When the message came in, Rel nearly stepped in front of a Queue car because he lost track of his surroundings.

It’s Peter Donovan, Vee claimed. He’s the one who is taking out the kids.

So, Rel had been right to suspect Peter. Despite his burgeoning affection for Hazel, Rel had hoped he was wrong. Not only because the new information would sadden Hazel, but because he had chased her off and sent her running back to Peter. On the bright side, the new information helped clarify Rel’s priorities: the world needed saving; the economy of every country could be in shambles in a few days…Hazel was in danger.

Accessing the Neurex, he searched for her location.

Nothing. Of course, he had seen her turn off her handheld before, but had she really done it this time? She had sent him a message – more names and code from Peter’s computer. Maybe that boded well because she had decided to trust Rel. Or maybe it’s the worst thing in the world because Peter walked in on her while she was stealing his information.

He swallowed his rising panic and traced her location up until the point it disappeared. When last seen, her handheld had located not at Donovan’s apartment, but in an entertainment district for the rich and famous. Exactly the type of place frequented by Peter Donovan.

Even though Rel couldn’t find any sure reason for relief, the realization did make him feel better. If Peter had taken her to a restaurant or a club, maybe he hadn’t caught her and wasn’t holding her.

Still, she needed to get away from Peter before the man discovered her covert actions. Part of Rel wanted to rush dramatically into the restaurant and grab Hazel out of Peter’s “clutches,” but not only did self-preservation demand that he act more reasonably – Peter could switch off Rel’s Wire by the time he could get to the door with Hazel – but it would probably put Hazel in danger as well.

For the moment, there was no reason to believe that she was in any imminent peril.

All Rel knew was that Peter had done something bad. Something to do with Wires and kids and comas. And something about servers and satellites. Yeah, not sure exactly what I’m up against.

Hazel, though? Hazel was currently playing tag with a tiger, and she would lose if she got caught. If Peter knew the information she had passed to Rel? There was only one way for a person like Peter to interpret that kind of act – as a betrayal. And Rel had no idea how Peter would react to betrayal.

When he climbed out of the Queue car, he stood in front of a huge building, the ground floor of which seemed divided between a club of some sort and a posh restaurant. Rel smiled. The club seemed conveniently located to help him find Hazel, and he would do his damnedest to make sure that happened. Accessing her contact, he shot her a message.

+++++++++++++++

Every nerve in Hazel’s body strung tight, as if the slightest shock would tase her into insensibility. For the first time since she had known Peter, she felt like she was looking at a stranger. It was as if there had been one person – the young man, just more than a boy, still optimistic, still vulnerable and naïve about the real world - and he had still held some connection to humanity.

If she read Peter right at the moment, the man who sat across from her was not who he had presented to her for their entire relationship. Or at least, not who she had let herself believe in.

She had been so inspired by his brilliance, and she had made so many excuses for his unkindness. It made her seem complicit to everything that he had become. If she had stood up to him, would it have impeded his ascent? Or maybe descent would be the more appropriate term. She blew out a breath.

Peter leveled a look at her, and Hazel recognized in him a new intensity that she had never seen. Considering his normal level of energy, that said a lot. Mostly, she noticed how he looked at her differently. Instead of teasing or manipulating, he looked at her…like she was significant. She had spent so much of her life trying to hide, to stay out of the way. For the first time since the Crash, Hazel had a revelation: the reason she had liked Peter was because he was so self-absorbed that he never really gave her any significance. He was the ultimate place to hide.

Except now, he was looking at her.

“Where is the restroom?” she queried weakly, praying she could manage an escape and make an excuse later.

He rose to his feet and reached for her hand, lifting her to stand and tugging her toward a door next to the brick pillar. “It’s right here,” he informed casually, turning the knob and pushing the heavy wood opening into a surprisingly cavernous space. No escape, she sighed.

For a moment, she worried that he would try to follow her, but he just swept his hand to gesture her inside. He knew there was nowhere for her to go. Before she entered, she checked that the lock only worked from the inside – it felt very much as if she were stepping into a prison.

Shuffling nervously past the mirror, Hazel made her way to a little, black settee that rested against one wall. She perched her foot on it and reached into her boot, pulling out her handheld. Raising it to eye level, she scrolled down to Rel. Because she had invested so much of her life with Pete, she wanted so badly to trust him, but her instincts warned her where her mind held back.

No signal, she realized. Explains why Pete’s not afraid to let me out of his sight. She needed access to the Bridge.

She spun in a circle, apprising the technology in the spacious room. Every modern room had connection for some reason or other, and her eye locked on the little metal box beside the sink – a paper towel receptacle. It was ridiculous, but the restaurant would have to keep track of its supply somehow. Almost all public facilities utilized electronics for stocking purposes.

When she gripped the box on either side, she pulled from the wall, tugged from the top, then lifted from underneath. The box easily opened from the bottom, and she quickly removed the stack of high-quality woven sheets. Behind, there was a panel screwed onto the wall. She had about three minutes before Peter grew impatient; she needed something to unfix those screws.

After a quick perusal, she recognized a supply closet and pulled it open. She pushed aside the broom and mop, a stack of paper supplies, and a couple of giant bottles of liquid. In the back corner, there was a bucket with brush handles sticking over the top, and she pulled it out to examine its contents. Only one looked promising, a round, wire bristle brush. One end formed a sturdy circle of wire that might prove firm enough to turn the screws if they were not too tightly ensconced.

Fortunately, the wire easily spun the little screws, and in about a minute, Hazel was staring at a small computer panel attached to a scale. Apparently, the supply of towels was determined by their weight – made sense. On the side of the panel, Hazel found what she was looking for: a tiny black button with two arrows. She needed access to the unique signal from the restaurant, but without knowing its identifier, she would not be able to attach. Pressing the button, she watched the screen as it disconnected from the restaurant Bridge-line.

She did not believe for a second that Pete let himself disconnect from the Bridge – no, he just connected through the restaurant’s dedicated Bridge-line. Now Hazel needed to access the private system, too. When she pressed the black button again, the panel flashed as it searched for its lost connection. It would most likely hook up automatically, but it would flash the information on the screen, and that is all Hazel needed.

A moment later, the random series of numbers, letters, and symbols popped up on the monitor, and Hazel snapped an image with her handheld. She then quickly tapped the characters into her own signal utility. Holding her breath, she watched as her handheld tried to connect. She blew out a relieved breath when the signal symbol glowed on the top corner of her screen.

In truth, she had no idea if the signal was only internal to the restaurant, but even internal systems relied on the Bridge for the most part. Theoretically, Pete could check the toothpaste supply at a local hospital or the grain stock at a farm on the west coast. Hazel could not know for sure, though, that Rel would receive the message. Still, she had to try.

I’m sorry, Rel. I should have listened to you. I think you were right. I think it’s Pete. You need to tell Vee so she and Mr. DeSoto can stop him. Hazel typed the message, and she prayed that whatever had sent him running away from her wouldn’t lead him to ignore her. So many uncertainties.

“Come on, Hazel,” Pete called. “I have plans for you after dinner.”

She had no idea how long he would wait and how easily he could access the room if he bribed the GM.

It is, Hazel, came the quick reply. It’s Peter. I’m sorry. Hazel couldn’t suppress her happiness that Rel had answered her. When she processed the words, though, Hazel’s breath started coming at double speed. How did Rel know? What had he found out? What would Hazel do now? Are you safe? Rel demanded, and Hazel didn’t know how to answer, so she didn’t.

He saved her from needing to reply, and she wanted to cry at his words. He had promised he would find her when she needed him. Still, she had treated him so rudely, with so much suspicion. The largest part of her had believed he had lost patience with her, and that she might never see him again. I’m in the club next door, he informed her, and tears sprang to her eyes. There’s a door adjoining in the southeast corner of the restaurant. If you can get into the club, I’ll get you out.

She wanted to sit on the floor and curl into a ball, but she had to hold it together. She had to figure out how to get away from Peter. Ironically, she had thought his house a prison. The room in the restaurant felt like a dungeon. I’ll do my best, Hazel promised. I won’t have my handheld from now on.

Hazel! Be careful!

Thanks. I’ll try.

She prayed she wouldn’t regret what she did next. Dropping the handheld on the ground, she raised her boot and smashed it down on the tempered glass. It was incredibly durable, and it took several tries to damage it, but she managed after several blows to create a web of cracks across the surface. With the exterior compromised, the delicate electronics inside would be vulnerable to the outside world. She dropped the device into the toilet and flushed, watching the water run over and around the device and slowly turn the screen, first to strange pixelated art, and then to gray followed by black.

“Sorry,” she sighed as she stepped back into the private room. “Is there dessert?”

Peter’s mouth rose at the corners, his eyes unchanged. “The agent. I need you to go ahead with that,” he spoke as if to someone not in the room. “Get back to me when it’s done… Dessert,” he agreed as he took Hazel by the arm. Hazel noticed that the room was once again abandoned, and the door was closed. “Definitely.”

Dragging her with him to a sofa that lounged in one corner, he wrapped his arm around her and pulled her against him.

“Peter,” she complained, pressing her heavy shoes into the ground to no avail. “Let’s go back to the apartment. I’m not comfortable here.”

“But I’m comfortable here,” he insisted as he lowered them down onto the sofa, his teeth nipping her neck as they descended. “In fact,” he murmured, “this is the place in the world I am most comfortable, cut off from all possible surveillance. This room has no electronic monitoring and no satellite access.”

That explains it, Hazel realized. The dead zone was intentional.

Peter slid his hands up past her shoulders and viced them behind her neck, pulling her mouth down to his. Hazel had let him get away with so much for so long. How could she possibly convince him now that she needed him to let her go? She could not convince him, she realized, because he did not care what she wanted. He would push as much as she would let him. And if he was really responsible for Sophie, would he really have a problem pushing beyond that?

Instead of letting him continue unimpeded, Hazel decided she would try to shock him. If she could – if she could render him immobile for only a second – she just might make it out of the room.

She responded to him for a moment, pouring as much heat into her kisses as she could manage, and Peter lost his cold control. I guess he’s at least a little bit human. Unfortunately, Hazel had no idea what she was doing, so she just let him run his hands along her dress. He paused when his hand touched the skin at her waist, and his fingers tried to slip beneath the cloth.

Hazel needed to move.

“I can’t, Peter,” she groaned, rolling off of him and onto the floor. He had not expected the move, and it took him a second to recover. In that moment, Hazel scampered away from him, rising to her feet on the other side of the table. “Why did you do it?” she accused, and his hormone-addled brain took a minute to process her words.

“Hazel,” he warned.

“All those kids. What were you thinking?”

She couldn’t believe she had the nerve, but now that she knew the truth, her sense of betrayal seemed to draw the words out of her. After all they had been through together – after how well he knew her – how had he done something so vile? Had she really let him get away with so much that he thought she would be okay with it? Had he really believed she wouldn’t care?

“What are you talking about, Hazel? What kids?”

He stalked toward the table, sidling along one edge to approach her.

Drawing a breath, she waited until the last moment, when he could have reached her if he had extended his arm. When he did finally reach out, she lunged and slid across the other edge of the table, making it to the opposite side and beginning a dash to the door before he could react. He didn’t need long, though.

Before she reached the door, his fingers had clutched the fabric on the uncut side of her dress. She spun back toward him, and he lost his grip. Using his forward momentum, she shoved him to the ground, sidestepping his descent and lurching back toward the exit. Peter was in phenomenal shape, however, and he recovered in time to smash into her just as her fingers gripped the doorknob, knocking her sideways so that she faced him again.

Hazel screamed when Peter pinned her to the doorframe.

“I don’t know what you think you know, Hazel,” Pete leveled in a low tone, “but I know what I’m doing. If you try and stop me, you will become my enemy.”

“I don’t want to be your enemy,” she implored. “But Peter, think about what you have let yourself do.”

For the first time in days, Pete looked at her with something resembling insecurity, pleading for her to understand. “You have been right this whole time, Hazel.” Even as his arm pinned her chest to the wall behind her, he tried to persuade her. “I realized it almost as soon as I handed off control. The Bridge is so dangerous while it’s connected to the Wire. I’m the only one who can fix this. I’m the only one who will.”

“But if you are willing to do whatever it takes to get what you want – if you’re willing to hurt people to make it happen - you’re as bad as the people you fear.”

“It’s not fear,” Peter leveled, his expression hardening. “It’s certainty. What are a few hundred lives compared to the millions that will potentially suffer if I don’t do this? You live in the oughts and shoulds, Hazel. I live in what is – I realized when Lex died that I had to do everything I can to make the future I want, and I’m one of the only people who can actually make my choices happen.”

He is completely delusional, she realized, compassion softening her gaze. When Peter recognized the look, he interpreted it as understanding. He peered at her with triumph.

“I’m the only one who can fix this,” he hummed, sliding his arm down to her waist and leaning in to kiss her again.

Drumming up the coldest depth inside her, she leaned into the kiss, and just as their lips met, she drove her fist deep into his injured rib. He coughed, and Hazel stomped his foot with her giant boot.

He cried out in pain, and she shoved him to the floor, pushing the door open as she sprinted out into the main dining room. Of course, Peter was hot on her heels, and she dodged and wove around tables and pillars, taking a roundabout way to the southeast corner of the restaurant so he would not know her destination and could not beat her to it.

“Hazel!” he commanded, but she ignored him.

Knocking a chair into his path, she wrenched open the door to the club and ducked into the masses of writhing bodies. Even above the pulsing music, she could hear his roar of frustration as she disappeared into the flashing lights and oscillating shadows.

Hazel knew better than to feel secure, and she desperately needed to find Rel. Of course, she prayed that Peter would not recognize the towering agent among all the chaos. If Peter blamed Rel for Hazel’s escape, Rel’s Wire would become a landmine inside his mind.

Climbing onto a platform, Hazel peered over the heads of the crowd for the figure that stood above them. Back at the restaurant door, a circle had begun to clear out, and Hazel could make out Peter’s form as it gestured commands to several food staff to spread around the club. Of course Peter’s restaurant has ninjas for waitstaff…

When the arm wrapped around her, Hazel started to scream, but a hand clamped over her mouth and stayed firmly in place as she felt herself spun to face her captor. Rel’s yellow hair glowed in the flashing lights, and Hazel threw her arms around his neck as he dragged her to stand on ground level. For a heated moment, she leaned against his chest, drawing on his energy to hold her up. Once her breath calmed, she leaned back and peered up into his shaded eyes. With the magnetic pull between them amid the flashing lights, the pulse of the music locked them motionless. The hunger in Rel’s eye’s stirred butterflies in Hazel’s stomach. Was she reading him right?

As quickly as it had come, the moment evaporated. Without a word, Rel spun away from her, twisted and pressed his way through the writhing mass of humanity, his arm firmly cinched around Hazel’s waist. For the first time since the fire, the rage of hormones did not overwhelm him in her presence, and the absence lightened his step. His natural attraction to her buzzed high in his mind, where the artificial chemicals had churned deep in his gut. The relief was dizzying.

Rel pulled Hazel through a low door where he seemed almost to bend in half to exit, and a moment later, she stood beside the building, the frigid wind biting through the slits in her dress. Not that she could feel it at the moment, after the heat worked up from her flight. Instead, it invigorated her.

“You found me…” she panted, but then she suddenly processed the precariousness of their situation.

“I told you I would find you when you needed me…”

Hazel wanted to kiss him hard on the mouth, but it was a really bad time to play the odds. Instead, she transferred her new appreciation for him into concern about his safety. After all, he had just robbed Peter Donovan of something very important. “We have to get out of here. I don’t want Peter to see you. He wouldn’t hesitate to shut you down with your Wire.”

“First I make sure you’re okay,” Rel insisted, bending down to gaze in her face. For whatever reason, the chemicals were not surging through him at the same intensity they had for weeks. Seeing her without the cloud of manipulation rendered her so much more beautiful, and he couldn’t let go of his worry. His hands held her head in place while he examined her eyes and cheeks and mouth. He then lifted her arm as if to determine that it was in one piece, and Hazel snickered despite the seriousness of the situation.

“I’m fine, Rel,” she smiled, gripping his hand as he reached for her other arm. “We can assess my physical state once we get away from Peter. I’m really worried that he has targeted you.”

“He has,” Rel shrugged. “He got me fired.”

“Fired? Since when?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

Hazel blew out a breath. “I heard it happen, too. It must have been instant, because Peter’s phone call happened just after I contacted you.”

“Don’t worry about it, Hazel.” He gripped her hand. “Vee is on it, and Mr. DeSoto will give me a job if it comes to that.” He raised his eyebrows, blowing off her concern. Apparently, he didn’t let the ending of his career bother him overmuch.

As the Queue car zipped up beside them, Hazel could hear the commotion coming from the entrance to the restaurant. She glanced back as she lower herself inside, and relief washed over her when Peter pointed to a Queue car headed the opposite direction.

“We made it,” she whispered, curling herself against Rel and clinging to his arm with a vice grip. He sucked in a breath, and Hazel considered letting go, afraid she had overstepped his bounds. After the near-hour of terror, though, she needed the reassurance of his strength, and she couldn’t make her arms release him.

“Looks like,” he smiled, pulling his arm out of her grasp so he could wrap it around her shoulders.

Did the motion signify his wish to draw her closer, or had he wanted to release himself from her grasp so he could get away from her when he wished? Beggars can’t be choosers, she decided, just grateful that he hadn’t pushed her away. Hazel knew that she had not had any kind of conversation with Rel that would justify her next action, but she brought her legs up onto the seat beside her and scooted as close to him as possible, curling her head onto his chest. His warmth wrapped her up, and when he sighed, she relaxed completely against him. She would figure it out later. Before she knew it, she had fallen asleep.

++++++++++++++

When Peter finally gave up his pursuit of Hazel, he stormed back to his private dining room and spent the next quarter hour throwing things against walls. He took a trip into the restroom – the only place Hazel had left his view during the entire evening. Immediately, he noticed the displaced metal box next to the sink. After making a circuit, he found the handheld in the toilet and called the GM in to fish it out.

Hazel Hops – Austen Trace – had left behind his only means to track her.

“Damn it!” Peter chucked the device hard enough at the porcelain floor that the tile cracked into several slivers, and shards of glass splintered onto the ground. Before that evening, Peter had been toying with Hazel, entertaining himself by watching her dance around and play cat and mouse. When she fought him that night and escaped, Hazel entered a game she was very ill-equipped to fight. Peter knew because Peter controlled the rules.