Kyte swears she can see a trail of salt crystals behind her as the late afternoon Pacific sun roasts her dry. Despite the glossy buildings and beaming people, Kyte will always prefer the second tier with its grime, for it at least has a weather dome. Nico on the other hand, is positively soaking up the golden hour sun’s withering heat. He even went as far as to call the lack of a weather dome a “blessing, especially after being cramped in that dank facility.” Yeah, a blessing for the tourism industry and overheating, Kyte had wanted to quip back, but she was too tired. Blundering through the streets, they make it to the trans-tier airport. Kyte picks the cheapest ride and she crams into a rickety Hubo at least a decade out of date with no room to twitch. She stumbles out into a visibly worse airport station on the second tier. The weariness is starting to really set into her by now. Her legs tremble as she pushes forward, brain on autopilot towards her apartment. Eventually, though she herself can’t really believe it, Kyte makes it to her front door. She scans her wristband against the lock, it clicks open, and she pushes open the door. She goes to close it only for the door to let out a shriek.

“Youch!”

Adrenaline spikes Kyte’s system again and she whips around. What she sees is a hunched-over Nico braced against the door frame and rubbing his nose.

“What are you doing here?” Kyte asks, a bit more relaxed now knowing that it is Nico.

“Uh, I don’t have a place to sleep anymore, remember? I was kinda locked up at night in the government watch rooms for the past month, and none of my old apartments are safe anymore.” His voice grows bitter at the latter phrase. Nico kept to himself that he only was conscious of his surroundings after he got hit in the face with a door: he had just followed Kyte. He must really be losing his Mafia training to do something so embarrassing and catastrophically stupid, even in a weary state. But, Nico’s statement wasn’t a lie. Kyte seems to know as much. She is quiet for a while as she considers the implications of Nico’s statement. However, there really is no other answer than to invite him to stay the night. Kyte simply leaves silence to linger out of habit.

The silence stretches over the beach as Yinzhu comes to. Her head throbs as she catches sight of the dock lights in the dark. Dark? It shouldn’t be night now according to their infiltration estimations. Yinzhu looks at her wristband to double-check the time. It is 22:34 and her sleeve is wet. In fact, all her clothes are wet. Not soaking, she notes, so she must have been out of the water for a bit. Her latest memory is of getting pushed into the SeaSong, then something…something happened... and then the complex exploded, and something slammed into her, hard. It was black after that. Judging by her state, it would be safe to say that the SeaSong is gone. However, if she had indeed been washed ashore after the wreckage, how was she several meters above where high tide is? She examines her clothes, especially the cuffs of her pants and her sleeves. Her pants show signs of abrasion from the cuffs all the way up to her knee, along with drying sand crusted in patches. Her sleeves, on the other hand, are free of scuff marks. Only blood and a few rips from flying bullets mark the surface. Clearly, she had not crawled up here in a daze, rather, she was dragged here. A location that was notably out of the way, but close enough to the city hub that Yinzhu could easily make it back home. Yinzhu clenches her jaw and spits out a curse. She pulls up the tracking program on her wristband, and is utterly unsurprised to see a ‘signal lost’ notification pop up. Yinzhu lets out a shout of frustration and grips her head in her hands. Her memory is sharpening once more. She remembers Kyte rushing in just as she was getting weary and pulling her along. That was not a part of the plan, but Yinzhu was too desperate for backup to reprimand her. Yinzhu also remembers now how Kyte tore through walls with a wave of her hand, and of how Kyte had thrummed with the trademark energy of Mercury.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Yinzhu curses again. Kyte had betrayed her, and by the visible absence of Nico near her, so had he. However, Nico was hardly a surprise. The alarm going off, and the wave of people, that one scientist, or rather infiltrator in a lab coat, that had rushed into the lab instead of out, all the pieces are clicking together. Given what Yinzhu knew of Kyte, there is no doubt that this treasury was long planned. How long was that traitor drinking her tea and playing games with her in her office, all the while hiding such a plot?! Hate bubbles up inside of her, but just as it is about to explode, it is tamed by a question: if Kyte was set on betraying her, why had she come back to save her? Kyte simply could have left Yinzhu in the complex to die and no one would be left to oppose her. No…Kyte didn’t have to kill her to pacify her, Yinzhu realizes. With the meteor in Kyte’s hands and her having disappeared, if Yinzhu were to report the truth, she would be heavily penalized and ridiculed for not only losing the cargo but also letting two hostages run free. The chairman’s warning reverberates in her mind. No, he can never find out. She can’t afford to be shipped back home, not yet. Yinzhu would have to lie, say that there was never anything there and the other two had died in the explosion. Yinzhu drags her hands down her face and stares out at the ocean through her splayed fingers. Smart move Kyte, think Yinzhu, if only you were this good at go. Though even as she thinks that, Yinzhu had no doubt that Kyte would soon become a worthy opponent in that realm too. Yinzhu clenches her jaw in anger at being forced into a corner, but oddly, there is less hate mixed in than she would like. Yinzhu shudders as she names the other feeling swirled in the mix: intrigue.

Nico is intrigued by Kyte playing host. She is a decent enough one. She shows him how the shower works and grabs him a fresh towel. She even gives him a set of clothes. The pant legs are too short and the shirt is too tight, but they are clean so Nico only makes a passing remark about their ill fit. When she is in the shower, Nico pours himself a glass of water at the kitchen counter. For the first time since the start of the infiltration, maybe even since agreeing to Kyte’s scheme, he thinks about his future. Kyte had actually won her impossible bet, which Nico supposes meant that he had won his own impossible bet of trusting Kyte actually paying off. Now they are dangling over a chasm, though Nico is sure Kyte doesn’t realize it quite yet, with only the singular string of hope provided by that set of weird rings as a lifeline. The bathroom door swings open with a puff of steam. Kyte steps out still drying her hair with a towel and wearing a cartoon pajama set. Nico tries not to laugh. He fails. Kyte grins at him. “What? I think it’s whimsical,” Kyte says. Nico laughs harder. “The person who pulled a fast one over those golden government goons wears cartoon pjs? If you plan on starting anything, you better not let that fact leak,” Nico brings a hand to his forehead and dips back with a flourish, “what a PR disaster that would be!”

“It might actually humanize me to the masses so that it wouldn’t be a disaster at all,” Kyte responds as she sits next to him at the counter. Nico blinks at her.

“You’re actually being serious,” he says. Kyte shrugs.

“Can’t hurt to be serious about the future,” she says. Nico scoffs. Kyte ignores it. Instead, she holds out her hands in front of her. Nico spits out the water he is drinking.

“What! You lost them!?” He shrieks. Kyte shakes her head.

“Of course not, I took them off,” Kyte answered. She kept her voice careless and leveled, for she had not taken them off. In the shower, she had watched the rings sink into her flesh and run down her fingers in black veins then fade into nothing.

Kyte rakes a hand through her hair, “I’ll unfold the couch for you.”

“Finally! My legs are about to fall off!”

Yinzhu slowly stands up. Her legs shake a bit, but she starts to walk. She hates how much she feels and looks like a wounded animal right now with viscera on her clothes and fury in her heart. Unbecoming. She straightens her back like she was taught, and strides to the nearest huvo station. She needs to begin her investigation into Kyte immediately.