“Deal,” Kayla says, already turning back to the door.
Nightshade watches us like he’s counting heartbeats until something goes wrong.
The corridor smells of cleaner and someone else’s breakfast. A hotel doing its best impression of normal.
Hatchet falls into step beside me. Ghost takes the other side, hands in his pockets, humming quietly under his breath.
The lift takes too long, or maybe I’ve just forgotten what waiting feels like when no one’s measuring the delay against something worse. It just seems so…pointless. Mundane. Normal.
Kayla leans back against the wall, arms loose, eyes on the numbers as they tick down. Ghost hums under his breath, tuneless and persistent, like he’s testing how much space thesound takes up. Hatchet faces the doors, shoulders set, attention already elsewhere.
No pad. No pen. Out here, silence is just how he operates.
When the doors open, the city pours in – traffic, voices, a siren distant enough to ignore. I step out first without thinking about it. Hatchet matches me automatically. Ghost drifts to Kayla’s other side, hands in his pockets, casual in a way that only works because he’s never careless.
We walk.
For half a block, no one says anything. Then Ghost breaks it, peering into a shop window as we pass.
“Tell me we’re not getting that,” he says.
I glance where he’s looking. A display of limp sandwiches and something claiming to be soup. “If we do, we deserve what happens next.”
Kayla snorts. The sound startles her a little, like she didn’t expect it to escape.
“Grease,” she says. “I want grease. If I’m risking my life, it’s not for lettuce and soggy sandwiches.”
“Spoken like a woman with priorities,” Ghost says solemnly.
Hatchet flicks two fingers in a quick gesture behind his back – agreement, or possibly a vote. It’s hard to tell with him. I file it under support.
I pick somewhere loud and bright. Fast turnover. No atmosphere. The kind of place where no one remembers your face five minutes after you leave.
Ghost studies the menu, frowns. “Those prices are obscene.”
“They know where they are,” I say. “Order or starve.”
Kayla steps up beside me, decisive. No dithering. I pay while she’s still listing things, the card machine chirping its indifferent approval.
While we wait, Ghost leans in toward Hatchet, lowering his voice theatrically. “You know, one day you’re going to actuallywrite something useful on that pad of yours and we’re all going to regret it.”
Hatchet doesn’t look at him. He lifts two fingers again, sharper this time. Ghost grins, satisfied.
The food arrives in paper bags already darkening with oil. I hand them out, redistribute weight. It feels absurdly domestic.
We step back outside. The air’s colder than I expect, sharp enough to wake something up under my ribs. Kayla walks between us, close enough that our shoulders almost brush. No one comments on it. We just adjust.
Halfway back to the hotel, she slows.
“Where’s Snow?” Kayla asks.
She says it lightly, like she’s asking after someone who’s gone to grab a coffee. The timing’s wrong, though. We’ve only just started back, food still warm in the bags, and she hasn’t asked anything personal all morning.
Ghost answers first. “Haven’t seen him.”
Hatchet gives a short shake of his head. Once. Definitive.
Kayla exhales through her nose. “He’s not happy about the tracker. Or the island.”
