Friday morning, Lysander walked into his office and got an extreme sense of deja vu when he saw Joseph Campbell sitting at his desk. He silently cursed whatever god was mocking him by throwing both the Campbell men at him in the space of a week, his heart having barely survived the first encounter. Wetting his aggressively dry lips, he stepped into the office and closed the door behind him, wanting to have some privacy in the event that he had another meltdown. Even four days later, he kept walking into the break room only to have everyone stop their conversations and stare at him.

Clearing his throat, he began, “Good morning, sir.”

“Sir? Please Lysander, I think we’re far beyond that,” Joseph said. He pulled out a chair from the conference table that ran the length of the center of the room and patted the seat, welcoming Lysander to sit.

Gripping the cuffs on his sleeves, Lysander mechanically took the proffered seat, his knees jangling in rhythm to the pounding of his heart. This time for sure he was about to be outed. Joseph had somehow found out about the plans Lysander had been making behind his back. He had noticed Red skulking around his house and watching him and put the pieces together and now, almost certainly, Lysander and Red were about to be sentenced to death for conspiracy or attempted murder or something.

“I find I’m disappointed in you, son,” Joseph stated, taking the first faltering step into the thick, tense air between them.

Lysander wanted to continue in silence--he had less of a chance of blurting something damning if he just kept his mouth shut--but he had never been able to resist Joseph’s piercing brown eyed stare, the very same eyes as Miria but so much harder and colder. “Ah, um, disappointed, Mr. Campbell?”

“Yes, disappointed. I asked you to come speak with me several weeks ago, but you never appeared. I got the impression you were avoiding me, in fact. I thought I had raised you with sterner stuff than that,” Joseph explained, leaning his elbows onto his knees and closing some of the distance between them. Lysander desperately fought the impulse to lean away, knowing it would only showcase more of his own weakness, something that Joseph had always disliked.

“O-Oh, I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to avoid you on purpose,” he lied. He had gone out of his way several times to not run into Joseph, but he didn’t want to admit to it, for obvious reasons. The parts of him that disappointed Joseph Campbell also made Lysander hate himself: his inability to stick up for himself (except in the form of a joke), the anxiety that followed him like a constant companion, his complete lack of self awareness, his ignorance.

“Hmm, I doubt that. But it’s pointless to argue about it now. We have very little time until Samantha and Blair arrive, so I would rather spend the time more efficiently.” Everything with Joseph was always about efficiency and logic--two rather innocuous (and indeed useful in many settings) concepts, but he wielded them like weapons. “I came to discuss again what you saw.”

Lysander had no doubt about what Joseph meant, but he wanted to delay the conversation, maybe he could play dumb long enough that his coworkers would show up and interrupt them. “What I saw, Mr. Campbell?”

Joseph merely gave him a withering stare, clearly not in the mood for games. “Indeed,” he said simply, allowing silence to follow the word, which swallowed any amount of confidence Lysander had managed to scrape together.

“Right, that. Well, uh, I think we both got our opinions out in the open then. I didn’t really see a point in talking about it more,” he admitted, only realizing as he said it that it was true. He had made his disdain about Joseph’s plans clear, and Joseph had explained as much of his own thoughts as Lysander could take.

“I see,” Joseph began, “And have you given any more thought to moving home?”

“As of now, I plan to continue living in Mapleview, but thank you for thinking of me,” Lysander bit out. The thought of abandoning everyone in Mapleview and running back to the Campbell estate made his stomach heave--to do nothing when he knew the truth of Joseph’s plans would destroy too many pieces of his heart.

Eyes narrowing marginally, Joseph continued, “You would senselessly condemn yourself to death?”

“Well, I mean, I’m still kinda hoping it doesn’t come to that,” Lysander mumbled, finding being confronted with the very real possibility of his death rather disheartening, to put it mildly.

Joseph shook his head, exhaling a long disapproving breath. He stood, towering over Lysander physically for once. “You are still so foolish,” he said, placing a lingering hand on Lysander’s head, the digits sinking into his thick black hair. The office door clicked open and Joseph retracted his hand, clenching his fist before striding away. He offered a cursory greeting to Sam and Blair and then he was gone, his muffled footsteps fading down the hall.

“What was that about?” Sam asked, jerking a thumb in the direction Joseph had disappeared in.

“Nothing. He just wanted to discuss one of my ideas,” Lysander said, fudging the truth. Sam screwed her lips to one side, cheeks and forehead tightening.

“What is going on with you, Lysander? You’ve been super weird for like the past two weeks now, and I’m trying to be understanding, but I’m getting kinda annoyed. We haven’t had a normal day at work in forever, and I need this job, so just talk to someone, will you? It doesn’t have to be us, but just like someone, so you can stop having this god damn cloud hanging over you finally,” Sam shouted, her voice rising as she continued on. Finished with her tirade, she stomped out of the office, leaving Lysander dumbfounded and Blair blinking behind her.

“She’s worried,” Blair said into the silence of the aftermath, “She doesn’t handle her feelings very well. If someone is hurt or sad around her, her first instinct is always to get angry. I think she deals with things better if she can fix it.”

“I see,” Lysander stated, thinking that he knew someone else like that.

“Mm,” Blair affirmed, before continuing, “I would also like to be supportive, but you are a very secretive person. It’s okay to talk to us about your problems.”

“I know, and I really do appreciate you guys being there for me the other day, but I can’t really talk about any of it without putting you in danger,” he admitted. They at least deserved to know that he would tell them if he could.

Blair’s eyes narrowed and she started to speak, but then the door flew open once more and Sam blazed back into the room, water droplets sliding down her cheeks and chin from where she had clearly splashed water onto her face.

“Okay! Sorry about all that! Let’s get down to business,” she stated before taking a seat at her desk. Blair immediately followed the directive, settling herself into her own chair and beginning her morning tasks. Lysander watched the pair of them, still feeling slightly gobsmacked by the entire exchange but with a chuckle, he also turned and started the workday. Without even intending to, they had both taken his mind from the stress of Joseph’s visit, and he again felt a rush of gratitude for them--for being there for him, even begrudgingly or unintentionally, and for being two spots of relative normality in the strange whirlwind his life was becoming.

At the end of the day, as he was leaving--only thirty minutes late, for once--Ben, the security guard, handed him a folded note, saying that a friend of Lysander’s had dropped it off for him about an hour ago. Lysander assumed that he would see Red’s looping letters when he opened the missive, but instead Ramon’s messy chicken scrawl greeted him.

Hey man, just thought you might not wanna be alone tonight. Meet me at the Corner Bar in Mapleview, if you want. I’ll be there ‘till closing time. -Skittles

Lysander considered not going--wanting badly to just get home and maybe take a hot shower and curl up with a book again--but Ramon had been integral to getting his plan off the ground and he felt obligated to keep him in the loop.

The Corner Bar was the only other bar still open in Mapleview, aside from the Bay Street Inn, where he had first met Red. It was located, appropriately, on the corner of the busiest intersection through town, making it significantly more popular among those who could still afford such a luxury than the Inn, which was tucked away on a side street not visible to pedestrians walking through downtown. Decked in fading and peeling baby blue paint and boasting a large sign proclaiming they had the best burgers in the world, it was difficult to miss. Lysander’s shoes crunched on the gravel of the parking lot, weeds now choking out most of the stone, and he stepped onto the old unpainted wooden staircase leading to the front door. The entrance sat raised slightly from the street--narrow, cloudy basement windows dotting the very bottom of the building--making the three step staircase necessary to gain access to the bar. Opening the white door, Lysander became immediately engulfed in the music pounding from the jukebox--an old country song twanging through the air. The lights were significantly dimmed, making the people cluttering in the small space appear more as vague shadows than fully formed human beings. Though the building was two stories--not including the basement level--only the first floor was used for the bar, the upper floor housing three small cheap apartments, one always occupied by the owner of the place. His shoes stuck to the floor with each step, and he awkwardly checked each face along the bar, trying to find Ramon in the minimal light cast by the liquor cabinet’s backlighting.

In the end, Ramon found him instead, a tap on his shoulder announcing the presence of his friend.

Lysander whipped around and waved a greeting, not wanting to shout over the combined noise of the music and voices. Ramon jerked his thumb behind him toward the other half of the joint where several tall tables littered the area near a pair of pool tables. The noise there was dulled by a faulty speaker, making it a perfect place to chat.

“Thanks for coming, man,” Ramon called to him across the table, his voice still needing to be raised to combat the other sounds.

“Yeah, of course,” Lysander replied, fiddling with the peeling label on an empty beer bottle Ramon had left between them. Lysander knew the other man almost certainly came here to work, and his rule was to only ever have two drinks maximum when scoping for customers, just enough to blend in and keep the bar staff off his back.

“How are things going then? Isn’t it almost time? That’s why I figured you wouldn’t wanna be alone and all. You get nervous,” Ramon stated bluntly. Given that Ramon’s job was essentially to read people in order to find someone willing to buy black market, Lysander wasn’t surprised that his friend knew him so well after only a year’s acquaintance.

Lysander scratched the label further off, the pulp of the paper collecting under his fingernails. “Yeah, Red said she wants to move on Sunday,” he admitted.

“And you’re still sure this is what you want?”

“We’ve talked about this. I don’t really see any other option.”

“Alright, alright. It’s my duty as your friend to ask, no need to come at me like that,” Ramon placated, taking a tug from the beer he was still nursing.

Sighing, Lysander apologized, “Sorry, I’m just on edge. Sam yelled at me at work today, and Joseph decided to pay me a visit this morning.”

“Damn, that’s rough, buddy,” Ramon said after a sympathetic whistle, “Sam’s the feisty one, right? The one you’re always fighting with?”

“We don’t fight, just argue.”

“Riiight, cause there’s a difference.”

“There is! It’s all friendly debate!”

“If you say so, dude,” Ramon finally capitulated. “So, don’t bite my head off, but I feel obligated--again, as your friend--to point out that this all still seems bat shit insane to me.”

Lysander glared at him, “Considering this was your idea, I don’t think that’s fair.”

“My idea?! Since when?!” Ramon shouted.

“Uh, since always. I asked you what I should do about Joseph, remember? And you said that I should make him have a change of heart, see the errors of his ways!”

“Holy shit, that was a joke!”

“It was? Seemed like a solid idea to me.”

“Dios mio, I can’t believe you’re doing all this because I made a joke one time. Lesson learned, don’t joke with Lysander.”

Lysander thumped his forehead onto the table, regretting it immediately when the surface stuck to his skin. “It’s fine. It’s all fine. Everything is gonna be fine.”

“You take everything too seriously, man,” Ramon said, tone consoling, “If you have faith, then I have faith, alright?”

Lysander glanced at him from his place against the table, rolling his head to the side. “Thanks, Ramon. Hey, I’m sorry again that I never asked for your real name.”

“Dude, don’t even with that, okay? It’s all good. You know it now, so the issue’s done and dusted as far as I’m concerned,” he said, clapping imaginary dust from his hands to underline his point.

Lysander smiled gratefully, thanking the fates that he spilled his drunken heart out to this man last year.

“By the way, you might wanna get your head off the table. Pretty sure I saw someone throw up on it last week, and I’m not sure if they ever clean this place,” Ramon said. Lysander lifted his head as fast as humanly possible, feeling a joint pop in his neck from the quick motion.

Groaning, he rubbed the sore spot, “God, I’m getting old.”

Ramon glared at him. “Oh, please, come back and talk to me when you’re at least twenty-five,” he grumbled before continuing under his breath, “Crazy bastard thinks he’s old when he still looks like he’s twelve.”

“It’s not like you’re that much older than me! You’re what? Twenty-five, twenty-six?” Lysander asked, genuinely curious.

“Yeah, twenty-six this month, actually.”

“Oh, what, really? I missed your birthday? I’m sorry.”

“We don’t really have that type of friendship, ya know? It’s all good.”

“Right, you’re right. Still, I’m sorry.”

With an exasperated look, Ramon said, “Dude, seriously, stop apologizing for, like, existing. It’s all good. If you wanna be better friends, that’s cool. If you don’t, that’s cool too. Just keep me out of the dangerous shit, that’s all I ask. I got stuff I want to protect too,” he finished with a shrug.

Lysander had never really made friends easily, which sounded strange to think as an adult. He got too self conscious and covered his insecurities by simply not allowing anyone to see them or get too close. Only Miria really knew the full truth of him, and even with her, Lysander sometimes pretended to be stronger than he was so that she would rely on him. So every person he ever met was kept at arm’s length, and he never formed anything more than base acquaintanceships, giving only small pieces of himself to everyone around him. Having friendship simply offered to him with so little fanfare felt strange and incredible, though Ramon seemed to think of it as little more than the due course of the conversation.

Resisting the urge to apologize for apologizing too much, Lysander began, “Okay, sure, yeah,” but then he didn’t know how to really finish. He didn’t know how to accept such an offer.

“Cool,” Ramon said simply, turning his gaze to the rest of the bar, sweeping his eyes over the other patrons. “Y’know I did have some stuff I wanted to sell, but I don’t think it’s gonna happen tonight.”

Lysander couldn’t stop the pang of potential guilt he felt for maybe ruining his friend’s business night but refrained from saying sorry. Instead, he asked, “Why not?”

“It’s just a bad night for it,” Ramon replied. He swirled the dregs of his beer around in his bottle, but Lysander could tell that Ramon only had a faux aura of nonchalance. There was something--or someone--Ramon was worried about. Lysander cast a surreptitious glance behind him, using whatever amount of stealth he had--which was admittedly not much--to try to parse what had his friend on edge so suddenly, but he unsurprisingly didn’t see anything other than the other customers making a lot of noise by the bar.

“Do you wanna leave?” Lysander asked.

“Mm, nah. It’s Friday night! We can hang a little longer, yeah? Oh! Speaking of birthdays, when’s yours?” The subject change was abrupt, but Lysander played along.

“Uh, mine’s in December, the nineteenth,” he said, a prickling feeling rising along the back of his neck, like someone was watching him. He pushed it aside, deeming it paranoia more than reality. At this point, only Barrier Patrol would want to keep tabs on him--that is, if they found out about his meetings with Red--but he doubted anyone under the leadership of Anthony Campbell would be subtle. They would be more likely to just attack him in the middle of broad daylight where god and everyone could see him go down--an example, just like Alexandria Wells.

“Oh shit, that’s close to Christmas. Those holiday birthdays always kinda suck ass,” Ramon commiserated.

“It wasn’t so bad growing up. Avianna Campbell always made sure to have a cake for me and a present or two and Miria made up this awful birthday song to sing to me. She still assaults my ears with it.”

“What about your parents?”

The question threw Lysander. People rarely brought up his blood family, and now both Red and Ramon had spoken about them in the space of a week. “Uh, I don’t remember super great, but I don’t think I ever felt crappy on my birthday. Mostly, I just remember feeling really loved. Like, when I try to think of them, I just get a warm, happy feeling, I guess. I do remember that they used to throw these elaborate parties for Christmas, before the Spread. Huge trees and tons of decorations all over the house. My dad cooked for like a week and my mom cleaned everything, even the light sockets,” he said. The memories that stood out to him were always strange like that, small bits of them that barely accumulated into a whole set of people.

“Heh, sounds nice. My mama used to bake for the whole month after Thanksgiving. I mean other than the stuff for the bakery. She’d come home tired from running the shop and start rolling out cookie dough in the kitchen like she hadn’t just spent a whole morning kneading bread dough or whatever. Those were the days, huh?”

“Your family has a bakery?” Tonight was full of revelations.

“Yeah. My friends growing up thought it was the shit because my pa would always sneak them cupcakes behind Mama’s back.”

“That does sound pretty awesome, to be fair.” Lysander noticed that the easy conversation seemed to have loosened some tension from Ramon’s shoulders, his broad heavy muscles unclenching from his neck and unhitching from their position by his ears. Still, the feeling of being watched lurked in Lysander’s periphery, a nagging feeling that annoyingly persisted. He ran a hand through his hair, using the motion to again check behind him for anyone obviously looking their way, but he saw no one.

Rolling his neck, Ramon stood from his stool. “C’mon, I’ll walk with you to your place.”

Ramon had never offered such a thing before, confirming Lysander’s feeling that someone in the bar was watching them, though he still couldn’t imagine who. “Okay, sure, sounds good.”

The pair crossed the room to the front entrance, bypassing the smaller back entrance that had been closer to their table because it led to a darkened covered courtyard, which Lysander could see from the small window on the door was empty. The steps creaked under their weight as they stepped onto them from the doorway. Once they were a good distance from the bar--Ramon leading them onto the brightly lit sidewalks that ran through the main thoroughfare of the town--Lysander broke the silence between them.

“Was someone watching us in there?” he asked. Ramon glanced at him, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his tan trucker jacket. The weather had been warming over the past couple days, but a nip of chill still lingered as the days marched toward April.

“Definitely. Someone was keeping a watch on you. You sure no one knows about all this shit with Red?”

“I mean, no, but I can’t imagine why they would just stalk me if they did know about it. Are you sure it was me they were watching?” The fine hairs on the back of his neck still felt raised from the lingering gooseflesh he had gotten at the bar, making him fairly sure that Ramon’s supposition was correct, but he had to ask.

“For sure, they couldn’t have cared less about me. It was w--” Ramon’s sentence was suddenly cut off as he shoved Lysander to the side, using the push to propel himself in the opposite direction. Something glistening flew through the gap between them where they had been standing moments before and stuck into the grass. Lysander stumbled from the shove, losing his footing on a root hidden by the grass and falling onto his side. He caught himself with his right arm, a jolt of pain shooting up his wrist as his hand held the majority of the weight from his upper body. What felt like a rock dug into his right knee. The light of the streetlamps caught the edge of whatever had been flung at them, reflecting off its surface and Lysander dimly realized that it was a blade of some kind.

“What the fuck?” Ramon said, summarizing Lysander’s jumbled mess of thoughts rather succinctly. If Ramon hadn’t launched him out of the way, the blade would have lodged into Lysander’s back instead of the densely packed earth where it now rested. Lysander’s arms shook and he fell onto his elbow, shock and adrenaline ripping into him.

“If you leave, you can live.” The voice came from behind them, and a form materialized from the deep shadows cast by the last clump of buildings they had passed--a demarcation between the mercantile and residential areas. Lysander and Ramon stood just between the businesses where the newcomer stepped from and a long single story house, lights already gone out for the night. Across the street, an old gas station sat, pumps rusting. The mini mart (renamed to Campbell’s Mini--Your one stop shop, saving you the run around!) attached to it still functioned, however, and Lysander couldn’t believe that someone had attacked him right where anyone could see it. Wasn’t this sort of thing supposed to happen in the dead of the night on some back alley? These thoughts fled as the person came closer, more blades clutched in his hands. Now that the person had stepped nearer, Lysander could tell that it was a man clothed in all black, hood pulled up on his head. Given Lysander was on the ground though, he could see the majority of the man’s face, youngish features greeting him. He couldn’t be much older than Lysander himself. The blades seemed to be small throwing knives of some sort, like mini daggers, though Lysander knew very little about weapons.

“Fuck you,” Ramon responded vehemently, and Lysander realized belatedly that the man had been speaking to his friend, had been asking Ramon to abandon Lysander. He looked up at Ramon and started the process of heaving himself up from the ground, which was made difficult by the shakiness of his limbs--pure, animal fear pulsing through him.

“Go, please. You said you had people you wanted to protect, remember?” Lysander begged. It cost him to ask the one person who could help him to leave, but he also couldn’t pointlessly condemn someone to sharing his fate. Ramon was a strong man, but Lysander doubted he stood much of a chance against someone so clearly trained to kill.

“Don’t be stupid, Lysander. I ain’t a coward, and I ain’t about to leave you with Psycho Jones over here,” Ramon replied, casting his voice so only Lysander could hear. The man had stopped still some distance from them, flipping one of his knives up and readying his arm in a throwing position.

“Fine,” the man said before pulling back his arm further for the throw. Lysander tensed, preparing his body to attempt a dodge, though he didn’t think he had much of a chance of actually getting away from an aimed projectile.

But just as the man was about to release the knife toward them, a red blur shot from across the street and plowed into the man, effectively tackling him to the ground. To his credit, the man responded quickly, repositioning one of his knives and stabbing at the new assailant. Auburn hair gleamed in the streetlight as Red ducked under the swing, pressing her body closer to the man. Once it had passed above her, she pushed away from him and kicked him hard in the chest. He grunted at the impact but managed to roll away from her and stand once more. All of this happened within the space of maybe thirty seconds, and Lysander considered maybe he was losing his mind.

“How many times do I have to tell you to fuck off,” Red seethed. Lysander could practically feel the force of her anger, the air heavy with tension, but the other assassin didn’t seem fazed, instead launching at her and swinging his knives in practiced sweeps. Red danced around him--there was no other word Lysander could think of to describe the motion. Ducking and twisting with each movement, the knives passed inches from her every time like she was toying with the assailant.

Suddenly, Lysander realized Ramon had taken the opportunity to come to his side, the other man grabbing his arm and beginning to drag him from the fight. Lysander planted his heels. As much as he wanted to get away, he also couldn’t just leave Red alone, even if she clearly didn’t need much help.

Red must have noticed his inaction because she shouted down the street at them, “What are you still doing here? Go!” The moment of distraction was enough for the other assassin, and he landed a blow to her forearm, which she had belatedly raised to protect her throat. Even from this distance, the cut looked deep, her blood already seeping freely from the wound. Cursing, she used the injured arm to hit the attacker in the head, causing him to stumble several steps away, momentarily dazed.

The next several things happened in rapid succession, Ramon hauling him away even as he watched. The assassin recovered just enough to throw one of his knives at their departing forms, trying to catch him before he could get fully out of his range. But before it could get even halfway to him, Red intercepted it, impossibly fast. Catching it, somehow by the handle, she used the momentum it already had to pirouette back around with it and hurl it back at the other man, her plaited hair streaming behind her like a ribbon. Clearly caught off guard, he offered no resistance as his own knife thudded into his chest with a sick squelch that Lysander could hear even as Ramon grunted and cursed at him to move his ass.

The assassin’s hands lifted to the protruding weapon, blood coating his fingers with alarming alacrity, and then he collapsed, more blood gurgling out of his mouth, signaling a punctured lung.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” Lysander murmured in a panic, his limbs finally going limp enough for Ramon to drag him from the scene. The last thing he saw before the pair of them disappeared around the closest corner was Red brutally pulling the knife from the other man.

The mad dash to his apartment went by in a blur, Lysander’s thoughts focused wholly on the scene they had just left behind. He couldn’t force his mind past the sight of the man collapsing, blood pouring from him. Lysander’s heart jackrabbited inside his chest, the thumping rocketing throughout his body. Even his fingertips pulsed as adrenaline wound up his throat. Dimly, he recalled directing Ramon to his place, his friend coaxing answers from him both gently and urgently. When they arrived in front of his door, Ramon stood him by the access panel, and Lysander went through the rote motions of unlocking it. Once the lock clicked, Ramon shoved them through the door and slammed it behind them. Lysander melted onto the floor, no longer able to maintain a standing position. Bingley pawed at him, confused, and the cats made themselves scarce, startled by the new presence.

Ramon paced around him, fingers dug deep into thick curly black hair, knuckles white with tension. “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered as he circled.

It was not until this moment that Lysander realized how sheltered his existence had been. He had understood the realities of the world, had known about Shifted, about the Barrier, about all the pieces that made up their society, but it was not until he watched a man who had attempted to kill him potentially drown in his own blood that Lysander fully appreciated that there was an inherent darkness lurking just out of reach. Amidst every minor protest being broken harshly by Barrier Patrol and the sight of crowds of people living in squalor without housing, he thought maybe he should have realized all this sooner, but all the same he had made it finally to the correct conclusion. It was like the feeling when you knew something was wrong but couldn’t pinpoint what until you noticed that your favorite coffee cup was on the wrong shelf or someone had turned around your houseplant--a minor change that sparked an unsettling deep in your gut.

“Fuck, okay, shit, alright. Um, okay...Lysander?” Ramon said, finally stopping his movements and kneeling beside Lysander, but Lysander couldn’t bring himself to focus on the other man; he could barely breathe, his chest tight and painful. “Ah, god, you gotta talk to me, man,” Ramon pleaded.

Lysander tried, he really did, but his mouth felt like sandpaper and he couldn’t really remember how to form coherent sentences, so when he opened his mouth, all that came out was, “I don’t--what do we--oh god.” Ten different thoughts flew to the forefront, faster than he could speak, and they all seemed to come out at once in a tangle of nonsensical half-phrases.

Ramon didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands--he kept waving them in the air around Lysander, not sure if he should touch him or not. Not having the wherewithal to really soothe or direct Ramon, Lysander just sort of watched the unsure movements vaguely, his mind replaying again the thud of the knife into flesh, the collapse of knees to pavement. He wasn’t aware how much time passed before a knock sounded at his door. The sudden sound sent a wave of panic through his stomach, his arms and legs tensing uncomfortably. Ramon narrowed his eyes at the door and cursed softly, finally leaving Lysander to his internal turmoil to sidle quietly to the peephole to check who was on the other side. A moment later, Ramon cursed again and beckoned Lysander to open the door for Red. Dimly, he did as he was told, and Red blazed in, examining every inch of the room in a quick visual pat down as she came.

Ramon gently extracted the door from Lysander’s limp grip and shut it, before wheeling on the assassin. “What the shit is going on?” he questioned aggressively, all the tension exploding from him in the form of anger.

Red turned her attention from the wall she had been looking at, her expression dark. “It was exactly what it looked like. I’m handling it,” she bit out in reply.

“Yeah? Is that all you have to say for yourself? I thought your type took care of this shit! If you were doing your job right then no one would even be targeting him!”

With that, Lysander realized that they were talking about him, arguing about him. He had not doubted that the man had been sent for him, specifically, but listening to them made it all the more real. Someone had tried to kill him. Someone had hired someone to kill him. Someone wanted him dead.

Why though?

Why?

“You think this is my fault?” Lysander had never heard Red so angry before, her voice rising as the conversation continued. She tended to run both hot and cold, but typically her anger took the form of icy silences and glares, words clipped and tone frosty.

“Who the hell else should I blame, huh? Before you, nobody was jumping out of shadows trying to skewer him!” Ramon was also shouting, but this, at least, wasn’t surprising. His friend had a volatile temper, almost like a dormant volcano--seething just beneath the surface, waiting to blow with the right provocation.

“Maybe if your friend could keep his nose out of other people’s business, then this wouldn't have happened!”

What?

“What?” Lysander asked, his voice cracking. Both of them turned to look at him, their expressions still set in frustration, mouths twisted and eyebrows puckered. At last, Red exhaled loudly from her nose and turned her face from him, crossing her arms across her chest.

“What do you think happened out there, friend? Huh?” she asked, tacking on the second part when he didn’t immediately open his mouth to answer.

“I mean, I was clearly assaulted,” he answered, the haze of anxiety lifting enough now that confusion was sifting in to take its place.

Red scoffed. “Clearly. But why, you might be wondering,” she continued, and yes, indeed, he had been wondering, now that he had the brain capacity to think beyond ‘oh god, oh shit, someone is throwing knives at me, now they’re dead, oh god.’ “Well, riddle me this, then, friend. Why did they attack you in the middle of the street? In the middle of a relatively safe suburb, not far from a ton of homes where people might be watching outside their windows?”

These questions hadn’t even begun to form in his mind, but now that they had been presented to him, he couldn’t not wonder.

“Why don’t you tell us, hm? Since you seem to have everything sorted out and all,” Ramon piped up from beside him, his stocky body like an immovable shield between Lysander and Red.

Her eyes flicked to Ramon, but she quickly disregarded him to stare once more at Lysander, her green eyes like burning emeralds.

“Fine. Let’s lay out the facts, then. Assassins typically attack in the dark. The whole fucking point is to kill someone without anyone finding out that it’s you, after all, but this guy just comes out and tries to take you down with a potential street full of witnesses, not to mention an actual living breathing tank of a person right next to you. Now, why would he do that? In what world would that be the smart thing to do? He’d have to be either extremely, clownishly dumb, or he would have to know that no matter how many people saw him, he would be safe,” she explained.

Lysander’s mind clicked to a halt.

No matter how many people saw him, he would be safe.

The client would have to have a lot of power to make that guarantee, to make a professional hitman so reckless.

Only two people in the city had that kind of power, and they both had the last name Campbell.

“Ah, fuck,” Ramon stated, concisley summarizing the feelings of all in the room.

Feeling staggered, Lysander piped up, “It has to be Anthony.” He felt sure of it. Just because he and Joseph had had a strained relationship, it didn’t change the fact that Joseph Campbell had raised him, taken him in when he had no one and gave him a future. On the other hand, Anthony had basically hated him his entire life, and before him, his parents. A stray remembrance from a holiday party came to him of his father shouting angrily at a much younger Anthony, a young man fresh from college, the entire party silent in the face of the even tempered Victor Badeaux snapping at anyone. The memory lived in that single moment for him, a silent cast of something that surely happened, but he couldn’t remember anything leading up to or after it.

“Mm, that’s the most likely candidate, I agree,” Red said from her position across the room. Her face had reformed into its standard blank countenance, making it impossible to tell what she was thinking.

“Cool, so it’s just the head of the city’s military force trying to kill us, awesome, no big,” Ramon muttered, shaking his head, “By the way, I still wanna know what the hell you think you’re playing at. Why would Anthony Campbell wanna off Lysander if it wasn’t for you, huh?”

“To be fair, he hates the shit out of me,” Lysander admitted quietly. The answer took some of the steam from Ramon, his shoulders unclenching from his ears.

“Ugh,” Ramon groaned, mussing his hair with a frustrated pull, “I need to get home. Mama is probably waiting up for me. We’ll talk more tomorrow, okay Lysander?”

“Is-is it safe for you to go?” Lysander asked hesitantly. He honestly had no idea. Maybe that assassin worked in a team or something or maybe Anthony just had a ton of assassins ready so that as soon as one went down another could take his place. Nothing felt sure.

Red sighed audibly. “This is the most dangerous place for him. They want you. If he wants to go, he can,” she said.

Oh, that made sense. As long as someone wasn’t lurking outside his door waiting for the next person to walk out, then Ramon would be fine.

Lysander walked his friend to the door and let him out into the night, feeling strangely bereft as soon as the other man had disappeared. When he turned back into his apartment, Red was still standing awkwardly in the middle of the room, her hands now gripping her elbows across her stomach. It was strange to see her look out of place, but she did in that moment, like she was lost. He opened his mouth to say something--he wasn’t sure what, just anything to take his mind off of all that he had just seen and learned--but she beat him to it.

“I took my eyes off him for a second. Maybe not even a full second. The other two went away with some light threatening, but that one was a real asshole. I almost didn’t make it in time,” she admitted, her voice fluctuating wildly from soft to fierce before trailing off, sounding almost defeated. This was a side to her that he didn’t know. Honestly, he had assumed that she just always went through life guns blazing, devil may care attitude hurtling her along. But now she was unsure of herself. In spite of everything--his own anxiety still firing through his stomach, the man she had just killed for him--he felt kind of flattered that he was seeing her like this.

But before he could even attempt to console her, she had shaken her head and faced him, her eyes gleaming determinedly. “I’ll stay here tonight, just in case. You can try to get some sleep. I’ll be out here with the dog,” she stated, deciding without asking, as was her wont. With that, she took a seat on the sofa, Bingley jumping up beside her pleased to finally be offered some attention.

“Uh, right, sure,” he said, though he felt like a guest in his own home. “Well, actually, crazy question,” he began with a nervous laugh, “But you didn’t like, I dunno, leave that dead guy in the middle of town, did you?” He infused as much levity as he could into his tone, trying to divorce himself from his real feelings and thoughts. Even now, his mind felt assaulted with images of that man’s potential family mourning him, a nebulous someone waiting for him to come home or something he had left undone haunting Lysander as though it was his own death he was confronting.

She looked up at him. She had been watching her own fingers methodically comb through Bingley’s fur. “No, I took him out beyond the Barrier. Nobody will care to find him out there.”

He wanted to ask how she had carried a fully grown man herself or how she had gotten past Barrier Patrol or any number of things, but he couldn’t do it. His throat constricted, anxiety settling once more over his shoulders now that his pressing curiosity had been sated. Imagining Anthony Campbell out there somewhere casually planning his death felt like needles being stabbed into his stomach, bile rising like a tide into his throat. Stumbling, he excused himself into his bedroom, closing the flimsy plywood door behind him. Living alone, he never had reason to use it, so the room felt smaller and almost claustrophobic immediately, but he wanted a solid wall between himself and Red in that moment.

Allowing her to see him during a panic attack wouldn’t be fair to her. She had done enough for him that night. It was bad enough she would have to hear it--the walls of his apartment too thin to fully deafen the noise. Crawling into his bed, he heaved sobbing breaths into his pillows, curling his knees to his chest and hugging the comforter to him.

“Sooo, where’s your favorite place to hang out?”

...What?

He heard the question through the film that spread across his brain, but it was senseless. It sounded as though she had come to sit right outside his bedroom, and he pictured her sitting with her knees pressed to her chest and back leaned against the bare stretch of wall separating them. While she hadn’t had to shout to him, she had raised her voice so she could be heard. Still, for a wild second, he thought she might be speaking to someone else, as though some other person had snuck into his apartment and began making idle chatter with her in his living room.

Tears continued to pulse down his cheeks and snot leaked unpleasantly from his nose, but he couldn’t resist the impulse to reply, “I’m sorry?”

“Oh good, you can hear me. I asked what your favorite place to hang out was,” she repeated, but it didn’t make any more sense the second time. He had no idea why she was asking him such a thing now of all times, but he didn’t really have the mental fortitude to play her game, so he just buried his head deeper into his pillow and tried to block out the compounding guilt from not engaging in conversation.

After some time passed--long enough that he was sure she had retreated back to her vigil on his sofa--she spoke up once more. “That’s fine. I can start. I was pretty spoiled as a kid. My dad had a decent job, so he took care of my mom and me financially, I guess. It’s hard to really remember anything good about him, honestly,” she began. Lysander had no idea what was possessing her, but he couldn’t help but listen to her voice as it pushed out the silence around him and the damning voices inside him, and then he thought maybe he did understand what she was trying to do. “Anyway, we went on a lot of family vacations before the whole Spread thing ruined the world.” His family had been the same. They always went skiing in New York in the winter and headed to Niagara Falls in the summer with one outing to Florida’s Disney World that he could barely remember given that he had been three at the time. It felt strange to remember ever leaving behind this city, to be able to pack up and see new sights and explore new places without fear. “We went all over the country, but we had one vacation that we went on every year to this island on the lake. God, I can barely remember anything other than, like, a cave? And a big monument and a park, I think? Well, whatever, we went there every year and camped out. We had a spot reserved right near the lake on a little cliff and we would bike ride everywhere. I remember feeling super pleased with myself when I could ride on my own, though I was only able to do that once before the Spread. Anyways, that’s my favorite place. Even if I can barely remember anything substantial about it, I remember being happy there and I think that’s enough.”

Her answer didn’t quite fit with the question she had asked, but it didn’t really matter. The explanation gave him a feeling of almost secondhand nostalgia, her memories imprinting onto his own and he could practically feel his parent’s hands in his, hear their voices like chimes on the wind.

Clearing his throat, he started his own story, “Mine is actually not far from here. There’s this town right on the lake that's advertised as Ohio’s own summer resort town. I mean, it’s definitely not that at all, but maybe it was? In the 1950s or something. We used to go there so much. It opened for the season on Mother’s Day, and you can bet we were there that weekend, even if it was raining. They had this little amusement park. It had ten rides and a waterslide, but it was cool as hell for little kid me.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t too scared to ride anything,” she said laughingly.

“Ha ha, you’re hysterical. But nah, I loved those rides. I couldn’t wait to be able to ride the bigger ones on my own, which obviously never happened. Anyway, we would go down the first weekend it opened, get my season pass for the rides, and eat pizza slices the size of my head. My mom put salt and red pepper flakes on hers and always peeled the bubbles off the crust and ate those first, while my dad would eat his without ever lifting it from the paper plate so his fingers wouldn’t get greasy.”

When he finished, they lapsed into silence, but it was a comfortable one, both of them simply breathing together.

“I haven’t thought about that town in forever. Thanks for that,” he finally said, genuine gratitude welling up in him. Speaking about his childhood felt good, and though the memories of that time had a veneer of rust and dust on them, it was nice to know that he could still recall them, still pull them to the surface and smile.

Now that his roiling emotions had settled, exhaustion crashed over him, settling over his shoulders like a comforting blanket. He brought his sheet over him and allowed his eyes to drift closed. In the vague state between waking and dreams, he couldn’t fully stop himself from asking her, “Hey Red? What’s your real name?” He had asked only once before, only to have her offer a quirky quip in reply, but the longer their acquaintance went on, the more he wanted to know--to have that piece of her felt, to him, like he would finally have something tangible of her to hold on to, which felt important for reasons he couldn’t quite articulate. She seemed, to him, as ephemeral as a sunrise--something you could wait all night to see only to have it be gone within a matter of moments and then have to live with the knowledge that you would never witness that particular brand of beauty ever again. But when he was fully conscious, he could never bring himself to wonder aloud, his fears and social ineptness casting him behind barrier after barrier, so it was only here, now, that he could finally ask her again.

A long period of silence reigned, long enough that Lysander truly started to lose himself to the weight of sleep, resigned that she must not have heard him or simply chose not to answer, but then her voice piped up, more subdued but inexorably there. “Not yet, Lysander, not yet.”

Yet.

He could handle ‘yet’. It implied a someday, and that reassurance was all he needed for now. With that, the hands of unconsciousness took him fully, and he surrendered to dreams.

Noah Fletcher tossed yet another book onto the ever growing pile in the corner. His Shifted abilities worked too well sometimes, and he struggled to keep himself entertained while Red gallivanted around the city during their working weeks. The speed at which he read and taught himself new concepts was beyond normal comprehension, but he loved it, loved the satisfaction of fast and easy recall, his memory never failing him. He would have to cross the city tomorrow and take more books out from a different library, especially if Red didn’t get back soon. She always told him not to wait up for her, but he couldn’t help himself. Ever since that night when he had been thirteen and she fourteen, when his dad didn’t come back and his mom and twin sister left him alone at their camp beyond the Barrier, he would keep a singular vigil for Red, the person who came home. He recalled the moment she arrived back to him, covered in bruises, hair wild and eyes haunted--devoid of the anger and hatred that had fueled her for so long. She had taken one look at him, his face covered in tears, and curled up next to him, whimpering apologies that he didn’t need. He knew whose fault his father’s death had been and it wasn’t hers.

It took months for them to pick themselves back up and return to some form of normalcy, but the world beyond the Barrier was unforgiving, especially for children like them, and they forged themselves into the spaces left behind, both of them coming out different but alive.

They had numerous hidey holes all over the city and the suburbs for when they had to stay close, small spaces usually forgotten about or left to rot for unknown reasons. It was his job to find new ones anytime they inevitably lost one. His other job was to keep them in the system, which involved a lot of morally grey usage of the recently dead’s codes and some fancy technical knowhow he had had to teach himself after watching his mother do it his entire childhood. He felt sure that she or even his sister, Tessa, would recognize the handiwork if they ever bothered to look for it, but so far they either hadn’t been able to track him or had left him alone in some twisted form of repentance. He didn’t know which and he didn’t care. He would never forgive them regardless.

This recent obsession of Red’s also concerned him. It was unusual for her to get attached to anything, but ever since the moment she first saw Lysander Badeaux, she had vowed with startling single mindedness to protect him like he was a puppy she had to look out for while he bumbled around. Having known her almost his entire life, he knew her reasons for doing so were tied to some deep intrinsic need of hers to shelter the goodness she could find, but he had yet to make a full assessment about whether Lysander really deserved such attention. So far, he was leaning toward maybe, though Lysander’s complete lack of awareness felt like a crazy affectation instead of a real human trait, but Noah had no real reason to believe so other than how clownish it was.

Still, he would do what he could for Red. They were a team, after all.