with its big round belly exposed, waiting for the final step. The maz.
I sit back with a sigh of relief and prop my elbow on my knee and my head on my hand, running my fingers through the long side of my hair. My gaze lands on Remi, lying upside down on Davon’s couch with their head hanging beside Jaesin. Their hands twine threads of maz together almost lazily, not even looking at what they’re doing as Jaesin cleans one of the guns and points out its features.
Then Remi looks up, their gaze locking on mine, and my breath stills. Their mouth tugs up at the corner, a faint upside-down smile that pushes a hot flush into my cheeks. I snap my gaze back to the floor, to the drone in front of me, the remembered warmth of this morning like a crackle of static along every inch of my skin.
“What happened while I was asleep this morning?” Ania asks, looking back and forth between Remi and me.
I shake my head, biting my lip to keep the words from spilling out of control. Nothing, really. But also, a lot. It felt like a lot.
“Nothing” is what I finally settle on, because it’s the truth. Nothing actually happened, externally. Internally, this morning felt like cresting the peak of a mountain, and I can finally see the gorgeous terrain sweeping before me, glorious valleys of rich greens and blue sky and the infinite possibility of horizon.
So many possibilities. If we live through tonight.
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Ania says, studying my expression closely. I draw back, practically hissing like a nocturnal animal caught in the sunlight, scrambling for shadow.
“I’m trying, okay?”
That’s the best I can offer right now.
All the same, when Remi rolls forward off the couch and heads our way, I duck my head and test each of the tiny screws again, desperate for something to occupy my attention.
“How’s the spell coming?” Remi asks, plopping down cross-legged next to Ania.
Ania weaves one final thread into a bare patch in the middle, then severs the flow. “It’s ready for your part. You sure you’ve got this?”
They give Ania a look, one eyebrow raised. Ania holds up her hands.
“I know, I know, I just . . . had to check. It’s all yours.”
Remi slides their hand under the spell, draping it carefully over their opposite arm like a delicate scrap of silk. It’s far too large to fit inside the drone’s belly at the moment, but once Remi’s done with it, the weave will be compact, layered, and dense with pent-up energy. The spell needs to be powerful enough to affect an entire roomful of people, yet fit in the carrying system I devised—no easy feat. It’s a challenge only Remi can manage. For multiple reasons.
I lift my creation slowly, carefully, and deposit it into Remi’s cupped palm, our hands touching skin to skin for longer than strictly necessary. They lift their eyes to mine and quirk a little smile.
“Thanks. Looks perfect.”
“Hope so,” I manage, mouth dry.
Their smile widens, then they step back, heading to the roof to finish off the most dangerous part of the weave. My gaze follows them the whole time, helplessly glued to their retreating form. I couldn’t look away if I tried.
“Definitely not nothing,” Ania murmurs.
I close my eyes and sigh.
“Let’s try to live through tonight, and then we can decide if it’s something or not, okay?”
“Fair enough,” Ania says. She reaches out, draws me to her, and wraps me in a hug. I stiffen, a wave of trapped panic shooting straight up my spine, making me want to curl into myself, protect my soft underbelly.
It doesn’t have to be this way, Remi said.
I take a long breath. Two. Force my muscles to relax. Soften my shoulders. Let the tension uncoil.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
No. It really doesn’t.
One more breath, and I let my arms wind around Ania’s waist and my
forehead fall onto her shoulder.
It doesn’t.
After tonight, hopefully I’ll have a chance to prove it.
Twenty-Five
OUR FINAL JOB. FOR REAL, this time. Of course, whether it’s a voluntary retirement or an on-the-job death that ends our heisting career remains to be seen.
Jaesin crouches in front of me, gun in hand, huddled in the nighttime shadows between two buildings. Behind us, Ania and Remi pull long, velvet strands of plum-colored obscuraz between their hands and pass them back and forth, weaving them together. Ania will never be as good a weaver as Remi, but she knows her ware and can work it like a pro, more than well enough to keep up with their shared spell. Together they weave a giant concealment screen, like a cloak to drape over all of us, much stronger than their usual spells. It won’t last long, just long enough to get us across the street and into the alcove holding the employee access, but that’s all the time we need.
And me? I sit there and wait. Torture. My first bit is already done: a simple message calling all MMC board members to a 12:15 a.m. emergency meeting at HQ, made less simple by the fact that I had to plant it on MMC’s servers to make it look like it came from an internal source. I neglected to mention that bit to Davon, just in case his IT manager conscience got in the way.
A notification pops up in my vision.
Davon: We’re all clear. I’m right inside the door. You ready?
You: Almost. Sixty seconds.
Davon went in ahead of us about twenty minutes ago, signing into the work log, registering his badge in the server room to give him an alibi, and scoping out the guard situation ahead of time. With a shimmer, Remi and Ania pull their last threads taut to finish our cover. It slithers like purple-black satin over their fingers, the weave tight and even, somehow seeming to glow with darkness instead of light. It’s hard to look at; I try to make my eyes focus on it, but they keep sliding away. A good thing, considering its purpose.
“Come on, hurry!” Remi says, beckoning us forward. “The fresher the spell, the better, for this formula.”
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