Guadalajara, Mexico.

Reeve didn’t sleep. He kept watch over the waking minds in the neighborhood, which grew fewer and fewer as the hours wound on. His eyes strayed to the bedroom and the way Alyosha had decorated. It wasn’t spartan, the direction he would have gone. There was a patterned blanket draped over a chair sitting in the corner of the room. A wooden dresser with a tall mirror attached had a couple of knicknacks perched on it. It was cozy and it warmed something in him to know Shvedov had made a real home for himself here. It felt strange that he’d never been in this house, though he bought it years ago.

He remembered the day they had met. Reeve had been sitting in his car at the back of a grocery store parking lot in Henderson, Nevada, watching a man across the street work at a car wash. Through his binoculars, Reeve could see he was in his late twenties, had cropped brown hair, and a rather lean body on a wide frame. It seemed such a long time ago. He remembered he didn’t chat much with his coworkers and had a tendency to bob his head when he smiled at customers, which was often. This was who Reeve had been ordered to kill.

According to the file, he was an Entropy agent named Martin Boykavich. The name was tied in Reeve’s memory to the sound of shaking melting ice in his coffee as he watched. The rattling sound was comforting. He had his mind opened up as an indiscriminate receiver for thoughts in the area, trying to tease out the relevant threads from across the street. It was unpleasant, but someone from Entropy was likely to notice any direct telepathic activity. To help keep himself grounded, he scratched at a tear in the upholstery on the front seat, focusing on the texture. It was a habit that annoyed the hell out of Gareth, but they had only known each other for three months, so basically everything about each other was still annoying. Neither he nor Hannah knew where Reeve was. All three liked to take long drives (or long desert walks for sunburnt Hannah) in order to be alone with their thoughts, so they didn’t generally press him when he was gone for a day or so.

The cursory observations Reeve had isolated from the tangled thoughts gave him the impression that the name on file was an alias. The mission file was sparse, which wasn’t unusual when it came to missions involving Entropy. There just didn’t tend to be much available intel. There was no information about whether he was knacked or what that knack might be. As Reeve tried to sort through the overwhelming din, he got the sense that if he had a knack at all, it wasn’t prominent. Another thing he didn’t sense was violence in the man, who was resigned to being called Martin. The images he could perceive were of clouds, looming close and beautiful.

Reeve had broken into his apartment late that night. He stuck to picking the lock, not wanting to spook him with his telepathy by making the Super open the door. It wasn’t a skill he often used and Reeve struggled briefly with it. The heavy clunk of the bolt shifting made him flinch and he hoped the sound of traffic just outside would mask much of it. He reminded himself to take a steadying breath before slowly turning the knob. It was dark inside. Palms flat on the door, Reeve remembered inching it forward, pausing now and then to move his body farther inside the apartment, careful to keep his telepathy closed off. The hinges creaked and Reeve grimaced. His heart was pounding in his ears and his breath felt too shallow as he braced himself to execute a less stealthy entrance. Horns blared down the street, putting him more at ease.

Once inside just enough to step clear of the open door, he waited to let his eyes adjust to the level of light in the room. He could make out a couch and a table, and then an emerging outline of shoulders and a head. Reeve froze and held his breath, but when the shape came at him with a haymaker, the world swung back into action. He ducked the wild swing and reached out to push into his mind, freezing his muscles and stopping a second attack. It was over faster than it began. He could hear the man’s desperate heavy breathing close to his ear.

“Get out,” a voice rasped, thick from forcing his jaw to move.

Sidestepping, Reeve swung the door shut behind him and hit the light switch on the wall. He squinted and let his mind acclimate to the flow of Martin’s thoughts. He was in loose pants and an undershirt; he wasn’t much taller than Reeve. Not Martin. Alyosha Shvedov.

“Are you from Entropy?” he asked Reeve. His Russian accent was heavy. He would never forget the palpable fear and apprehension Alyosha had felt waiting for him to answer.

“No.”

Relief, followed by more fear. “Who are you?”

There was no real reason to be indirect. “I’m from SolCorp.”

He watched Alyosha digest this with a dread that was hard and remote. “You were sent to kill me.”

“Yes,” was all Reeve could think to say.

“So why am I not dead?” His English was decent, but dotted with awkward pauses.

Once inside the apartment, Reeve seemed to have misplaced his conviction. He reached for it and found nothing. He relaxed his grip on Alyosha’s muscles enough that he would be able to stand up comfortably, but not enough for sudden movements. Reeve opened his mouth to try to answer. He had practiced what he would say earlier in the day, back when he felt prepared for this. Nothing came.

Alyosha huffed out a breath and gave a small, experimental shrug. “Why don’t you come all of the way inside.”

Reeve stared at him, brow furrowed. “What?”

“Inside,” he repeated. With an effort, Alyosha slowly raised one arm waist high to point at his own head. “You are already in here, yes? When you want me to be dead, then I am dead. Nothing I can do could stop it. But I am not dead, so you might as well sit down.” He gave a weak smile.

In his thoughts he could see images being replayed of a man killed with telepathy. A slack, anonymous face against carpet, blood slowly leaking from his ears and nose, saturating the whites of his eyes. Alyosha understood what would happen if he gave Reeve a reason. What he didn’t understand was why it hadn’t happened already. Reeve released his grip on his body, keeping a firm lock on his mind. He felt some of the tension relax.

Alyosha rolled his shoulders and glanced over at his kitchenette. “I would like to get a glass of water. That okay?” He tapped his temple. “You will watch.”

It had been an unnerving reaction. More so because it wasn’t from a place of sheer cockiness, but from a man resigned to the fact that there was nothing he could do to prevent the death he knew was coming.

“Sure.” Reeve monitored his thoughts and watched him take a bottle of water from the fridge and move to take a seat at his small table.

He followed and sat down across from him, his whole body rigid. “You’re a part of Entropy.”

Alyosha’s eyebrows pulled together. “Da, yes.” He took a drink, swallowed, and then started laughing soundlessly. “I am sorry,” he said, putting up a hand, “I just don’t understand.”

Reeve, the laughter bringing him back to himself, leaned forward in his chair. With folded hands and his forearms resting on the table, he began to sift through his past. Again, clouds were the first thing he saw, as if they were the undercurrent of his mind. Less diluted now, Reeve could feel these cloud images from many angles, and along with it came wonder and a sense of great pressure. “You’re a pilot,” he said with some surprise.

“I fly their planes, yes. They tell me where to be and then where to take people. I do that.”

“Why do you work for them?”

“You don’t already know this from being in my head?”

“How you tell it could be as important as the facts.”

He flashed that resigned smile again, looking down at the table and then back up at him, eyes bright. “Okay,” he agreed, shaking his head slightly. “I grew up on a farm. My father was a crop duster and he taught me how to fly. I was supposed to work for him.” He swallowed. “But, I was not a good kid. I wanted to see the city. I left. I ended up with—you would call gangs.” He toyed with the bottle in his hands. Reeve watched. “I flew for them. Bigger planes, across the continent. Drugs, this sort of thing.”

Stolen novel; please report.

He hesitated, then gave Reeve a sloppy side-grin and lifted one shoulder, a gesture that made him look like he had just been caught out at something. “Then one day, these other men told me I worked for them now. It was…not a request.” He took another drink of water. “So I shuttle them places. Bigger planes now. I don’t know what for or sometimes who they are, but it is my job. They’re not people you leave. I don’t know why you want to know this.”

“Because I don’t want to kill you.”

“Since when does that have anything to do with it?”

That made Reeve smile back, disarmed. “It’s maybe not what we were taught in Sol, but it is what I was taught.”

Alyosha looked at him like he was crazy. Reeve felt that was possible. “So you don’t kill me—then what?”

“I hide you. From Sol and Entropy.”

“Can that work?”

“If they both think you’re dead.”

Alyosha raised both his eyebrows. “Has it ever worked?”

It hadn’t yet, but only because this had been the first mark he had ever approached with this plan. And he was highly motivated to make it work.

“Well, the other option is I can kill you right now if you’d prefer.” He scratched his head. “And if it helps, it’s a fifty-fifty chance, depending on who finds you that if you die, I die too.”

“That is honestly not how I define ‘helps,’” he laughed. “But I see what you are saying. I would owe you.”

Reeve was surprised to find how comfortable he felt in his head. Not that it wasn’t full of minefields of dark, painful memories, like Gareth, but it didn’t seem to haunt him in the same way, or taint everything else. Like Hannah, his thoughts were very straightforward and honest. From that, it was clear Alyosha was willing to go with Reeve on this.

“When I leave here, I want you to go down to the airstrip, take their plane, and fly it down to Guadalajara or Mexico City. Your choice.” He pulled a thick billfold from his pants pocket and held it up. “This should be enough to get you set up for a while. And use this,” he pulled out a cellphone, “to call the contact number in there within the next two days to give me your location.” He put them down on the table and watched Alyosha study them before slowly picking them up, gently as if they were fragile. Reeve gave his head a controlled but swift surge of pressure, just enough to cause pain. “If you run, you will have my team and all of Sol looking for you, and you should hope that Sol finds you before I do.”

Alyosha nodded, but the lack of mental response to his telepathy reminded Reeve that Entropy was a hard act to follow when it came to threats. “Will you make me kill people?”

“No,” he said quickly and took a breath before continuing. “No, not that kind of favor. But if you stay in contact with me, I’ll make sure you have whatever you need to keep you off their radar.” He extended his hand across the table.

“You are serious?” His brow was furrowed and his jaw was slack.

In response he left his hand out, waiting. Alyosha shook it.

“I’m Reeve.”

He was staring at his hand, as though it had acted on its own. “Alyosha.”

“I know.” Standing, Reeve recognized the feeling in his belly that led him here. It was conviction and it was fear.

Alyosha laughed and rubbed at his face with the heels of his palms. “Why are you doing all of this?”

“It’s the right thing to do.” Reeve gave a small smile. “And because one day I might need a plane.”

The sky above Guadalajara grew rosy with dawn and Reeve finally dozed.

---

SolCorp Pharmaceutical’s Philadelphia Office. Neptune Department.

Gerrit del Sol was reading through the roster of Retrieval agents who had been pulled for backup on three new Icarus, per a continent-wide alert from Neptune. It was a lot. Like, a lot. But he was the second highest ranking Neptune agent in Philly, so it fell to him, and that was fine. If nothing else, he was pretty good at keeping a cool head.

He was just about to reassign a few of his agents to cover the openings created by the alert, when Fredericka came barging into his office. Gerrit was slightly younger than her, with short dark hair, a tall forehead, and faint five o’clock shadow. He occupied a middle space between desk worker and field agent, so while he was dressed in a plaid button down and slacks, his Blacks were hanging on a hook by the door so he could gear up at a moment’s notice.

“Hey,” he smiled at her after a pause of shock and stood up from his chair. “How you been?”

“Oh, sit the fuck down,” she snapped with her characteristic scowl.

He made an exaggerated grimace and sank back into his seat. “Ma’am?”

“You’re damn fucking right.”

Gerrit knew when he was fully out of his depth and when someone’s attitude wasn’t expressly aimed at him, so he kept his mouth shut. Always better to let someone wear themselves out on their own. Particularly with Freddie. They’d only worked together as Retrieval agents a couple times, years and years back. But her efficiency and the brutality with which she could use her light manipulation was a thing few people who saw it forgot. He’d heard that since having left for Reintegration and rising through the ranks, she’d managed to translate that energy into verbal form, but he’d never been on the receiving end of it. He kept his mouth shut and waited for her to go on.

“I need you to pack an overnight bag,” she told him, face gone hard and neutral. “You’re coming with me. We’ll have people send over the rest of your things.”

He put his hands out, palms down. “Hold on—" If he didn’t know better, he’d have questioned whether this demand was professional or correctional. When the person in charge of Icarus Containment tells you to pack a bag, it had a level of effect that originated in the primal fear sector of the brain. But he did know better, because he hadn’t done anything off-color. “Can you back up please?”

She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Neptune, in his divine wisdom, has promoted you to Third and your first crisis is already underway. You’re pretty fucked, honestly, so get a bag, and let’s go.”

His mouth moved aimlessly. He mentally set the promotion aside for a second. He’d come back to that. He knew Will was older, but his health was good, and Gerrit hadn’t even heard whispers of him planning to step down. It had to have been something sudden and drastic.

“Is Will dead?”

Her expression didn’t change. “Only professionally.”

“Uhh…” He let his mouth hang open.

She sighed and walked around to his desk. With swift movements, she pulled the laptop her way, logged him out, and logged herself in.

He shook his head at her. “What the hell’s going on, Fred?”

“No one calls me that anymore,” she snapped, not looking at him.

“Yeah, no kidding, but you’re not really answering me, so I figured I’d give it a shot.”

Her hands flew over the keys and brought up four panels of Icarus files. His eyes lingered on the youngest one. A teenager.

“I saw these come up, but haven’t gotten a chance to—”

Then she pulled up Neptune’s report on Will’s resignation. Gerrit rushed to take in the text as quickly as he could and felt the blood drain from his face with each word. Halfway down were the ID photos of four agents lost. Good people. Gone now.

“Will fucked up big time,” she told him, straightening as he read. “So now we’ve got four agents down, four Icarus in the wind, and no head of Retrieval. HQ’s been keeping the worst of it as quiet as we can until there’s a new head of Retrieval. The foster is one of the Venus Twenty-Five, so I imagine people could draw parallels to that fucking fiasco.”

He raised his eyes from the screen, but Freddie was on a roll.

“The Icarus were prepared. Their trail ends at an airstrip. Sage thinks you can bring them in and I don’t have time for you to argue that you can’t. Plus you’re my ride back to LA and I’ve got my own shit to do, so if you don’t mind, let’s hurry this overnight bag thing along so you can make me almost lose my lunch back in my own timezone.”

It was a humbling image, those eight faces staring him down through the screen, four Icarus, four fallen agents. And an even more humbling task. Sol agents didn’t defect in groups. It just didn’t happen. Rogue elements were supposed to be just that: rogue. An interpersonal matter gone wrong, substance misuse, mental illness. Hell, even ideological division—but individual.

Gerrit logged her account out with a quick keyboard shortcut, shut his laptop, and shoved it in the computer bag he kept under his desk. “Okay, let’s go.” He went to the door and hefted his Blacks onto his shoulder.

She hadn’t moved from his desk. “You’re not even a little shocked you were chosen for the promotion?”

“Of course I am,” he breathed. “But right now, you need me on my game, so what I’m hearing is LA needs someone to lead a mission to bring these four in and rescue this kid. That is something my brain can handle without going into shock and without the distraction of leaving all my friends behind, so that’s what I’m going with. The rest can wait.”

Gerrit stuck his head out of his office door and caught an agent going by. “Hey, tell Ron LA needs me for a thing. I’ll call him later to explain.” The agent looked confused, but nodded. He shut the door, dug a packet of antacids out of his Blacks for Freddie, and held them out. “Okay, let’s go.”

She didn’t move. “You don’t need your stuff?”

“When it’s time to brush my teeth, I can pop back to my quarters for my toothbrush if I want to.”

She made a face. “Teleporters.” Fredericka snatched them out of his hand and chewed with malice.

“Why do you dislike me so much?” he asked.

“You give Neptune a bad rap.”

Gerrit scratched his nose with his free hand. “Honestly, I was kind of hoping you’d have to think about it for a second before answering.”

“You’re not the first person to ask me that the past day,” she explained, as if that helped. “You’re too friendly. You like everyone.”

“But people are likable,” he argued with a smile that was more from surprise than anything.

“We don’t need to be liked. We need people to listen to us.”

“Reintegration doesn’t need to be liked,” he corrected. “Maybe even Neptune the office doesn’t need to be liked. Retrieval and even Cleanup–sure, we’ll ruin your day if you ruin ours first, but there’s nothing wrong with us being approachable. We scan people into and out of the building every day, keep threats out, and come running to the rescue when there’s danger. I mean, hell, we literally want people to approach us to report if something is wrong. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but I’m not either.”

She regarded him with an unimpressed expression.

“And,” he went on, “it’s not even a professional ploy. There’s always something to like about people.” He held back on saying, ‘even you,’ as a joke.

Freddie rolled her eyes. “Alright, you don't outrank me yet, so shut it and fuck up time and space, or whatever it is you do.”

He gave one slow blink, then held out his free arm for her to come in close enough for him to get a good hold on her. “Yes, ma’am. Take a deep breath.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and jumped.

***