Sol LAHQ. Saturn Department.

  “Do you have your pick for the Miami job?” Louis asked. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy and there were more lines in his forehead than normal, owing to either tiredness or dehydration. His shoulders were rounded and his shoes had scuffs on them. Strike one.

  Grace tapped her fingers on her desk. “It should be in your inbox. It probably got buried.”

  “Right.” The movement of his eyes was all wrong. He glanced around the room as if he were running down a to-do list in his head on loop and was worried he’d forget something. Grace had seen him busy. She’d seen him overtaxed just shy of the breaking point, like the last time Mackenzie had gone into Everything. Even then, he didn’t look like this. He was avoiding her gaze. He was uncomfortable. Strike two.

  “It says to send Daniella,” she told him, watching, waiting. “She’s free in Philly and could do this in her sleep.”

  “Thank you,” he nodded and turned to go. Whenever Louis found himself in her office and in over his head, no matter how pressed he was for time, he’d pause, hang his head, and take a few breaths. He knew her office was one place he could go and not worry about anyone taking a lapse in his game face as a weakness. He took three steps toward her door without slowing. Strike three.

  “Louis,” she snapped. “Get back here.”

  He halted, thankfully. She wasn’t in the mood to chase him. He came back in and faced her.

  Grace stood. “What’s going on?”

  He shut his eyes instead of looking at her. “I’m just busy, that's all.”

  “Louis.”

  He pulled out the chair in front of her desk with more force than it warranted and sat. “You know better than to press for information above your station.”

  She stayed standing and looked down at him. “You know better than to pretend what’s going on is business as usual or just a matter of clearance. Something is going on. You’re not right. Mackenzie’s not right. You’re working something off the books.”

  Louis was extremely good at what he did. He could have denied it without a hint of a lie, the same as she could have. Instead, he lowered his eyes. “Grace.” It was a tired, pleading sound.

  She sat. “I want to help you.”

  “I know. This isn’t my call.” Louis’ pained expression was a comfort. He wanted her to.

  Doing her best to ignore the twisting in her gut, Grace held her head up. “Does she not trust me?”

  “Of course she trusts you. I’m not even inside.”

  Grace pressed her lips together. In her mind, Mackenzie trusted Louis implicitly and assumed she shared most everything with him. Afterall, he semi-annually held the title of Saturn, with all its connected clearance, so there was no need to split hairs there. But now she wasn’t, with whatever this was—or she was, only inasmuch as to make life hell for Louis. Whatever this was, it was deep and it was serious.

  “I’m here,” she told him.

  He nodded. “I know. Thank you.” He left, face drawn and blank.

  Dropping her head back to rest on her chair, Grace sighed. The knot in her stomach ached, but the best way to help at that point was to ignore them. She pictured that knot dissolving into nothing, the way she would remove things from her mind after a mission, or the times after she had returned to being Third after spending a couple months with a Second’s level of clearance. It raised goosebumps on her arms. She didn’t feel lighter or better, but she could work without it weighing on her mind, so she did.

  ---

  Sanctuary. ?ód?, Poland.

  Reeve started to numb to it after almost two days. Two miserable days. His throat was raw and he was sweating like he was back in Beatty. The room tilted and sloshed when he moved, so he did as little of that as possible.

  The door opened slowly. Alyosha had far too many things in his hands to carry safely. He was balancing a liter bottle of water, a glass, more vodka, a small plastic bucket, and a plate of toast. He gave Reeve a weak smile. He thought he looked horrible.

  “How are you doing?” Shvedov asked. It was hard to hear his voice over the telepathic din that was plugging up all his senses, but that familiar tone was there.

  “As horrible as I look.”

  Alyosha clicked his tongue. “You’re reading me.” He carefully set everything down on the floor and opened the vodka. “You shouldn’t be able to do that.”

  Reeve didn’t respond, only took the glass he was handed and tipped it back. He sputtered. There was more in the cup than he expected. More was the last thing he wanted right now. There was great competition for the first thing he wanted right now. A backup liver was in the running.

  “Anything yet?”

  Reeve laughed. It was a long wheezing sound. Alyosha offered him the toast. “Sorry,” he said, not taking the plate but looking up at him. “There’s a lot of everything right now.” He saw Shvedov in layers. Normally his telepathy and the rest of him were aligned, like having half of a sentence on one pane of glass and the other half on another—when you looked through them both at once, there was no delay or hitch. Now they had split.

  At the top was the swirling color of the brightest currents—the ones that were either familiar enough or intense enough to stand out for him to (sometimes) translate them. Beneath that was the visual input of Alyosha. High creased forehead, ears that jutted out, and eyes that were small but kind. Behind him, bleeding through him, was the deep roil. An advancing, churning wave constantly surging closer to him with so many shades stacked on top of each other that they became a color his mouth couldn’t contain. Reeve wasn’t and had never been religious, but the deep wave was hard to look at. Every sense in his body screamed at him to avert his eyes, like it was a holy thing that shouldn’t be looked upon, or couldn’t be looked upon without losing something he wasn’t ready to give away.

  “Any change then?”

  Reeve resignedly took a bite of toast. It tasted like the crush of color in his head and throat. He chewed it aggressively, as if that could possibly help. “It’s easier to hold,” he admitted. “Not as all-encompassing.”

  “That is good, right?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  He nodded and pushed the toast away. The floor dipped and squeezed his eyes shut. Nothing felt right. The bed felt like a cliff’s edge. “You should get away from here.”

  “You should sleep.”

  “No, that’s—” Reeve rolled, face down, letting his nose smash into the damp pillow. “You should go someplace safe.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  He turned. “I do?”

  “Yes,” Alyosha sat on the bed. Reeve tipped with the sinking mattress and swallowed. “And other stupid things like that, about protecting me. But you can’t remember, so maybe consider that you’re not in the best frame of mind right now.”

  Reeve made a quiet groaning sound into the pillow. He’d lost the thread of Alyosha’s thoughts. It all felt wrong.

  Shvedov gave him a pat and left his hand on Reeve’s clammy back. “You know I love you, but you are really pathetic right now.”

  Reeve grunted again. The world spun and he fell asleep.

  When he woke up, disoriented and cotton-mouthed, Reeve could hear Alyosha and Allison talking quietly in the room. Allison noticed right away that he was awake, that familiar and unfamiliar lightning-fast awareness of being around telepaths.

  “Good morning,” she smiled.

  “Morning,” he muttered, turning and realizing he was only in his boxers. He tugged the blanket to cover himself where he’d kicked off the sheet. He was too warm for it, but he didn’t have Hannah’s philosophy about clothing.

  Her face was flat, but her eyebrows were high. “Alyosha says it’s getting better.”

  Reeve worked his lips. His tongue felt like a strip of dryer lint and his stomach was burning in his chest. “Alyosha made me drink more.” It came out more slurred than he liked.

  “Of course he did. That’s why I like him more than you.”

  He tried sitting up but stopped, sick and weak. He stared at the two of them. The input of his telepathy was still– no swirling, no flowing. An imposing blank wall.

  Motion sickness hit him hard and fast. He lunged for the bucket and heaved up a caustic, bitter liquid. After spending his whole life with a sense of motion in the core of him, stillness made it feel like he was in freefall. Alyosha helped lever him back onto the bed, one hand on the floor supporting himself.

  “I don’t want this,” he choked out.

  “Are we there?” Allison asked, leaning down. He tried shutting his eyes but it didn’t help the vertigo.

  He raised his voice as much as his raw throat could rasp. “This has to stop.”

  Shvedov was looking panicked but Allison was completely unperturbed.

  “Calm down, now. It’ll stop. Just memorize how this feels.”

  “Memorize?” Reeve’s voice was a squawking cough of a sound. “I’ve been blackout drunk for days.”

  “You’ll remember it. Let’s leave him alone to sober up, then I’ll take care of the rest.”

  Reeve spun. His eyes were burning hot and he knew if he blinked there could be tears, so he didn’t. He held them open, letting the pain sear deeper and deeper, trying to pin his awareness to the sensation, like he was rotating on an axis. His whole face felt heated now and he pressed his face to his sheets with keen embarrassment.

  “I will stay for a little while,” Alyosha told her quietly.

  “Are you sure?” she asked. There was something different in her voice, a tone he couldn’t place.

  “Yes.”

  Reeve heard the click of the door and didn’t look up. It felt like he was rapidly flipping end over end, moving forward, passing through the mattress like a ghost. Something cold and wet touched his face and he flinched sharply. It forced his eyes closed, which only made the burning worse. Shvedov caught at his hand and held it.

  “Hey.” His voice was quiet and tired. The cold was back and after a few breaths, Reeve could tell it was a wet cloth Shvedov was dabbing on his forehead. His pulse was pounding in his temples.

  “Why didn’t she want you to stay here?” he asked. His voice sounded odd to himself, but his nose was stuffy and pressed into the pillow.

  “It’s nothing. Will you quit worrying about me for ten minutes?”

  Reeve sighed. “No.” He tried to laugh, but it turned into a cough and then a gag. Shvedov gathered up his hair for him.

  ---

  Sol LAHQ. Uranus Department.

  “How can something so cute smell so bad?”

  Marek slowed down at the sound of Emmett’s voice coming from the Uranus Pet Program office. He stuck his head in to see Emmett with his fingers between the the bars of a temporary kennel, scratching the chin of a shaggy little brown dog.

  “You smell like the LA river,” Emmett cooed. “Yes, you do.”

  “New one?” Marek asked from the doorway. It was late, but the Pet Program office was never silent with the shifting of dogs, cats, and small rodents (at Marek’s insistence) in their pens. They tried to keep most pets with a foster until they found a home, but there were always a couple who lived at the office.

  “Yeah, she’s in rough shape, but a sweetie.”

  Marek went over to take a peek into the kennel and smiled at the little dog’s wagging tail. “I thought you were clocking out early?”

  He shook his head, mouth going a little thin. “Evening plans got canceled.”

  “Do I need to beat someone up?” he offered with a smile.

  Emmett rolled his eyes. “Please, you may be the one who’s been in the field, but we both know if one of us is going to kill someone these days, it’s me.”

  Marek laughed. It might be true. Marek had certainly lost his taste for physical conflict. “I take it from the good humor that Penn had a work thing?”

  He nodded, heavy with frustration. “There’s always some crisis in Cleanup.”

  “Did you see my latest Baguette Update?” he asked, hoping to get a smile out of him. He was proud of this one. He’d posed Baguette with a little doll-sized coffee mug and labeled it ‘Beverage Tuesday.’ If nothing else, Marek could really commit to a bit.

  Emmett’s smile was more wicked than anything. “Did you see my email about that info I need for the quarterly report?”

  Marek coughed. “Hey,” he changed the subject to what he’d been looking to ask Emmett in the first place, “have you been having trouble with your email lately?”

  Emmett brushed his dog-fur-covered hand on his jeans. “Sure, it’s email. You have to be more specific.”

  Fair. “A couple of times now, I’ve seen a message come in late at night, like two, three in the morning and I read it and think, ‘That seems off, but I’m in bed so I’ll deal with that in the morning,’ but when I come in, it’s not there.” He knew how silly it sounded but that was never the type of thing to hold Marek back.

  “What sort of off?”

  “Reports for missions I don’t recognize. Conduct reports that disappear.”

  He frowned. “Did you talk to IT?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And?”

  “And now I’m asking you."

  He lowered his brow. “Vanishing emails from three in the morning as you're falling asleep? I think you dreamed ‘em.”

  Marek sighed. “That’s what IT said.”

  Emmett crossed his arms. “What the hell are you doing looking at work emails at three in the morning when you get in here at like five?”

  “I always do one final check if someone decides not to stay the night," he admitted. “Just in case I’m needed.” He left off that he'd also do a final check while a partner was using his bathroom if they did stay over. Some departments would write off Uranus as being low stakes, but Marek didn't see it that way and neither did Emmett.

  Emmett shook his head at him with a smile. "God help the people who manage all the relationship declaration paperwork you produce."

  Shrugging, he tried to play it off like the subject of the emails was put to rest. He should have known better.

  Emmett’s forehead became lined as he regarded him. "This is really bothering you."

  Empaths. Empaths plus a friend he'd known for over a decade.

  "Yeah. It is. I don't think I'm dreaming it."

  He nodded, thinking harder. "Take a screenshot next time. So you'll have something to bring to IT."

  It was a simple, obvious idea, and one he should have thought of. Now he just had to remember to do it when he was, admittedly, half-asleep.

  "Hey."

  They both turned. Penn was in the doorway, in full gear.

  "The worst is taken care of so I delegated the rest. Still want to get dinner?"

  "I'd love that, thank you," Marek jumped in with a grin.

  Emmett glared at him, then smiled at Penn. "Sure."

  "Alright," he said, pointedly ignoring Marek, "Let me shower and change real quick and I'll meet you at your place."

  Emmett looked down at his fur-cover clothes. "Yeah, me too."

  "I'm ready now," Marek teased.

  Penn rolled his eyes. "Goodnight, Marek,"

  "Goodnight, Pennadict Arnold."

  Penn paused as he was leaving, his face pinched. He stopped to give Marek a true scowl then walked off.

  “Wow,” Marek muttered when he was gone. “He really did not like that one, huh?”

  Emmett’s expression was slightly off. “Yeah, that hit a nerve.”

  He frowned. “He’s not normally so touchy.”

  Emmett worked to brush off his pants the best he could. “Well, isn’t Benedict Arnold’s claim to fame treason?”

  “Fine, I’ll stick to calling him Pennitentiary or whatever.”

  He raised his eyebrows at him. “And you wonder why he’s not your biggest fan.”

  “No, I don’t.” Marek clapped him on the back. “Go. Date, you crazy kids.”

  “Get some sleep,” Emmett replied and headed out.

  He probably was just tired, Marek told himself. He’d been really burning the candle at both ends and relying on coffee to get him through, which was probably why he felt a headache coming on. He’d probably just imagined it. Marek let out a breath and headed for home, alone tonight, to get some rest. And stop checking his email in the middle of the night.

  ***