The grocery store was significantly less fun without an invisible drone and a headset.

There was no one to tell Eli which peppers to grab—though he grabbed orange, for Banneker—and no one to upend the long shopping list Sherry had written for him. The lack of interaction forced Eli to actually think back on his day as he tossed a few jars of sauce into the cart.

The morning, at least, hadn’t started as he expected.

“Eli?” A voice had echoed from the hallway as he shrugged into his shirt.

“Hold on, be right out.” Eli opened the door and frowned. Ambrose was standing in front of his room, dressed in a white button-down instead of his usual flannel.

“Morning.” He gave a nervous smile, hands clasped behind his back. “Before I head down to the basement, I wanted to check in. I mean, ask how you were feeling.” He cleared his throat. “About everything.”

Everything still hurt, if that’s what he was asking.

“Doing all right.” Eli shuffled. It was too early in the morning to properly deflect these sorts of questions. “Listen, I’ll figure out what I’m doing and I’ll be out of your hair soon—“

“No, no!” Ambrose held up his hands, his words rushed. “That wasn’t my intention. I like having you here—we like having you here. But if you need help with figuring it all out, I’m happy to, you know, help.” He let out a breath. “I should go.”

Utterly befuddled, Eli leaned out of the doorway as Ambrose escaped down the hall. “Ames, is everything okay?”

He stopped mid-step. Though Eli couldn’t see his face, the stiffness in his shoulders indicated that he was carefully weighing his next words.

“Fine,” he finally said. “It’ll all be fine.”

He ducked down the stairs before Eli could pry further, and a few minutes later, Sherry had come up with the grocery list in hand.

It was surprisingly nice, being out of the cabin. Upon Sherry’s urging, he had made a whole day of it. He had first stopped at a beautiful lake view halfway up the shore, then veered west for a waterfall hike. Then headed to a farmer’s market before a leisurely drive back down to the tiny grocery store, where—

Eli frowned and scanned the shopping list one more time. Sauce, mustard, bread…

He looked from the paper to the cart. The cabin already had all these things-—he had seen them in the pantry this morning. They didn’t need these groceries.

Sherry hadn’t sent him out.

Sherry had sent him away.

“Shit.” He let go of the cart and speed-walked towards the door. He should have known it as soon as he saw Ambrose’s button-down. Is that what he had been so nervous about this morning? A mission?

He whipped out of the parking lot, down the highway, and into the gravel drive before his thoughts could catch up with him. They were stealing icefall, surely. Grim and Banneker must have cased the joint yesterday, which meant the place was less than a day away by car. So most likely the city. But they hadn’t dropped any clues as to where in the city…

Sherry was already running down the steps as he rushed into the foyer.

“Eli, I thought of something else I need you to—“

“He’s on a mission, isn’t he?” Eli said. Sherry slouched at the base of the stairs.

“Yes, he’s on a mission. But you said you didn’t want to be involved, he was trying to—“

Eli was already halfway up the steps. “Does Banneker have eyes on him?”

He burst into Banneker’s room without knocking, Sherry close behind. Banneker leapt in his chair and grabbed his headset.

“What are you doing—?”

Eli dragged another chair over to the desk. “I’m watching the mission, that’s what I’m doing.”

“Banneker?” Grim’s muffled voice barely came through the hacker’s headset. “What’s going on?”

Banneker sighed and spun back to his computer bank. “Eli found out.”

“Tell him he doesn’t need to watch.” This was Ambrose, his voice even harder to hear than Grim’s. “He can stay out of this if he—“

Eli grabbed a headset and sat next to Banneker. “Too late.”

Banneker and Sherry looked nearly as surprised as he did. There was no reason for him to be there. After all, he had sworn not to help them.

But he couldn’t bring himself to sit in front of the fireplace and read a book while Ambrose got himself shot up in a heist.

“Grim, you there with him?” Eli asked. A quick sweep of the monitors told Eli where there was. They were in the outskirts of the city, at what appeared to be a lab. Sharp-cornered concrete and glass, prim landscaping, and an unnecessarily soaring lobby. It was the type of place Eli had once envisioned for Icefall.

“I’m in the car,” Grim replied in a clipped voice. In the upper-right monitor, Eli could see them parked near the lab, their shoulders drawn tight. In the center monitor, Ambrose had already reached one of the lab’s hallways. Something was off about his appearance—deep brown hair, glasses, facial features that his mind couldn’t quite remember or grasp—but there was no mistaking his stride, nor how he adjusted the sleeve of his lab coat as he walked.

“Lab twenty-five, you said?” Ambrose murmured.

“Second lab on the right,” Banneker said. “Remember, you need a keycard to access. Your target’s en route.”

“Are they alone?”

Banneker rapidly toggled through several angles of the hallway. “Yep.”

“Good.”

“So who else is on the mission?” Eli looked to Sherry, who was hovering at Banneker’s shoulder with her arms folded. She frowned as she kept her eyes on the monitors.

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you have other operatives for things like this?”

“Yeah,” Grim said. “Me.”

Eli froze, an anxious chill rippling up from his hands. “But…what about the guards at the compound? The team at the gala?”

“Let go of the compound once it was compromised.” Grim sounded like they were speaking through gritted teeth. “Had to downsize anyway, before the end.”

Eli resolved to interrogate them later on what that meant. “And the museum?”

“There was no team,” Ambrose answered for Grim. “It was just me.”

As Ambrose bent to pick open a supply closet, Eli stared slack-jawed at the screens, then gave a sharp, humorless laugh.

It had been a bluff after all. He could have shot Ambrose on the balcony before the gala had even begun. Could have gotten his punches in, then handed him over in exchange for a commendation from Pearce…

And where would that have left everyone else? DuPont would have shot Rochere and let her bleed out in the midnight gallery. Grim would have been left abandoned in the alley. Banneker and Sherry would have been in this room, just like they were now, watching Eli send Ambrose to his death.

The thought of it made him sick.

On screen, Ambrose opened the closet door and peeked inside.

“Will it work?” Banneker asked. Ambrose nodded. “Good, target’s at your six.”

Ambrose stepped back into the hall just as a scientist rounded the corner, clipboard in hand.

“Excuse me,” he adopted a disarmingly soft tone as he approached the scientist, “this closet doesn’t seem to have gloves. Do you know where I could find some?”

The scientist stopped, then leaned into the closet. “Ran out in the lab? There’s usually a few boxes right there—“

Ambrose pulled a small cylinder out of his pocket, sprayed a light mist at the man’s head, then caught him as he slumped forward.

“Nice,” Banneker muttered, still toggling through the cameras. “You’re still clear.”

After dragging the man’s unconscious body into the closet, Ambrose re-emerged with his clipboard and badge.

“Beake, I’d say you’ve got twenty minutes before the potion wears off,” Grim said as Ambrose approached the lab.

“Then it’s a good thing I’ll be out in ten.”

Eli looked again to Sherry, who gestured to her face. “Appearance potion.”

Ambrose swiped his new badge over the pad by the lab door. It flashed green, and the door clicked open, allowing him into a long, blindingly white room. It was easily three times the size of his basement lab, and was just as orderly.

His gaze immediately went to the icefall case in the back of the room, then to the scientist running tests in the middle.

“Hey.” The woman frowned at him from over her pipette. “If you’re looking for the burners, those are in lab twenty-six. You wouldn’t be the first one today to—“

Ambrose held up the clipboard and shifted his accent to something vaguely mid-Atlantic. “I’m here to transfer the icefall to the stabilization room.”

The woman remained staunchly between him and the compound, her eyes narrowed. “It’s not supposed to go in until tomorrow.”

“Pearce wants to speed up the trials.”

Eli sat up straight.

“Really?” the woman said. Eli waited for her to question the name. She didn’t.

Ambrose made a show of shrugging and rubbing the back of his head. “Listen, if I don’t get around to stabilizing at least twenty grams by tonight, my trials will be screwed and he’ll—“

“All right, I get it.” The woman stepped aside, then tossed him an apologetic look. “Sounds like you’ll be working late, huh?”

Ambrose scoffed as he picked up the case. “Yeah. I’ll be lucky if I even make it home tonight.”

The woman shook her head. “My team did that scramble last week. He wanted the energy surges tested two weeks earlier than projected.”

“Two weeks?”

“Mhm.” She returned her focus to her pipette. “Ordered so much pizza to the lab, I almost swore it off. Almost.”

“I’m sure I’ll be doing the same tonight.” Ambrose waved as he opened the lab door with his shoulder. “Best of luck.”

“You too.”

As soon as he was back around the corner, Ambrose straightened his shoulders and resumed his normal stride. “Apologies for the terrible accent, everyone,” he said lightly, then ducked back into the supply closet.

“Camera, please?” Banneker said. A moment later, his lower left monitor flickered to life as Ambrose placed a tiny camera on the closet wall. Sherry visibly relaxed once she had a view of him again- but Eli couldn’t bring himself to do the same.

“What was that about, Ames?” he said, feeling his voice coil in his tightened throat. Ambrose lost none of his speed as he un-buttoned his lab coat to reveal a pocketed vest underneath.

“I don’t have time to explain right now,” he murmured.

“Pearce is a shithead,” Banneker said.

“Good explanation, Banneker, thank you.” Ambrose flicked open the case and began sorting the tubes into his vest pockets. “I’ll explain in more detail once we’re back.”

But if Ambrose’s words were meant to comfort Eli, the man’s actions were having the opposite effect. Eli’s palm began to sweat as Ambrose tucked vial after vial of unstable icefall next to his heart.

“Hold on, you’re gonna carry it out like that?” Next to him, Sherry had drawn her lips into a tight line, and Banneker fidgeted with the headset cord. Eli gestured to the screen. “If any, if any of that breaks—“

“I know what I’m doing, Eli.” Ambrose buttoned up the lab coat and stowed the empty case inside a box of paper towels.

Eli ran his hands through his hair. He shouldn’t have sat down to watch.

As Ambrose left the supply closet, he took a bottle from his pocket and drank the contents. Sherry leaned forward, her expression even tighter than before.

“Ambrose…”

“Just a precaution.” He started down the hall. “Banneker, which exit?”

“There’s a side door to a smoking area. Right, then left.” Banneker stiffened. “Wait, wait—guard coming up at your ten. Go back.”

Ambrose turned on his heel as a guard rounded the corner and began to follow him. Everyone in the room held their breath, eyes tracking the guard as he slowly caught up to Ambrose.

Then the guard veered left, and Ambrose veered right. The room exhaled.

“Where’s the nearest backup exit?”

“Two minutes straight ahead, but I’ll need you to roundabout,” Banneker said. “Don’t want the scientist in lab twenty-five seeing you again so soon.”

“Good point.” Ambrose ducked down another hall, then another, until Eli lost the thread of where he was in the lab. All he could keep track of was how his pace quickened with each turn.

“Five minutes on the potion.”

“Thank you, Grim.” The door was now in sight. Ambrose rolled his shoulders, his back remaining stiff against the icefall vest. “Sherry, I was able to stow all thirty vials. If you’d be able to prepare a case with the pre-stabilization solution for when I return, I can—“

Banneker’s clicking suddenly went frantic, the blood draining from his face. He was cycling through views of a certain hallway so quickly that Eli couldn’t catch what he was seeing until he stopped on the final camera angle.

“Fuck,” they said at the same time.

Pearce was walking down the hall, flanked by three guards in suits.

Banneker leaned forward immediately. “Pearce, it’s Pearce at your six. Ghost now.”

Ambrose vanished just before Pearce and his entourage entered the hallway. Behind Eli, Sherry gave a curse.

“Grim, time the invisibility potion. He’s got maximum five minutes.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “I hate when he does this. Can’t see a damn thing, no idea where he is…”

“I know, I know.” Banneker quickly re-sorted his views to track both Pearce’s movements and empty hallways. “Should’ve packed Tom to follow him.”

“Banneker, I thought you checked the admin’s calendar.” Grim’s voice had a hard line around it.

“I did!” Banneker gestured to the laptop to his right, though Grim couldn’t see the motion. “Hacked it both yesterday and today, he wasn’t supposed to visit at all this week!”

“He does this at the agency,” Eli muttered, unable to take his eyes off the gray-haired man striding smugly through the lab. “Shows up randomly to check on teams. Keeps them on their toes.”

“Did it work?” Grim asked.

“Let’s just say Dawn and I were only caught with a bottle of whiskey once.” Eli adjusted his headset, beads of sweat dripping from underneath the cushions. “Ambrose, where are you?”

“He can’t talk while he’s invisible,” Sherry half-snapped, now pacing across the room.

“Can’t give away his location?”

“No, it’s too much effort,” Banneker said. His hand on the mouse shook. “I can’t give him eyes, and he can’t ask me for directions.” He looked at Eli. “Ames is on his own.”