Lili is in a world that is far too bright yet far too dull. Her vision stretches beyond the horizons, but there's nothing to see. An infinite plane of existence and she has it all to herself, no strings attached.
And then the globe appears before her, in all its shining terror. The snow inside is still swirling as if someone's shaken it recently.
She grits her teeth. Lili doesn't waste a single moment as she asks, "Did you disable the radar?"
It doesn't answer, and Lili is pretty sure it can't because it's a globe. Instead, it motions to her body.
Watch out. It’s warning her.
She looks down at herself. There's something bitter, something dark and solid inside her core. It's so angry Lili thinks it might burst. That she'll burst along with it.
It swirls around her. She's completely swallowed herself in a cocoon of smoke and burnt wood. And for some reason, she feels like she's right at home.
And then the globe appears before her, in all its shining terror. The snow inside is still swirling as if someone's shaken it recently.
She grits her teeth. Lili doesn't waste a single moment as she asks, "Did you disable the radar?"
It doesn't answer, and Lili is pretty sure it can't because it's a globe. Instead, it motions to her body.
Watch out. It’s warning her.
She looks down at herself. There's something bitter, something dark and solid inside her core. It's so angry Lili thinks it might burst. That she'll burst along with it.
It swirls around her. She's completely swallowed herself in a cocoon of smoke and burnt wood. And for some reason, she feels like she's right at home.
—
Avett feels like he's just been forcibly taken and fed to the dogs. It’s difficult for him to recall exactly what had happened to him in the engine room during that encounter. He remembers fumbling with the engine for a bit, but it’s like he’s trying to reach for his memories through a gauzy curtain.
He opens his eyes and sees the bottom railing of the bed above his.
“I’m Avett Ironsturm,” he tests, “and my worst subject was literature.”
…So he’s able to recall entry-level characteristics about himself, which means that he passes the sure-fire memory loss examination, which means he’s just confused from passing out.
He lies there, spending the minutes organising his thoughts. He remembers seeing a vague blur of a globe when they reached that clearing in the mall, remembers the absolutely overwhelming chill of power that had radiated through his bones the moment Lilith laid her eyes on it. Or at least, that’s what he’s assuming happened. Then he remembers being carried to the infirmary, being subject to Auren’s strange Gallian medical procedures… and being thrown off the bed and onto the floor just a few minutes after.
He shoots right up. The headache he gets from doing so is intense. He remembers seeing an outstretched tendril in the tiny cabin window above him, a Butterfly Matriarch. Judging from how the ship isn’t moving at all anymore, they must’ve gotten out of that sticky situation a long time ago.
Good. He takes a few deep breaths before swinging his legs over the side of the bed and making his way into the navigation room.
It’s empty. He swings the fridge door open, brings the closest thing resembling a volume of water to his lips, and starts chugging. Half and half milk. It’s better than the ship’s tap water, so it’s not all bad. He’s just grateful that it hadn’t been beer.
Where is everyone? is his second thought. When he looks outside, he sees the dull surroundings of a sanctuary’s hangars. They’re likely on the upper levels of the Hive. No wonder they left him behind. The third spire is meant to be a haven for off-landers, but the Humans in the two other spires stage enough coups against the third to overthrow a small realm. It’s a wonder how the IRC still considers the Hive a functioning, legitimate sanctuary.
Or maybe he’s just exaggerating their exploits for the sake of demonising Humans again. It can’t be that bad. Then again, the IRC doesn’t have the best track record when it comes to foreign relations—
As he walks down the corridor, he notices that the doors to the armoury are closed. He raises an eyebrow, tucks his bottle of milk under his armpit, and is just about to hit the green button on the side when he stops himself. If he remembers correctly, this is where Lilith sleeps. And considering that the time currently reads 11:38 AM, she shouldn’t be asleep right now. But she is.
Eh, fuck it. They’re not crewmates until she’s had her privacy trounced on like grass in a paddock. No, bad mindset to be in. He knocks anyway.
“You may enter, Avett,” Auren replies from the other side.
… Ok, he’s definitely interrupting something here. Catch-up lessons or something. And he means that in the most literal, least filthy sense because Auren and Lilith have to be two of the biggest buzzkills he’s ever had the displeasure of meeting. When he opens the door, he’s greeted with Auren’s nimble figure, seated right next to Lilith’s unconscious body.
Something sinks in his stomach. He’s missing parts of his memory, and he doesn’t like that one bit. “...What happened here?” he asks. “She’s alright, right?”
“Avett.” Auren folds his hands and crosses them in front of his mouth. He’s letting his hair hang from his head freely, and from the way each strand is just tingling with sunlight, he’s been manipulating ether. “Were you aware that casters could transform their bodies into living, ethereal batteries?”
He drops the bottle of milk. His arms have gone completely slack. He remembers how her wings had unfurled, how she had turned around and told him just how much easier it would be if he still hated her. Whatever that meant.
Then he realises that he’s supposed to say something, so he says, “Oh, fuck. She did that.”
“Yes. She very much did.” Auren turns his head back towards Lilith. “Do you remember what happened after?”
Everything else after is a blank. He must have passed out after answering her question.
He shakes his head. Auren rubs his face.
“That would make two of us,” he answers.
“You don’t know either?”
He shakes his head as well. “However, I can make educated assumptions. When I realised we were moving faster than the Butterfly Matriarch, I assumed you had remedied our fuel problem. My abilities were no longer needed, so I re-entered through the back entrance. I did not expect to see you, Avett, lying unconscious on the floor—and Lili, doing your job, in your stead.”
Avett doesn’t like the way he emphasised those two ‘yours.’ “She did not fix the engine. Far from it.”
“I do believe that you have not checked the engine room since you awoke.”
“I don’t have to be a caster to know that overloading the entire engine with the stench of Human ether is going to completely fuck the—”
He presses his lips together when he catches Auren’s cold-kissed glare. Ugh, what the hell. How does he even have this much power over him? He’s had more experience on the field as a mercenary, fine, but on this ship, he should be far from his superior. That’s Ysh’vanna’s job.
“Anyhow, I requested for repairs earlier. Consider it an extremely retroactive congratulatory gift.” He's still staring at Lilith like she’s some sort of angel. Like she shouldn’t even be alive. Avett is pretty sure she should’ve died.
Then Auren asks, in that saccharine-sweet tone of his, “May I return to my hypothetical now, darling?”
Avett fights off the urge to instantly scrunch up his eyes and turn up his upper lip. “You may, honey.”
The Gallian caster leans forward in his seat, clearly satisfied with his answer. “I would imagine that the load required for Lili to power the ship far exceeded her pool of personal ether. It would have—should have drained her resources instantaneously.” His eyes move to the pair of wings that have been propped against the table. Avett has to do a double-take when he sees them. Each wing is still fully outspread, as if frozen mid-spell, but the crystalline feathers—no, there are no feathers. They’ve all been shattered.
Avett’s glad that he hasn’t bothered to pick up his milk because he probably would have dropped it again.
“A frightful sight, I am aware.” Auren doesn’t bother looking back towards Lili this time. “At first, it puzzled me. How did a Human manage to channel enough ether to power a ship fully? Then I realised why she was continuing to hold onto the box despite being unconscious. The ship was, very likely, forcibly siphoning ether through her body.”
A large amount of foreign ether, introduced into her circulation—not a fun experience. Her wings certainly hadn't been able to take the load, and they had shattered early.
“She should be dead. There is a reason why only trained Gallians are permitted to use ether pens.” Something flickers in Auren’s eyes. A dark, morbid curiosity. “But she is merely resting.”
Merely resting. Avett grinds his teeth together. Lucky bitch. Maybe now’s the best time to bring it up. That he’d been a sitting, waiting duck every time the relic had graced them with its presence, and that he'd love to have some form of self-defence against such an unseen force.
But then he sees the way Auren truly regards Lilith’s unconscious body. Not like an angel—no, that would imply a certain level of respect. Auren is looking at Lilith like she’s a child who’s just figured out quantum theory for the first time. She's a butterfly that's been trapped inside a glass jar, and he's her gentle, giant overseer.
Avett looks away. He’s definitely interrupted something between them.
"I should leave." Avett turns back towards the doors. Auren doesn't even offer a farewell glance. He only continues to stare, his eyes flickering with the occasional glint of ether and curiosity.
Casters are intense.
—
When Avett manages to get out of the armoury and into the safety of the navigation room, he slips his GlassLink out of his pocket and checks if he's gotten any new notifications or if his father is finally seeing someone again. He's immediately greeted with a smorgasbord of messages on the lock screen of his phone, so it's probably the former.
"But she is merely resting." Try as he might, Auren's words won't leave his mind for even a second. It's hard to see Lilith as anything more than Human, let alone as a caster capable of straining against her ethereal boundaries like it's child's play. The fact that she can perform feats only a Gallian—a race of biologically powerful outliers that really shouldn’t be categorised under the all-encompassing term of B class mammalian—is capable of… scares him. She doesn’t have the mental fortitude for that sort of power.
And then maybe she does. He remembers the way she’d slammed him against the wall and told him, in no uncertain terms, exactly how she felt about the bitchfit he’d thrown at her in that old shipwreck. The new backbone looks good on her, but she still needs to grow into it, he thinks.
He slots in two slices of bread into the toaster and dusts off his fingers before he checks into the Ironsturm group chat. It’ll do him no good to dwell on someone as incredibly dysfunctional as Lilith. She might start rubbing off on him.
He sniffs and rubs his nose with the back of his hand. Despite his previous statement about who messages the most, it’s Aoife’s whose texts are flooding the top of his screen right now. They’re in response to his father’s incessant nagging about getting the milk from the back instead of from the front, because now the milk that they’ve gotten is going to spoil in a week, and they can’t finish an entire litre of milk in a week because Aoife is the only one who drinks it.
Terrible. Anyway, his toast’s popped out of the toaster, so he grabs that and pretty much shoves it into his mouth. He’s been knocked out often, more than he’d like to admit, and it always leaves him with an insatiable appetite and a craving for carbohydrates.
“Morning, Avett.” Ysh’vanna’s voice twinkles in after the doors slide open. Her hands are full of groceries, all contained in those flimsy paper bags that the Hive supermarkets like to use.
The bread’s absorbed all of the moisture in his mouth, so he just waves back.
“Sleep well?” She doesn’t do much to hide her grin as she drops the bags onto the table.
Avett briefly considers flipping off his captain before he swallows his uncomfortably large wad of bread. “Like a rock.”
“Good to hear. How’s Auren? Lili?”
Suddenly, busying himself with unpacking the groceries seems like a great idea. “They’re fine. Disgusting, Auren’s heavily infatuated with her like he’s a schoolgirl falling in love for the first time—but they’re fine.”
Ysh’vanna coughs. “Eldraks don’t care about that kinda stuff.”
Shame settles at the pit of his stomach before it flares up into something he doesn’t really want to put a name to quite yet. “Sure didn’t look like it.”
She bites her lip. Opens her mouth to say something, then shakes her head. “How are you, by the way? For real, this time.”
“It was relic recovery. The only thing that could’ve killed me was Lilith.”
She’s putting away jars of pickles in the fridge now. “Lili came back with a stab wound, our comms got cut off, and you’ve been looking shaken ever since you got back.”
Avett doesn’t mean to, but his hands freeze midway through the first paper bag. “Getting knocked out does that to you. Are you an empath now?”
“Can’t I worry about my frontliners, like, at least a little?”
“Go ahead. There’s nothing to worry about.”
His captain straightens herself out again. There’s something in her eyes, and it’s not just the way the light’s hitting them. “Nothing, but you’re angry. What really happened out there, Avett?”
He narrows his eyes and dumps the rest of the bag’s contents into the cupboard underneath the sink. “I’m always angry. Why don’t you pester Lilith about it instead? She might actually like the attention.”
“I’m asking you as your friend, not as your captain—”
Nope. He’s already sauntering out of the navigation room, leaving Ysh’vanna alone with her groceries—and his second slice of toast to cool on the dining table. It’s a miracle how he’s still employed by her. Maybe she doesn’t have a choice. But he’s heavily violating protocol here, and it certainly hasn’t been the first time he’s done something like this. Ysh’vanna must be at one hell of a dead-end to tolerate him at this level of disrespect.
He shouldn’t be pushing her like this. But he’s perfectly content with the fact that only Lilith is aware of his dirty little secret, and he’d like for it to stay that way, weirdly enough.
—
“Lili, I must admit, I am still quite curious about how you managed to draw an excess of ether to the point of…”
Auren’s eyes shift off to the side. He’s eyeing the shattered wings. It’s only been a hot minute since Lili’s woken from her slumber, and she’s felt like she’s been mixed around in a blender on the highest setting ever since. It’s not entirely his fault, but he’s bombarded her post-unconscious state with enough questions that she’s not entirely sure that he’s innocent anymore. She feels numb, and in dire need of a few extra hours of sleep.
“I just did what I had to do,” she answers simply.
The answer doesn’t impress Auren at all. He asks again, this time slower. Lili just gives the same reason. What else should she do? It's not like she's got an answer for him because she's just as confused as him, if not more.
Not that the memory of what had happened to her before blacking out has faded away into obscurity quite yet. She still remembers how the bright shock of pain had scattered throughout her entire body when the fuel tank decided that her best was not enough. It had felt like being crushed between two beds of microscopically-thin needles.
"Foreign ether knows no owner. I could only imagine the torment that was imposed on you."
She raises her head again. "I'm guessing I wasn't supposed to do that."
Auren doesn't respond, because he's already asked the same 'how?' question so many times that even he's starting to feel exhausted. He’s an endless vat of curiosity, and there’s nothing she can do to sate him.
He changes his method of attack. "Lili, perhaps we could both benefit from an afternoon stroll in the Hives. We could have you fitted with a new pair of wings. Perhaps a newer model might suit your needs.”
So she wholeheartedly agrees, because if there’s one thing she absolutely despises, it’s wasting away in Avett’s shadow. The bitter sting of shame from their first encounter isn’t as bad anymore, but it still plays and skirts along the corners of her mind, a mosquito she can’t quite stamp out.
Lili’s not sure what she’s expecting when they arrive in the Hive’s main shopping district, but it sure isn’t a square full of off-landers… and not a single Human in sight, which might actually be a good thing. Then she catches herself and straightens out her back. She can’t let Avett rub off on her like this, especially when it’s her own people that he’s referring to when he’s on one of his maddening rants about how dangerous the Hive’s third spire is to off-landers.
Even then, there’s a slight inkling of doubt in her head that’s telling her that somehow, these Hive Humans aren’t the same as the ones she’s been well-acquainted with before the fall of Earth. It’s in the way the Hive’s main square feels more industrialised than the Afflatus’ snug network of living spaces. Pipes are exposed, walkways are devoid of any natural plantation, and above each stall’s entrance is a thin string for slamming down iron shutters at a moment’s notice.
Lili bites the inside of her cheeks and breaks out into a gentle jog to keep up with Auren’s long stride. All of a sudden, her caster’s uniform feels like it could be iron-inforced armour, proof of her allegiance to the off-landers and not… them. “Did we ever find out why the radar stopped working mid-flight?”
“I did make sure to question the repairmen before they headed off for lunch.” His expression furrows; Lili’s stomach drops like a weight in response. “They found no abnormalities. I even examined the machinery myself, though the internal functions were incredibly delicate, so I was not able to draw any conclusions without promptly ripping the entire apparatus in half.”
She eyes his stubby fingers. To say that she’s wracked with guilt is an understatement. “There were two relics,” she mumbles.
Auren doesn’t answer at first. “And we only returned one,” he finishes.
It’s all downhill from there. She explains how they’d first assumed that the snow globe was the relic the IRC had requested, how it had trapped them in a neverending version of the mall she knew and loved all those years ago. How she’d thought it was after Avett when in truth it was after her all along, and now it’s somehow following her, influencing the world around her for the worse. She doesn’t tell him about how she’d seen Avett’s gruesome past. She especially doesn’t tell him about the smouldering, burning thing that the globe had shown inside herself. What the globe had been truly after.
When she finishes, they’re already standing in front of the shop’s entrance. The interior is a deep blue, a stark contrast to the world of porcelain-white tiles they’d been subjected to while walking over.
“It seems that you have made a new friend, Lili,” Auren responds.
Her reply is curt and serious. “I have reason to believe that it’s what caused our radar to stop working.”
The inside of the store smells like an office—stale, with freshly printed papers, and a hint of laundry paste that’s wafted from the workers' primly-kept suits. Crystalline ornaments line the walls like she’s in an antique store, and as always: no Humans. She should probably stop looking for them at this point.
“What would you like to do about it?” Auren asks. The shopkeepers give him a puzzled glance as they stroll past a glass case containing what seems to be incredibly expensive wings.
“Preferably get rid of it.”
Auren stops in front of a particular line of wings. These are noticeably less sophisticated than the one Lili had seen in the glass case. The ‘crystals’ aren’t multi-faceted gems that have been shaped into teardrops but are instead flattened, glassy plates. They fan out from the middle, and they look more like upside-down maple leaves than actual wings; a far stretch from the ones she had before.
She turns to Auren. “I can handle bigger wings.”
“Bigger is not better.”
It’s hard to stop herself from scanning the store. The section that they’re in only makes up a tiny fraction of the establishment; the rest of the walls are covered in real wings, wings that drip heavily with gemstones and still manage to look elegant rather than gaudy. “What’s wrong with those ones?” she asks.
“A frontline caster’s needs are vastly different from those of a backline caster’s.” He detaches the wings in front of him from the wall and holds it out from the straps. “You do not have the luxury of going bigger over functionality.”
She presses her lips together. Then she takes off her cape and sides her arms through the straps. The feathers of the wings tinkle against each other as they fall back into a resting position.
Oh, god, she can hear the hushed snickers from behind the counter already. Dread drips through her, and for a moment, she feels just as heavy as the other wings in the store. At least she has her license on hand today.
If Auren had heard them, he makes no indication of it. “Channel your power. See if they fit you.”
She shuts her eyes and braces herself against the walls with both arms. She imagines dipping her hands into the pools of ether around her, lowering her head underneath that deep, neverending, silent abyss—
With a gasp, she snaps her eyes open. It’s cold. Chilly. The absence of power in her veins feels just as oppressive as the abundance of it.
“Lili?” Auren moves to block the shopkeepers from her view.
Her eyes slam shut again. This can’t be happening to her. She needs something simple. Something to prove these off-landers wrong, that she’s not just some deadbeat Human who lucked out and managed to score a side job as a leecher aboard a mercenary ship.
And yet, no matter how hard she tries, all she can manage right now is to teeter at the edge of the void, like she’s looking at the Mariana Trench through a glass-bottom boat.
Her hands fall back from the wall. Confusion makes her furrow her eyebrows; anger makes her grind her teeth together.
“Lili.” Auren bends over to meet her gaze. “Is something the matter?”
“Everything’s fine. These wings are great.” She slides them off her back and folds them right back up before offering Auren a tender smile. “I’ll take these. And we’ll meet outside, is that ok?”
She hands off the wings to Auren and leaves the store as quickly as she had entered it. Waiting for him, the ever-capable caster and Gallian, to finish up his payments and take her back to the ship.
—
The moment she’s back in the ship, she’s facing her distraught self in the form of a glassy reflection with the bathroom door shut firmly behind her. Her knuckles—white. Her face—as white as her bronze skin will allow it. The abyss had not merely gazed back. It had engulfed her, bones and all like she was nothing. In the state that she is now, she might as well be nothing.
“Close your eyes, Lili.” Her voice breaks. She goes through all of her emotional triggers for ether: happiness, joy, euphoria, pride—and when that doesn’t work, she turns to anger. Raw, boiling, guttural rage. And when that doesn’t work, she drives her fist into the wall below the mirror.
The plaster doesn’t crack. Her hand draws back bloodied.
She stares at it, her lungs heaving. It’s all dripping over her hands, staining her pants, pooling onto the floor. Her affinity is hers—her ether is hers. It should come naturally to her, as simple as manipulating a muscle, as shaking out a knot in her leg. That’s what Auren told her. So why isn’t it holding?
A whimper comes out of her mouth as she clenches her hand and runs it underneath the tap. All of this, and she still needs to tell Auren about the relic, except he doesn’t seem to care. She wonders briefly if it’s just the relic’s presence that’s been throwing her off, but the occasional flashing memory of the ethereal abyss serves to correct her.
Useless. She’s useless. An effigy of her former self, constructed from straw bundles and yesterday’s newspapers.
“Aaand here you are.”
Lili stretches her face in incredulity. Of all the people—
Avett closes the distance between them in two, easy strides. His eyes fall onto her hand, then onto her face.
“Impromptu training,” she says.
“Like hell it is.” In seconds, he’s got her by the wrist in an iron-firm grip as he leads her toward the counter that’s underneath the medicine cabinet. It’s scary how strong he is when she doesn’t have her affinity to cover her weaknesses. When she tries to shake him off, all she succeeds in doing is mildly inconveniencing him.
So she doesn’t fight back. “Thanks,” she mumbles.
His nose crumples, just slightly. Then he answers, “You’re a handful, you know that?”
She winces. And it’s not just because Avett is shoving a ball of alcohol-soaked cotton into her open wounds. If only he knew the gravity of the situation. No, bad idea. She doesn’t want that.
“So what brought this one on, Lilith? Haven’t seen you this angry since…” He makes a revolving motion with his other hand. “You know.”
His seemingly innocuous question throws her off guard. She opens her mouth, shuts it again, then reopens it like she’s a fish gasping for air. Avett is the last person she should be saying anything to.
“Nothing,” she says.
“You know, that just so happens to be the exact same thing—word for word—that I told Ysh’vanna when she wanted to know about our little relic encounter. I know you’ve tons to say—especially after that little stunt you pulled with our engines.” He’s wrapping the bandage around her hand again. She’s always injuring herself, and he’s always there, standing at the ready to mop up her shit.
“It’s nothing,” she says again.
Even after he’s done with the bandages, he’s still holding onto her hand. “Nothing,” he says, meeting her eyes, “is the word people go to when they’ve got plenty to say, but can’t find the resolve to just spit it out.”
“That’s crazy, because I’ve actually got nothing.”
He lets her go. And thank god he does, because she swears that she’s never going to get used to this genuine intimacy thing. She’s gotten hugs from Ava, though those had only served to make her uncomfortably vulnerable. Her mother and father were two entirely different matters altogether. Hugs had been currency with them, given to her when she aced a test or acted in line with their ever-increasing demands.
She likes to think that she’d received one from Avett as a reward for listening to him, but as the tender minutes roll by, she’s not so sure about that anymore.
Finally, he leans back onto his hands. “I spilled my guts out to you in that ship. Wouldn’t mind if you did the same to me.”
“Yeah, well.” She stands back up, her focus trained onto the multiple reflections of herself on the bathroom tiling. “I’ll mind.”
Hurt flashes over his eyes.
A muscle in her heart twists painfully. She's been drafting her farewell speech for the possibility of when Auren finds out that she’s dead weight and outs her current predicament to Ysh’vanna, whereupon they’ll drop her off at one of the Hive’s other, less cordial spires, but at the end of the day it’s not like she’s actually ready to hand in her license and uniform. At the very least, by keeping it all to herself, she’ll be able to stay on board for longer. Long enough to hopefully regain her composure and her abilities. She’s staying pessimistically hopeful.
Thankfully, Avett changes the subject. “You heard about our next mission yet?”
She shakes her head.
“You’ll like this one.” He’s grinning up a storm, his prior vulnerabilities having now dissolved into gentle mischief, which just fills Lili with optimism. “We get to go after a B rank.”
Shit.
She covers her mouth with the back of her hand and coughs. “What kind?”
“B5. Would you look at that. An Equaliser.” He flips through his GlassLink and shows her an image of something that looks like it should really belong in a compendium of supernatural occurrences. It carries itself around from underneath a gossamer mist that falls over its hunched, four-legged body like a cloak, and its head is a long tube that protrudes out of one end like a misplaced straw. But the thing that truly arrests Lili’s attention is its eyes—staring directly at her, so keenly that she swears she can almost make out her own stupefied face in those animalistic, glassy beads. Lili’s not even entirely sure if the photographer’s even alive anymore.
Avett pulls the phone back. “Scared of ghosts?”
She clenches her fists. She must’ve looked a little too shaken by the dragon’s appearance. “Hardly. It looks like what you’d get when you ask a kid to draw a giraffe.”
He freezes, blinks—then laughs. “Stars, that’s aptly put. Wish it just stayed in that kid’s head. Environmental workers around the area reported multiple headaches, then vivid nightmares, then their ethereal equipment just stopped working. They left before the hallucinations started hitting them, and for good reason too; I hear they hurt like a bitch.”
A weak aura. Still an aura nonetheless. The image of the blood splatter on the wall is still fresh in her mind, fresh even to make her cringe inwardly. She can’t possibly comprehend how Avett feels about this. “So we’ll just be… walking in? Going insane?”
He shrugs. “Yeah, pretty much.”
A choke catches in her throat. “That’s—”
“I’m not worried.” His hands ball into fists as he leans against the wall of the bathroom. “It took a week for the workers to even register that something was up, and by then all their equipment had crapped out on them. We won’t even be in the area for any longer than three days, and maybe we’ll even finish the job in an afternoon.”
For the first time that day, she willingly meets his eyes.
“What?” He shrugs again. “I’m just not worried. There’s risk, and then there’s perceived risk. If we play our cards right, if we do our job as mercenaries, we’ll be fine.”
Then he stretches out his hand in front of her, his palm outstretched. A handshake. Presumably to ease her nerves.
Lili is silent at first. His flippant attitude is very easy for her to subscribe to, even with her current circumstances. Avett is incredibly capable on the field, even while working on his lonesome. In fact, he prefers it. Maybe her loss was predestined.
For a moment, she thinks about telling him. But then she locks it away behind all of those endless walls and bars and padlocks. He’ll be able to handle himself out there. He never needed her anyway.
She takes his hand in hers and squeezes it with all the strength she can muster. “Our job as mercenaries,” she repeats.