Poison took that first, biting sip of tea, and forced herself to relax. She pushed the worry and thoughts tumbling through her head aside and replaced them with the sensation of hot liquid rolling over her tongue. She fought the worry that relaxing would leave her open and vulnerable and tried to enjoy the bite of mint instead.

Ironic, in a way. Hello, my name is Poison, and I’m afraid of not being afraid.

She knew it was important to relax, that you had to get away from the stress and tension every once in a while. She had to stop looking over her shoulder for just a moment. The knowledge didn’t make it any easier. Nor did the fact that she had seen first hand what happened to people who failed to unwind properly. But she had also seen what happened to those who grew lax and lost their edge. Finding the right balance was never easy. Especially with the events of the last week.

One week. So much had happened. One week ago, she had first met that strange girl, right where she was sitting now. She had left the café happy, and refreshed, and expectant.

Then they had stumbled onto the trouble with the cops, Hounds had fought among themselves, Yoshua had disappeared. From then on it had been one big jumble until they had all come back to the apartment twenty-four hours after leaving it. Twenty-four hours that had thrown everything off and torn all of them up. Hours that had shredded routines into useless little scraps that clung to Poison’s mind and fell apart when she reached for them.

The whirlwind hadn’t subsided then. Half an hour in the apartment, thirty minutes of contemplation, just long enough for the adrenaline to wear off, to leave them drained and tired. Only to get up and start packing and hastening into the next cascade of unfamiliar events.

She remembered thinking that the day had started so well. And forty hours after getting up in normalcy, Poison had sat in a new apartment halfway across the city with too-vivid images in her head.

Orion had fared worse. He had collapsed an hour after leaving to pack up his stuff, from exhaustion and putting far too much strain on the wound. He had torn Poison’s stitches. Again. Lilly had jerked out of his state of shock then and helped Poison pack.

Even Eliah had joined in, wordlessly, methodically placing kitchen supplies into boxes.

Yoshua’s body had disappeared somewhere at some point. Lilly must have taken care of it, though she had no idea how.

He had also managed to arrange for an apartment and had them ready to move at sun-down, just as Orion woke up and was steady enough to walk to the waiting rental car on his own. Afterwards, they had put him back in bed, the first thing to be set up. Lilly had left with Eliah to gather the last of her stuff from the Stove, softly refusing Poison’s offer of help.

Instead, she had busied herself with the new apartment. That had been most of her week, actually. Alone, while Orion rested from his wound and whatever mental shock he carried with him from the facility. While Lilly was gone, or cooped up in his new room, trying to make sense of the data they had liberated.

Today, Poison had pulled herself together and left Orion sitting in the new kitchen-slash-living room-slash-her bedroom. The apartment had only two separate bedrooms, but the kitchen was joined with the living area, and the couch was comfortable enough for her needs. Instead of unnecessarily discussing who was to get one of the rooms, Poison had claimed the open area and settled the argument before it could begin.

Now, finally, she was back at the café, with her book. Keeping up appearances for a while before slowly disappearing. Just as planned.

She couldn’t help checking her alias again. She had been Alexandra Nolan in the old apartment, living with her brother and their shared cousin. In this café, she was still Alexandra. In the new apartment, she would switch to being Lara Brown, college student living with two friends.

Her eyes found the open book in her lap. There had been a bit of a queue waiting to pick up drinks at the counter when she had come in. She had ordered and then sat down to wait until she was called up for her tea. She had been trying to read in the meantime, and to not think about the last week.

Slow breaths. Reading. Familiar book. Comfortable atmosphere.

At her fifth attempt to read the same paragraph, without absorbing any information, the call to pick up her drink had saved her from further repetition, if only for a moment. She had fetched her cup, sat back down, and taken her first sip. Now she tried her luck with the book again, attempting to continue where she had left off last week.

She got two paragraphs down the page, barely re-immersed into the story. Descriptions of buildings, streets, people … and then the blond hair. Her mind wandered back again, one week back, before the chaos, drawing the connection easily enough. She had given it enough to work with, after all. Same café, same table and chair, same tea, same book, and then the blond hair.

The image of a smile, a knitted hat, and warm, brown eyes overlapped the words she was trying to read.

Poison blinked. The scene replayed in her mind, wiggling between perception and reality. The girl sitting down, absent-mindedly brushing off her hat, leaving strands of hair sticking in all directions. Then another moment, a day later, half sunk into chaos. That mischievous smile and open, wide gaze. Poison found herself grinning dumbly and staring off into empty air, and stopped. She wasn’t here to think about some girl.

No, sure. She was just here to relax and pretend normalcy, and thinking of someone clearly was neither normal nor relaxing, whereas frantically pushing those thoughts aside was perfectly healthy. Poison could hear her inner voice drowning in sarcasm. She wondered if it was worth the effort to try and convince herself that she had not come here in hopes of meeting the girl again. It was the same weekday, time, and place, after all.

She bit her lip. Okay, maybe she was here to think about the strange girl. And maybe that was all right. It should be all right. For normal people it would be.

The girl probably wouldn’t even be here. What were the chances? And even if she happened to be at the café, she wasn’t necessarily interested. And then even if she was, Poison had her own troubles with relationships. Especially now, with so many secrets and dangers. Besides, after having met in that lounge, after knowing what Poison did for a living, would the girl still be as friendly? Just because Poison was less than bothered by the prospect of a “partner in crime”, so to speak, that didn’t mean everyone else was, too.

Assuming the girl had been interested in the first place. Assuming Poison ever saw her again.

This was ridiculous. She had seen the girl once. Talked to her, once. She knew her name, probably not a real one, and that she was a forger. Nothing else.

Maybe she was boring. Or racist. Maybe she wasn’t into girls at all.

Maybe they would get along just fine, but Poison would realize with time that she wasn’t all that invested after all, and she’d be too afraid to do anything about it.

‘Great or boring?’

Poison blinked. Her gaze rose up to find the voice’s owner and her thoughts stalled for a moment. It felt like a small gear was desperately spinning in her skull, connected to nothing, no traction. Her mind was working, but it wasn’t doing anything.

The girl stood in the same spot as last time, cup of hot chocolate, book under one arm. She even wore the same hat.

‘Uh ...’

OK. This would be a great time to say something. Apart from “Uh”.

‘Um. What?’

Wow. Great choice of words. Shakespeare junior, are we?

But the girl chuckled, soft and warm. Her voice, now that it wasn’t straining to be heard over the commotion of a full room, was a bit lower than Poison would have expected. She found she liked that.

‘That book,’ the girl said, gesturing. Anna, Poison remembered. Even if it was a fake name. The gentle voice distracted her from that line of thought.

‘You were kind of spacing out, so I figured it was either very interesting, to have you so lost in thought, or very boring.’

The girl sat, placing her hot chocolate on the table. She didn’t ask whether the seat was taken, and Poison got the impression she did so very deliberately, gauging the reaction she would receive.

‘It’s, uh, it’s really great, actually. Just have a lot of stuff on my mind right now.’

‘Hmm.’ Anna smiled. ‘What do I call you here?’

Call? Oh, her name. Keeping the cover, right.

‘Alex,’ Poison blurted out on reflex. Thank the gods her aliases always sat right. ‘You?’

The smile widened. ‘Still Anna. I don’t change all that much.’

It was a strange conversation, so normal in a way, but also far from it. Asking for cover names to use in public. Exchanging those looks that said “I know what you do for work”. Secrets, but open to the two of them. It was intoxicating.

Poison threw the last of her caution away, and hoped her insecurity would go along with it. Screw this. Confidence had been the way to go last week, so why not now?

‘Pleasure to officially meet you, Anna.’ She allowed a small grin to spread on her lips, and got a broader smile in return.

‘Same here. So, what are you reading?’

Sarah sighed. Actually, to be accurate, she just blew air through her nose. She guessed that counted as sighing, though. It had the same kind of exasperation, or maybe dread. It just wasn’t so loud and dramatic. If she made the sigh noise without the rush of air leaving her lungs, would that still classify? Which part of the sigh actually made it a sigh? Now that was a nice, distracting thought to concentrate on instead of absolutely anything else!

Something nudged her. ‘What’s eating you?’

She smiled and shook her head on reflex. ‘Oh, nothing.’

Michael Runner gave her a sceptical look but dropped the issue.

Two weeks. Surveillance, mapping out routines, and occasional, seemingly innocent meetings. Granted, they hadn’t gotten a hold of Runner’s contacts in the city yet, but the rest had been laughably easy. His flat was bugged, he went to the same grocery store every few days around six in the evening, and the Agency had confirmed the identity of one of the medics he was working with. That theory was solid, at least.

Sarah had spent the last few days searching for a potential base the medic was operating out of. No luck so far. It would have been the icing on a very bountiful cake. They already had so much, and Sarah had gotten a call yesterday.

It was time. Getting more information, finding clues and contacts, would cost weeks or even months. Nobody was sure how long Michael was going to stay in the city. With every day, his inevitable departure and accompanying disappearance became more likely.

Yesterday, Sarah had gotten the order to apprehend Michael and bring him in, with resources provided. She was supposed to do it without notifying the police force, especially Ryan Silas.

The whole liaison thing had been a ruse from the start, she’d known that, and she was mostly all right with it. She was an Intelligence Agent. No room for sentimentalities, not when they impaired her job.

So why did she feel guilty? She’d done missions like this a thousand times, what was different? The tightness in her gut was almost the same feeling that had reared up weeks ago, when Daniel had been threatened. It was like a desire to help, when she knew she couldn’t. Completely unnecessary.

‘Come on, something has been bothering you all evening.’ Michael gave her a crooked, disarming smile. ‘Tell me.’

Sarah made a face to cover up her wince as the tightness in her gut seemed to squeeze her. ‘Just lots of paperwork to do. The office is in chaos. New client, and all.’

‘Aw, I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah.’ He thought she was working at a pharmaceutical company. All the better he believed it. She’d had to read up on a lot of stuff to come across as convincing, though. He certainly knew his medical terms. ‘Let me guess, you have the day off tomorrow.’

He smiled again, and this time it was more sheepish than cheeky.

It was nice, in a way. Talking, spending time. She’d come to enjoy the company, almost forgetting for a time that he was a wanted fugitive. That he was branded a terrorist and hiding from half the country’s law enforcement.

She remembered the building the police had breached two weeks ago. Remembered Yoshua Stone, and how they’d had to leave him in a hurry. The building had been burned down not even an hour later. Probably by the research team themselves. No evidence left.

A harsh cut for researchers looking to continue their work. Simply replacing the lab equipment would require horrendous expenses. Whoever had run the facility had something big to hide, and lots of funds.

Michael knew about the lab. They’d talked about the fire, as a side-note to a conversation, and he’d become tight-lipped. Evasive. Feeling guilty, perhaps?

How was Michael, easy-going, gentle Michael, involved in the gruesome death of Yoshua Stone?

And how come she cared, and doubted, and got emotionally involved in her cases? Time to be professional, time to cut the sentimental crap.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of an agent sitting on a bench. One of those she had been granted to execute her mission, one of those she had planted here. The agent didn’t acknowledge her. There was no need. Everything had been laid out beforehand.

Show time.

She slowed a bit, and angled her body towards Michael.

‘Since you have tomorrow off and I plan to call in sick anyway, what do you say we prolong the night?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What do you have in mind?’

He was trying to hide it, but he was excited. Sarah felt a stab. Michael was interested in her, she knew that. He had been from the start. Her using it to get close to him seemed … wrong.

Screw feeling. She’d done these things before. This time was no different. Just because she happened to like the target, the mission wouldn’t change.

‘There’s this bar a few blocks away. Really good whiskey selection.’

‘Hum.’ His raised eyebrow turned into a grin. ‘Lead the way, then.’

The path was laid out. Planned. Multiple paths, actually. As long as she didn’t spook him prematurely, there was no realistic chance for him to escape any more. Once she had him turned the right way, even that small chance would vanish.

Sarah took a corner at the next intersection. Left. Into an older part of town. Beautiful, with narrow, winding cobblestone streets. Leftovers from a different time.

The agent on the bench didn’t move from his spot while he was still in sight. The one she knew to be hiding in the small park to the right of them stayed hidden as well. For now. Sarah’s position would be confirmed as soon as they were out of earshot, and her colleagues would draw away from the alternate routes and close in from all sides.

It was overkill, perhaps. But Sarah had been responsible for the layout, and she had no insight into Michael’s skills, training, or even overall fitness. How many opponents could he take on? No information had been provided.

He didn’t carry himself like a martial artist, but then, neither did Sarah. And she had studied up in several. Maybe he was simply good at hiding it?

Improbable. She noticed how he tried to hide his accent. It would shift whenever he was nervous or flustered, or tired or drunk. The dialect would become more pronounced and he would try to get it back under control. Surely, if he could hide his sense of balance, he should be able to cover an accent more sufficiently. It did make him stand out.

Michael didn’t seem to carry weapons, either. The Agency had been wondering for a while how he managed to be in contact with the criminal layers without immediately being sold out to Max Rivers. One more question nobody had answers to. She’d get those soon, though. Hopefully. If she was allowed to interrogate Michael before her people whisked him away.

Oh well. There was the street sign she’d been looking for. Time to act.

She slowed and stopped. Michael looked at her questioningly. Time to make use of his crush.

Sarah placed a hand on his chest and stood on tiptoes to kiss him.

Michael froze for a second, then readily leaned in to return the kiss. His arms snaked around her shoulders. They stood entangled for a few seconds, then broke apart for air.

Sarah forced her voice into a flustered whisper, a little out of breath. ‘Want to come back to my place?’

She leant in to kiss him again, but he drew back and let go of her. ‘What are you doing?’

She frowned. ‘Um.’ She tried a shy smile. ‘I thought that was kinda obvious?’

‘Yes, but why?’

Come again? Sarah lowered her hand from where it was playing with a lock of her hair, taken aback.

‘What? Because I wanted to. And … I thought you wanted it, too.’

‘No, you didn’t.’ His frown deepened. ‘You haven’t shown the slightest interest in me since we met, and not for lack of trying on my part. You haven’t shown interest in anyone, male or female, not once since I met you. You completely blocked me off just yesterday. And now you suddenly want to take me home?’

She stepped closer again. Dammit. Distract him. The kiss had worked well enough. Not convincing enough? ‘Maybe I changed my mind.’

‘You don’t change your mind about something like that.’ His features hardened. ‘Wait, w-’

She didn’t give him time to finish the question. Instead, she shoved him against the wall and drew her gun.

Instead of responding to her attack, Michael grinned as he caught himself against the wall. Then he caught sight of the gun, and paled. He groaned and let his head sink back against the brick behind him, closing his eyes.

When he opened them again, the were hard and calculating, so different from the way Sarah had come to know them.

‘So. Who are you with? Cops? National services?’

‘Agency.’

He laughed, bitter and sharp. ‘Small, windowless room, then. Far below ground. Lots of fun.’ He sighed.

Sarah swallowed past the lump in her throat. She couldn’t manage to slip into the cold, empty mindset she could work with so well. Normally, she’d distance herself emotionally, let most of her actions run on autopilot, let her training take over and go through the familiar motions.

Normally, the people she dealt with scowled in situations like this, they cursed or spat insults, or sometimes went silent with resignation. Michael didn’t do any of that. Behind his attempt at nonchalance, he looked … afraid? It didn’t fit her script, her idea of how things worked. She was used to walking safely and surely through the motions, to act and have everything else react accordingly.

Now, she felt like she’d stumbled and lost her rhythm. She’d forgotten how to do things manually. Why they were important, exactly what she should do. It was a game, and Michael didn’t play along. Her head contained only one idea that seemed plausible, so she went with it.

‘Michael Runner, you’re under ar-’

‘Yeah, I know the speech,’ he interrupted her, running his hands over his hair, smoothing it back. He was shaking. ‘Okay ...’

He twisted and struck out, aiming for her gun hand. Sarah fired on instinct.

Michael fell back against the wall, mouth gaping, hands instinctively pressing against his side.

Sarah gaped for an instant, her expression mirroring his. Then she shook herself from her stupor and activated her earpiece. The faint rustle of static greeted her.

‘Target is down, repeat, target is down. Requesting immediate back-up and medical officer on site.’

Michael was sliding down the wall until he was on the ground. His mouth was still open, with no sound coming out. Shock.

Sarah kept her gun trained on him. While a part of her mind screamed in confusion, another had finally taken over. Her training.

Keep the target pinned until back-up arrives. Always maintain line of sight. Apply first aid only when the perimeter is secured.

Footsteps sounded to all sides as her agents arrived. They immediately took up positions, silently. Sarah holstered her gun and went to kneel next to Runner. He gaped at her.

She pushed his hands away and pulled up his shirt to inspect to injury she had dealt him. Clean through-and-through, between two ribs, not deep enough to have hit the lung. He’d be all right. She put his hands back over the wound and told him to keep them there. The medical officer would arrive shortly, and deal with any further treatment.

Runner wouldn’t be taken to a hospital, but rather an Agency facility. She would accompany the transport until she could hand him off to a higher-ranking agent in charge. Then she would report to her supervisor and explain why she had fired at her target.

Until then, she wouldn’t leave Runner’s side. He was hers, now. Her collar. Her mission.

‘Michael Runner, you are under arrest.’

Orion slowly, very slowly, spooned coffee into a filter. His hand was shaking. Some of the coffee went back into the bag it had come from, some found a new home on the counter, and precious little actually ended up in the filter.

The front door opened, and closed a moment later. A deep sigh, then Lilly trotted into view, looking both tired and relieved. He gave Orion an odd look and sat down in a chair.

‘What’s up with your hand?’

Orion shrugged in what he hoped was a nonchalant way. ‘Dunno. It just started shaking. Haven’t been able to calm it down, and of course trying only makes it shake worse.’

He concentrated on the coffee again, and managed to empty the whole load before it cleared the bag. Lilly stood back up and took the spoon from him.

‘Maybe it’s not the best idea to drink coffee, then,’ Lilly chuckled, but set up the filter and set the machine brewing.

Orion leant against the counter. ‘How was the funeral?’

Lilly rubbed his forehead and then scratched the scruff of beard on his chin. ‘Nice, I guess. Eliah wanted to make it traditional. We had a fire on that island.’

‘Oh yeah, the one with the water around it. Has bird poop on it, I think.’

‘Smart-ass. You know which one. In the middle of the lake just outside the city. Pile of mud, really. Teenagers are having bonfires there all the time, so nobody noticed a bit of smoke in the middle of November. Hiding in plain sight and all that shit.’

Orion nodded.

‘Her parents were there, and two more people from around the Stove. They had some impressive stuff. A poem in Arabic, a painting, even this small wood carving. Eliah welded a rose.’

‘What’d you do?’ The three weeks since Yoshua’s death had found Lilly frequently cursing something and then leaving his room to sit in his armchair and try decoding the files from the lab facility. He’d been doing something else in his room all the time, and it seemed he’d made something for Yoshua.

Lilly smiled, a little embarrassed. ‘I sewed a small, uh … like a puppet. Looking like him. A bit. With imagination. Button eyes and yarn hair.’

‘Nice.’ Orion was seriously taken aback, even refraining from making a comment about the creepiness of little Yoshua puppets. Lilly had never displayed any crafty talent, which was the reason Orion and Eliah built all of their gear. ‘I didn’t know you could sew.’

‘I can’t. But I didn’t think a flash drive full of code would have kicked it. Whatever you make is supposed to be shaped physically, and all the others did that. Even the poem had calligraphy in it. And I think the fact that I can’t sew for the life of me and the puppet turned out halfway okay should count.’

‘I never really understood that tradition. I mean, you spend so much time and effort making something, making it as beautiful as you possibly can, only to destroy it.’

The style of funeral Eliah had chosen for her brother included a pyre. All those attending brought a hand-crafted item, and the objects were gathered and burned along with the body of the deceased.

Orion had attended one of those once. He had felt very awkward, like Poison had when they had brought Yoshua back. He was sure it was a nice thing, if you were invested and motivated, but Orion had just felt stupid. Like attending a sermon of a foreign religion.

‘That’s kind of the point,’ Lilly said quietly. He was one of those who saw meaning in the gesture of burning stuff. ‘You spend time and effort, and you know you spend it to honour someone. You think about them while you work, letting your memory and emotions go into your work.

‘You don’t craft it to show around. You do it for someone else. The others can see your view of the deceased at the funeral, and then you give it to the flame. I think destroying something as soon as it’s completed makes it all the more special. It has only one purpose.’

Orion threw up his hands. ‘It’s like drawing a picture nobody will see. Art you lock away. A brilliant algorithm that will never be used.’

‘Yes, in honour of Yoshua. Something extraordinary and unique. One of the reasons code wouldn’t have worked. I’d use that algorithm again sometime, and it would destroy the effect.’

Lilly smiled to himself, and the wistful peace in his expression made Orion a bit ashamed at voicing his opinions so brashly.

‘I’ll never sew little Yoshua puppets again. Eliah will never make a copper rose again. Her mother will never paint another lion in just reds and yellows. Those things belong to Yoshua now. What better way to give a last gift?’

Explained like that, it wasn’t all that different from the rituals Orion was familiar with. Aside from the burning. And the gifts. And that it sounded completely senseless.

But it was time and effort spent to honour the deceased, and that was something he could understand, if he tried.

‘So. What really happened to your hand?’

Orion looked up in surprise at the sudden change of topic. Lilly was pouring two cups of coffee from the finished batch, calm as ever, as if asking what Orion had had for breakfast. Or what movie he wanted to watch tonight.

‘What do you-’ Orion caught himself and sighed through his nose. He could try to lie, but Lilly knew him well enough to notice that something was off. And lying wasn’t useful if you couldn’t pull it off.

‘It’s nothing.’

He said it with enough clarity that Lilly wouldn’t further press him on the matter. Orion didn’t want to tell. Well, he wasn’t going to whine about his problems. He was a leader. Strong. Steady.

And he’s my friend. One of only two. When have I last felt I had to defend my reputation so much?

He opened his mouth to answer the question after all, but Lilly spoke up again.

‘Why have you been such a dick to Poison for the past weeks, anyway?’

Orion’s mouth closed. ‘Been what?’

‘A dick. An ass. A rude idiot. An insensitive bastard.’

‘Yeah, thanks I know what “dick” means. But what do you mean by it?’

‘You’ve been nagging, been unreasonably harsh, rebuking her when she’s relaxing a bit -’

‘You mean when she gets carried away.’

‘- holding her down when she enjoys herself more than you, which is not all that hard right now, by the way.’

Orion crossed his arms and scowled, trying not to look like a petulant child. ‘I’m the leader. I’m acting the part.’ He played with the thought of asking how Lilly’s decoding of the lab’s hard drives was going, just to piss him off. That might be a step too far just to throw him off topic.

‘You’re being an ass,’ Lilly continued, unfazed. ‘Look, it doesn’t matter what’s eating you, you don’t have to tell me. Just lay off a bit, okay? You notice how Poison was all bubbly this morning when she left? Happy to spend some time out, on her own?’

That stung, and Orion almost winced.

‘I’m not saying she hates you, just that it’s hard to be around you at the moment. We’ve got our own shit to deal with, you know. Poison just tries to work hers out on her own, so she won’t worry your sorry ass.’

Orion felt his face heat. How to make your friend feel guilty, step one. He found he couldn’t meet Lilly’s eyes. ‘And you? How do you deal with it?’

A dry chuckle. ‘Good ol’ denial until it gets too much. Listen, as I said, it’s not like we hate you now, but you gotta work on how you deal with your shit. Because right now, you’re making a poor job of it, and if you keep it up, Hounds won’t work like this for much longer.

‘Don’t give me the leadership crap. Do something. I don’t think you want us to break apart after Michael any more than I do.’

He handed Orion one of the cups of coffee, took the other for himself, and started towards his room.

Damn. Damn Lilly and his stupid sermon, he didn’t get it, he didn’t have to keep them all working together.

Don’t give me the leadership crap.

He supposed Lilly was right, in a way. Why was he wavering so much in his behaviour? He already felt ashamed for his last comment, but here he was, leaning into arrogance again. Had seeing Jordan rattled him so much? Or was it Yoshua, with the grief finally sinking in? The confrontation with his past, maybe?

Lilly was right. He had to deal with his own issues. Might as well start now, before he lost his calm.

Orion clenched his teeth. Wavered for a moment. Decided.

‘It was a nightmare.’

Lilly stopped, then came back into the kitchen, eyebrows arched.

‘I had a nightmare, and I woke up and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking.’

He forced himself to continue. Deep breath.

‘I was afraid to go back to sleep, so I made coffee.’

Deep breath. Keeping the heat from his face. Going on.

‘It’s my memories from before. Before I met you, I mean. I know I haven’t told you much, and I’m sorry, but ...’

Come on. One more breath.

‘I did some things I regret. Bad things. Stuff you would hate me for if I told them, that I hate myself for. Seeing Yoshua brought back memories, and the guilt is along for the ride. I’ve had the dreams for weeks, but this one was worse than the rest of them.’

Lilly nodded and was silent for a moment. Orion knew he wanted to know, wanted to ask. Why he got apathetic, why he used to be called Sixty-Two, a number of all things, what he regretted so much that he wouldn’t tell. His bursts of arrogance. How he had come to “clean up” around a lab just like the one Yoshua died in. Orion had told that story again, the same night, after Eliah had left.

‘What did you do?’

It was a question he dreaded, and not dared expect.

‘Don’t make me. Please.’ Orion found himself fighting tears. Fuck. He couldn’t even meet Lilly’s eyes, which only added to his shame.

A hand came down gently on his arm.

‘It’s okay. You can tell me. I’m your friend. I won’t hate you.’

Orion shook his head. ‘You don’t know that.’

Lilly hugged him. Orion froze.

‘What are you doing?’ His voice was muffled against the taller man’s shoulder, and despite his words, he made no move to disentangle himself.

‘Sometimes we all need a hug.’

Orion chuckled, breaking off as the sound swayed dangerously close to a sob.

‘When you’re ready, you can tell me. Always.’

He wasn’t going to press it, wasn’t going to pry any more. Orion relaxed a bit.

Lilly released him, smiling softly. ‘Okay. What movie do you want to watch tonight?’