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“What?” Alex scrunched his face in confusion.

Kana swallowed, clutching the laptop in her hands. “I messaged Robin about what was going on, and they want to talk to us right now.” She pointed at the man. “Including him.”

“Oh, that’s my computer!” said Matt as Kana walked over. But everyone ignored him.

Kana turned the laptop around. Skype’s generic gray silhouette icon was plastered in the middle of the faded blue screen, with the text “Robin” underneath. “They think the cop can help us.”

9

Robin

Jun watched Kana set the laptop on the empty seat that Alex was just at, its bright screen casting a glow across the concrete.

After a couple of seconds, the speakers let out a hiss of white noise. Jun shifted closer towards the screen, staying near the workbench, not sure what to expect.

“Hi! Can you all hear me?” The voice that came through was synthetic—neither male nor female, layered with static like a news broadcast concealing a source. Jun couldn’t tell if it was unsettling or ridiculous.

Alex dropped the man back with a thud. The man groaned, head hanging. Jun and Matt exchanged a glance. Neither of them wanted a dead man on their conscience. They hauled the chair upright, the man groaning as his weight settled back into it.

“This Robin?” asked Alex, shoving the gun into his front hoodie pocket.

“Yes! Is this Alex?”

“Yessir,” Alex responded. He furrowed his eyebrows. “Or ma’am?” He pursed his lips with a grimace as if he had said something wrong. Then he nodded at the computer. “What’s up, foo?”

“Awesome! It’s finally nice to talk to you after texting all this time!” Robin chirped. There was something deeply wrong about a cheerful voice coming through a wall of static. Jun’s skin prickled. “Sorry that I can’t get the webcam working. Who else is in attendance?”

Alex raised his eyebrows and sighed. He pointed to everyone in the room as he named them off. “We got my homie, Hal. Kana, you already know.” When he moved to Matt, he passed over Jun like he was part of the furniture. “Matt, who just works here. And we got a cop in our vicinity.”

Jun’s jaw tightened.

Robin’s artificial voice buzzed through the garage. “How did you end up with that?”

“It’s his fault.” Alex nodded at the cop with a smirk on his lips. “I was just teaching him a lesson before he does anything—”

“I’m not going to do anything,” the man replied curtly. He looked back behind his tied hands and made an uncomfortable shrug. “Well, I can’t.”

Robin made a low hum. “I guess that should be fine as long as Mr. Cop—”

“Ken,” said the man promptly and loudly.

“Okay—Ken,” Robin said, stretching the name out playfully through the static. “As long as Ken keeps his word and doesn’t rat us out, he’ll have no choice but to assist us.” Their tone shifted, lighter now. “That’s everyone in the room, right, Alex?”

Alex side-eyed Jun. “Nah, we got one more.” He held Jun’s gaze for a long beat. “Connor,” he finally said.

Jun’s chest loosened. Whatever grudge Alex was holding, he was still keeping Jun’s secret. That had to count for something.

“Sounds like we got a full house!” Robin exclaimed. “If you trust this team, Alex, then so do I.”

“Woah, hold up.” Alex held his hands up, then dropped them as if he just remembered he was arguing with a computer screen. “I didn’t say nothing about a team. Don’t make weird assumptions like that.”

“That’s fair.” Robin laughed. Jun ducked his head and bit the inside of his cheek. The last thing he needed was Alex seeing him smile right now. “That’s why I wanted to meet you all to talk about how the job is going.”

Jun got it together, realizing how surreal everything was coming together so fast. From this morning to the late afternoon, he was laying in the car figuring out if he should go to the memorial service or not. Now, he was watching Alex play interrogator with a loaded weapon, and none of it felt real.

Ken looked at him and Matt with a pleading, confused expression, and Jun couldn’t offer anything because he barely understood how he got there himself.

“Then why don’t you?” Hal asked, crossing his arms.