“Good,” Cassian mutters, shutting the trunk.
Nathaniel hands him two syringes, capped and ready. “One each. Press, depress, done.”
“I know,” Cassian says, slipping one into his vest pocket. The other stays in Nathaniel’s hand.
They start walking. A moment later, Cassian glances over his shoulder and motions for me to follow.
I need to move. Join them.
It takes a second for my brain to unfreeze.
I scramble out, heart pounding, and hurry to catch up with Cassian and Nathaniel as the operation begins.
The hunt is officially on.
Whether I want it or not.
Icome back to the apartment and find the lock broken.
For a moment, I simply stand there in the dim hallway, staring at it. The metal plate is warped, the bolt twisted at an angle that suggests brute force rather than finesse. Then I inhale slowly, turn the handle, and push the door open.
The apartment is... not ransacked.
Instead, the first thing I register is the smell. Food. Warm, fragrant, aggressively seasoned takeout. Then, I notice that my kitchen table is cluttered with plastic containers, chopsticks, sauce packets, and a spilled heap of rice that Talon is currently scraping back into a carton with the wrong end of a fork.
Cassian sits opposite him. Posture unnervingly straight even now, eating with clean, economical movements. He glances up the moment I step inside.
Talon only looks up when he drops a piece of chicken on his shirt.
“Oh,” Talon says, as if I’ve simply returned from the mailbox. “You’re back.”
My eyes flick to the broken lock. Then to the table. Then back to Talon.
“Why,” I ask evenly, “is my door broken?”
Talon jerks his thumb toward Cassian. “We got hungry.”
I stare at him.
He seems entirely unbothered by this. Not even a little bit aware that what he’s just said is not, by any reasonable standard, an explanation for property damage. He nods toward the fridge. “You have nothing in there except... I don’t even know what that was, dude. Some kind of science experiment. Or leftovers from the Cold War. So we had to improvise.”
Cassian speaks without looking away from his meal. “We meant to pick the lock, but he got impatient.”
“I was starving,” Talon protests. “Oh, and we got you food too. Cassian said you’d probably forget to eat. You seem the type.”
I blink once.
Of all the outcomes I anticipated, of all the scenarios I turned over during the walk back, bracing myself for the worst, coming home to a dinner table occupied by two murderers sharing orange chicken and spring rolls in the middle of my sterile apartment was not on the list. Not even close.
I step further inside, closing the damaged door behind me.
“How,” I ask calmly, “can I be certain the two of you didn’t take the folder while I was gone?”
They stare at me for a beat. Talon swallows loudly. Then, without warning, he digs into the pocket of his leather jacket and tosses something across the room. I catch it automatically, fingers closing around it before my brain fully registers what it is.
A phone.
“Check it,” Talon says. “I recorded everything from the moment you left the apartment.”
