“To Chloe”

“To Chloe!”

“To Chloe and Jodie!”

“Get it, lovebirds.”

I raised my glass to everyone else’s, trying not to blush. Jodie looped her arm around me and drank deeply, grinning like an idiot the whole time. I went to drink, but hesitated, and raised it again. “To Dotty.” Sid joined me,

“To Dotty. She was one of yours, makes her one of ours. We avenge our own.”

The mission had been my idea. We knew for certain now that the RWHS operated within MI6, and after the events of the last week, we all had a reason. The goal, comparatively, was simple. Anvil, Katrine deduced, was too dangerous to be stored anywhere other than within the building itself. If we could get in and destroy it with another of Sid’s Magbombs, Jodie and I would be safe and RWHS morale would plummet. They’d know we could come for them. There was the added bonus of potentially stealing a lot of valuable data. Names, locations, things that could be leaked. It would mean a lot of dead RWHS agents. They would be mourned, remembered, but they killed my friend. They needed to die.

“To Dotty,” everyone cheered again, and we broke off into the last night before the most dangerous mission of our lives.

Katrine couldn’t get drunk for fear of putting her off her game, Jodie just couldn’t get drunk, which meant that none of the rest of us did much, save talk to each other. Confessing might have been a better word for it.

“I ever tell you how I joined the group?” Addie asked me, a little more drunk than he should have been.

“Never.” I made a mental note to get him to the Component before morning.

“Funny story. It’s really not. I killed someone.”

“Did they deserve it?”

“She was my girlfriend.” He took a deep drink. “Laurie. She was a ray of sunlight, always made you feel better about yourself. And she was the one into the magic shit, not me. Always reading up on wicca, voodoo, the ancestral shit. Did all sorts of charms and spells on me, to bring me happiness, joy, growth. I think she had the ability too, because one day… Fuck i don’t even remember what happened. But Sid showed up just in time to help me dispose of the body.” He looked over at her, sharing a cigarette with Katrine by the air funnel. “She’s always there to avenge. ran up. Never to help.”

“Maybe we’re beyond help.” I said, gazing at the ceiling.

“Maybe I am. You? Not so much”

I snorted a laugh at that. “Addie, three months ago I was a uni dropout working in a coffee shop. That’s already beyond help. And I’m worse now. ”

“Because of us.”

“Because of the RWHS.” I corrected him, “Whatever we are, they made us into. Not Sid.”

“Maybe. But she’s the one that dumped the woman I love in a river.”

I thought about Sid, Grabowski. about her hair. My shoulder still hurt because of a few days of living with the pain, but her hair grew back to the length it had been in those photos. She still saw herself as that soldier.

“What do you think we’d be like without her? Without all of it?”

“Without the RWHS?” he was looking through the wall, into another world.

“I don’t know. I’d still be living my shit life.” my shit life, with a friend who I hadn’t crushed under a hundred tons of rubble. “You?”

“I would have married Laurie.” He said without hesitation. “She wanted kids, two. IVF, not adoption, she wanted to go the full mile for it. I don’t mind, so long as I get to raise ‘em. We’d be at the age now that we’d be having them.” He drank. “Katrine would be a teacher. God she’d be a good one.”

“She would be,” I agreed. Addie nodded, wistfully.

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“But hey. You got a girlfriend out of the whole ordeal. Congrats, kiddo.”

I tried to imagine Jodie like that, without the war. I couldn't. She was born into it, shaped by it. A Jodie without Grabowski wouldn’t be Jodie. across the room she coughed up a lungful of smoke and laughed. Suddenly, I felt a pang of guilt for what I felt towards her.

“Go. be happy.” Addie flopped back on the sofa, to stew in his own memories. I grabbed two of the illusion pins and went to Jodie.

“Jodie?”

“Mh?”

“Upstairs?”

I took her by the arm and went to the roof. Someone, probably Addie, whistled.

“You good?” she asked when we were up

“Yeah. Yeah, just claustrophobic” She nodded, and sat on the edge, one arm around me to stop me falling back.

“This is classic first date stuff, right? Staring up at the stars” “Second date” she clarified

“You never took me home, I’m counting it as one”

“That’s a long date.” She said after a moment.

“Well, we’ve got a stereotype to uphold”

“Hm?” She looked at me, confused. Oh, right. She didn’t have much in the way of pop culture knowledge.

“It’s like… a stereotype that lesbians have long dates.”

“Huh.” she rested her head on my shoulder and looked out at the city with me, “I’d like that.”

“Me too.”

The City beyond thrummed with life, but none of it took any care of us. We were just two people in a sea of humanity, still for the briefest moment before being pulled into the currents. But we were the most important things in our own small world, that encompassed her, me and the roof. The rest was just a backdrop, painted next to the stars.

“What comes afterwards?” I whispered, half to myself.

“I dunno.” she said, unmoving, “We settle down. Live quiet lives.” I nodded, imagining that. Me and her, Addie and Laurie. Somewhere out of the city, I’d always imagined living in a village, or a small town.

“I could get a job in a garage.” I rested my head on hers.

“Mh.” she’d closed her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping, just… experiencing.

“I’ve always wanted to do that. I stole my dad’s car once, before he realised something had gone wrong, so that I could fix it. He still doesn’t know.”

Jodie pushed up closer to me and I looked down to see tears forming. I put my arm around her and held her close. Parents. Not something she had experience with. “I’ll teach you how someday. Promise.”

She tilted her head upwards and kissed me. As we did, we undid the charms on our pins, so when I looked down, her eyes were brown, not grey.

“Tusim surakhi’ata ho” she whispered

“What?”

“I don’t know what it means. But when my mum was trying to get sober she’d say that to me. I think it’s good.”

It sounded like a good thing. We put our glamours back on, the risk not worth it any longer, and stayed there a little longer.

Everyone was asleep by the time we got back, except Katrine. I knew where Katrine would be, so I left Jodie to rest, and found her at her workbench, tracing circuits in her armour.

“I’ve triple checked it, it’s all in order.”

She rested the piece, a gauntlet, down on the table. I’d soldered the copper into the inside of the armour so that nothing could touch it. it was designed to stop bullets and stay light, in case Katrine ever had to come with us into the field. The design was unlike any other plate armour that existed, lying much closer to her body than actual plate. The runes set in stopped it from bending or breaking out of shape, and the extremities all redistributed force felt by the inside. With it, she could run, jump, and fight like an olympian if she needed. She would be safe.

“I know,” she said, still running her fingers over it, “just making sure.” There was worry in her eyes. I knew it was from the warehouse, that was why she had been so insistent on this. Every part of it was overkill, and that was the design. She’d felt the touch of death, this shell would stave it off. “I finished off the sapperbug while you were asleep.” she said, producing a small beetle made of wire, “Addie helped me, he insisted on the design”

I took it in my hands, “it’s cute. I can feel it”

“It’s a lot of magic, one of the most dense circuits we’ve made, but the base of it is the same as the business cards Sid has. You and I could clear it up after tomorrow.”

“No, I like it how it is. So it just sucks up text?”

“Essentially. It taps into the lingering memory associated with it, and copies it off that. It’ll hold as long as you keep it charged. Then when we get back I can find a way to take the information out.”

“Can’t I just take the information in?” I ran the bug across a loose page, then tapped it to my temple. The entire workings of my new bracer appeared in the part of my mind I'd set aside for foreign thoughts.

“For a page, maybe. But if they have everything in print it’ll be too much.” she put the sapperbug back on the table.

“Hm, okay. Get you anything?”

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking you that? I didn’t spend the last week in hell.” I winced. “Sorry. I know she meant a lot to you.”

“It’s okay. It’s what happens.”

“Even so. You need time to mourn.” She put down the bracer and picked up another piece.

“Is Addie okay? He seemed a bit shaken when I was talking to him.”

“Addie?” Katrine looked over to him, head lolled over the side of the sofa, “I think so.” She was silent for a moment, then said “but he was worried about you. Sid’s not usually reckless like this, I don’t think he likes it. He acts tough but he’s had a lot of people in his life die. I think he’s worried about you.”

“I don’t think it’s me he’s worried about.” She blushed slightly and started working on the piece.

“Oh I wouldn’t. Far too young for me.”

“Not like that, Katrine. I just think he cares about you. More than he does us.”

“Maybe. I suppose I see him as the son I never really had, in some way. Societal factors force transgender people to view each other like that, filling the roles of a nuclear family. Obvious reasons. That said if I had a son he’d be some uptight academic prick, like his mum.” She laughed, “God can you imagine me, a mother?” she leaned back in her chair, the piece long forgotten

“I think you’d make a decent mother.”

“I’d kill it before it moved on to solids. Maybe I could have been a father, but a mother?” She looked at me, and I got the distinct image of two people at the gallows. “If I ever could have been, that me is long gone. Now come on, get some rest. Big day tomorrow.”

I nodded at her and made my way to Jodie, fast asleep in a cot. I pushed her over to one side and got in with her, she looped her arm around me in her sleep. I pretended to be asleep for another hour before Katrine finally turned off the lights