Lysander didn’t fare any better at work the following day. Thankfully most of the work he had could be completed on his own, and he left as soon as he was able to for once. Any flash of red on the street had him tensing and looking around, even though he knew she most likely wouldn’t look like herself if she was there. He couldn’t help it, though. His mind ran circles, and he dreaded seeing her later that night as though she would come to his door with a knife and do him in over dinner.

Tugging at his hair, he decided to try to find Skittles, which sounded like an impossible task given the size of the city, but was, in reality, a simple guessing game. At this time of day and the day of the week, his friend would most certainly be in some bar or other in Mapleview, making Lysander’s task easy. Only two bars were still open in his hometown, so he just had to check both.

Luckily for Lysander, he found the shorter man sitting alone at the first place he went to, the very same bar Lysander had met Red for the first time. He remembered the job she had supposedly completed that same night and looked surreptitiously around the floor for bloodstains before feeling like a complete ass.

Skittles saw him coming, his eyebrows furrowing in confusion at his approach.

“Uh, yo, dude, I’m working?” he said as soon as Lysander was close enough.

“I know. I just needed to talk to you about something. I’m kinda freaking myself out, I think,” Lysander replied, taking a seat next to the other man, bar stool rocking a bit as he settled onto it. The bartender came over and he ordered a quick vodka cranberry, already folding out enough money to cover the drink. He only wanted the alcohol to loosen his anxiety slightly, unclench his shoulders and jaw and make it easier for him to talk.

“Yeah? How the heck did you even find me, man?” Skittles asked.

“You told me you were always in Mapleview on Fridays, remember?”

“Oh yeah, well shit. Guess I had this coming at some point. Welp, tell me what’s up, then,” Skittles said, leaning back on his stool and motioning for Lysander to tell him everything.

“Okay, so, you were right about Red,” he started.

“Oh yeah? Get the fuck out,” his friend said, sarcasm leaking heavily from his tone.

Lysander glared at him. “Yeah, yeah, ‘you told me so’ and all that. Anyways, I happened across her last night after having dinner with Miria-”

“Whoa, whoa, you’re still having dinner dates with her? That’s messed up, man. You shouldn’t be doin’ that to yourself,” Skittles interrupted.

Lysander groaned and waved off the concern. “It’s fine! That’s not what this is about, okay? So, like I was saying, I saw Red in an alley arguing with some other guy and-”

“And you got hella jealous?”

“What? No! Jesus, just listen. Okay, so she told this guy--or girl, I guess--to back off or she would kill the ‘pretty brunette’ they were seeing. So I got suitably freaked by that, but then she caught me listening to them, and I think she threatened me too.”

“Okay, and?”

“What do you mean ‘and’? Isn’t that enough?”

“I mean, it would be weird if it was Miria threatening you at gunpoint, but the Red Morn? Nah, that’s who she is. She’s an assassin. You hired her to fake assassinate a man, dude. It’s kinda in the job description for her to be kinda freaky.”

Lysander supposed that all made sense. Why had he been so disturbed by the events from last night, anyways? It was his own fault that he had been duped into believing she was harmless. She had never claimed to be anything except what she was. He had no right to expect any different. A silly mistake, nothing more. He breathed out gustily, expelling some of the stress he had built up. He thought about bringing up his worries regarding the Shifted, but the bar was quickly filling up and someone had taken the stool on Lysander’s other side. Bringing up such a thing in such a crowded setting felt like a bad idea.

“Thanks, Skittles. Against all odds, I feel a bit better now,” he admitted to his friend.

“Better about what?” asked the blonde next to him.

“Oh, uh, I was talking to him,” he said, gesturing to the other man.

Inexplicably, she glared at him at this. “Holy god, you’re bad at this, friend.”

Red.

Again.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, frustration creeping in. “I’m not even surprised, honestly. What’s your excuse this time? Just happening by?”

“No excuse. Just wanted to see what you got up to in your off time. Sue me, I’m curious. I’m Red, by the way,” she said, reaching a hand across Lysander and offering it to Skittles.

“Nope, I’m out,” Skittles said, ignoring the proffered hand and starting to stand.

“Aww, don’t go! I’ve been dying to meet you! Why do they call you Skittles? The world needs to know!” she asked excitedly, her tone completely at odds with the persona she had shown the night before. Lysander felt a headache coming on.

Skittles groaned and sat back down. “Ay yi yi, what have you gotten me into, man?” he grumbled so only Lysander could hear. “You could have just asked Lysander, y’know?”

“He said he didn’t know.” She ratted him out without pity or remorse. Lysander flipped over to look at her, feeling a deep sense of betrayal and embarrassment. He snuck a look over at Skittles and saw him looking deeply confused.

Sheepishly, Lysander said, “I’ve never known what else to call you.”

“Seriously? Huh. My bad, dude. I thought I’d told you. I always wondered why you never called me Ramon,” he said with a chuckle and a slap to Lysander’s shoulder. The mystery that had haunted Lysander for over a year was solved with a single sentence.

Before Lysander could chime in with anything in reply, another man approached their little threesome. He was tall, probably only a hair shorter than Lysander himself, and his hair puffed around his head in a brown cloud, adding to the general impression of tallness. He looked almost too young to be in a bar like this--though Lysander had no grounds to be thinking such a thing, given his own youthful appearance. The new man’s hazel eyes swept across the bar almost disdainfully, a sneer curling his lip practically imperceptibly.

“This place sucks,” he announced as he arrived, plunking a glass of what could either be water or vodka down in front of Red and leaning against the back of her chair with his own drink in hand.

“You think everything sucks,” she quipped at him, taking a long pull of her drink, “Lysander, this is my roommate, Noah.”

Words could not describe the shock he felt. “Roommate? What?”

“Yeah, as in, we live together, split the chores, so on and so forth?” she said.

“He really is slow,” Noah added. Lysander felt the sting of knowing someone talked about him behind his back.

“To be fair, this shit is freaking me out,” Skittles--Ramon--piped up, his head now fully propped up by his palm with his elbow on the bar.

“He wouldn’t stay home, so I had to bring him,” she said, elbowing Noah’s hip where it met with the back of her stool.

“I get bored,” he admitted as though explaining their household dynamic to Lysander and Ramon.

Lysander shook his head, headache now fully active and pounding away at the right side of his skull. “I think I’m gonna go,” he said without making any real advances to do so.

Red gripped his arm, and the touch brought him back to the feeling of her fingers clutching his shirt. “Why? I thought we were having fun,” she said, sounding genuinely confused by his behavior. Seeming to realize she was touching him, she released his arm and picked her glass back up, sliding her fingers through the perspiration that collected. He watched the skin of his arm turn back to the normal shade after her tight grip left a white handprint.

“I just don’t get you,” he said finally.

“What’s not to get, friend? I’m a pretty simple creature,” she replied.

“Pft, yeah right,” Noah coughed out. She turned an icy glare on her roommate, green eyes chilling and fierce. Lysander shivered, goosebumps rising on the back of his neck.

“You can shut up now,” she said, “Why don’t you go talk to our new friend, Skittles, hm?”

Noah merely rolled his eyes and did as she asked, taking a seat on the other side of Ramon. “Yeah, yeah, I can tell when I’m not wanted,” he called down to her. She continued to glare at him, lips tight until Noah struck up a conversation with Ramon about something or other. Lysander couldn’t find it in himself to focus on what they were saying, his brain running itself to shreds and his stomach flipping uncomfortably.

Red eyed him, “You okay there, friend?”

“I feel sick,” he answered, the headache and alcohol settling uncomfortably together to create a roiling nausea.

“Wanna get some air?” she asked.

He froze and gave her a skeptical look, “I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you alone, honestly.”

She blinked at him, “I guess that’s fair. I’m not gonna hurt you, but why should you believe me, yeah?”

“Exactly! I don’t even really know you.”

“And I don't really know you either.”

“What?”

“What?”

“What you just said.”

“Oh, I just thought we were stating the obvious.”

He glared at her, feeling too ill to put up with her, “This is what I mean! You’re confusing!”

“You think too much, friend. We’re work associates. That’s it. We’re not friends or even acquaintances. You don’t need to know literally anything about me to know that I’ll get the job done,” she said.

He saw the logic, but he had once formed an attachment to a piece of chalk, so he struggled to really agree. “I know all that, I guess. It’s just-”

“It’s always just something with you, friend,” she interrupted, knocking him from his train of thought.

“Oh, yeah, it used to drive Mr. Campbell crazy. He always wanted me to speak up, said I mumbled too much,” he admitted unthinkingly, “Sorry.”

“No need for apologies. It doesn’t bother me. I just noticed it, is all,” she said with a shrug.

“Oh,” he said just as a thought occurred to him, “Hey, how did you know that I would know the layout of the Campbell estate?” He had never told her that he grew up there or how he even knew Joseph Campbell.

“It’s not exactly a secret. Your parents’ deaths and Campbell taking you in afterward was pretty heavily covered in the papers back then. Just took a little research,” she said smoothly.

“I see,” he said. He had long gotten over the reality of his parents’ deaths, but sometimes the knowledge hit him in strange ways, fresh grief and loss hitting him like a tidal wave: a daffodil heralding in spring reminding him of his mother’s favorite flower, the smell of freshly brewed coffee laced with the acrid tang of cigarette smoke reminding him of waking up and hearing them getting ready for the day in the kitchen.

“Ah shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad. My mom’s dead too, so I get it,” she shared. He cast her a surprised look at the unasked for information.

“I’m sorry too. It’s hard losing a parent,” he said after a moment, trying to imagine her situation.

“No worries! It was ages ago. I don’t even remember what she looked like,” she said with a wave of her hand. He felt suddenly sad for her without really knowing why.

“What about your dad?” he asked curiously, wondering if her father was the cause of her Shifted status.

“Oh him? He might as well be dead for all I care, though death would be too kind for him,” she said before taking a sip from her glass.

Eyes widened, he ventured a quick, “Oh, uh, I’m sorry. That’s rough,” before taking a long pull from his own drink. The sharp burn of the alcohol hit his tongue unpleasantly, but he persisted, trying to escape the conversation.

“No biggie. Anyways, you wanna ditch now so we can talk more privately? It’s still meeting day and all,” she said.

He still felt unsure about leaving with her, but he figured she already knew where he lived and worked, so if she wanted to kill him, she could certainly do so with little effort. “Yeah, alright.”

“Cool. I’m off, Noah. Be good,” she called to her roommate. He flicked her off in reply, still deep in conversation with Ramon. Lysander wondered what they had to talk about, but he didn’t have the mental capacity to try to figure it out now.

“Thanks again, uh, Ramon. I appreciate you,” Lysander said with a pat on his friend’s back.

“Yeah, you better, man,” Ramon grumbled with a good natured wave of his hand.

Chuckling, Lysander followed Red outside, a wave of deja vu washing over him from their first meeting. “I’m glad we’re not running this time,” he said with a small laugh.

“And yet you still can’t keep up, friend,” she teased with a smirk.

“Ha. Ha. Hilarious,” he said as they walked toward his apartment. The night sky was clear of clouds, allowing the stars and moon to shine down at full capacity.

“I can’t believe you didn’t recognize me. I even wore the same wig to help you out,” she said.

He groaned, “I’m sorry, okay? Maybe I’m not super observant.”

“Maybe? Try definitely.”

“Fine. I’m the least observant person to ever live.”

“The first step is admitting it.”

They walked a few paces in silence, the sound of their footsteps clicking against the pavement ringing down the empty night streets of the suburb. As they entered the residential district, he saw the lights on in various houses as people either got ready to go to sleep or got ready to head out for the night.

“Soooo, you have a roommate? How does that work?” he asked to break the quiet between them.

“What d’ya mean? I told you it works in the normal way,” she replied.

“I mean, I didn’t really think there were any places out there large enough for two people,” he said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Barrier.

“Oh, well, there’s not really this close to the city. When we’re working, it’s more that we share the same fire pit,” she said with a laugh, “But when we take breaks, we camp out a little farther from the city. A lot of the old Amish houses are still pretty intact out there, being that they’re made of mostly wood.” Anything made of natural resources typically lasted longer than anything man made in the Spread. Yet another mystery unsolved.

“You take breaks? Huh.”

“Yeah, we both get pretty burned out, so we’ll spend a few weeks out there before coming back. His dad took care of me after my mom died, so I feel kinda responsible for him. Plus, he’s super useful, so I gotta keep him around.” Another little laugh.

This was the most information about her that she had offered to him, and he wanted to keep her talking. “Oh yeah? His dad must be a pretty good guy,” he offered.

“Pffft, yeah, I guess he was. Taught me everything I know. Noah is nothing like him. In fact, Noah is something of a shitter, but we grew up together, so I’m used to it.”

He couldn’t fathom why she would laugh while admitting that the man who raised her was a decent guy, but he figured it might have to do with the whole “taught me everything I know” comment. He also didn’t miss that she used the past tense when talking of him. “He’s an assassin too then?” he asked.

“He was, yeah. One of the first to really take it up out there. Probably one of the best too, but he’s gone now. Took the fall for something he didn’t do like the fool he was,” she said bitterly. He opened his mouth to ask her for more, but she quickly cut him off. “Anyways, we’re here, so that’s enough of that. Time to talk about our good friend Joseph.”

Glancing around, he noticed with a startle that she was right. He had been so distracted by the conversation that he had walked them all the way to his front door without realizing. “Uh, right. In we go then,” he said, scanning them through quickly. Bingley jumped all over them as they passed the threshold, and Lysander waved the dog out the back door to divert his attention. After work, Lysander had stopped by to let Bingley out before heading out to find Skittles, but the dog clearly still felt frustrated with him for not spending the afternoon at home with him giving him a walk. “You hungry? I could make us some sandwiches real quick?”

She glanced up at him from where she had knelt down to pet the cats as they wove around her ankles. “You keep trying to feed me. I’m not a starving orphan you have to take care of.”

He blushed. “I know. I’m just trying to be polite.”

“Uh huh. Polite,” she said with a scoff, “You’re too nice, is what it is.” She said the last bit almost too quietly for him to catch.

Ignoring her comment, he closed the back door as Bingley trotted back in from doing his business and continued into the kitchen. “Well, I’m hungry, so I’m going to eat.”

“Fine. If you’re doing it, then you might as well make me one too,” she called.

Chuckling he put together two quick turkey sandwiches on wheat and brought the plates out to the living room. Setting one down in front of where she had settled on his couch, he took a seat on the floor across from her once more.

Picking the plate up, she curled into her usual spot, knees tucked under her, and bit into the sandwich. “I took a look at the estate, and it seems like everything is still pretty much the same as the diagram you drew me,” she said after chewing and swallowing her mouthful. “Honestly, I don’t have much to report, but I wanted to ask you something.”

Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he gestured for her to continue. “Okay, what’s up?”

“Why are you doing this, really? I think I deserve to know at least part of the truth at this point. I don’t think I need to tell you how dangerous this is for both of us. If this goes wrong, we’ll both hang. Figuratively, of course. They’d probably just shoot us in reality. But you get the idea,” she explained.

He looked down at his plate, fingering some of the crumbs and grounding himself in the feeling of them being pulverized under his skin. “Yeah, I know all that. And I guess you do kinda deserve to hear my reasons.”

Sighing he leaned back onto his palms and straightened his legs under the table. Bingley took the opportunity to curl into his side, and he took comfort in the feeling of the warm fur pressed into him.

-

Three weeks ago

Lysander chugged through the last few tasks he had at work before he could leave for the day. The minutes had ticked by impossibly slowly, but he still found himself hesitant to return home for the evening. He wanted to see his pet family, but he also felt obligated to speak with Joseph about something. Miria had been acting more and more withdrawn lately, and he suspected it had to do with her relationship with her father, which had been slightly off since her mother had died of liver disease when they were fifteen. Joseph hadn’t coped well with the loss, throwing his frustrations about the unfairness of it all outward to anyone within a ten foot radius while Miria cracked under all the newfound pressure and reflected all of his toxicity inwards. Lysander didn’t really think it was his place to get in the middle of their family squabbles, but he also knew that he was in a unique position as a not-quite family member to mediate.

Stacking the last of his paperwork into a neat pile in the middle of his desk, he flipped off his desk light and exited the office. He had several moments of internal debate where his anxiety attempted to convince him to simply press the down arrow for the elevator and give this whole idea up as a wash, but he painstakingly pushed those thoughts aside with a stalwart image of Miria’s face. Arming himself with that, he firmly pressed the up button to take him to Joseph’s office on the top floor. The entire ride up stretched on while his stomach flipped and adrenaline laced up his throat, practically choking him. The elevator dinged merrily as it arrived at the proper floor, and Lysander moved mechanically off, instantly wishing he had not done so as the doors closed with a quiet whoosh behind him.

The carpet beneath his feet absorbed the impact of his footsteps, leaving the only sound coming from Joseph’s office at the end of the hallway. The sound of Joseph’s voice ricocheted down the bracketed hallway, but Lysander was too far away yet to make out individual words. Not wanting to disturb Joseph if he was in an important meeting, Lysander crept slightly closer and raised his fist to tentatively knock on Joseph’s slightly opened door.

“I’m just not convinced about the efficacy of this plan,” a tinny voice said from beyond the door. Lysander halted the movement of his fist. The voice was recognizable as the head of the Warner Corporation based in Boston, which Lysander knew from the several radio interviews she had participated in. The last thing he wanted to do was interrupt a meeting between cities, especially given how difficult communicating in such a way was quickly becoming as more and more electric lines and cell phone towers beyond the Barriers were consumed by the Spread. While Lysander knew very little about telecommunications, he figured they had to be speaking using some kind of radio, voices bouncing along a system of still existent repeaters. Which raised a whole host of other questions, like how they set up the meetings and how they knew the system would work, but he had no way of getting answers. Joseph’s voice from inside the office interrupted these musings.

“I know how you feel, Alyssa, but the fact of the matter is that we simply don’t have enough resources to sustain so many people anymore,” Joseph said with a sigh, “I’m planning on cutting back the Barrier to the emergency circle within the next six months.”

The breath caught in Lysanders’ chest and he pressed a palm into the wood of the doorway to steady himself. The emergency circle had been built when the Barrier had first been implemented to cut off the outer suburbs in case the Spread somehow found a way inside. It was intended for people to evacuate behind the much smaller Barrier in waves before it went active if such a situation ever erupted. Did this mean there was some weakness in the existing Barrier? Was Joseph about to initiate the evacuation protocols? But then why had he mentioned resources sustaining people? Lysander’s head spun with implications.

“I’m with Campbell on this, Warner. It’s bad enough we got so many unregistered’s somehow finding their way back in and leeching off our hard working Codes, but I just can’t see myself being able to feed all these people in a year, let alone employ ‘em. It’s misery out here,” crackled another voice from the radio. This one was tougher to recognize, so Lysander figured it must belong to a corporate president either from the south or west, both of which rarely received airtime in Cleveland. He had even heard whispers that a Rift had opened somewhere in the south that had completely cut off communications with a swath of the southern states.

“Indeed. It is unfortunate, but there it is. Sometimes you have to excise a tumor so that the whole remains healthy,” Joseph stated. Lysander felt bile rising in the back of his throat.

If Lysander understood correctly, Joseph Campbell was talking about sentencing thousands of people to their deaths, all because they had the misfortune of living too far from the city.

“I imagine that brother of yours is pleased with these developments,” said the unknown potentially Western/Southern voice.

Joseph exhaled loudly from his nose--a quick huff of a humorless laugh. “Yes, Anthony is extremely pleased. He’s been pushing for a tighter circle since the beginning. Perhaps I should have listened.” Lysander had known about Anthony Campbell’s feelings in this regard, had always known even as a child when Anthony would come up to him after the deaths of his parents and tell him that it was their fault that so many could “leach off the city” as he put it.

“Doesn’t your foster son live in one of the proposed suburbs, Joseph?” Alyssa Warner asked.

“Mm, yes. I have been trying to subtly request that he move back home for the past several months, but he is being obstinate. He feels an attachment to that place, given that his parents lived there,” Joseph informed. Lysander’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, remembering every moment from the past months of Joseph pulling him aside and asking him to move back to the estate because he felt lonely in the place, and if Lysander moved home maybe Miria would too? Wouldn’t that be nice?

His breaths started to shorten as panic began to fully set in, and he could feel the heat of tears building behind his eyes. A lump formed in his throat, and he struggled to keep the attack at bay just long enough to make it to the elevator out of earshot. Lysander turned and shuffled back the way he had come, using the wall as a support for his shaking legs.

“Lysander? What are you doing up here?” Joseph’s voice came from over Lysander’s shoulder. Lysander immediately stopped in his spot and turned to face his foster father, the man who had effectively raised him.

“I--um--I had something I wanted to discuss, but you sounded busy, so I thought I would leave you to it,” Lysander said, forcing each word out with all the oxygen he still had powering his lungs after the nearly physical impact he had received.

“Oh? I just finished. I wouldn’t mind sitting down and talking with you now,” Joseph said, gesturing back to his office.

“No, no, it’s really fine. It can wait. No big,” Lysander stuttered out. An iciness began to creep up his back, pricking his neck and pushing his fight or flight response firmly into the flight category.

“But you seem distressed, son. That’s no way to be wandering the streets at this time of night.”

“No, really, I’m fine. I’ll just be going now,” Lysander said, slinking slightly further from him and beginning to turn away.

“Ah, I don’t think that’s wise at the moment,” Joseph said as he grabbed Lysander’s shoulder, halting his movement. “I don’t know what you heard, but maybe we should talk about it, hm?”

“Talk about it? What’s there to talk about? You mean, how you want to just basically murder thousands and thousands of people?” Lysander spat out, his nerves frayed to the point of snapping.

Joseph raised a dispassionate eyebrow, peering up the scant inches that separated their heights. “I think you’re overreacting. If you just listened to the reasoning, you would understand better--”

“There’s no reasoning in the world that would make that okay!” Lysander interrupted, the words exploding out of him and echoing down the hallway. Silence rang in its wake, and Lysander began to blush in embarrassment and frustration. “You took up my parent’s cause, you fought for the suburbs, now what? It’s too inconvenient to keep them running? Well, figure it out! This is crazy!”

“I don’t think you’ve ever spoken to me like this. It’s a nice change from the mumbling anyways. But no, Lysander. This isn’t a fairytale where everything magically works out in the end. It’s just not possible for me to keep all those people anymore,” Joseph explained. The phrasing made it seem like the people of the city were his pets, and Lysander’s stomach turned harder.

“Why are you like this? What happened? I’m so confused. I just want to go home, Mr. Campbell,” Lysander muttered to the floor, the fight draining from him and no longer caring if he sounded childish.

“Fine, fine. But do remember to come see me for that chat, Lysander,” Joseph said, “Oh! And please keep this information to yourself. It wouldn’t do to cause a panic.”

With that, Joseph turned and strode back to his office, closing the door with a gentle click.

-

“Sooo, what? You want him to see the error of his ways or something?” Red asked as he finished telling her the story.

“Well, it sounds childish when you put it like that, but yeah, basically that’s what I want,” he replied.

“And you don’t want to tell your little girlfriend about it because?” she asked, trailing off on the last word as though wanting him to fill in the blanks.

“First of all, Miria isn’t my girlfriend. Secondly, she can’t know about it. She would be devastated if she found out what her dad is planning.”

“Uh huh. But don’t you think she should make her own decisions in this regard?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re kinda treating her like a little kid or, I dunno, like she’s some kinda trinket that you don’t wanna break.”

Lysander furrowed his brows. “No, I’m not. I just want to protect her. She deserves whatever amount of happiness I can cobble together for her.”

Red gave him a long look, her face pinched and unsure. “Well, it’s none of my business either way,” she said with a wave of her hand, “As for your reasoning, I think I get it, but also, who’s to say that this will even work? Have you even had that chat with him that he wanted? And what if he’s right that there’s nothing to be done and the best thing to do is just to cut your losses and run?”

Lysander felt irritation start to creep in, hot and unpleasant in his chest. “No, I didn’t ‘have that chat with him’! I don’t think there’s anything he could say to make me feel differently about all this. And there is no just cutting my losses or whatever. There are real living breathing people out there who would almost certainly die if he closed them out of the Barrier. There has to be a different solution. Even Alyssa Warner sounded skeptical! So I have to believe that once he’s back in his right frame of mind that this will all work out somehow. I’ll figure it out, if I have to. Even Miria can help with that. She’s great with numbers and figures! She’ll find something Joseph missed.” He could feel himself slipping further into a nearly manic lecture, but once he started he couldn’t stop his mouth. He had to disclose everything on his mind to purge the creeping tendrils of doubt and insecurity worming around in him, and Red just happened to be the only person around when his carefully built dam of optimism and hope sprang a leak.

“That’s painfully naive, friend,” she said quietly, but her face didn’t appear truly chastising. Instead, she had an almost soft look about her, something bordering on affection but not quite truly there.

“I know,” he replied, “But I don’t know what else to do, y’know? I made pros vs cons spreadsheets, for god’s sake.”

“I’m going to help you with this, but you have to promise to not be disappointed if it doesn’t work out like you want it to.”

He thought the caveat strange, but he felt too grateful to her to think too closely on it, so he agreed with a firm nod of his head. “It’s all gonna be great, you’ll see. I know him. Once he faces his own mortality, he’ll call it all off and we’ll sort out how to save everyone together.”

Red sighed and tapped a finger on the arm of his couch. “Yeah. I’ll make sure of it.”

Crossing the brightly lit expanse of her apartment complex’s lobby, Blair Harada gloried in the sound of her heels clacking against the shiny clean marble. A rather large tasteful chandelier dangled from the high ceiling above her head, the crystal accents reflecting light throughout the space. After another long day of corralling Samantha, it felt nice to have some alone time, relishing in the knowledge that no one would be waiting for her when she arrived at the tenth floor apartment. The demand and pressure from her parents had done a solid job of driving her away from their household, both of them attempting to reign in her impulsivity and desire for independence from their money and name. Being the daughter of a renowned heart surgeon (even if the medical field had been forever changed after the Spread began, her father still worked tirelessly to advocate for new techniques and medications that could be achieved within the confines of their small bubble) and a judge on the Committee gave them certain expectations about how she should behave and Blair felt the weight even on the other side of the city. It didn’t help that they had recently relocated into city limits in order to be closer to their work, though Blair suspected they wanted to keep a closer eye on her.

Slumping against the wall of the elevator, Blair then remembered the Sinclair household and suddenly the prospect of her dark, empty apartment lost some of its appeal. Even from their first meeting, Samantha and she had butted heads about the silliest of things, but their differences somehow transformed into the only true friendship Blair had ever had and this night was one of the rare ones that they spent apart, trading their residences between each other for dinners and late night chats though Samantha often insisted they go to her place so she could care for her younger brothers and her mother.

Blair unlocked the door of her extremely expensive apartment and wished, not for the first time, to be greeted by the roaring footsteps and excited shouts of her closest friend and her raucous cabal of brothers.

But all that met her was the view of the city skyline from the expanse of windows on the other end of the room, lights flickering from the rooms of countless others.