It took Scratch longer than she was proud of to find the bathroom. In her experience, it was a problem with all bathrooms in incredibly fancy hotels or mansions; the fancier they were, the more likely it was that the bathroom would look like something else entirely, in this case a large, indoor terrarium.

Very gingerly, she made her way across the large, flat rocks that served as stepping stones, and brushed aside a fern that dangled into her path. There was more greenery than Scratch had seen so far on Serendipity; far more greenery than the miserable excuse for a herb garden she had on her own ship, even. It probably helped that there was an enormous skylight, and that night took longer to come than a pillow princess getting edged. Definitely not a self-referential statement.

The toilet was hiding behind a curtain of ivy, and like any toilet in any fancy hotel in Lightport, it would retract into the wall when not in use, because the very idea of having to think about such bodily functions was apparently beneath the upper echelons of society. Bathrooms were places for doing drugs, or getting railed, or occasionally, taking a shower.

Sadly, it was this third situation that Scratch found herself in, but she wasn’t going to deny herself the possibility of the second if the opportunity arose.

The shower was, as to be expected, phenomenal. Though she had disabled all of the data collecting as she stepped in (she would not let Dmitri Enterprises to get sold all of her personal biometric information if she could help it), the waterfall shower head (literally a waterfall) seemed to adjust its temperature and pressure to her preferences without any input. She would have been a lot more concerned about that fact, had it not been the best goddamned shower she’d ever had in her life. It wasn’t quite as good as the thermal baths on Petrichor, but given that those were heated by lava, it wasn’t exactly a fair comparison to make.

It took about four minutes of that perfectly calibrated water flow for Scratch to forget that they were on a timeline, and about eleven minutes after that for Lucero to burst in there, and turn the water off themself.

Scratch, naked as the day she was born, had been blissfully unaware, right up until the waterfall came to a very sudden stop, and there was a towering figure with an unimpressed look on their face standing right next to her.

‘God, fuck!’ Scratch jumped, and very almost fell flat on her ass. Thankfully, Lucero was kind enough to catch her. ‘Put a fucking bell on.’

‘Oh, I would look good in a bell,’ they said, musingly, the irritation fading. ‘On a nice leather choker. Great idea, Scratch.’

Scratch would not let herself get distracted from the issue at hand. ‘Why the fuck didn’t you knock? I’ve been in here for like…five minutes.’

‘Well, firstly, I did knock, and secondly, you’ve been in here about twenty, and we have about sixteen minutes before you’re expected down to supervise the canapes. Did you seriously not hear my six inch heels clomping across the very slippery stones – huge health and safety hazard, by the way.’

‘No,’ Scratch said. She snatched her towel from where it was hanging off an artificial tree branch. 'Just... don't sneak up on me like that, okay? I get a little jumpy.’

‘God, Scratch, are you deaf or something?’

'Yes!' Scratch said, exasperated. To Lucero's credit, they looked utterly shocked. 'Please don't say something like "oh, I couldn't even tell" because it's so fucking rude.’

'I'm sorry, I legitimately didn't know. I wasn't trying to be an asshole. Well... I mean I was, but not about that specifically.’ They did sound genuine, so Scratch decided to throw them a bone. No pun intended. Given the fact that she very specifically didn’t want people to know, she could hardly get that upset when they…well, didn’t know.

'I can hear better in my right ear,'she said. 'So if you're going to clomp, do it on that side.’

‘No implant?’ Lucero asked, and they were right back to being an asshole again.

‘Is this really the time?’ Scratch had spent her entire life brushing off the people that kept insisting that she needed to get some kind of implant to let her hear properly, and she was well and truly sick of it. In the beginning, of course, it was because she couldn’t afford it, but now, it was the principle of the thing.

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‘Alright, alright, I’m sorry.’ A pause. Scratch could feel whatever judgement was about to come before Lucero even opened their mouth. ‘You know, a push-up bra would do you wonders.’ It was very tempting to give up her last line of defence, and towel-whip Lucero’s backside, but Lucero had apparently also grown up with at least one sibling, and stepped the fuck back the moment Scratch got a certain look in her eye. ‘You know what, I’ll let you get dressed.’

It wasn’t as exciting a moment as it could have been. Scratch had been very excited to dress in her nicest clothing, and then at the last minute, the plan changed. Or rather, in using Scratch’s employer as cover for a daring art heist, they had both failed to take into account the fact that Scratch would probably have to work.

So instead of her nice and cool, stolen designer labels, she would be wearing her (still very nice) chef whites. A little disappointing, but there was not a lot to be done about it. At least her chef whites were a lot nicer than what she’d have to change into later on.

Lucero almost certainly got the long end of the stick. They were wearing a bedazzled evening gown, complete with bedazzled mask, and looked as though they were ready to complain about everything from the canapes to the table settings. Carbrey would almost certainly have a heart attack.

‘Alright,’ they said, ‘First two hours, we mingle, make note of who’s there, what’s going on, etcetera, etcetera. I’ll worm my way into Mrs. Vandersnoot’s ear, get her to think about swapping out one of the paintings for something more obscure, then cause a scene so that you can make the switch.’

Scratch was still a little uneasy about the plan. Usually, she relied on crimes of opportunity, like an unlocked door to a jewellery store, or a security guard that had fallen asleep. Even Galastar had been ninety percent opportunity. This wasn’t even a good plan.

‘Well, of course,’ Lucero said, when Scratch brought this up. ‘The foundation is the important bit, as long as we know where all the exits are, everything will fall into place. Overplanning is for people that have more than two people on their crew.’

There was a strange tightness in Scratch’s chest, and she was pretty sure it was the sinking feeling that tonight was going to be a goddamned disaster. Never mind the painting, if whatever distraction Lucero was going to cause ruined the charcuterie spread, Scratch was going to flip.

Fourteen minutes later, she was standing at the entrance to the ballroom, impressed. Carbrey, for all of his obnoxiousness, had done a pretty good job, and the hotel’s kitchen staff had taken Scratch’s very clear instructions of “please make the food look mysterious” and done spectacularly with it. They had not, thankfully, gone with her suggestion of putting all of the food in the shape of a large question mark.

‘Oh, Kitty!’ Mrs Vandersnoot came swooping in. ‘It looks marvellous, you’ve done a wonderful job; desserts that look like fish cakes but are actually filled with chocolate? A true visionary!’

‘It was nothing,’ Scratch said, perfectly willing to take credit in this particular situation. It seemed like the appropriate thing to do, but she would have to remind herself to go and thank the kitchen staff later.

They had about an hour before the guests started arriving, and Carbrey was running around putting the finishing touches on everything. He stopped to berate one of the gallery security guards for standing too close to one of the pieces, and made sure that another was sufficiently draped in black cloth. It would have been entertaining, if he hadn’t immediately set his eyes on Scratch and told her off for not wearing a black jacket instead of a white one. She was rescued from this by Charlotte, who looked ravishing, and Scratch had to force herself to remember the plan.

The plan, or lack thereof, probably did not involve sneaking off to a utility closet for thirty minutes, which just went to show that nothing was ever really perfect. Instead, she got to stand by the food display, just in case any of the guests had any questions about the evening’s spread. It was the perfect spot to watch the guests trickle in and marvel at the decor.

Scratch hated to admit it, but Carbrey had done a good job. The room had started the day as plain and featureless, and was now something that could have been mistaken for a “rich old person’s mansion from the 18th century,” which was the brief that Carbrey had given the virtual environment simulator. Scratch knew precisely nothing of the 18th century on account of the fact that that was over a thousand years ago, and she had never graduated high school, let alone taken a history class. But, there was a grand staircase, and a fireplace that seemed to be housing a real fire, and lots of paintings of snobby looking people lining the walls. They had even done up the architraves and the cornices, architectural features that had no real practicality in a climate-controlled gallery.

There was a young man sitting at the piano, and from the way he played, Scratch suspected that it was the same young man that had been playing at Mrs. Vandersnoot’s gathering at the Birds of Paradise casino a few nights ago, only she couldn’t tell, on account of the mask. It was frustrating. More frustrating than she had anticipated, and not nearly as salacious.

Lots of men in black suits. Not unexpected, given that half the guest list was made up of people that would be guests on the yacht, and half of that list was people that Mr. Vandersnoot wanted to talk business with.

For all that this was a masquerade ball, with an emphasis on true anonymity, some of the guests were not trying very hard. Whether because they were non-tech masks without the scrambling emitter, or because they were talking very loudly about their unique business affairs for anyone around them to hear, it was hard to tell. For example, she had a very strong suspicion that the gentlemen proclaiming that the tragic rocket explosion on Sirta IV was just bad luck and was in no way the fault of the Dmitri Corporation was probably Diego Dmitri, who had loudly proclaimed exactly the same thing the previous evening on a talkback program, just without a mask. If Scratch were slightly worse of a person (or better of a person?), this would have been the perfect place to collect blackmail material.

Feeling incredibly self-conscious, she adjusted her mask. She’d had to borrow one from Charlotte, who had apparently been to more masquerade balls than she had any other kind of parties, and kept a small stock on her at all times, just in case. They had agreed on an “anything goes” sort of situation for the evening, which, given the fact that Charlotte had already confirmed on multiple occasions that there was zero exclusivity, seemed pointless.

But, it was important to have good communication in a relationship, even if it was more of a situationship. A situationship in which Scratch had not been purposefully withholding a key piece of information about her identity. Instead, she was putting on a mask so as to ensure that whoever she found herself hooking up with tonight was also entirely unaware of her identity. So it was hard to feel too upset about it.

The stupid thing was, any attempt at hiding her identity was scuppered by the fact that she was standing next to the food table in crisp chef’s whites, so if anyone really wanted to find out who she was, it wouldn’t be that hard.

The next figure that stepped into the ballroom was unmistakably Lucero. Though they were wearing a scrambling emitter mask that meant Scratch could not retain any details of the face, there was no mistaking that show stopping dress (that absolutely did not fit the theme of the evening). Scratch felt her heart jump a little in her stomach, and it had nothing to do with the dress.

She and Lucero locked eyes across the crowded ballroom. Lucero’s eyes flickered from blue to green to brown.

‘Alright,’ Scratch muttered to herself. ‘Showtime.’