Max Anders (Personal): “Hello, Nate.”
This was the fourth or fifth phone call I’d eavesdropped on, and the novelty of spying on someone I’d only ever seen on trideo hadn’t yet faded.
Nathan Gilbert: “Max! How’ve you been? It’s been, what, a month?”
The voice on the other line was broadly similar to Max’s, with the same crisp American aristocratic accent that spoke of old money, old names and old attitudes. A quick skim of the matrix revealed that Gilbert was old old money. The kind of family that had arrived in America rich and only grown richer over time. His pedigree made the Anders dynasty look like young upstarts.
Max Anders (Personal): “The firefighter’s gala. As pedestrian as ever, but I suppose it’s more of a business function.”
Nathan Gilbert: “I swear, the only people having fun at that thing are the hose jockeys, and that’s just because they don’t know any better. Anyway, Max, Gabrielle and I are hosting a real party at our place next Saturday. It’s a little short notice, I know, but I promise it’ll be good.”
Max Anders (Personal): “What’s the occasion?”
Nathan Gilbert: “Does there have to be one?”
Gilbert laughed, genuinely and earnestly. He sounded a little drunk.
Nathan Gilbert: “It’s Heather’s coming-out party after she debuted last month, and Gabrielle and I are celebrating our five year anniversary at the same time.”
A more targeted search revealed that this was, in fact, the third time the chemical magnate had celebrated a five year anniversary.
Max Anders (Personal): “Has it really been so long? I could have sworn Heather was still only as tall as my waist.”
Nathan Gilbert: “And I remember when you were just a spotty preteen hovering over your father’s shoulder. Take it from someone who knows, Max; time is only going to go faster from here.”
Max Anders (Personal): “Ominous words from someone who’s supposed to be celebrating.”
Gilbert laughed down the line – the sort of sound that could only really be described as ‘haughty.’
Nathan Gilbert: “Too true, my friend. Too true. Which is why I intend to gather all my friends and children in one place and celebrate the future of my family. Speaking of family, I know Gabrielle will be looking forward to seeing Kayden again. And you should bring Theo, give the lad a break from his studies. Heather could certainly do with more friends close to her own age, and I’m sure she’d like to pick his brains about university.”
Abruptly, the thought flashed into my head that I might be eavesdropping in on some oblique dynastic horse trading. Gilbert had called Heather the future of his family, but she was his fourth child. She could make a difference in his business if she was smart, I guessed, but she’d also secure their future by marrying into an emerging megacorp. Gilbert was old money; unfathomably rich by my standards, but that wealth wasn’t growing. Theo Anders, on the other hand, would inherit an empire.
Or maybe this really was just small talk, Gilbert really did think his daughter was a shut-in who desperately needed to start talking to people even if the only one available was two years older than her and I was just lost in my own paranoia with mom’s old rhetoric reverberating throughout my skull. I’d plugged my brain directly into the private comm lines of the ultra-wealthy only to realise that I had no idea how those people thought.
Max Anders (Personal): “We’ll be there, Nate. I might even have the opportunity to return the favour soon enough.”
Nathan Gilbert: “Oh?”
Max Anders (Personal): “I’ll be making the formal announcement tomorrow, but the Corporate Court has agreed to launch an audit to determine whether we qualify for a double-A rating. Within a matter of weeks, we’ll have true extraterritoriality.”
I pulled up the audio file, clipping the last few seconds and flagging them for attention. I had no idea how many analysts Calvert had poring over this data, but that was big. All of a sudden, we were on a deadline.
Nathan Gilbert: “That’s brilliant news, Max! It’s taken them long enough, but I guess even some stacked Swiss court can be worn down by enough time and effort.”
Max Anders (Personal): “Shiawase had a minor shortage in certain medicines. An agent of theirs reached out to Medhall with a fair price for them, but I offered to waive the cost altogether if their Justice’s office expedited my petition.”
Nathan Gilbert: “I see you’re still as cunning as ever. You really are living up to your father’s legacy.”
Max Anders (Personal): “Sometimes you have to take a hit to come back stronger. I have to go, Nate, but I’ll see you soon.”
There was something in the CEO’s tone, if it wasn’t just the product of my imagination. We’d hit him where it hurts, set the DEA on his whole political arm and driven them into hiding. To make it worse, Medhall had been forced to cooperate fully in the investigation; to act like the aggrieved party duped into handing out drugs to a rogue policlub who promised them it would be going to homeless orphaned puppies instead of cyberpsychotic lunatics.
I was back in my room at the loft, sunk deep into a recently-purchased armchair as I drifted in and out of the matrix. The calls had been of limited utility; his work comm was on a different network entirely, tied directly into the central database of Medhall Pharmaceuticals, which left me with the calls he chose to make on his own time. He was apparently something of a workaholic; he hardly called anyone, and his comm went unused throughout most of the day. But that was what Calvert had asked for, so that’s what I’d given him.
Returned from Boston, I’d had the chance to examine my prize in full, taking in the strengths and limitations of the Myo network. It only contained the Anders family’s personal devices, but that meant well over two dozen different commlinks, tablets, terminals and all the associated accessories. Not all of them were clearly labelled – there were a few that I hadn’t yet been able to ascribe identity to – but I had enough to get a picture of the family’s structure.
It was surprisingly small; most of the devices were linked to only three people; Max Anders, his wife Kayden, and their twenty-year old son, Theo. Of the couple, Kayden’s parents were both still alive, but weren’t on the network, while Max Anders’ mother had died around five years prior. Max had a sister, Diane Anders, but she’d spent the last six years in a rehab clinic up north, so she didn’t have a phone. She’d died just recently; her overdose had been on the news when I was hospitalised.
Kayden A: “Max. It’s been a little while.”
Max: “Kayden. You’re fine, I take it?”
Kayden A: “I’m fine.”
Max: “And our daughter?”
Kayden A: “Aster’s fine. She’s adjusting well to kindergarten. The first parent-teacher night is coming up soon.”
Max: “I know. It’s in my calendar. I’ll have a driver pick you up, then we’ll travel from the office to the school.”
Kayden A: “Sure. Is that why you called?”
Max: “No. We’ve been invited to a party. Short notice; next Saturday.”
Kayden A: “Who by?”
Max: “Nathan Gilbert. Celebrating his daughter’s debut, mostly. He wants us to bring Theo as well.”
Kayden let out a faint sigh before she continued – short and quiet enough that I didn’t think it was deliberate.
Kayden A: “Nathan’s a dinosaur, and his wife is just catty.”
Max: “He’s an influential dinosaur. His political connections run deep, which means that it’s important we keep him friendly. As for Gabrielle, it would hardly be the first time you’ve had to put on a smile and pretend to like someone for the greater good.”
Kayden’s next words were murmured, and sounded a little reluctant.
Kayden A: “Whose good is that?”
Max: “You know whose, Kayden. It’s about Aster, about Theo. Sometimes securing the future for our children means putting ourselves in uncomfortable positions. Besides, you can hardly argue there aren’t any benefits. I hear your business is going well?”
Kayden A: “I found another client this week. A Maersk executive who just relocated to the city and wanted to furnish her new waterfront apartment.”
Kayden sounded defensive and, from what I could tell, she had good reason to be. On paper, she ran her own interior decorating business, but a look at its portfolio had demonstrated that there was no way it could be profitable. I didn’t know if it was a hobby, a social project or an attempt to carve out whatever independence she could find, but the business was as dependent on Medhall money as she was.
Max: “I’m glad to hear it. You’ve always had a good eye, whether it’s for furniture, fashion, men.”
Kayden A: “Don’t.”
Max: “You should wear white. It makes you look… purer. More earnest.”
Kayden A: “Appearances matter, right? Especially among our ‘friends.’”
I didn’t need to see her to note the intonation she added to the word.
Max: “This is the life you chose, Kayden. I may not be the high school baseball player you found so infatuating anymore, but we’re still the same in so many ways. However much we’ve changed since then, whether or not you’re willing to admit it, we both share a similar perspective on what’s right, what’s wrong, and what has to be done.”
Kayden was silent for a few moments, then let out a long sigh.
Kayden A: “Okay. Have your people send me the details, I’ll make sure the nanny knows to look after Aster that night.”
It almost felt voyeuristic, but I’d figured out they were separated almost as soon as I looked at the network. All of his devices were registered at one address, all of hers at another. Their GPS logs just confirmed it. What was truly impressive was that the city as a whole had no idea. They still attended public events, still put on the façade of a happy couple. Once again I’d found myself in possession of data that people – mostly gutter journalists, admittedly – would pay a sizeable sum for, yet I was completely unable to act on it.
Kayden herself was Anders’ second wife, for all that I just learned she was crushing on him when he was a high school sportsman. It must have been a very one-sided crush; there was a five year gap between them, with Max having passed forty this year and Kayden being almost thirty-five. She wasn’t Theo’s mother; Heith Anders, Max’s first wife, had died around eighteen years ago. He’d been married to Kayden – much of it only on paper, apparently – for eight years.
We had so much dirt on Medhall at that point that I couldn’t help but wonder when our client planned to make his move. We didn’t have the smoking gun, didn’t have something irrefutably linking Medhall to the Chosen, but Alabaster’s testimony – though he’d never see a courtroom because vampires weren’t legally people – would probably be enough to create an indirect link even if they denied all knowledge. The Chosen had launched enough heinous attacks that we definitely had enough to cause a stock crisis, maybe even force Max Anders out of the CEO chair.
Ultimately, however, that decision was out of my hands. For whatever reason, the serpent wanted to toy with his food some more and he’d decided that – for the time being – he didn’t need us to help out. Which left me with nothing to do but monitor the private lives of three very private people.
I turned my attention back to the third cluster of devices and the long-running five-way telecom call being supported by one of them on a commercial matrix host.
GM: “Okay, Kat, I’m going to need you to make an Acrobatics saving throw.”
Theo Anders was about my age, and a lot more soft-spoken than his father. He had his vidcam on, revealing the same blue eyes and blonde hair as Max, but on a softer face. He wasn’t overweight or anything, but it was clear that, unlike his father, he hadn’t played baseball in high school. It almost made him look naïve.
Grace: “Twenty two.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
GM: “Nicely done. As you plummet back down the elevator shaft, you manage to reach back and grab the cable of the slowly ascending elevator. The sudden stop is almost enough to rip the cable right out of your hands again, but you manage to hold your grip.”
Grace: “Okay, I’m going to shout back up the elevator to the others ‘I’m fine! Drive those cocksuckers back!’”
Tecton: “Tecton just sighs.”
Grace let out a short, sharp laugh. Theo’s players were a surprisingly varied bunch for the son of a human supremacist. ‘Tecton’ was played by a dark-skinned gnome in what looked like a college dorm room, with engineering textbooks visible on a shelf behind him, while Kat was a little more predictable; a blonde human with a wild-eyed look in her eyes that showed just how much she was enjoying the game. From the look of things, she was in a flat-share; I could see another woman sprawled out on a couch on the other side of the room, her focus on her headphones even as she shot Kat the occasional bemused look.
GM: “Okay, Jacob, you’re next in the initiative roll.”
Raymancer: “Well, since I know Grace is still healthy enough to frustrate PR, I’m going to step up and fire a disintegrate spell at the last robot before he can close on Annex. Twenty nine to hit.”
GM: “You hit. Roll damage.”
‘RollSpace’ is a surprisingly simple host. There were other providers on the market who offered full simsense immersion, allowing the person running the show to put their players right in the heart of the action. It was what I’d have expected from someone of Theo’s wealth, but a glance at the devices the others were using to connect revealed a vast gulf between them and him. I had no idea how they’d met; it must have been on the host’s forums or some other, similar online space.
Raymancer: “Seventy-nine points.”
Wanton: “What the fuck even is your build?”
GM: “It’s dead, obviously. Would you like to do the honours?”
I was pretty sure Raymancer was a Fomori; a subvariant of trolls who were typically a little shorter, with smaller horns and no dermal growths. On top of the obvious social advantages that gave them, they were also much more likely to be magically awakened. He was in some kind of commune; a large, open plan space covered in all sorts of handmade artwork, with a few other trolls visible in the background.
Raymancer: “Raymancer takes a half step forward, raising his right arm as he mutters an incantation, pointing his palm directly at the robot. A moment later, there’s a crack of thunder as a beam of ethereal green energy shoots out from his palm, the force of it causing his costume to blow back behind him.”
Grace: “Classic drama major.”
Raymancer: “The moment the beam connects with the robot, it starts to disintegrate into a glowing green ash that rises up into the air before disappearing completely as the last atoms of the machine are reduced to nothingness.”
GM: “With the last machine dead, the ballroom feels strangely silent. Grace, you manage to climb back up the elevator shaft just as the double-doors of the balcony at the end of the room swing open. A crackling shield suddenly activates, protecting the power armoured supervillain who emerges, looking down at you like he’s just discovered a roach in his kitchen.”
The other three members of the party used the handles ‘Wanton,’ ‘Annex’ and ‘Cuff.’ The latter was another blonde human, streaming in from her bedroom, while Wanton was a tanned elf with a mullet and a CalFree flag on the wall of his room, and Annex was an African-American human broadcasting from what looked like a private booth in a matrix café. I could have dug a little deeper into the connection to unearth their real names, but there didn’t seem to be much point; none of them seemed to be in the city.
GM: “‘So the Wardens have finally come for me. I was wondering how long it would take you to reach this place. You should be proud; you have exceeded my expectations.’”
Theo had put on as deep and booming a voice as he could manage, clicking an option in the host that further enhanced his words with an artificial reverb.
Wanton: “‘Maybe we’d have taken longer if you had anything worth fighting! Can you do anything other than robots, or are you a one trick pony?’”
GM: “The supervillain just laughs down at you. ‘My machines are the perfect soldiers. They can’t question, can’t disobey. They can’t be bargained with, they can’t be reasoned with. They don’t feel pity, remorse or fear and they absolutely will not stop, ever, until this city is mine!’”
Cuff: “I knew you’d like that movie.”
Cuff had a warm smile on her face, but she quickly quietened down. It seemed she wasn’t that comfortable speaking in front of a crowd.
Tecton: “‘You know we can’t let that happen. Even if you do defeat us, this city will never accept mechanical rule. The people will fight you.’”
GM: “He laughs again, a little louder this time. ‘The people don’t know what they want! They’re sheep; they must be herded lest they wander off and die alone! Only I have the will to rule this city! Only I have the vision to guide it to prosperity! I had hoped you would see the righteousness of my cause, but no matter! I will not let you stand in my way!’”
Theo loaded up another encounter in the programme; the same map as before, but the doors at the end of the palatial hall were open, with four robots standing between them and the party.
GM: “The immense doors to the supervillain’s inner sanctum swing open, as four more giant robots stride into the room, each one armed with an assault cannon on their left arm and immense fists on their right that crackle with electrical energies. The supervillain himself deactivates the shield on his balcony, then leaps down to the floor below. He takes up a position behind his robots, seemingly content to let them take the lead for now.”
Theo smiled, well and truly lost in the moment.
GM: “‘Tremble before the might of Tyrant!’”
The smile faltered a little as Theo was distracted by something else on his comm.
GM: “And with that, I think it’s time for a ten minute pause.”
Grace: “You dick!”
GM: “Just building tension, Kat. Besides, I need another coffee if I’m going to run this fight.”
His tone was light, but I could see the tension undercutting his expression. The cause was obvious; he had an incoming call from his dad, no doubt about to invite him to the now infamous party. I wasn’t particularly interested in hearing the same information repeated a third time, so I stayed with Theo’s friend group as he left the room.
Wanton: “So, we’re all aware that we’re fighting Theo’s dad again, right?”
Tecton: “You don’t know that, Lewis. Don’t make assumptions.”
Annex: “Do you think he even knows, or is it like a subconscious thing?”
Raymancer: “Tyrant seems like a pretty common character archetype for me. Comics are full of evil masterminds.”
Grace: “Yeah, it’s not Theo’s fault his dad’s, like, a legit supervillain.”
Cuff: “Just leave off him, okay? It’s rude to talk about him when he’s not here.”
Wanton: “I didn’t mean nothing by it, Ava. Your long-distance boyfriend’s still a better DM than any of us. Except for Jacob, I guess, but at least Theo hasn’t saddled us with any immortal ninjas.”
Raymancer: “I thought you all thought he was cool?”
Something about this whole situation felt very familiar to me. It wasn’t what was happening right now, but what Theo and Ava had said to each other. It was Theo’s username, too; I’d run into a ‘Tantalus’ before, in the Observatory deep within the resonance realms, who’d sent out a number of messages to someone in Hawai’i. Ava, most likely.
I hadn’t taken the data with me back across the event horizon; it just hadn’t seemed relevant at the time. From what I remembered, it seemed that Theo didn’t share the same beliefs as his father and step-mother, and was conflicted about being groomed to take over a corporation that he knew was racist and suspected was involved in a lot worse.
I wasn’t sure what to make of that information. The fact that a member of the Anders family wasn’t racist didn’t exactly make for useful blackmail, especially because that was something his father had to have noticed. Still, it was another strand of the web of conspiracies and data we were weaving around the company, which made it potentially useful even if we didn’t understand the how or why.
Mostly, though, I just felt a little sorry for him. Not too much, though; I was sure the gadgets, lifestyle and free ride to University helped to soothe the pain of awkward dinner conversations.
“Hey,” a soft, cautious voice drew my attention back to the real world, where Lisa had slowly pushed open the door to my room. “It’s time.”
I swallowed, my throat drying up, then closed the connection to the Myo network.
The others were waiting in the lounge, where the air was so thick I could have cut it with a knife. The others were quiet, even Alec, while Aisha was pacing up and down the length of the sofa with a fiercely nervous expression on her face. She’d dressed down – at least, by her standards – in black joggers and a red crop top.
I’d dressed a little more sombrely as well, whether consciously or not, in a pair of dark blue jeans and the black t-shirt with the yellow scarab logo that Lisa had coaxed me into buying at the market. It just felt right.
“All good?” Lisa asked, looking around the room. She was wearing a pleated black skirt and a lilac top underneath her trenchcoat, and had selflessly taken on the task of making sure we left on time.
“All good,” I answered her, as Aisha stopped pacing and gave me a look. “Let’s go.”
Rachel, wearing much the same practical work clothes she always did, was waiting downstairs, elbows deep in the chassis of her mostly-repaired Steel Lynx drone. A trio of shiny new Doberman gun-platforms were parked in the corner of her workshop, unpainted and with the assault rifles they were supposed to carry still stored in their case. She stopped her work once she caught sight of us, wiping her arms clean on a rag before wordlessly clambering up into the front of her van.
I was expecting Lisa to join her into the front, but instead she got into the back with the rest of us, sitting next to me as Aisha and Alec claimed two seats on the other side of the row, Aisha immediately hunching forward and tapping a foot against the floor as she wrung her hands.
I just stared straight ahead, sitting stock still with my mind gazing through the metal hull of the van to the digital cityscape beyond, tracking our progress through GridLink as Rachel took us out and into the city streets.
It was quieter than I was expecting. The gang war was still out there, but the pitched battles had given way to guerrilla warfare as both the Yakuza and the Chosen settled in for the long haul. All the while Knight Errant were pushing hard, launching large-scale raids on soft targets and advancing the security checkpoints one block at a time. The tension in the air was still so thick you could have cut it with a knife, but things were a little closer to business as usual. If Calvert didn’t do anything to kick the hornet’s nest, things might even start to calm down before too long.
Still, there was a small, miserable part of me that almost wanted something to get in the way. I had no idea what to expect, no idea what to do, no idea what was expected of me. But it was only a small part; the rest of me knew how important this was.
Bitch pulled up in the drop-off zone, then set the van’s pilot program to circle the block once we’d all dismounted. The Crash Cart hospital wasn’t tall by modern standards, but I still felt the full weight of the twelve stories of concrete, steel and reinforced glass looming over me, with uniformed security guards patrolling the perimeter walls that delineated its extraterritorial space.
I felt a palm against my lower back.
“You okay?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Yeah.” I shrugged her off, willing my legs into motion as the hospital grew larger and larger. A makeshift checkpoint had been set up by the entrance for visitors, with a metal detector and someone checking SINs against the global registry. When we ignored it, walking down the route dedicated to medical personnel and clients with active policies, a pair of security guards moved to intercept us. I flashed an authorisation code at their tactical network – a borrowed client ID that Calvert had given us if we ever needed to access the hospital – and the guards discreetly returned to their posts like they’d never been suspicious.
An ambulance had just pulled up to the triage entrance, a pair of armoured paramedics carrying a woman on a stretcher, her head strapped in a neck brace. A mother and her son were walking out the front doors to the hospital, the kid rubbing nervously at the polymer cast on his arm. In the corner, a security guard had found a rough sleeper who’d managed to sneak past the fence. The elderly ork was almost bent double; the security guard had him in an arm-lock and was marching him back towards the perimeter.
Once we’d crossed the threshold into the air-conditioned lobby, with its gift shop, café and wide corridors leading off to the different departments of the hospital, I led the way up through the warren of wide, well-lit corridors that nevertheless managed to feel like a tight, claustrophobic maze if you didn’t have the building plans downloaded to your brain.
Our destination was a short-term recovery ward on the eighth floor of the building, designated according to the building plans for post-surgery patients. Lisa spoke to the young dwarf manning the reception desk while I paced nervously up and down the length of the waiting room. Idly, I flicked a glance over to the others. Rachel was watching me intently, but without any obvious concern, while Aisha was staring down at the floor and Alec had his hand on her back and a downright uncertain expression on his face.
After about a minute of chatter, the receptionist picked up a work-issue commlink and sent off a message in the matrix to a nurse on the ward, who then made her way to one of a small number of private rooms set aside for premium clients. I stopped looking at the matrix, then. I simply waited, my focus solely and painfully present in meatspace, until Brian stepped into the room.
He looks the same. That was the first thought that ran through my head, only for that initial impression to be dashed against the rocks once my brain had made complete sense of the picture. With modern medicine, especially the kind of treatment he’d had, the lingering scars of almost any sort of physical trauma could be stitched away and repaired. Even the bare cybernetics of my arm were a deliberate affectation; I could have gone for a synskin coating that was identical to the real flesh I’d lost.
Brian was wearing clothes that I’d taken from his apartment and brought to the hospital when he was unconscious – a deep blue t-shirt, a pair of black sweatpants and some red and white sneakers. They were clean, bland and far from his usual hard-edged, hard-wearing fashion. He didn’t stand or move like someone who’d had three bullets pass through his chest, and his features were all pristine, with flash-burns healed, cuts closed, cybernetic components replaced and fresh synskin painstakingly applied to hide them from sight.
In spite of all that, I knew then and there that he had changed. It was in his eyes, in his stance, in his saddened expression as his eyes landed on me before he noticed Aisha, and his features shifted into something close to despair.
“Aisha…” he began, as his sister abruptly stood bolt upright and stormed across the room towards him. I thought she was going to hit him, but instead she threw her arms wide and pulled him into a constricting, desperate embrace.
“What are you doing here?” Brian asked, his tone completely lost. Abruptly, Aisha let go, sliding out of her brother’s grip as a flash of anger flared up in her face. As quickly as it came, however, it was smothered beneath a conscious effort on Aisha’s part. Instead, she answered his question in a wavering tone that she was trying to keep level.
“I ran into some trouble and needed a place to crash. Don’t want to freeload, so now I’m a Shadowrunner.”
“It’s dangerous,” Brian said, slowly.
Aisha opened her mouth to say something then paused, pursing her lips for a moment of silent thought before finally speaking.
“Yeah. But I was in danger before. Least now I’ve got backup.”
Brian’s jaw was clenched tight, but he nodded. His eyes darted from person to person, passing over Rachel, Alec and Lisa before landing on me, where they lingered. First on my face, as he tried to read whatever my face was showing, then a little further down and to the right. His eyes stayed there for an uncomfortably long time before he finally spoke.
“Your arm…”
“Oh,” I exclaimed, a little surprised. I brought my arm up to my face, watching the joints in my hand move as I furled and unfurled my fingers. “I’m used to it. Forgot it was there, honestly.”
“Good.” The word came out uncertainly, but that was understandable; I had no idea what you were supposed to say to something like that.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, stupidly.
He shook his head.
“The docs here do good work.” He was clearly shaken, but I picked up on the unspoken question. Lisa did too.
“Our client,” she stressed the word, “is with Evo. So we didn’t get paid for the last job, but we didn’t have to worry about medical expenses either. Now we’re on retainer.”
“We’ve already pulled one job for him,” I said, regretting it the very next moment when his attention flashed back to Aisha with a visible wince. “It went fine. Got away clean.”
I decided not to mention just how close everything had been to going wrong.
“So, what next?” Brian asked.
“Professionally? No idea,” I answered. “Client’s in a holding pattern. We’re waiting for him to decide on what to do next, or for some pieces to fall into place in a plan I haven’t been able to figure out yet.”
“As for here and now,” Lisa interjected, “I figure we head back to the loft? Take it easy for a day; drag as many seats into the front room as will fit and just chill out.”
I frowned, ever so slightly, before schooling my expression back into place. I didn’t want to sit around doing nothing when I could be monitoring the Anders wiretap, getting ready for the next mission or searching for more answers from the resonance. But I wasn’t blind, either; Brian seemed about as enthusiastic about the idea as I was, but that didn’t mean Lisa wasn’t right.
“Like old times, huh?” Aisha asked, flashing her brother a grin. “The real old times, I mean. Jumping out at you from behind the couch, shouting Sentai Samurai catchphrases and hitting you on the head with a foam sword.”
He didn’t smile, but Brian seemed to imperceptibly relax at that memory.
“It’s settled then,” Lisa said, smiling. “We’ll grab some takeout on the way back home.”
Things weren’t good, that much was obvious, but there was still something nice about seeing Brian walking beside me as we made our way back through the hospital. He’d always seemed so solid before and, while he’d obviously been shaken up by his injuries, it was almost comforting to know that he was here. That we were all here.
“It took long enough,” Lisa said, in a tone so quiet that only I could hear it, “but the gang’s all together now.”