The lithid had chosen “Azure.” One degree of separation away from calling itself blue. Since it was—you know—blue.

I shook my head. Creatives came up with the worst names.

“Earth to Matt?” Kinsley prodded me sternly. “You’d give me hell if I was zoning out during prep.”

“Can’t plan if I can’t think.” I countered. Realistically, though, she was right. I was having trouble focusing on anything since the lithid encounter. And my hands were still shaking.

We were back at the warehouse I’d found her in. As a hideout, it seemed as good of a place as any. The windows were all boarded up and high off the ground. Difficult to access. Whoever owned it was either outside the city when the dome came down or had abandoned the property, as everything was exactly as we’d left it. Kinsley had been here for nearly a week and no one had found her.

Most importantly, neither Miles nor the Suits knew it existed.

“Think later.” Kinsley did a slow circle around the facility. “Ditched the computer, shotgun, and everything that could be tied back to me. A few things that probably couldn’t, but I got rid of them just in case.”

“Fridge is gone,” I noted wryly.

“Bought it from the from the store. Not worth the risk, and it’s not like you’ll be spending that much time here. Hopefully.”

“Hopefully.” I repeated, barely paying attention.

“Jesus, Matt. Don’t sound so confident.”

I rubbed my eyes, trying to wake myself up. “Depends on how many resources they’re willing to dedicate to vetting me. We should know in the first forty-eight hours how difficult this is going to be.”

“It’ll be fine.” Kinsley insisted. “Anyway, I brought in a cooler and a couch I bought from a few different places. Enough to make it looked lived in.”

I had to marvel at the difference between the scared little girl I found here and the guild leader she’d transformed into. Even in a pair of sweats and a t-shirt, Kinsley radiated authority. If she survived the next few years and made the leap to adulthood without cracking, she was going to be terrifying.

I nudged a medium-sized pink polka-dotted dog bed positioned next to the bed with the toe of my shoe and snorted.

Kinsley rolled her eyes. “Fuck off. It was the nicest one I could find. The only one I could find. Lotta people picking up dogs these days.”

“Oh?” That was either heartwarming or horrifying, depending on how cynically you wanted to look at it.

“Another merchant was talking about it.”

“What happened with the group that was giving you problems?” I asked, though I already knew something had happened in her favor. The quest that tasked me with finding more merchants for the merchants guild had been marked completed a few hours ago, despite no action on my part.

“Got tired of the standoff and had them all assassinated.” Kinsley said blandly.

I stared at her, my eyes narrowing.

Kinsley gave me a flat look. “Not sure what’s more alarming. That you’re out of it enough to take that seriously, or that you think I’m capable of it. Whatever. You were right. They folded like cardboard after I walked away from the table. Started reaching out to me individually, trying to cut a deal for themselves.”

“A situation you used to pressure the holdouts and play them against each other?”

“Of course.”

“Nicely done.” I held out a fist and she bumped it absentmindedly.

“I fucking hate this place.” Kinsley said, glancing at the vent next to the shelves.

“Barring some disaster, this is probably the last you’ll see of it.” I shrugged. “Safer that way. You mentioned the door power had changed? You can use it more now?”

“Once an hour.” Kinsley winced. “I’ve been trying not to lean on it heavily and save it for emergencies, but I have been using it. Should still be able to get you from here to the apartment and vice versa the majority of the time..”

“I don’t expect you to lock yourself out of a key ability for me. I’ll try to give you an hour lead time when I’m coming and going.”

“Yeah.” Doubt filtered into Kinsley’s expression. “Matt, are you sure you don’t want me to send some people with you tomorrow? I’d use a proxy to hire them so there’s no direct connection. The best guys I can find. People who’ve been doing this a lot longer than either of us.”

I shook my head. “Can’t risk it. It doesn’t matter how good they are. If they make a single mistake, or there’s an ability in play we don’t know about, we’re blown before we even know their location. Myrddin needs to look like a solo operator on the run, low on resources. Angry, frustrated, with just a hint of desperation.”

Kinsley nodded slowly. “It’s weird how you talk about him like he’s someone else.”

“Just compartmentalizing.” I spotted a light patch in my shadow, a passing shimmer of blue before it vanished.

Azure wasn’t the kind of summon I could just bring in on the spot. Or in the city at all for that matter. The lithid’s summoning process was flashy and eye-catching, and probably needed to be done in flauros if I wanted to keep it completely concealed. So I was in the unfortunate situation of having to keep him summoned and on me. Azure had suggested staying rooted in my shadow as an alternative to concealing him in an implement, and so far, he was mostly invisible.

Kinsley bit her lip. “I’m worried about my dad. He’s not built for this. Even if he’s prioritizing “saving,” me, he’s gotta be running on empty by now. It’s only a matter of time before he breaks down.”

“Hey. You’ve taken care of my family. I’ll do everything I can to take care of yours.” I squeezed her shoulder, trying to impart a sense of confidence without promising anything. If things went south with the Suits at the wrong moment, there was a chance Vernon’s fate would be out of my hands entirely.

Judging from the sad smile, Kinsley knew the score. “Thanks. I hope your friend’s okay too.”

A grim silence dampened the atmosphere. Everything was up in the air, and despite my predictions and plans, neither of us could be certain how well this would work out. Hell, if the Suits had done the math and worked out that Myrddin was the Ordinator, and ended up being a little more short-sighted or less brazen than I predicted, there was a real possibility they might deem me too much of a liability and kill me outright.

“Oh, I finally got a vocation.”

Kinsley’s eyebrows shot up. “About damn time, considering how long the system’s been teasing it. What’d you snag?”

“Anima Seer.”

“The fuck?”

“That’s what I said.”

As I gave Kinsley the rundown, she pulled up her interface and swiped through several windows. “No equipment for it in the vocation tab.”

“Figures.”

“I swear, every upgrade you get has a sinister twist. Sounds helpful as hell though. Especially when you start leveling it up—and hey.” She grinned. “Even if it’s trash, I’ll finally have a way to funnel you selve.”

“Can’t you use quests to do that?” I asked.

“No.” Kinsley said, her expression significantly more grumpy than moments before. “It’s stupid. I gave you a quest to survive the transposition, when you were unconscious, testing a smaller amount first just to see if it worked. It went through, but I received an arbitrage warning for assigning a quest that was too easy, and got fucking soft-banned from giving quests for three days.”

“Another obstruction.” I rolled my eyes. “The system really doesn’t like handouts.”

Kinsley tapped her foot. “Well, come on you bastard, show me the goods so I can pay you.”

There was an awkward silence.

I huffed. “Okay, fine. I have no idea how to access it. There was nothing new on my interface, and the associated abilities weren’t on my character sheet.”

“Did you check your trade screen?” Kinsley said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

That was the one place I hadn’t checked, as I’d barely used it since the store had come online. Sure enough, there was another icon shaped like an anvil, intersected with an “S.”

I focused on it, and a dropdown appeared.

I focused on each of the skills in turn.

My dreams of omniscience were crushed for the moment, but the combination of skills and my new summon gave me a hell of a lot more avenues for information gathering than I had before.

I generated a contract for Kinsley, marking as the service rendered and leaving the selve amount blank. When I attempted to activate the skill, her face popped into my mind easily. When I immediately switched gears and tried to pull up Ellison, it drew nothing but a blank. That figured. I’d squeezed Kinsley’s shoulder earlier. being retroactive was probably too much to hope for, but I had to try.

Setting that aside, I focused on Kinsley again, waiting until her face appeared in my mind, then fell deeper into the trance.

The resulting overload of information hit me like a tidal wave