"Three is a solid unit, five makes a band. Four is just weird." - Catherine Foundling

  I frowned from the ground, staring up at the woman who had, against all logic, sense, or reasoning, taken my team apart like we were children playing with our betters. I grit my teeth so hard I heard them scrape against each other. It wasn’t the pain in my back, or the wound in my pride that was causing it, but rather the sheer, utter frustration I was feeling radiate through my body with every beat of my accelerated heart. And she had fucking laughed and taunted me like it was so easy to do it.

  Marauder groaned, but I didn’t turn to look at him lurching to his knees. I didn’t look, directly, at Shift as she bashed into a table and grabbed the end of it, trying to center herself against whatever was making her go haywire. Prodigy… well I could hear her breathing a few feet away, hyperventilating. That boded ill.

  No, instead I stared directly into the eyes of the woman standing over me with a gun pointed at my head.

  Those eyes were a shade of purple that was more enigmatic than I’d ever seen… unnaturally glowing in the darkness of the Garage with hues of yellow staining them in waves that came and went. The color of her hair matched, black with streaks of Lilac. Striking. Almost moreso than the lifted eyebrow and grin I felt was splitting the difference between cocky and pleased. Like a cat that had caught a mouse in it’s trap. “I can see that aura of murder wafting off of you, not that you’re doing much to hide it,” she spoke in a slow, melodic sort of drawl that sounded equal parts tease and warning. “Take a break, Upgrade. I’m not here to murder anyone, or be killed for that matter.”

  “Funny way of showing it,” I bit out through a cough. “What did you do to them?” I asked.

  Almost like she’d been waiting for a cue, she spun the revolver around a finger and holstered it before holding up a hand and snapping it’s fingers. I don’t know how to explain it, but the second she did it was as if the tension snapped. The electrical wires that had descended and crossed in front of and behind Prodigy, keeping her from moving, all snapped and fell to the ground. As for Prodigy, she, too, exhaled deeply, and her senses sharpened visibly.

  “For you,” she spoke turning and holding up her hands in surrender, “I actually had to think pretty hard about how I’d get the jump on you. See, it’s a known quantity that you’re probably the most dangerous assassin in the world. Digging up information about the original FORGE-assassin-boogeyman was tough as all hell, but you’ll come to find I am the absolute nightmare of anyone who thinks they can hide information. Your implants,” she continued getting back on track as I let my breath slowly catch up to me, as well as let the calm, colder part of my mind try it’s best to come back into the fray, “are your greatest strength and weakness. I’m no technopath, or for that matter a technomancer. But what I am is scrappy, and proficient in hexcrafting. So I whipped up a little something that would throw you off your base. I don’t care who you are, anxiety makes everyone stumble, and when you have your suite of powers and abilities, it’s all the more dangerous.”

  “How shrewd,” Prodigy commented as the blade of her new toy erupted and illuminated the dark. “Interesting last words, however.”

  “Prodigy,” I coughed out, still suffering from my sudden upheaval. She eyed me fiercely. “Let her cook, she’s clearly got a reason for having done all this and not killed us. Least we can do is let her say her piece. On that subject, who the fuck are you?”

  She made a show of turning to face me once more and taking a dramatic, low bow. When she rose, she rested her hands atop her chest, which I didn’t allow to draw my eye.

  “My name is Violet, but that’s not the question you really wanted to ask me.”

  “What do you want, why did you do this, why are we still alive, what’s up with your eyes? Take your pick,” I grumbled out as she extended a hand and found she had to step back as Prodigy and Shift both flashed ahead of me. “Guys.”

  They stepped aside, and our assailant, Violet, took a few understanding steps backwards.

  “What the fuck did you inject me with?” Sileena snarled before she could answer me. “You’re making me reconsider whether or not I should start keeping knives on me for shit like this. Not fucking cool, man.”

  “It was harmless, in the long run.”

  “That’s not what she asked,” I said, finally fighting back to my feet.

  “It’s what she meant,” Violet responded a little more coy than I liked.

  “The fuck I didn’t,” Sileena spoke, but it was a little too defensive, too quick.

  “Sure. It was a cocktail they used to give you when they ran tests at Site-14, but a significantly less concentrated dose. You’re less tough to learn about than Prodigy, but the information was mostly mechanical and practical. Exhaust your energy and you’ll burn out and just fall over. Forcing you to use your power against your will by putting your adrenal glands into overproduction is a surefire way to make that happen. I mixed in some things to make you feel like you were drunk too. Seems like you regenerated fast enough that it lasted… exactly until now, but it got you out of the way.”

  “Lucky fucking me,” Sileena snapped once again.

  “Quite, I’d say, or else you’d be unconscious or dead.”

  “Okay, you gillipollas,” Marauder insulted, now on his side, aiming his pistol at her even though I knew he was far from fighting-fit. “Back to Jefe’s questions before my finger slips 3 pounds of pressure.”

  “It’s magic,” she said, glibly, “My eyes are the way they are because of old magic in my blood. Um, the rest of those questions can wait until I’m done explaining how I took you all down.”

  “1.5 pounds of force down…” he growled, and I shook my head at him.

  “You were less of a challenge still to learn about, Gabriel dos Santos. Your power isn’t so much of a thing to workaround as much as your style was. Once the plans start hitting the fans, you’re first to take advantage. It makes you predictable. You’ll go for a gun, throw a punch, hell throw a chair if it’ll get you the initiative.”

  “Yeah yeah, you got it first,” I tried to speed her along.

  “Not just that, actually. Limiting your options by attacking you in a place you wouldn’t want to just scorch the earth was important. Your only option was to be direct and take me out yourself as soon as you found me in the dark. But I can see in the dark, and you can’t. Also you’re slower than you think.”

  “See how fast you dodge a bullet, pendeja,” he challenged. For good measure, I sent a shutdown order to the prototype weapon, and he pretended not to notice.

  “And that leaves…” she trailed off, turning to look at me behind Prodigy, who hadn’t moved even as Shift fell back after I told them to cool it. “Upgrade. So much technology hiding around here. Cameras, proximity sensors, hell even the powergrid is localized so well that I had no way to intrude. Formidable defenses and early warning systems are great, but in this case you’ve got a glaring weakness.”

  I imagined for a second that she had something akin to my Umbra program, but I was sensing a stark lack of technology on her person, outside of a brand new phone with nothing but Youtube and the other generic apps on it.

  “You got me,” I conceded.

  “Magic. You don’t have a single answer to someone throwing even a basic cloaking spell over themselves.”

  “That shouldn’t even be possible,” I answered crossing my arms. “You can’t fool a motion sensor with a cloaking spell. You still have to walk, and displace space as you do.”

  “Unless I crafted a spell that let me predict the radius and blindspots in your system.”

  “There aren’t any,” Marauder said. “I made sure of it.”

  “There weren’t before I created one by casting the aforementioned cloaking spell over the southwestern-most set of motion detectors. If those are cloaked, then they aren’t reporting on anything because they don’t recognize anything as an intrusion while they’re hidden unless they are directly acknowledged.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I denied. “I’d have noticed if the system lost a whole suite of the defensive array I created.”

  “When was the last time you actively thought about them?” she asked tilted her head at me. She had me there. “You offload it’s running to your subconscious so deeply that you don’t even acknowledge it anymore. Sloppy sloppy. What’s worse is technopaths have a tendency to impart themselves into their work. It’s useful and dangerous to do so, even for a master.”

  “I might let him shoot you if you keep insinuating I’m an amateur,” I warned. I had a limit, sue me.

  “Sure, pardon me, the person responsible for your team’s undoing for deigning to report on how and why. Listen, even master warlocks, witches and wizards make similar mistakes. Your own mind is inside of your programs, in a way, because your signature is all over them. I tricked you directly, through your tech. It’s a weird overlap that only exists specifically because technopaths and to a degree technomancers,” she stopped and whispered “thats you but magical instead of biological,” fairly conspiratorially. “Anyway you all live in your tech, and that makes it easier to do magic that requires a solid connection to, well, you. From there, you were left for last to take down because, well, you’re just a dude.”

  Ouch.

  “Don’t get me wrong, you’re far from average in all the ways that matter. You’re smart, you’re ambitious, you’re pragmatic, you’ve got a nice body and even though you’re a bit scruffy, you’re definitely a heartbreaker, but at the end of the day you are imminently mortal. Word got out that Gaz tapped you twice and you almost died. Mostly by way of Gaz, so I wasn’t sure how much I could trust that but I just witnessed it. In real time. You are exceedingly easy to kill by yourself. You’ve made some strides in that regard, but without the other 3 on their feet and actively watching your back, working in concert with you, or providing a distraction you aren’t any more threatening than your average scrap packer to anyone that isn’t filled to the brim with technology.”

  I wanted to argue… but damn if she wasn’t right. Fuck me, she’d just proved it by throwing me off my game and putting me on my ass.

  “Now, what I’m here for is to illuminate all of that for you,” she said carefully, as we all shared disarmed looks.

  “You… you know you could have gotten this point across without attacking us,” Sileena incredulously responded.

  “No I couldn’t have,” she answered in a chirp, matter of factly.

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “Yeah, whatever benefit you stood to gain can’t have been worth it,” I said.

  She shrugged, and the techware outfit she wore shrugged with her. “Well, for one I wanted to see for myself just how dangerous all of you are. This was fun, right? I mean, honestly it’s not everyday you come this close to dying, and there's nothing like a near death experience to inspire you! But, seriously,” she spoke, and the facade she’d been wearing, the smile and coy glances from the half glowing eyes behind blue bangs coming down over her eyes in curls, disappeared. The mood shifted a bit. “I’m a diviner, by trade. It’s why I managed to get everything to be timed perfectly, how I knew today would be the best day to make my point. I read the cards, and they told me that you all wouldn’t be nearly as receptive to what I had in mind to offer you if you didn’t see how dire the need was first. I offered you a problem, and now I will offer you the solution.”

  I suddenly had a spike of pain in my head when she said diviner… information I didn’t have any idea I had suddenly becoming readily available like a memory I didn’t know I could remember. Diviner, a term used by the Hansel and Gretel division of the FORGE to describe a magical element, usually human, that dabbled in augury or oracle work. I had just… known that thanks to Kento. Information was still melding with my mind even after a week of migraines and cluster headaches as I sifted and sorted through my own mind to acclimate to everything… It wasn’t pleasant reconciling the information that was mine against someone else's. I waived it off as Prodigy watched me squeezing my temples.

  “Not another bruja who sees the future,” Marauder groaned. “Miles and Millie took months to get used to…”

  “Please ignore him and continue. You were finally making your way to a point,” Prodigy spoke with ice in her voice. I spared a glance, and recognized the bone-chilling aura of hate in her body language.

  “The problem is that you all are the absolute best at what you do, and you’re still in a very delicate state of being,” she began, “which is a shame because I’ve seen death in all of your futures… very near futures. You are the apex in your fields, and if you were to survive what is to come then you’d become exactly what you aspire to be. But you have to make it there first, and you are doing an awful job of staying alive. Or rather, you will be.” Her words had begun to echo with… power beyond simple speech, and I knew as well as Marauder that this was the sort of monologue you had to let rock. Her eyes glowed once more as she whipped her arms out to the side and 4 cards flew out of her sleeves, each one following as she brought her hands together in front of her chest, floating harmlessly around her with the faces of each card turned towards her. Their slow rotation entranced us, and we lowered weapons instinctively raised in self defense as an eerie light shined out from each card making shadows dance around the witch.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  She pointed, and the cards stopped, one in every cardinal direction around her. The one she’d specifically pointed out turned, it’s light now illuminating us. The tower turned upside down. “Kendrick Carter, the Tower Reversed. You are deep in the throes of transformation, and around you that transformation is forcing change beyond the materials with which you craft. Resistance and fear at becoming more than what you are will bury you. Embrace it, and allow the metamorphosis to take root. Do not resist.”

  At her behest, the card flung itself to me, and I snatched it without a thought to what I was doing. Sure enough, an upside down, crumbling skyscraper. I felt somewhat cheated that it wasn’t a literal tower, but the way the art depicted the fall seemed to show instead something rising. Somehow, the depiction of the shards of glass, chunks of rebar and assorted bits of it’s structure felt as if it were an ascension of platforms. My eye might have been tricking me… but I could almost see silhouettes of people on the cards if I didn’t focus on it too hard.

  I didn’t have long to focus on it before the shifting of the cards, the only light source present, drew my eyes again. This time, she addressed Marauder with the boom of her voice somehow more somber than commanding like it was for me.

  “Your path is ever winding, full of distractions and demanding your full focus. You will be tested, you will be strained to the maximum, and you will be dragged through the thickest and thorniest of bushes… but that is the life you have always chosen for yourself. Be certain, and be decisive when the time comes. Express control over what you can. When opportunity comes knocking, Gabriel Dos Santos… mount your Chariot and remain focused. When obstacles are put in front of you, remain strong of will or become another memory in La Luz Nocturna.” I flinched as she reached so deep into our… into his past as she threw a card I couldn’t quite see that he caught and stared at with furrowed brows.

  The reading for me had been crystal clear in a lot of ways. That I would be responsible for something of a tumult if I beheaded the FORGE was a given, but the rest of my reading had meant something to me in ways that I doubted the others understood beyond the basics. Gabriel’s, however, had been less obvious. He, however, looked a bit shaken… like a chord had been struck. “Como sabes ese nombre?” he breathed out and she shook her head.

  “He asked how you know the name of the bar, Violet,” I translated as he examined the card.

  “Hyobin Park,” she cut through, pointing past me as another card I notably didn’t get to see flew past me to her waiting hand. “You know of balance. Yin and Yang are one facet. Mind, body and spirit are another. The mystic and the mental, the hand and the fist. Yours is a delicate one, and as you toe the tightrope be wary that you don’t allow wrath and ruin to overshadow nature and nurture, for only in Temperance is balance not fraudulent.”

  Never once did Hyobin even look away from her card, wearing a mask of indifference that didn’t fully reach those sharp, hawk’s eyes of hers. Her read was shorter by comparison, and while she wasn’t in a mental tailspin like Marauder, neither did she seem unmoved.

  The final card we all saw. A woman in front of the moon, only a silhouette, but she was still clearly visible. Clouds marred the otherwise shimmering lunar body around her, and two dots showed mischievous eyes above half a smile. “Sileena McArthur. Secrets kept are weapons wasted, but not every weapon needs firing. Yours is a past that will nip your heels, as mysterious and strong in it’s pull as the Moon. You know not the depths to which the truth and understanding has been stolen from you. When you finally reach that truth, it is up to you to decide if and when you will reveal it. That decision may cost you dearly. Lucky for you, my divination has your end placed further out than the rest of your group. Or, perhaps it is in the past.”

  I blinked, and the card, along with that exceedingly cryptic reading, were gone, already in Sileenas hand.

  “As for me,” she spoke holding up a single card, pulled from her shirt, “The cards see me as the Fool not because I am foolish, but because I am the beginning of this team finally coming together. And unless you do, I don’t foresee a long life in my future either,” she spoke honestly, depicting a woman with a stick over her shoulder and her valuables tied within it at the beginning of a long, twisted path into a beautifully drawn horizon. “You need something to round you all out, to cover for what you don’t know and bolster what you do. You need someone who dabbles in the practice, but also someone who sees what you all do not. Most of all…” she smiled, the glow leaving her eyes, “You need a fifth bandmate. Four is an ugly number in more than one culture for a reason. I don’t expect to be liked after my introduction, not at first. I don’t mind that. But I have a vested interest in seeing you all live, and to help you all reach the end of your paths. A mutual enemy.”

  She held up another card, this one not of a tarot deck but rather one that very clearly said FORGE in gold. “Suffice it to say I owe them a black eye, at the very least, for what happened to my coven.”

  I rose an eyebrow, and Marauder, who had come to stand beside me while we were entranced by the show, looked me up and down. He waved his hands like he was clearing the air before cutting through the silence in the most animated way possible. “Okay, I’m playing my ‘everyone listen to the crazy guy for once’ card. Roommate meeting NOW!” he said, and Violet blinked a few times, genuinely not having expected that. Which was funny, since she’d seen this whole thing coming in her words.

  “Guess you can’t see everything. Also, turn my damn lights back on,” I said as we walked away to speak outside of her earshot.

  “Oh, I just flipped the safety breaker before I attacked,” she said with a smile, and I fought against my nature to not flip her off. While she walked, under Prodigy’s gaze, to turn the lights back on, I sighed, looking at my card.

  The lights showed the fatigue we’d still been fighting off even after a week of low activity. The fear at how easy it had been had us shook. “Alright, so that was… a lot. Where’s your head at, Gabe?” He snorted.

  “Fuck man, la bruja had us dead to rights. She’s got a point about us, at the least, needing to up the ante even more. Those toys we made are dope, and good work but…. Mmm. No se, pana. It’s a risk both ways.”

  I looked to Prodigy, still staring at Violet, who had sat down on an empty conveyor line and was shuffling what I presumed to be the rest of her deck idly. From there, I had no choice but to also stare, and when Violet looked up from the deck to us with something of a knowing, but blank smile… I could feel the decision coalescing. “Alright, look I’m leaning towards giving you a shot despite the… rancorous nature of your application, but I got a few more questions.”

  “Shoot, I’m only here to help,” she cheesed at me.

  “Yeah okay, first thing, why now?” I asked her. “Somehow you’re well read on all of us, and it is a bit suspicious.”

  “Frankly, your little group wouldn’t have been my first choice had it not been for your activities last week, but that’s got the whole hive abuzz,” she admitted. “I don’t think any of you are aware just how much buzz is buzzing, though.”

  “Halogen put a bounty up basically the day we got the damn thing,” Sileena spoke, notably cooled down enough to be cordial.

  “Yeah, and then she put an even heavier toll on you all. And she’s turned hunting you down into a race. First to bring you, or that pretty head of yours, to her is getting an even, untaxable fifty million, AND a spot for themself and their group in her crew. Her personal crew. Like, a seat at the table with the head honcho.” The way her smile had started to fade and her brow furrowed despite herself told me, at the least, that she wasn’t kidding here.

  “Well damn,” I breathed out with a chuckle. “Looks like the plan worked.”

  “A little too well. Upgrade, you’ve got people flying to the states from literally all over the globe. And, what’s worse, I couldn’t actually find you until the last day before the bounty goes active.”

  “Wait so people are already coming at us?” Gabe said with a startle. “Badass, but also fucked up.”

  “Luckily,” she cut back in holding up a finger, “I can cloak us for a few more days against any sort of magical locators or trackers. After that, it starts to get… risky.”

  “Okay, that’s good to know because I’ve got a few more ideas bouncing around in my head I wanted to work on, and the pressure might make it go from rough drafts to prototypes ahead of schedule, assuming we let you join us.”

  “Yeah, big fuckin if there, but I wanna ask something too,” Marauder spoke up, already gathering broken pieces of work from the ground with a furrowed brow. “All of us have personal stakes in bringing down the FORGE. Que pasa con ustedes? You only barely mentioned the whole coven thing, but I wanna know more. It’s kind of the whole reason Jefe linked us all together like this, and I don’t know if I can trust someone without a dog in the hunt that matches. None of us joined up cause we asked.” I’d almost always trust his intuition in situations like this almost more than my own. More than that, though, he was right.

  She hopped off the table, eyes sharpening again as she approached a few steps closer. “Trust me when I tell you, I got nothing but hate in my heart for them,” she began. “I had 5 sisters once, all of us part of a coven. Without giving away all of my secrets, I don’t know whether I still have 5 sisters, and whether or not I’ll ever get an answer. It’s been a long time of dry readings and oracle work coming up with nothing. I won’t stop going after the FORGE until I know, and I won’t say anything else until the trust level has increased between us all. I’m willing to make concessions, but just let me hold this one thing close to the chest.”

  I weighed the options, but turned away again and this time we huddled up.

  “Alright this is new territory and since we don’t have a formal system… all for?” I asked.

  They were quiet but marauder grunted before he nodded. Prodigy looked over my shoulder at her, and I saw through a camera that she was sitting again, head in her hands as she waited.

  “I’ll vote for only because I don’t want an element like that outside of arms reach.”

  “I say no, but it looks like I’m outvoted anyway.”

  “Not how it’s gonna work. It’s all or nothing. This whole team thing won’t work if one of you legitimately doesn’t trust the other.”

  “Okay, but now I feel like an asshole. I don’t think I can trust her after she did all that to make a point. I don’t care if she can see the future or whatever I’m not a lab rat to just pump stuff into and play around with. I mean are you all for real?”

  “Valid points,” I conceded. “I know you’ve had some awful experiences with scientists and I won’t deny that she definitely crossed a few lines.”

  “Is that a but I see coming in the near future?” She prodded bitterly.

  “However,” I started with a smirk that got her to snicker despite herself, “The fact remains that she could have killed us and didn’t. Yeah, she crossed a line, but technically speaking I have and would have done worse to make a point.”

  “Yeah but you’re you, jefe,” she pleaded looking from me to Gabriel, who was looking at her with earnest sympathy.

  “And I don’t want to say I exactly trust her but I understand her methods. The underlying truth here is that Prodigy is right. She can’t be trusted not to just turn on us if we turn her away either. Better the devil you know.”

  “You even called her the devil,” she grumbled.

  “If you aren’t convinced, we will say no.”

  “No, wait. I’m… what would you say… amenable. On the condition that we are super double careful not to get the wool pulled over our eyes.”

  “Believe me, she even blinks wrong and I’ll pluck off her eyelids myself,” Prodigy assured her and I paled a bit remembered the time she put a knife in my eye.

  “Alright. So, we’re in accord.” I stood up straight and turned towards Violet, beckoning her to approach.

  I held out a hand and she came within arm’s reach, letting me really scan her face with both eyes for anything. A twitch, a tell, a sign that I shouldn’t. She took it, and I felt like weight fell as we held each other’s gaze a few seconds longer than was strictly necessary. When I let her go, she looked around and cleared her throat.

  “So, do I get a codename?”

  “Asshole,” Sileena said.

  “Cool it,” I told her. “She’s one of us now, at least for the moment. Let’s try to get along.”

  “Yeah, well, she just kicked my ass, so forgive me if I’m a little bitter,” Sileena admitted deciding to let her embarrassment be a bit more visible, which was enough for all of us to crack and lower our hackles. It was just as well we didn’t end up getting taken advantage the second our guards were downa gain. Violet giggled a bit, and offered an olive branch.

  “There is no way those specific tricks would work under any other circumstances, if it makes you feel better. Sort of like the stars had to align.”

  “Lucky for us, you can force the stars to align in our favor now, huh?” I added sitting down on a stool that had survived the action without falling over and crossing my arms. “How about Astrologer?” I asked.

  “See, this is why the only one of us you gave a name to is your fucking self,” Gabriel groaned rolling his eyes. “Give me a hand, we don’t got a lot of time to finish all of this work according to La bruja.” As I ignored him, I rubbed my chin, scrutinizing Violet, who was trying not to shrink under the gaze now that she didn’t have to defend herself and keep up an appearance. Prodigy, notably, seemed to have deferred to my decision, and was no longer on guard. Well, as much as she was EVER not on guard.

  “Spellslinger,” I tried. Violet made a gagging noise, pointing at the back of her throat. “Doesn’t roll off the tongue, true...”

  “Just terrible,” Shift cut in, but then she snapped her fingers. “Wait, it’s so easy! Your codename should be Omen.”

  I bit my bottom lip because I wanted to object, mostly due to the fact that I hadn’t come up with it. Hyobin looked over her shoulder at me, walking towards the couch. “She, as usual, is better at this than you ever will be, Kendrick.”

  “Okay, is everyone done bullying the guy in charge of keeping you all alive?” I asked, a teeny bit hurt that I was being betrayed.

  “Um… actually that’s my job now?” Violet spoke following Hyo to the couches where all of this had started with an invite to a dinner party. “Where do you all sleep around here anyway?”

  “Kendrick sleeps in a hammock over all the projects he’s working on,” Sileena spoke blurring into her spot. “Come here let’s be devious and talk shit about the boss some more while he’s too busy to argue.” It was forced, but she was trying not to let her presence throw her off her natural balance.

  “Thank you so dearly for continuing to make fun of me while I plan out all the technological upgrades keeping us up and running.”

  “That’s partly me,” Gabe spoke, cutting even deeper from across the floor.

  “Fine, I quit.”

  “Oh, in that case, I know a few technopaths we can reach out to…” Violet tossed up, and I immediately regretted my decisions.

  We’d won a victory over the Forge, we’d undermined one of their top dogs, we’d made, apparently, some very powerful enemies, we’d learned that we were fated to die unless we trusted a total stranger, and made a new friend of said stranger.

  All and all, not bad. As I reviewed recent events, Gabriel, passing me a soldering iron and a broken drone, flicked up an eyebrow, which I recognized as his way of asking if I wanted to talk about what had me spacing out.

  “No es nada, amigo. Just thinking things have been moving pretty fast lately. If we’re gonna keep up, you know what time it is.”

  He smirked, and shook his head because he knew what was coming, following my eyes to some drones I’d been waiting on an excuse to do something with.

  “Si jefe. I know.”

  “It’s time to upgrade.”