Meanwhile, when was Charlie plotting...

  Pearl was sitting on a sofa.

  On a stupid, lumpy piece of trash that should’ve been thrown out a decade ago, in an apartment nobody sane would rent.

  Only paranoid people.

  And right now? She had plenty of that.

  With the kind of people going after them, paranoia wasn’t just justified; it was survival. Still, the thought gnawed at her: this wasn’t even her hideout. The stale air, the broken fixtures, the faint scent of mildew clinging to the walls… thanks to Charlie’s head of security.

  She slumped back into the cushions, the faint softness long since dead, leaving only the feeling of sagging wood and tired stuffing. Her thigh brushed the frayed edge of a blanket someone had left draped across the armrest. It smelled of dust, as did everything here.

  “We should go tomorrow,” she said suddenly, staring up at the low ceiling as if an answer might be carved into the peeling paint.

  Lucas, hunched over a holo-screen, looked up from one of the little hacking puzzles she’d thrown at him, a baby exercise, and he was still failing. He spun around on the chair, his brow furrowed. “Is it safe?”

  “I don’t care anymore.” She glanced toward what was supposed to be a window. Instead, it was just plywood nailed over a warped frame, jagged seams letting in the faintest draft of night air. Nobody should be living here. Not even them. “Let’s scout her place.”

  “Pearl…” Lucas gave her that look, the one that said he’d try to talk her out of this, even if they both knew it wouldn’t work. He looked so cute when flustered like that.

  “Serious,” she said, springing forward before he could respond. In one quick movement, she scooted onto his lap, her weight sinking into him as she adjusted herself with an unhurried wiggle.

  The second she settled, she felt him go rigid beneath her and couldn’t help the little smile that tugged at her lips. “Gimme the coordinates the brunette sent,” she whispered, leaning close enough that her breath brushed his ear. Watching his ears go pink was more satisfying than any answer.

  “Her name is Lola,” he muttered, fumbling with his holo-phone like it might slip out of his hands if he looked at her too long.

  “Oh, you learned her name? Hmmm.” She tilted her head. “Why’d you struggle so much with mine, then?”

  “Because you’re Pearl!” Lucas blurted, nearly dropping the holo-phone for real this time. He groaned, hiding his face in his hands. “Dammit, you did that on purpose.”

  “I like to tease you, yes,” Pearl said, rising from Lucas’s lap in one fluid hop.

  Her stockings brushed against the cold concrete as she padded back to her own chair, a creaky thing that probably belonged in a dump, much like the rest of this apartment.

  She plopped into it with a little bounce, grabbing the edge of the cracked desk and spinning herself half a circle before pulling the ancient computer closer. It wasn’t much, the fans loud enough to sound like a dying drone, but it hummed beneath her palms as it powered on.

  A decade old, maybe more. She smiled faintly at the thought. She once hacked Minisoft HQ with a makeshift rig that used a chip from a smart frying pan. Nothing was impossible.

  “But for real, we need to check the place,” she added, letting her fingers dance across the keyboard.

  “You realize there will be people?” Lucas finally found the message on his holo-screen and flicked it to her.

  Pearl stuck the edge of a pencil between her teeth, chewing absently, the familiar wood-and-graphite taste grounding her. She always did that when her nerves crept up. “We don’t need to see the people,” she said, words muffled around the pencil. “They… should have some free rooms?”

  Lucas groaned, slumping back in his chair. “Not again. We’re here for a reason!” His voice cracked, frustration bleeding through. “It’s because of me, and… You suffer here…”

  Not this again. Spiraling wasn’t an option.

  She sent him a shaking-head meme through his holo-screen, forcing it to auto-pop right in front of his face, the tiny chibi avatar she’d made of herself wagging a finger in disapproval. Lucas breathed out, but smiled. “Pearl…”

  “No, Pearl,” she said with a wink, leaning back into her seat like this was a game she’d already won. “Do I need to wear that e-girl retro makeup again?”

  His head snapped toward her almost comically fast. “W-what?!”

  “You thought I usually wear that? For you, the one you like the best.”

  His face drained of color. “You were going through my browser history.” He said it like a final verdict, accusatory and resigned all at once.

  Pearl giggled, spinning another lazy circle in her chair, the fishnet weaving over her thighs catching the glow from Lucas’s holo-screen. “Nope. But who do you think put those viruses on those sites?”

  “Should’ve known,” he muttered, and glanced down, at her fishnet stockings, then back up. She felt the weight of his look, the way his eyes lingered a half-second too long. She ran her hand down her thigh, slowly, as if brushing away invisible dust, but her heart was hammering.

  That glint in his gaze sent her pulse spiking. “Is this…? I like…” he started.

  “I do have my old-school style,” she interrupted, giggling again, softer this time. “It just happens to match your preferences.”

  She let him stew in that while she turned back to the holo-screen, its soft glow reflecting in her eyes like neon in a rain puddle. “No wearing make-up. Usually.”

  She still had her backdoor into the city’s records, the one she’d found months ago. They’d asked her to help patch others when she pointed it out. So she did their work, let them watch the super finals, and in return, they gave her their credentials, because… They were underpaid?

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  “Strange,” she murmured, chewing the pencil again as strings of data scrolled past. “There’s nothing. They either forgot to register it with the officials…”

  She paused, waiting for Lucas to finish her thought. Silence. She turned her head, catching him staring at his screen instead, the flush creeping up his neck. “Already know it,” she said flatly. “You don’t even log in. Auto-clear your history.”

  “Doesn’t matter, you somehow—”

  “Stop and answer.” She pointed the pencil at him like an accusation. “Why would Charlie’s building not be in the official blueprint database?”

  “That is not unusual. Maybe they… forgot? Paid not to?” Lucas said, distracted, like he was still chewing on the thought.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Pearl replied, waving her hand dismissively as if she could physically brush away his overthinking. “Let’s look at the public cameras…”

  Her fingers flicked across the holo-interface, scrolling through the feeds around the building. Bright neon-blue windows of security footage hovered in front of her, glitching faintly from the overloaded connection.

  No cameras near the building.

  Pearl blinked, leaning closer as if proximity might make new feeds magically appear. Her breath fogged a tiny spot on the holo-glass as she squinted, ruining the image.

  That… wasn’t right.

  The fascists always watched. They’d slap cameras in your shower if the PR made sense, and they already did with the capsules. The fact that this entire block had a dead zone?

  Her stomach knotted.

  “Weird…” she muttered under her breath, tasting graphite as she instinctively shoved the chewed-down pencil edge back between her teeth.

  But she wasn’t about to be defeated by some dead feed.

  She rolled her shoulders and cracked her knuckles before sending a quick ping over her private network, her customized interface casting soft pink and teal glows across her face. She felt the comforting hum of connections lighting up like synapses firing.

  Several closed networks pinged back near the building. Private. But one of them was close enough to piggyback.

  “Bingo,” she grinned, the word slipping out unbidden as she zeroed in on the best signal. A bank ATM, tucked right at the corner of the block. Older model.

  Perfect.

  Hacking it was almost too ez, as if robbing a vault in plain sight. They were still running v12.1. She didn’t even need to burn a zero-day exploit. Just ran one of the old bypass scripts her friend had written.

  If only they knew what she was using it for.

  Pearl’s grin faltered a little. She shared that code with her so she could “hack the government,” and here she was using it to spy on Lucas’s… what was this version of Charlie even? Ex? Friend?

  “Damn,” she muttered, chewing harder on the pencil until the wood creaked. “Yeah, that’s weird.”

  The ATM feed flickered to life and immediately disappointed her.

  The camera was pointed in the opposite direction, giving her nothing but the dull gray sweep of a graffiti-stained wall and the occasional shadow of passing pedestrians.

  “Screw it!” she snapped, biting down until the pencil snapped clean in two. She tossed the pieces into the trash, the already-overflowing bin stuffed with takeout containers and crumpled energy drink cans. “Have a drone close…”

  She scrolled through her registry of “official” drones, the only ones she’d bothered to keep clean and government-compliant. One was idling four miles away at a public drone-pad, batteries full and waiting for orders.

  She plotted a course and immediately got hit with a glaring red error notification.

  “No-fly zone?” she whispered, feeling her pulse skip. A mile and a half of restricted airspace, with Charlie’s building right in the center.

  “This couldn’t be her…” she breathed.

  Pearl felt a thrill crawl up her spine. Whoever did this wasn’t some bored city official or an over-funded landlord. This was deliberate, intentional and smart.

  She grinned. “Whoever did this wasn’t half bad. They did all they could. But… you still have the building there, right?”

  She flew the drone closer and just zoomed in. The drone had one of the better Zeiss optics, and the building filled the screen.

  It wasn’t just a building.

  It looked like the kind of place a comic book villain would monologue from, or maybe a luxury spa they would rest at.

  Her heart thumped as she mashed the feed closer to Lucas’s face, practically smothering him with the glowing holo-screen. “That building is ridiculous!” she declared, words tumbling out with giddy disbelief. “Your ex is a villainess!”

  “She’s not,” Lucas muttered, massaging the bridge of his nose like he could rub away the holo-screen hit. He glanced at the building on the screen, eyes narrowing. “Yes, it looks weird, but she bought the building. The previous owner must’ve built it that way.”

  “Oh!” Pearl’s eyes lit up, pupils darting between the readouts on her holo-screen and the structure itself. Her lips pulled into a grin so wide it almost hurt her cheeks. “She bought it off a villain! Even better, ha!” She kicked her feet against the chair’s legs, a little bounce of excitement. “Tomorrow we tighten the security, and she needs to let me park a few drones there!”

  “Calm down, calm down…” Lucas stepped in, catching her lightly by the arms before she could spin herself into another plan. His fingers were warm through the thin fabric of her hoodie sleeves. “So we are going there? Are you sure?”

  Pearl twisted slightly in his grip, scanning the miserable excuse for an apartment like it had insulted her.

  Her gaze lingered on the so-called bedroom, just a hollow space with a creaky frame and a blanket that was older than her. “I want a bed that has a mattress,” she complained, her voice pitching high enough that it even surprised her. She slapped her palms against his chest for emphasis.

  “Okay. Tomorrow,” Lucas said with the tone of someone surrendering to a force of nature. To her, which made her giddy. “Now we need to go. We promised Lucy we’d be there in half an hour.”

  Pearl groaned dramatically, letting her whole body go limp as she crashed against him, burying her face into the side of his neck. His scent was faintly of sweat mixed with the synthetic tang from the cleaner. “I don’t wanna go to the basement,” she whined, words muffled against his skin. “Can we skip it?”

  “You insisted on keeping the capsules there. We could have had them here,” Lucas replied, pressing a quick kiss into her hair. His lips brushed the spot just above her ear, sending a small shiver down her spine.

  She clung tighter, curling her fingers into his jacket and pressing a quick kiss against his cheek in return. “The government has a backdoor and camera there.”

  “Sure…” Lucas sighed, the sound of someone who knew better than to keep pushing. “Let’s go?”

  Pearl glanced back at the image of the building on the screen. Its hard lines and windows stared back at her like a dare. She bit her lip, excitement and nerves churning together in her chest, then finally nodded.

  Lucy squinted through the spyglass, one eye closed so tight it wrinkled the skin beneath.

  “Did they move?” She barked, her voice dropping into that gravelly, exaggerated pirate growl she’d been perfecting all week.

  “No,” her first mate answered. A tall woman with a pretty decent pirate accent, she stood beside the mast, hand shading her eyes as she stared toward the horizon. “The ships haven’t changed their course in the last hour. Still blockading us.”

  Lucy huffed dramatically, snapping the spyglass shut with a flourish. She adjusted her “awesome pirate-adjacent” hat, a ridiculous thing with one floppy side that kept catching in the sea breeze and smacking her cheek.

  Still, it made her feel the part. She squinted toward the distant shapes bobbing on the horizon. “Blast it all! I can’t spy no blasted flags! This be as useless as a bilge rat in a sword fight!” she barked, chucking the spyglass into her inventory.

  “Oi! Ask ‘round the fleet if any of ye can spy what in the seven seas be goin’ on out yonder!” she roared, throwing her arm wide at the crew “But…” She paused, tapping her chin with a finger. “It mayhaps don’t matter much, eh?”

  “Why, Captain?” piped up one of the Tramar mages, a skinny youngster whose robes were too clean to have ever seen proper plundering.

  Lucy grinned, showing her teeth. Perfect opening.

  “Easy!” she cackled, throwing back her head with a laugh as if she drank rum all day. “It doesn’t matter who they be! They be standing between us and Charlie!”

  She stomped one booted foot on the deck, grinning as a few nearby players jumped like startled deckhands. “When the lot o’ ye be loggin’ in…” She spun on her heel, planting her fists on her hips. “We be ramm’n the leadin’ ship an’ forcin’ our way through the blockade!”

  She raised her hand in the air.

  "Yarrr!” Her crew groaned in unison. Which only made her laugh harder.