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“Shit,” I whisper.

“Shit,” Fox agrees, already pulling me by the hand. “Shit, shit—we’ve gotta⁠—”

“Wait.” I kick off the shoes. “Okay.”

And I run like that, ride home like that, barefoot and hanging on to Fox the whole time.

CHAPTER 17

BLUE

The message pops up at 11 a.m.

That’s the first thing that’s strange. Usually they’ve been coming earlier, or later, depending on how you judge it. Two, three in the morning. Not almost midday. Not when I’m trying to edit, my screen full of clips of my own face I’m splicing together, cutting out dead space and balancing the audio levels.

So it distracts me, at a time when I’m not used to being distracted. I click the pop-up.

My inbox launches, flooding the screen. It’s the same new-user avatar, the same no-subject subject line, but this time there’s no preamble to the message.

This a friend of yours?

She looks beautiful.

Then a URL.

I don’t know why I click it. I know better than to click it. Infosec 101: don’t follow random links, don’t open unknown attachments. That’s how you end up with your machine rootkitted and your shit held hostage by the Russians for a cool thousand bitcoin ransom.

But I do click it.

A new window pops up, some video-sharing site I don’t recognize and has me second-guessing that it’s a scam after all, but before I can so much as ALT+F4, the autoplay kicks on.

It’s CCTV footage. Security. Higher quality than my homebrew cameras, with proper night vision and rotating angles, but still grainy and monochrome. An alley: concrete walls, two dumpsters, one pole light blowing out the middle of the frame, a timestamp ticking in the corner. 12:41 a.m. Last night. For a few seconds nothing happens except a flattened bag of something skittering along the base of the wall.

Then a steel door at the edge of the frame swings open and two figures spill out.

A guy, tall, hauling a girl by the hand. She’s in a dress. Heels. Short hair. The camera’s resolution is shit for faces, but I almost don’t need them.

It’s Fox. And Tink.

My gut goes cold.

I stop the playback. Fire up my video scraper extension and save the source file to disk, then jab in a USB stick and drag it over.

At this point, more of my messages are threats than not. But vague, always. Nothing actionable, legally questionable. Empty, really. Nothing in any of them ever showed he really knew anything. Let alone that he could see us.

This is different.

This threat isn’t empty.

If he’s watching us like that⁠—

If.

If it’s real.

Out on the landing, Fox and Pan are on the couch—Fox shirtless, Pan not—both hunched over a controller as something blows up on screen. Only Fox glances my way.

“Hey, Blue, what’s⁠—”