Flux: Chapters 20-25 (Patreon)

20: Roen

Abandonment isn’t the absence of people. It's the inverse. The overwhelming presence of silence.

The kind that clings to you like damp cloth, seeping into the cracks of your skin. It’s the aftertaste of words never spoken, the ghost of a touch that never quite lands. People think being left behind happens all at once — a door slamming shut and then footsteps fading into the distance. But no. The worst kind of abandonment happens in inches, in glances that don’t meet, in conversations that never start. It's the slow, steady erosion of not being seen, until one day you’re just a shadow cast by someone else’s life.

And it gets so, so much worse when you become whole for just a single minute. Because it reminds you what you've never had. What you never will have again. So hurt, bruised — you flee back into the familiar shadows. And the slow death marches on.

In some ways, Roen didn't mind the lesson. It had been painful, but probably necessary. If he didn't extend a hand, he wouldn't feel the absence when no one reached back. He understood this in the same way a stray dog understood a kicked rib — instinctively, without needing to be taught thrice.

Stupid, to think now, that he ever worried about what other people thought of him. How he spoke and how he acted. He had been so desperate for affection that he imagined strangers sitting in a café or students in a lecture hall regard him as if he were some kind of exhibit to be scrutinized. He’d spent years obsessing over the stutters of his tongue, about the way his body moved under the command of their attention.

The reality was that they didn't think anything about him at all.

That was fine. That was good. Just a shadow on the sidewalk. And life moved on.

The rain beat a steady pattern on his umbrella as Roen hurried across the intersection, his backpack bouncing lightly with each step. He slid around the crowd coming the opposite way and, with a squint through the stormy midday haze, turned down the corner with the full-body adboards rolling their movie reels.

His bag was on the heavier side today. He'd taken a detour to a tech shop and loaded up on some extra materials for his home project. There were a few things they didn't offer in the net catalogue, and it's not like he couldn't spare the time or the space. Plus, he wanted to buy something legitimately to quell the guilt that still lingered from a few days ago.

Stealing the ifrit ashes from the lab had been laughably easy. The physical act of it always had been; just open the shelves, palm one or two more baggies that you need, and slip them inside a bag when nobody is looking. Hell, he even pocketed a vial of ectoplasm when an undergrad had asked him to stash it away and he couldn't be bothered to cross all the way across the lab with his hands full of glassware.

Nobody saw and nobody cared. Nobody ever cared. Only him. And he was exhausted.

The rain hadn't let up throughout the week, either. There must've been a fall raging past Sirrej's city walls or something, because the sky was a flat, uniform gray with no discernible clouds or shapes in sight. Even the ringlet lights of the Mega-Nexus above the city were muted when the civilians craned their necks and caught some errant raindrops in the eyes for their trouble. Don't look up, and everything would be just fine.

Roen slowed when the familiar neon lining of the café came into sight.

The glow that spilled out onto the wet pavement wasn't too strong during the day, but he could see that a small section by his usual spot had been refurbished since his last visit. More overhead LED bars lining the giant window, a new ice machine further in.

He stopped at the entrance. The bar was barely visible through the crowd, with some of the tables having been pushed together, people gathered around a cake. Sparkler candles burst and lit faces up, and even through the rain he could hear the muffled exclamations.

It wasn't the first time that Vinny's hosted a birthday party. Zoe was usually too busy to pester him with so many guests and children about, and the atmosphere solely revolving around the lucky boy or girl meant that he could simply just disappear in his corner, even more so than usual. That, plus free drinks. It was a popular time to be a customer.

Roen watched the scene for a moment longer, hand resting on the push bar.

He let it slide off and continued down the street.

The bells chimed at his back, and the noise of celebrations overwhelmed the rain for a moment as it streamed through the open door, then faded again.

"Roen!" her voice called out.

He didn't stop.

Boots splashed in water, slipped, then splashed again with a side of buzzing wings before she caught up with him, skidding to a stop in front of him.

Flux did not look good.

For someone who usually wore a fashion statement on her sleeves, she now looked as if she'd grabbed her wardrobe right from the laundry basket. A shapeless sweatshirt that hadn't seen an iron in a century, crumpled and a size too big for her, and the type of baggy pants your granddad might loiter around the garden with. She didn't have shoes on, only a pair of knitted socks. Mismatched, too.

But more stark was her face.

The usual blue tint in her hair had faded to a suggestion, a dirty off-color from the uniform white that seemed more stain than deliberate design choice, her locks slicked down from the rain and flat against her forehead. There was a gauntness hiding beneath her skin now, as if she hadn't eaten a bite for a week straight. The only color that seemed to remain on the pixie was the red around her sunken eyes.

Those same eyes that were drinking him in as they stood facing one another.

"Um. Hi," she said. Rain trickled down her chin.

Roen adjusted his grip on the umbrella and tried to step around her.

"Wait, no please!" she shifted with him, stepping to the side. "Please don't go."

Roen could've pushed through the blockade, probably. Since she was clearly undercover and likely didn't have legal authority to detain him, he didn't have to stay there.

But he wasn't afraid anymore. Not of her, and not of speaking. He just felt so tired. He didn't see the point of exerting any particular effort at this point. So he remained standing there. Staring at her — staring through her.

Flux licked her lips. They trembled anyway. "I… I'd like to apologize to you, Roen. For not being honest with you about who I was, and about... about how long I've been aware of you." Raindrops gathered at the tip of her eyelashes and fell to her cheeks. "Years, Roen. I first saw you in Vinny's two years ago, and… It was so unhealthy and wrong and I didn't care because I just wanted to see you, and it grew into an obsession and I was afraid it'd scare you away if you knew. I, I didn't want you to think less of me, and… so I… I lied."

"It's okay," Roen said. His voice sounded dead to his ears. "Many people let their jobs consume their lives."

He didn't blame her for it. He blamed himself for falling so easily.

"No, no no no! Roen, you were never work for me!" she said, words rushing over each other. "I only joined NullCorp a few months ago — way after I knew about you or the trouble you were involved with. And I don't even — I'm not a handler or an enforcer, just a computer specialist for some net scraping. That's it. That's all it is."

Roen just shook his head, but Flux continued, ignoring the hair in her eyes and the rain that was soaking her to the bone.

"I spied on you and followed you to see where you lived and where you, where you worked — but only once! I realized how fucked that was, and, and then I only watched you in Vinny's. Which is still fucked, but, but Roen, I had no ulterior motives other than my need for you."

"Why?" Roen asked. None of what she was saying made any sense. He genuinely did not understand what could've been so interesting about him. A painting on the wall was more animated than his own pathetic self.

"Because you're wonderful. That's why. Because the first time Zoe approached the table adjacent to yours, and the guy with his goblin girlfriend couldn't pay for their order, you quietly went up to the bar and slipped a few bills over to the tender — and never said a word to anyone about it. Even though it scared you. Even though your eyes were down and it was clearly hard."

Though red rimmed, rain flowing down and maybe tears, too — Flux's eyes shone as she spoke. "Because you're dedicated and smart and hard working. The way you draw — my god, to be the paper worshiped by your hands. The world is just one Roen-shaped hole when you're not around creating, tinkering, making it a richer place. You do it for the love of the craft, not because you want to impress anyone. That quiet, humble boy who makes everything around him better. And I… I want to do the same for you. Because you deserve someone to make you better, too."

The pattering rain, the distant chatter of people and rushing cars were muted for a minute. They took a step back for the pretty fantasy Flux had painted in his mind. He smiled at it, inside. It was a beautiful dream. But Roen was used to dreaming, and he never again wanted to fall for another sudden awakening. Better that way for everyone.

"That's kind of you, Flux. You really are one of a kind. Thank you," he said.

He then started to walk away.

"Roen, pleaseplease don't leave, I'm begging you!" Flux cried. "Let me prove it! I'll — I'll do anything! Anything — what can I do to convince you that I'm not stringing you along? Just tell me, tell me and it's done!"

"I don't know, Flux," Roen said. He shut his eyes for a moment and breathed out, but he didn't stop. "I don't know."

"You're — you think I'm just a cop going after a case, right? To get close to you, to catch your brother's gang?" she said, walking backwards to keep up with him, her clothes hanging on her in heavy, wet clumps. "I don't, I… My job at NC was just a coincidence. You have to believe me!"

"I tried believing, once. Look how that turned out."

Her wings caught the air as she dodged a man in a raincoat, almost colliding, but it didn't stop her from keeping pace. "I can quit! Roen I can, I can leave and find another job if you want me to. It doesn't matter to me — only you do."

"Words, Flux. You don't have to be a lawman to report a crime. And I'd have no way to be sure you quit anyways." He shook his head. "Just, stop it. Please. I'm not worth going through all this trouble for."

"I don't care about laws or morals or the lack of them." Flux's eyes flashed in the rain. "You want to be sure I'm on your side? I would kill for you, Roen. I would slash Franklin's throat open with a RAM stick, throw that keres off a skyscraper, and then walk into the NullCorp headquarters as if nothing ever happened. I'm not scared of them — and I'm not scared of putting them six feet under. Fuck laws. You are my laws."

Roen's feet halted. He stared at the pixie with an open mouth. "Flux, that's—"

"What you want is assurance, right? I can give that to you. I could rob something or break someone or hack the damn gov treasury and capture it all on a vid. I can't report you to the sec-corps when I'll be going down in the process, too. Say the word, and I'll go MAD for you — mutually assuring destruction."

"Damn it, Flux, no! I — I don't want you to hurt someone, and I don't want you to hurt yourself. This is insane."

Flux's eyes widened suddenly. "No, it's not insane — it's the solution." She zipped around in place, scanning around the street until she found what she was looking for. "Come on."

Roen hesitated.

"I know how to fix this — how to fix us," Flux pleaded. "This won't hurt anyone. I just want to — I want to make you stop hurting. Please let me," she whispered.

The raw emotion in her voice shook Roen's calloused heart for a moment. Not for long, and not enough to seal any wounds. But enough to hear her out. So he followed.

The backstreet that Flux led him into was not really the type you found in the slums. An L-shaped storage corner, it was barely wide enough for two people to stand side by side. Even during the day, the only light came from overhead neon signs, casting a dim glow on the wet cobbles and scattered plastic containers.

They walked past the corner and to the very back. Flux, looking wet and miserable and still somehow so achingly pretty, turned to him then.

"Can I, um," she gestured at him. "Can I borrow your paddie for a bit?"

Roen didn't have anything incriminating on his datapad, so he unlocked it for her and handed it over. When she asked for his umbrella, he relented, too. The rain only reached them as a timid drip in the confines of the alley.

Flux then leaned down toward one of the plastic bins, started the datapad's vid recording function, and propped it on the lid to frame them both. Umbrella above it. When she straightened, she did so with a determined look on her face.

"I am Flux," she declared. "And the world government can go fuck the dead gods' muscular spines, from the seas to the peaky tits of the Liftic national mounds."

Reaching inside a pocket, she pulled out a vial of… nothing? It looked empty.

But Flux didn't open it. She just looked at Roen, raised a hand in a dramatic fashion, and snapped her finger.

There was a pop, and the soaked pixie was reduced back to her original form.

Roen could only watch in disbelief.

How did she time that so perfectly?

He was still wondering that when the miniature Flux — now hovering at eye level — opened the vial, upended the tiny but still very much empty container on an outstretched finger, and then sniffed it up through her nose.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Flux's flailing and entirely human-sized feet appeared midair and barely avoided kicking him in the face.

"What— the hell," he exclaimed, stumbling back a step.

Flux's feet hit the ground, and she had this manic grin on her face people got when they knew the act of rebellion had been worth it — and a long time coming, too. She let out a little laugh, then repeated the performance.

Pop. Small Flux.

Sniff, pop. Big Flux. The wind of displaced air rattled the lid of plastic containers.

"Dear human, lemme introduce you to a racial gov-secret, one kept from the public under threat of imprisonment; the existence of pixie dust!" Flux said, proudly extending the empty vial toward him.

Roen reached out, but stopped short of touching it. It really did look empty. But what he had just seen… he looked at Flux.

"Wait, so — so pixie transformation is not random at all, but an after effect of… of an invisible substance?"

"Almost got it in one," Flux said. She tipped a bit more of — of something — from the vial, then flicked it up into the air between them with middle finger and thumb. "Pixie dust kinda looks like bluish-green glitter to us — but for every other race, it's entirely invisible. It's a natural residue that we pixies produce when feeling strong emotions, and acts as a size accelerant when ingested back into our systems."

Roen stared at the dust supposedly swirling in the air right now. This was a big deal — if she was telling the truth. A single afternoon in the university labs was enough to reveal the countless reactions and effects a newly discovered reagent could produce. There would be a market for it, especially in a corporate nest such as Sirrej.

"You still don't believe me," Flux said. "Here — hold out your hand."

Roen did so, cautiously. Flux too moved with deliberate slowness, as if trying not to spook him, and she poured the mouth of the vial over his palm.

He felt it. It was light and fluffy and near insubstantial, but there was a definite touch of something there, small motes, almost ticklish. Flux used her index finger to spread it around his palm, like a masseuse applying a balm to soothe the muscles.

It looked sort of ridiculous. Like she was pressing down on thin air.

"Um, you should prolly wipe your hand off," Flux said, drawing back with a sheepish smile. "Humans shouldn't inhale too much of it, and I've got like dozens of bottles at home. It's not exactly rare stuff."

Roen curled his fingers, letting the dust seep through the cracks between them.

"But — why? Why is this a governmental secret?" Roen asked, confused. "I mean… plenty of races produce unique materials. Vampire fangs have a sedative, some treants can supply the local grocery store with seasonal harvests. Hell, you can even donate medusa venom at the dentist's."

"Simple. We made discussing pixie dust illegal because we could. Lots of small details came together to create the perfect storm; invisible material, pixies being a monolithic bunch with ninety-five percent of our population living in the same neighborhood, royal roots with a fuckton of money…" She shrugged. "After the Godswar, when the WG united all the nations under a single umbrella, the fairy community 'donated' enough to slip in a little protective clause under the radar."

After the Godswar… "Oh. Because of the cyclops."

"Yup. It's crazy how your entire race can be driven to extinction because a random guy found out that carving out and eating your eyes — or eye, singular — can have vision enhancing effects, or even cure blindness." Flux shuddered. "No, old pixen wanted none of that. The cyclops incident was still fresh in everyone's mind — and when the opportunity came, they took it. Bye-bye pixie dust in the history books. Bye-bye experiments. Welcome random fuggin transformations at the most inconvenient times."

Roen felt the rain trickle down the back of his neck. The cam of his datapad watched them both from the containers like an owl, switching hues from red to orange as the neon signs above switched commercials, reflecting from the wet surfaces.

"So, yeah," Flux said, showing her hands with a little gesture and then wiping them in her pants. Not that it made them any drier. "Looks like I just committed governmental treason." She took a quick glance at the cam, then back to him. "Whoops," she smiled.

She did. Everyone who grew up in Sirrej heard at least one story about a pixie accidentally changing sizes at the wrong time. It was just one of those things you catalogued away as common knowledge, never really giving it another thought. But after what she just showed him — transforming not once, not twice, but four times in a row, then pulling out some invisible dust he had felt on his skin…

No. She really was telling him the truth. She really was tightening a noose around her own neck — just so she could help loosen the one around his.

Roen braced himself against one of the recycling bins to steady himself. The emotional whiplash was just too much. He wanted, desperately wanted to believe what they had shared was real, not deception, not manipulation. To travel back to the times when he was just a nerdy boy falling in love with a trendy girl shouldering her way into his life.

But scars didn't work that way. You can't will a thrust in the gut away simply by putting the knife back in the sheath.

Flux moved toward him, but froze when he flinched away.

"Roen. I'm so fucking sorry that I hurt you." Flux's lips trembled. "I was a coward, and I lied because it was easier to play the perfect savior for the perfect boy. I was terrified of what you’d do if you knew the truth — that I was this… this weird stalker. I was afraid of losing you. And when I did — it was a million times worse than I ever thought it could be."

"I don't think I can do it again, Flux," Roen said. "I don't have much left in me."

"Let me fix it. Please — just let me try."

What did Flux see when she looked at him? A similar image to her own, probably. Gaunt features, pale and sickly skin. Apathy that hung around him like a brittle cloud. Bandage over a broken nose and the projection of a pretty neon girl reaching out for him.

You cannot fix that.

"I would like to fix me, too," he whispered.

"One more chance, Roen. Please give me one more chance at us. I'll go slow and I'll be patient, and I won't press for anything more than what you're willing to give me. If it's friendship, I'll be just a friend. If a gaming buddy, you'll see me on the net every day. If a partner in crime, I'll load the gun while you're counting the bullets. You have dirt on me now. If we go down, then we go down together."

"I don't know. To continue what we had— how it felt. I don't know, Flux. It's too painful to revisit."

"Then we start over."

Gently, moving in slow motion, Flux extended a hand toward him. "Hi," she said with a small smile. The faintest ghost of that confident, smug tilt of her lips curled up in the rain. "I'm Flux, and I'm not a savior. Just a girl who's been waiting far too long to meet you."

Roen watched her hand bridging the gap halfway across the alley and the chasm between them. It was a spear aimed at his flesh, being primed again, whereas back toward the way he came — that would be safety. Dull surfaces cannot cut. Just walk down the road and try to bury the memories beneath the same gray routine of the non existing.

He wouldn't survive another lie.

There was no guarantee anything would come of this, that her interest in him would last.

She'd be safer away from Arlo and Malcolm and all the others, too.

His brain put up all the warning signs — and then his heart tentatively took a single step past them, and he reached out to meet her grip.

"Hey. I'm Roen Travall. And I think I like your hair."

21: Flux

Flux had invited Roen on another date.

He had refused her.

It stung. A lot. But she probably deserved it.

Flux sat in her fancy office chair of the server room, feet hanging over the armrest like a pair of chicken wings, and caught the bouncy-bouncy ball above her head on the rebound.

It was one of those days when she had to put in 'work time' locally for whatever-the-hell reason Director Marlock cooked up. That made her grumpy, as a rule. The servers were just fine by themselves, thank you very much, and the only threat they were under was the ball sailing against the nearest wall when she was nearby.

Stupid fuggin corporate jobs and their stupid quotas.

And yet. And despite it all — today was the happiest Flux had felt in days.

There's that giddy feeling around a birthday or Christmas people get; rushing toward the present and just buzzing with energy to open it up and see what's inside. They open it, and not only is it what they wanted — but so much more. Perfection itself. Better than perfection; the other half they were missing.

For Flux, that had been their date. She held her gift for a moment, warmed by its glow for a microsecond that promised more joy than the entirety of her life before. He was the ecstasy on the tip of her tongue, and she hadn't even tasted him yet.

And then she lost it.

At first, in the hellish moments after Roen had rushed out the building, it was Asterim that she blamed. She had all but savaged her brother to a point that he had fled with several bleeding scratches on him and likely with the imprinted idea that she was not someone to be toyed with. Which… was fair, maybe. Asterim had visited to create trouble, sure, no two ways about it. Flux did not regret carving into him a little.

But she also couldn't blame her brother for something that, ultimately, she was responsible for.

From the start, Flux had been lying to Roen. About how they met, about how she worked in law enforcement — in her desperate attempt to try and paint herself in the perfect light, to make him want to like her as much as possible… she had deceived him. Omitted things that she shouldn't have. Her building blocks were already swaying left and right on the precarious foundation of a single tile, and all her brother did was tip it a little. And then it all came crashing down.

She fucked up. She fucked up badly. And it was her Roen who suffered for it.

Every single day, she had messaged him and rambled and begged for his forgiveness. No answers came, and she hated herself for what she'd done to him. Every day she sat in Vinny's, hoping to see him walk through the entrance — not just for a chance to talk to him, but to reassure herself that he was okay. His avoidance of her was one thing; it fucking hurt, but it was nothing compared to the aching need to see him healthy and whole.

When she had spotted him out in the rain, he looked like death. She ran to him, then. And she knew that there was no commitment she wouldn't make to reverse the cycle, no line she wouldn't cross to see him get the happily ever after he deserved. Like a mother protecting her clutch, or werefolk crouching over their defenseless mate, Flux would have slaughtered every single one of the innocent celebrating humans in the café if it brought a sliver of life back to Roen's pallid skin.

So she ran to him. She slapped all the sticky bandaids on the gaping hole she had caused, hoping that maybe she could fix a little of it and stem the bleeding. She threw a middle finger to both the corporations and the gov, and firmly planted herself on the crimmy side of the spectrum, because if her human was there, then that's where she damn fucking well belonged, too.

It wasn't perfect, and it wasn't enough — but her awesome, incredible, so damn huggable human had allowed her to try again. He had given her another chance, a new beginning. She wouldn't fail him this time.

The ball thumped against the floor, bounced on the wall above the exit, then flew back over her desk and arched back to her hand. Flux let out an 'ugh' — code language for 'get me the fuck outta here already' — and took out her datapad to check the time. Twenty minutes until the end of her shift. Eh. Good enough. She had places to be and a friend to boyfriend.

Flux gathered her stuff, expelled her pixie dust in an oopsie moment of random shrinkage, went a couple of floors down the elevator — stopping to lean out and check after each one — and then flew out the first open window that she spotted in the hallway. It kinda felt like a reverse heist, commando style. Chalk it up to practice for future fieldwork.

Though it was barely dripping, the raindrops that assaulted her in the open air were larger than her fist. Flux swooped downward and flittered over to the elevated garden of a convention center two blocks down, and after some tugging, ripped free the heavy burdock leaf without holes in it. Holding it above her head to protect herself from the rain, she then flew above the city and began her beeline toward her apartment.

Yeah, yeah. Sometimes she forgot her raincoat — big deal. Her brain wasn’t an infinite storage unit, and it’s not like she could just install a few terabytes of SSD to upgrade her memory. It's been more than a century since the Godswar, and cybernetic implants were still in the realm of scifi. For most races, anyway. Cough cough, golems.

Her phone started up her synthwave ringtone. Flux slowed her flight a bit and freed one hand by balancing the leaf on her head — smushing her hair flat in the process.

She rolled her eyes, tapping decline. She then quickly typed out a reply.

Flux: alrwe

Flux: alrewaw **ffffff

Flux: already omw home

Flux: (fk u)

A one-hand typer she was not.

She threw the leaf away moments before slipping through the crack of her open window. She made a lazy circuit around her room — it was something of a racial tic for pixies — and then went into her bedroom to grab one of the miniature vials and get some dust in her system. Air popped and her feet touched down on the linoleum floor. She threw off her pack with a satisfied sigh, did some girl stuff in the bathroom such as checking her butt out in the mirror to confirm it was still doing its bubbly thing, grabbed some snackies from her cupboard — salty being superior to sweet — and then plopped down in her pillow nest on the couch.

She found her keyboard & mouse somewhere in the third pile, logged into her PC hidden under the table, and the screen mounted on the far wall lit up with her desktop. She put on her headphones, and then vid-called Korella from their server app.

Horsey-horse was already spread out in front of her comp. A moment of surprise flickered through her face, followed by concern, before both were carefully wiped off. "Oh hey, Flux."

Flux nodded at her, stuffing her face with cheesy dinosaurs. She opened her browser and then quickly tabbed through her algorithms doing their thing, filling the NC database with a steady stream of potentially fucked up shit. Huh, only a dozen or so entries since last evening. Slow day.

"So um," Korella said. "I received your message. From yesterday."

"Uhuh."

"And I'm glad that everything worked out with, you know. That the two of you are mending things."

"Yup."

"And you look — Flux, can you listen to me for a moment, please?"

Flux paused, then tabbed back to Korella once more. She bit off the head of one last dino and cleaned her hands with a wet wipe. "Yeeeah. Sorry," she said. "Busy times. Tumultuous, one could even say."

None of them spoke for a long minute. The chip bag rustled as Flux leaned back harder between the pillows.

"It's nice to see that you're eating again."

Flux picked at the fraying seams of a pillow. Sure, recent times haven't been great for her, but… but that was over, right? She had a clean slate to look forward to. Things were on the right track once more.

Damn it, Korella. You're making me feel guilty for having been feeling guilty.

"It was my fault," she muttered. "You had warned me from the start, and you were right — I should have asked Roen out years earlier. None of this would have happened, then. I was such a fucking moron."

"I agree," Korella said. "But," she paused on that, staring into the camera as if she could see right into her soul. Held it. She then let out an almost neighing whine. "Girl, you should have at least talked to me. How am I supposed to feel when I get continuously ghosted after all that went down? You were offline most hours of the day, your replies were rarely more than a single word, and you looked like a zombie — no offense to undead folk — during the single vid call I could squeeze out of you. I was scared for you, you know. That you would do something you'd regret."

"Nah. Too much of a pussy for that."

"So what — you've just been sitting at home, messaging him?"

"Trying to. Yeah," Flux said. She glanced back into her bedroom, eyeing the massive pile of glass bottles that consumed a quarter of the room, nearly spilling over the edge of her bed. "Among other things."

When a pixie cries — truly, heart-wrenching kind of sobs that shake the whole body — she expels a significant amount of pixie dust through the eyes.

Flux wouldn't have to worry about running out of the stuff for the next five centuries.

"Damn it, Flux," Korella said. "How can you let one boy do this to you?"

Flux's brow furrowed. "He didn't do anything. He had to suffer for all the shit choices that I made."

"Sure, but… what I mean is…" Korella stopped. She took a steadying breath. "Look. You're in love, I get it. Really, unfathomably so. But you have other people who care about you, too. When you close yourself off from everyone and say 'fuck the whole world' and decide to be miserable, you drag other people down with you, too."

"That's why I—"

"It doesn't happen because you're miserable, you idiot! It happens because you're pushing them away."

Flux chewed at her lips.

"You punished yourself — but don't you dare punish your friends by denying them the opportunity to help."

Flux saw what Korella was saying. And she was sorry. But she just hadn't been in the right headspace to be helped. To her, it was a stone-cold fact that no matter what Korella or the gaming group or her family came up with to try and cheer her up — none of it would have made a damn difference without Roen's forgiveness.

But she had it now. Thank the gods, she had him back.

"You're right," Flux said. "It's not that simple, but. Yeah. I shoulda talked to you. A bit more, anyway."

Korella left it at that. It might come up later, or it might not. The two of them were used to this dance. You can lead a horse to rave, but you can't make it do the floss — or something to that effect.

She shook out her mane, revealing a new set of lopsided earrings on her left side, matching her eyebrow piercings. "I was planning on taking a trip downtown. Your apartment is very inconvenient to visit."

Most places in the city were. One of the reasons why Sirrej's centaurs mostly kept to the upper glade, or adjacent areas.

"I'd like that — but maybe not here. We could grab a burger or something."

"Good," Korella said. Flux's screen flashed with a notification as she sent her an invitation. "You up for some grind? I almost have this new elementalist geared out."

Flux attacked the salty dinosaurs with renewed vigor.

They gamed for an hour or two. One of the awesome things about PC versus paddy versus console was that the former allowed for efficient multitasking at the press of a single button combination. Her wall-mounted screen — or TV, for the non-snack dinosaurs out there — was one of those XX types that were so large they could be configured to count as four different monitors, split vertically and horizontally in the middle. She even had the mount on the wall adjust slightly so that her main monitor was always centered in front of her — kinda like standing desks, except it's the screen that comes to you.

She busted out some orange juice because, according to her bestie, she needed to regain some vitamins, and got some Liftic spiced meatballs with rice to go with it. She had picked them up in the morning before going to work. For some very understandable reasons, Flux had not ordered a single thing via courier drone since that night on the bridge with Roen.

Oh, right. Speaking of.

Flux paused during a loading screen — yeah, games still had those — and grabbed her phone from the table.

"…and dude-dude-dude she almost quit when her view count tanked during the main story," Jelly was saying, going on about one streamer or another. The four of them — Flux, Korella, and two gobbos from the Shortstack Guild — were doing a fairly trivial dungeon run that was pretty much just mindless button mashing for the XP and the occasional rare drop.

Flux tuned Jelly out, thought for a moment, and then wrote out a quick message to Roen.

Flux: yo, I got these pc parts together if u wanna build a new comp

Flux: here's the link

Flux: actually im curious, do u know the specs of ur old pc?

To say that Flux was distracted for the rest of the run would have been an understatement. She glanced down at her phone at least every five seconds, so it was a good thing they were only doing voice comms with the girls.

Her phone buzzed and the screen lit up.

Roen: I think it's this one.

Flux leaned over her table, and her eyes widened in horror when Roen's link led her to a website with pre-built comps. Ancient, overpriced pre-builts at that.

Flux: uuuuuuh

Flux: does it still work xd

No Flux, no. Bad Flux! Do not be rude. He just hasn't seen the light yet.

Her foot jerked up as if struck by one of those medical reflex hammers. She actually felt giddy at the thought of converting him and showing him all the awesome stuff on the net and gaming and cuddling and weeeeeeeee!

Roen: One moment, just booted it up.

Roen: It's updating.

"Hey, what are you doing, Flux?" Uzu asked. "You're AFK."

Flux grabbed her mouse and keyboard. "No. What? No fuck you. I'm here," she said, arriving just in time to meet the new swarm and start slicing.

"You need to lock in!" Jelly declared.

Korella, her busty-ass elementalist pausing to emote mid combat, said, "Mmh, I think our little nightbug might be ditching us for a booooy."

Good thing that Flux was an expert at multitasking.

Roen: Okay, I think it's done. I don't remember my password, though.

"So what if I am talking to a boy, huh? Maybe I wanna teach him the ropes, too. Help him level."

Flux: try to login as guest

Flux: its the smol arrow button at the bottom lrft

Flux: left*

"That's boosting, and it's against the terms of service," Uzu said.

"Nuh-uh, actually," Jelly said. "It's only boosting if she uses her current character. She could, like, start fresh with him."

Heh. Ain't that the truth.

Roen: Oh nice I'm in.

Roen: Yeah it seems to be working pretty well. It only took about three seconds for the browser to open.

"Sweet holy summer child," Flux muttered.

"What?" Korella asked.

"He's using the default browser as a benchmark."

A collective gasp of dismay came over the comms.

"Ooookay, we'll hold the fort," Uzu said, barring the mouth of the cave with her shield-wielding berserker. "The emergency on your end sounds way more severe."

"Oh, oh!" Jelly cut in hurriedly. "Give him my referral code if he's gonna make a PoR account! I need the extra gems."

"Oomfie, I'm gonna be overjoyed if his PC manages to run fuggin minesweeper."

Flux opened a portal and went back into the main hub. She then picked up her phone, lifted her feet onto the couch to snuggle deep into the pillows, and turned out the girls' voices to focus on him instead.

Flux: glad it works

Flux: :3

Flux: do u have Pixcord installed?

Roen: I don't think so. Is it a game?

Flux: lmao no

Flux: its like a server based messaging prog

Flux: kinda acts like a forum + voice + vid app and its much more convenient to use than phone msgs

Roen: Oh.

'Oh'? Flux bit her lips. What kind of 'oh' was that? Was it like 'oh yeah awesome, dude, I'm totally gonna get right on that shit' or was it more like, a disappointed 'oh' that you kinda typed out because you didn't want to come off as rude or something. Like, uh-oh.

Flux stared at her phone for a minute.

Flux: OwO

Silence.

Roen: :)

"Uuuuuuu he just did a smiley face!" Flux squealed. "He's such an adorkable delulu goober normie-wormie!"

"Fucking hell," Uzu said darkly. "And that's exactly why I'm never getting anything pole-shaped near my pussy."

"I once stuck a beer bottle up my asshole," Jelly mused.

Roen: Okay I downloaded it.

Roen: Not sure if I'm gonna install it right now. I want to get some time in with my project, I still have several places to draw. I'll also take a look at the link you sent me, but I'm not a computer person so we'll see what that amounts to haha.

Flux: nono yeah for sure, thats cool

Flux: um so tomorrow is weekend soooo

Flux: wanna try gaming together? just chill and do some coop stuff. there's some old classics that ive been dying to replay but never rly got the opportunity lol

She held her breath as she waited for the reply. Come on. Please. Please give me a lifeline. Her phone groaned under the pressure of her grip.

Roen: Okay. We can try that.

She jumped up in the couch and almost did a fist pump. But then she remembered that it would be incredibly cringe — like, people who do fist pumps and talk to themselves out loud like in those low effort litRPG ebooks, yikes — so instead she settled for a quick celebratory lap in her apartment. That was good, that made sense — exercise, bitch.

Flux: awesome :3

Flux: bb and sweet dreams my lil goober

Roen: Bye, Flux. Talk to you later.

The words throbbed in her vision like pink neon hearts. He would talk to her. Maybe not see, maybe not hold or kiss or cuddle… but even just talking seemed like an impossibility not so long ago. If they couldn't talk, then she wouldn't want to talk ever again. To not see him, might as well gouge her eyes out — and the same with the rest. She needed him like a CPU needed thermal paste. Without that sweet and nerdy human mush-mush, she could not compute.

A chance. A chance was all she had. It's the only one she would get now, and she was determined to push the chips forward… and go all in.

22: Roen

The delivery truck arrived at ten, and with the weekend rates, it cost a fortune just to have the computer parts dropped off in several boxes outside his house.

Roen hauled them in the living room and, after a trip down to the basement for the utility knife, began sorting through the stuff Flux had recommended. Building a computer was not like his usual engineering projects, not really. Instead of having freedom, you were forced into a puzzle game where everything had its own place and slot and sockets that was less about innovation or creation, and more about just having the general knowledge. It kind of reminded him of those dating guides. Or putting together an elaborate IDEA furniture. The individual parts playing the person rather than the other way around.

Somehow, it managed to be both oversimplified and frustrating at the same time. He had half the mind to bring over the soldering iron and melt the graphics card in place so it would stop the damn rattling. The massive thing looked like it would fall out at any moment.

After a quick tea break, Roen swapped out his old keyboard, monitor and mouse. He then placed both computer chassis next to each other, swapped the cables and fired up the new one.

Unfortunately, that was as far as he got. Instead of a desktop, the system blinked into some sort of black-and-white environment where he couldn't even use his mouse and a bunch of numerical jargon filled most of the screen. The word 'UEFI-Plus' blinked at the top. He decided to back out. He didn't know the first thing about software and he wasn't in a hurry to ruin a brand new system. For now, his old computer would work just fine.

When Roen messaged Flux his profile name after installing that server slash forum slash communicator app, he tried to ignore the regiment of messages in the phone logs that had gone unread. He'd been in a bad place. Same with her. There was no point in opening up wounds that were barely just starting to scab over.

It didn't take more than five minutes until he got a friend request from someone called 'Nightbug#563' with a profile picture of, well. A glowing firefly.

He accepted. There was maybe a two second delay before an intrusive notification popped up about an incoming voice call. After a moment of hesitation, he accepted that, too.

"GOOD MORNING OOMFIE!" Flux's voice blasted through his headset.

Roen winced and quickly lowered the volume with the little slider on the bottom right. Apparently, ear products were not designed for usage on a hundred percent.

"Um — can you hear me?" he asked, adjusting the mic. It was the same model she had pointed out in the store, though with a darker color variation.

"I sure can," Flux said. There was some crunching in the background — less like static and more like cereal. "You sound good. Got everything I put in the cart for you, then?"

"The delivery arrived a bit ago. I didn't know you needed this much stuff nowadays to play video games."

"Uh, yeeeeah. Sorry about the price." He could hear the embarrassed smile in her voice. Silverware clinked against a bowl, a chomp, and then some chewing. "It's more than just for games, though. It's better to get the full experience if you're already upgrading — dunno if you saw that little opaque antenna? It's kind of like a signal scrambler for an extra layer of protection. Fresh tech out of Lux City."

"I've got it somewhere around here," Roen said, lifting one of the box piles by his chair. He thought he could see the packaging.

"Dun wowwyabawuit," Flux said with her mouth full, before swallowing. "Wait, so are you on the new PC already?"

"No. I assembled it, but the… the starting sequence looks like something I shouldn't touch without some actual knowledge."

"You are wise beyond your years," Flux said sagely. "Want me to walk you through it?"

Roen thought about that for a moment, and shook his head. Then remembering they were on voice, "No, it's fine. I think I need to let things cool off — me and the puzzle box are still not on the best terms."

"Mmm, I remember my first time," Flux reminisced. "I forgot to put in the fans, said 'fuck it', and played with the computer behind me and my wings flapping super hard. Airflow by pixen frustration."

Roen sipped his tea. There was a bit of reflection mucking up the screen, so he went around the living room and drew a few curtains. Flux, in the meantime, seemed to have finished off her breakfast — or early dinner — and was softly humming a song under her breath.

"I sent you an invite to our server," she said. "You should see the little popup next to the friend's list."

The notification dumped Roen on a landing page with far too much color, restyling the app's gray surface into an animated beach during a some kind of a tropical storm, wind blowing the leaves that framed the chat rooms. Like with most of the net, had to get through a few pages of rules and conditions before he could do much of anything.

"Is this where you typically hang out?" Roen asked. He wasn't as clueless as to not have heard of these types of programs before. A list of online users were listed on the right side of the window — available, away, or ingame. It wasn't a huge server, only about eighty people or so.

"Yessir. Welcome to the egirl paradise."

Roen tilted his head. "Egirl, as opposed to… a regular girl?"

Flux's returning laugh was a devious thing. "Ooooh man, you do not want to go down the dictionary rabbit hole. Just assume everyone on the server to be female, kind of fucked in the head, and not afraid to go into detail about their overexerted fembussy."

"Their what?"

"Exactly."

Roen was starting to suspect that, maybe, just maybe, he was in over his head.

He leaned back in his seat and looked around the empty house. The analog clock from the kitchen ticked with staccato pangs. That bone-deep exhaustion threatened to creep back in.

Fuck it, and fuck keeping it safe.

"Where are these weird beeps coming from? I'm getting swarmed by something," he said, mousing over the blinking channels with red check marks over them. The uppermost one was going crazy.

"Oh, that's the bot channel. Um, so you need to right click it and then press 'mute'. We had to put a blockade on image perms when Jelly figured out how to animate catgirl vids."

"Got it."

Roen scrolled through the list of channels in the application. "There's a lot of…"

He trailed off, scanning through community groups for music and streamers, archive collections of fan fiction sites, a wildrunner celebrities chart, artwork dedicated to mutants from the wilds, and… a couple of more interesting places under the label 'NSFW ZONE'.

"What is a 'Hyper Futa Inflation'?'" Roen asked. Some kind of channel for economic enthusiasts?

"PPFH— Oooooh-kay I think we're just about ready for gaming," Flux spat something out on the other end.

He clicked on it out of curiosity, only to be met with an age restriction and a request for ID verification. Huh. Guess that handling money was something more suited for adults.

They spent some time setting up his Vapor account after that, a process very similar except this one leading him to a store and games' library. Though he assured Flux that money would not be an issue, she kept insisting that spending money on most corporate games was a waste and she'd much rather hack him some free copies. And that it'd be more ethical, too. Listening to her was a bit alarming. She had some very deep seated hatred against microtransactions and content pay-gating and greedy executives running the gaming industry into the ground.

The older games, though, she bought and sent him as a gift package that cost less than twenty creds. He would have protested if she hadn't been so quick on the trigger finger. And if he didn't remember that Flux came from such a wealthy family.

He flinched away from the memory. It still hurt thinking back to that night.

The first game they loaded up was a two-player coop puzzle platformer where they played as gene modified golems fleeing an ancient prison facility before a murderous AI could destroy them. It was not at all what Roen had expected; it involved portal guns, some clever physics simulations, and a whole bunch of ways to both assist and mess with your partner. The teamwork aspect was actually pretty rewarding — though Flux did have a tendency to push him into laser grids, then whoop and jump after him to trigger the respawn mechanic.

Based on Roen's memory — or at least the games his classmates played — they were all about pulling slot machines and making arbitrary numbers climb while pretty explosions filled the background. He enjoyed this one, and by the time they hit the exit button a few hours later, he wouldn’t have minded continuing at a later time — so long as he had someone to continue with.

Roen saw that he had been tagged in one of the Pixcord general channels. Curious, he clicked it and the chat room appeared.

EternalEclipse: man alarm @Roen37

EternalEclipse: run for your lives everyone

Renata: lies he has no profile pic

Renata: i need proof

EternalEclipse: yo guy, take a selfie and watch them freak out

Uzi111: wtf

JellyJelly: are we seggsist now or what :o

Uzi111: yes.

His eyebrows rose with each message that Roen read. He was about to ask Flux when he saw a new message appear.

Nightbug: fuck off retards

"Hey, Flux," Roen said.

"Yeah, what'sup? One sec, I have this list of games ready that should be good for new players."

Nightbug: one more word and im gonna force a malware down all ur throats

Cinder: hnnng u know what else I want down my throat??

JellyJelly: A COCK!

Nightbug: dumbfuck morons

It was something of a novel experience for Roen to see himself be discussed without his actual participation. Even if said participants appeared to be a little… unhinged.

"You don't have to defend me, you know," he said. "I think they're just messing around."

"Who? Oh! Uuuuuh," Flux said. The faint clanks of her mechanical keyboard ceased. "Sorry. The girls can be a little extra on the weekend. You can mute the chat notifications if they're bothering you."

EternalEclipse: @Nightbug accept my call

"It's okay. Who is EternalEclipse?"

Flux didn't answer right away. Roen could imagine her sitting there, chewing on her lips and worrying about not wanting to overwhelm him.

That upset him for some reason. He didn't want to be coddled and protected and kept in an empty little cage — not anymore. Being an introvert was one thing, and he knew he'd never be the opposite. But he was wrung too dry — far too low on the energy, or the will, to care enough to run away from Flux’s friends with his tail between his legs.

It was just voice chat, for fuck's sake. How hard can that be?

"She can join the call, Flux, if you trust her. I'm not made of glass."

"I know you're not," Flux said quietly.

There was a short audio clip, and another profile picture appeared next to the two of theirs.

"Morning, Korella," Flux said.

"Pfft, morning my ass. The sun is on its downward course already, if you had bothered to look outside your window."

Korella had a rich voice, silky and a bit deeper than Flux. It was about on par with everything he'd been told about her.

"Hi Korella. Nice to finally meet you — well, 'meet'. On the net, at least."

"You're the elusive Roen, huh?" Korella said. "So when did you decide to spike Flux's drink in that little café you both frequent? Human spit has magical properties against some races, you know."

"Um. What do you mean?"

Flux cut in. "What she meaaaaans is that I might have talked her ears off about you, in the past. Sometimes. On occasion. Once or twice."

Oh. Roen scratched at his knuckles. "Was that, like… back when I didn't know about you?"

A guilty little silence.

"Yeeeah."

"Two years, to be exact," Korella supplied. "I had to endure her insane ramblings for two way-too-long goddamn years about someone she hadn't even met." She snorted. "Talk about boy fever."

Roen didn't know what to say to that. It was still insane to think about a girl stalking him for non-police related reasons. But he was slowly beginning to internalize it, the fact that there might just be something mildly interesting about him. From an outsider's point of view, anyway.

"It — it would have been nice to see each other earlier," he said.

It would have prevented some of this whole clusterfuck for sure.

"Ohmygod. So true, oomfie." If blushing made a sound, Flux would have been the one to discover it.

"Can I ask a question?" Roen said. "How long have you two known each other?" They way they spoke and the way Flux had talked about Korella previously, he guessed the answer was much longer than his two years.

"Oh, about as long as I've been scraping the net for digitally signed albums from the lead guitarist of Swords and Handgrenades, which is to say, forever," Korella said. She then said to Flux, "Though I still think that sending your sister over to drop off the USB at my place was a low blow, girl. The insult."

Flux stumbled for a word and finally settled on, "I was… less independent, back then."

Roen held back a smile. It felt kind of nice to make Flux flustered for a change. He wondered what stories he could dredge up.

He fished for a while, but Korella, for all intents and purposes, was a refined creature with enough subtlety to direct the conversation in ways that made Roen's head spin and realize he was chatting about deep-wilds conspiracies all of a sudden. Dark zones, for example, were something Roen had always been interested in, but even he couldn't foresee the mad theories people on the net with enough free time on their hands could construct. Aliens from outer space, radiation from godly vomit, or shape-shifting felines roaming the lands with a divine connection to luck and fortune. Silly stuff.

It was surprisingly fun talking about silly stuff. Especially when you had two girls speaking over each other so much that you never felt a second of those painful silences.

At some point they had all joined an online lobby of a browser game — one of those 'guess what I'm drawing' types — and were in the middle of trying to figure out if Korella's stacked rectangles resembled a car or a radio tower more, when Flux made her shot.

"Soooo…"

Roen squinted at his screen. "Yes, Flux?"

"Weeeell, you know how your new PC still needs to be installed and stuff?"

"Mhm."

"It's just that, OS setups are dangerous as heck. It's one of those things where you need a very firm, steady hand to supervise. One wrong move and, uh, BAM!"

"Bam?"

"Bam," Flux confirmed. He could hear an oddly rhythmic pressing of her keyboard. "Like, gonna feel real bad if it's not done right, bam."

"You're acting real 'sussy' right now."

"WHORES I swear to god!" Flux yelled, and Roen saw her start to unload a torrent of profanities in the server's general chat. "Stop corrupting him!"

Roen, very wisely, did not reveal the dozens of private messages a couple of users had sent him; among them was a list of strange words, each with a brief explanation of when to use them — though not what they actually meant. After all, the best way to learn was by repetition and experience.

"So what were you trying to say?" Korella asked.

There was a bit more furious typing on Flux's side before her attention drifted back toward them. "Uh."

"Roen's new computer," Korella reminded her.

"Yes. Yes, that."

Flux took a deep breath — though she probably wasn't aware of the sensitivity of her microphone, because she tried to pass off the question as casual. "I was just thinking, I'm gonna be free for most of Sunday and I need to stretch my wings. And you need a comp technician — so how about I come over to your place and help set everything up?"

"You mean…" Roen trailed off.

"Not like a date, date, just uh, a strictly professional and friendly sesh of nerding out. I can also install a bunch of programs right from my paddie — screeners, firewalls, the works. Making sure that everything goes well with your first computer is very important. Think of it kinda like, uuuuh, like delivering a baby — you shouldn't attempt it alone!"

"Cuh-ugh," Korella half coughed half agreed.

Roen looked over at his datapad. After Flux had recorded her speech breaking governmental law, she also installed some security measures on his device, password-locked the folder, and generally made sure that he'd be the only person with access to the vid. If he wished, he could just walk into the nearest blues' police station and put Flux behind bars for a decade.

It was assurance. Where his self-worth lacked the strength to make him believe Flux actually liked him, she had given him the next best thing. A way to convince his brain. To appeal to his logic where his confidence failed.

It should have been good enough, damn it.

Roen's thoughts were interrupted by his phone's ringtone.

"I'll be right back," Roen said. He took off his headset — making sure to mute himself — and switched to his phone. It was Arlo.

"You're back in Sirrej?" Roen asked right after picking up.

"Roen," Arlo greeted. His voice was framed by the background noise of an electric, continuous rumble. "Almost. I'm on my way back, still on the Mega-Nexus. I called as soon as I got into signal range."

Thank the gods. Roen held the phone closer to his ears. "Arlo, listen — have you spoken with Malcolm recently?"

"Oh, right, that meeting you guys had. Everything went down without a hitch, I hope?"

"No. It didn't," Roen said.

Roen could practically hear his brother raise his brows. "If this is about the ifrit ashes—"

"It's not about the fucking ifrit ashes," Roen said, frustrated. He looked toward the crevice below the stairs where he'd stashed the bags. "I already picked them up."

"What, then?"

"It's about Hank," Roen said. "He… Arlo, Hank is dead."

Silence. Nothing but the sonic-speed tram rattling away on the other side.

"And not just an accident — he's been murdered. Someone delivered his severed head to Dawnkill's balcony. We don't know much yet, and Hank being the target could be a coincidence according to Malcolm, but there's a chance that someone is hunting us."

Still nothing.

"Arlo?" Roen asked quietly.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. I mean… physically. Sure."

Arlo let out a breath. "Good."

"Explain to me what part of what I just said constitutes as 'good'. We may have an assassin after us. Do you understand that? Other than Dawnkill, our team is a bunch of untrained thugs and if this person decides to go after somebody else, it sure as hell not going to be her. She was warned, for gods' sake. It could be Franklin or Bull or, I don't know, Malcolm next, somehow." Roen paused, his voice lowering. "It could be us, Arlo."

"That's why I need you to stay put, stay out of sight. If Malcolm calls again — if you see any unknown number ringing you — I want you to ignore it. Alright?"

Roen ran a hand through his hair. "Everyone knows where we live." Where I live, he corrected himself silently. "Staying home wouldn't do any good."

"You're overreacting."

"And you're not reacting at all," Roen said bitterly. He wanted to be angry at his brother. At how dismissive he was. But anger required fire, and he was all out of oxygen.

Did Arlo even care if his little brother wouldn't be there the next morning?

"Look — I understand that things have been complicated lately, but there's no guarantee whatsoever that whoever killed Hank is going to come after you. Malcolm said the same thing, right? He's a smart man, Roen — and he's been doing this whole outlaw business for way longer than either of us. We should take his advice. Cool things down a bit. Cease operations and team meetings for a while."

"For a while," Roen said woodenly.

"Or permanently," Arlo allowed. The sounds muffled for a second as he covered the microphone. He then turned back to him. "That's why I was calling you, actually."

Right. He wasn't calling because Roen had left him several desperate messages and unanswered rings. Roen slowly leaned back in his seat, mute. The house was silent around him.

"You there?" Arlo asked.

"I'm here."

"Right. Remember what I told you? About a long term acquisition?"

"I remember. Something about a controlling stake in some big corporation."

"That's it — and it's happening very soon, at the end of this month," Arlo said. There was an energetic quality to his words. "There's going to be a joint investor's conference in Sirrej with many of the city's bigshot shareholders present; including Lombard Televised, the media corp that I'm gunning for," he paused. "Have you heard about them?"

The name was familiar. Faintly. "Not really."

"It had some insane growth the past few months and, despite being a newer fish in the pond, is already prestigious enough to be a surefire investment. I already have a deal pending with a few shareholders willing to sell that we'll finalize at the conference. So that's gonna be happening."

"I see."

"And I want you to be there, too."

Roen froze.

He didn't like social events. He didn't feel comfortable around people at large, let alone crowds wearing fancy suits and dresses and ball rooms. There wouldn't have been a single person more out of place in an environment like that than Roen.

And yet — his brother wanting him to be there sent an ember of warmth through him.

"That final job I mentioned the last time we spoke? The conference is it. I'll need your help with some rigging — and then we're home free for the rest of our lives."

The ember died out in a gust of smoke.

"Not a drone, Roen. Just some… modifications for a lectern, the one they'll be using for the speeches. Okay? It's going to be very simple, very safe — and I'll be right there with you the entire time."

"Why?" Roen asked with a whisper.

One word with so many different meanings. Why did Arlo lie. Why did nobody want him. Why should innocents pay for his actions.

Of course, his brother answered neither of those.

"One of the bigger shareholders is, unfortunately, unwilling to sell. I tried everything already — he won't budge. I'll need him to step away if I want that controlling stake," Arlo said. "His son would be a lot easier to convince."

"I refuse," Roen said.

Arlo laughed lightly. "Come on, Roen. I'm being serious."

"So am I."

Arlo went silent for a minute. "You know, when I heard from Franklin that you botched the previous job, I thought this was just a one-time thing. A momentary lapse of judgement. Hm? Which is understandable — for someone as young as you are — and so I was understanding. What we do is nasty business. We both know that." His voice grew closer, quieter. "But we, as adults, sometimes need to do some nasty things to get ahead. What do you think I have done during the past eight years while you finished high school and went through the university that I paid for? I worked. I put money on the table so you didn't have to — and all I asked for it in exchange was a bit of drone rigging. You never even saw as little as a dead body. I shouldered both the guilt and the labor without a single word of complaint."

Arlo's breath was close in his ear, intimate. "What I request of you now is a single modicum of effort on your part. Come to a party, secure one bomb, and then we're set for life."

"What if I don't?" Roen heard himself ask.

"If you don't? Well, then I'm afraid I'll have to send a very tragic, very anonymous email to the blues regarding a bright university graduate engaging in illicit crafting and possession of explosive devices."

"What? Malcolm is the one making the explo—"

"And I'm sure the blues won't mind going after the next best thing when it turns out the main suspect is a man who's been wanted for the past two decades and impossible to find. Djinn magic, when done under the table, is funny like that." Arlo snorted. "Roen, stop being difficult. Did you really think that I wouldn't snap at least one picture of you crouching over the bomb? Your life is over unless you help me; your life is secured if you do."

"No," Roen said quietly. "I didn't think you would do that."

"No more drones, I told you. And I was correct; if you do this one thing, we'll never have to go back under those bridges again. I've always been honest with you, so trust me when I say this — you need to grow the fuck up, little brother."

Roen stared blankly at his monitor. He could just barely hear the faint chatter of the girls through his headset, and there was more life inside that sorry little box in front of him than the entire building around him.

"Will you come home anytime soon?"

He could hear Arlo lower his phone, probably to minimize the call and check his schedule. "That is a — negative," he said. "Sorry, Roen. I have to grease some pockets before the conference. Sirrej is a big city and there's only one of me. Expect to see me on the day of the party."

Arlo paused for a while. The tram hummed and rattled. Neither of them spoke.

"Is that going to be all, then?" Arlo asked. He sounded distracted already.

"Sure."

"Great. I'll give you a call later, then, if I have the time. Remember — stay home. Stay alone. Few bad things happen to those who don't tempt fate."

The call ended.

Roen put his phone down on the table with deliberate slowness. He paused for a moment, then got the headset back on. The girls had moved on from the drawing game and were discussing some kind of viral vid.

"I'm here, sorry," Roen said when he got the chance.

Apparently the vid wasn't all that important, because they immediately dropped it with some 'no problems' and 'awesomes'. The way they pounced reminded him of a pack of wolves closing in on a deer with a perfectly coordinated strike.

"So, we were thinking," Korella began, "I was actually planning to head downtown and hang out with Flux — maybe sit in a café or relax in the park for a bit. But instead, we could come over to your place and help you set up your PC. We can still spend time together and get everything sorted for you that way."

"Yup-yup," Flux said, "Select status from outing where guests greater-than-or-equal-to three semicolon — oh look, it returned 'not a date'!"

"What she's trying to say is—"

Roen cut off Korella with a single, "Okay."

Silence from both girls.

"Um. Okay, as in, 'okay I hear what you're saying', or like, okay as in 'fuck yeah, let's party, bitches'?"

"The second one," Roen said. "I can't promise a party, exactly, but…"

The beginnings of a deep breath rose from Flux's end.

"…but I hope my slushie machine is up to the challenge."

There was a thunk as Flux's headset likely hit her apartment floor. Even with the added distance, her screams of triumph came through crystal clear.

Roen smiled to himself. If the future was already on fire, he might as well grab some marshmallows and make the best of it.

23: Flux

Korella's black van was a beefy piece of work.

From the outside, you’d never guess how many creds had gone into reinforcing its sturdy frame or customizing its sleek interior to accommodate larger races comfortably. Like most high-echelon vehicles, its rear windows were tinted for privacy — hiding not just the passengers, but also the undeniable truth that, sometimes, a few mini-fridges beside a mobile wardrobe really was a practical design choice.

Flux hopped in through the open window, sniffed up a line of pixie dust, and found herself lounging in the passenger seat.

"Seat belt," Korella said.

The centaur behind the wheel was sitting in a specialized cushion that resembled a comfy bathtub without its front, letting her hooves hang out to reach the pedals. There was no separator between the back of the van, and Flux didn't wait for permission to saunter up to the nearest fridge for an energy drink.

Korella's tail flopped next to Flux's head in impatience. The advantages of taking up a lot of space; you could emote across a wider spectrum.

They started down the street only when Flux was nice and secured and strapped down by the devilish seat belt. She cracked the can open and sipped some liquid adrenaline.

"You have an addiction problem," Korella noted.

"True," Flux allowed. "And the only cure is a proper dicking down — administered ASAP."

Korella just shook her head, not dignifying that with an answer. She waited for the light to go green before glancing at the GPS on the console and turning down a corner. "Trying some new makeup?"

Flux glanced at herself in the overhead mirror. "Yeah," she said, adjusting her hair. She had just a hint of dark blue dusting below her eyes, across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. "I think it looks cute. Like color-coded freckles."

Korella, for her part, went fairly light with her whole neo-gothic getup, with only some foundation and a pair of black-and-white contact lenses. She kept those mismatched eyes on the road. "Don't overthink it. He'd love you even if you showed up in a clown outfit."

"I doubt he's a clussy chaser. It's a pretty off-grid fetish."

"I dunno, girl. Remember that vid where the chick pulls out one of those twisty balloons that clowns use to tie into animal shapes?"

Flux squinted, trying to recall the one. "Uuuh, maybe?"

"Slutty clown in red, bowtie, kinda cute. She pulls the balloon from her mouth — and then keeps on pulling." Korella let go of the wheel for a moment to indicate the size. "Either there was some clever editing involved, or she was one throaty bitch. That lip-bite at the end was just icing on the cake."

Flux grimaced. "And I'm the weird one when you remember shit like that." She looked at her energy drink's label. Mango flavor, and more sugar boxed inside the little cage than anything else. She leaned a bit forward so her wings had space to start working off the calories.

Sundays were fairly light on traffic, so it didn't take long until they spotted the suburbs where Roen's home was located. Trees lined the road, close enough and frequent enough to give off a vibe of hiking through an idyllic little forest wonderland.

Flux had been here before, once, during her early stalking days. It gave her that same twisty-fluttery feeling deep in her stomach, and the sensation kept growing with every signpost they passed. She took slow, calming breaths — but she could only marginally reduce the awesomeness of what was about to happen.

She guzzled down more energy drink.

Korella's GPS turned off as the van rumbled up to their destination, slowing and then coming to rest by the sidewalks. The sudden absence of the bass-boosted electric motor left a strange quiet in its wake, broken only by the wind brushing its invisible fingers over the rustling leaves. A bird trilled once, twice, then went silent.

Korella stretched, testing her hooves before glancing over. "Alright, we're here. You ready for this?"

"Is my hair still doing its thing? From all angles?"

"Spiky, spunky, and with a blue tint in the middle. Very Fluxen, I would say."

"Okay, then," Flux said, straightening her back. She adopted a deep, wizardly voice. "Mellon."

Korella opened the doors and scooted back out of her tub-seat to leave through the back of the van. She took Flux's empty can and threw it in the trash compartment on the way out. The bin whirred and aluminum crumpled.

Flux jumped out, her gaze taking in the family house across the street. Gravel fronted the entryway, and ivy crawled its way across the low fences on both sides of the property. The building itself was a cheery light yellow, with a low roof merging up into the second floor. It looked deceptively quiet, just like all the houses that looked innocent enough until a certain pixie-dust-infused, obsessed and hyper-energized individual graced it with her presence.

Korella walked up next to her, a good two feet taller thanks to her equine foundation. Flux gave her a sidelong glance. "Do you think he knows you're a centaur?"

Korella grinned. "I think I failed to mention that little detail."

Uh-oh.

As they approached, Flux noticed several cameras hanging just underneath the roof tiles. They were spaced apart in a uniform enough pattern to make her suspect the entire building was framed by them. Had she upped the ante on her stalking ways, she would have been spotted instantly.

A cellular scanner protected the entrance, just below the doorbell. Korella raised her brows as they traded a look. Too expensive for this place to come across as anything but paranoid. Flux had a feeling that Roen's brother was the culprit, but put the question aside for now.

She was on the precipice of a milestone — she was about to pop her boycrush's-house-visit cherry.

Korella reached over her and rang the doorbell. It dinged and it donged.

They waited for a bit, and then the door opened and Flux got her first glance at the Travall household.

Her gaze swept up to the entryway above the door frame, where the dark-painted roofing displayed a wooden ringlet pattern, reminiscent of the intricate grain you’d find on a well-worn barrel lid left out in the rain. Right in the center hung a convoluted, wrought iron lamp that looked like someone had attempted to fix with far too much welding.

Eyes drifting downward, Flux saw herself in a full-body mirror — daaamn, she looked like a hottie — and an old-fashioned calendar next to it. There were some scribbles on the surface, but she couldn't see from there if it was up to date.

The rest of the small welcome area was hiding behind one very, very distracting human that shifted Flux's attention away from the inanimate and back to the biological.

Roen was standing in the doorway. He looked a bit worse for wear – a sleepless cast to his eyes and a little paler than usual – but still a million times better than the last time she'd seen him. His hair was sticking up in a loose, charmingly disheveled mess. He wore jeans and a plain gray t-shirt that looked good despite being entirely unremarkable.

Flux melted a little. He could’ve been dressed in a tutu, and it would’ve still barely registered next to his presence.

"Hi," she squeaked.

Roen, for his part, was staring open mouthed somewhere above and behind Flux's head. "Um — it's nice to see you both," he got the words out.

There was probably a joke circulating somewhere on the net about a pixie, a centaur, and a human walking into a bar.

"It is my pleasure," Korella said, graciously extending a hand over Flux's shoulder. Flux leaned away to give her space when her boobs almost bonked her in the head. "For all Flux talked about you, she never mentioned how ravishingly sharp that jawline of yours sits."

Apparently Korella had switched to all upper glade mode, being all sociable and courteous and shit. Some people could just toggle between personalities like a menu setting.

If her plan was to catch him even more off balance, the effect was the opposite.

The absurdity of her appearance combined with that of her statement just made Roen's eyebrows climb upwards. "Thank you," he said eventually, then glanced behind him. "You might have to duck a bit in the doorway, but you should be fine otherwise. I'm not sure how you get on with stairs, though."

"We have a complicated relationship," Korella said.

"Yes," Roen said. He hesitated for a moment, then stood aside. "Come on in."

The interior of the house was warm and inviting, a single hallway leading down toward an open-arched kitchen on one side, a living room on the other, and a stairway in the middle. The air smelled faintly of cinnamon.

Flux was very careful not to bump into anything, which was easier said than done with her wings giving their erratic flutters to rocket her forward every few steps. The pictures on the walls were paintings rather than photos — landscapes, mostly. Barely-apocalyptic illustrations of the wilds.

"You paint, too?" Flux asked.

"No. I tried, once, but I just can't work without the accuracy of a sharp point. It's a whole different skill set," Roen said. "Well. Adjacent, but still different enough."

"Like engineering and computer science, eh?" Flux grinned, leaning into the kitchen to take a peek. Oooh, those look tasty.

Roen stepped around her, walking up to the counter. "I suppose." He grabbed the tray with a pile of chocolatey doughnuts and three colored slushies on it, then nodded behind her. "My computer is over there, in the living room. If we're going to—"

Korella clopping up from the hallway probably sent some cautionary thoughts through his head, because Roen abandoned the tray and instead hurried back past Flux to rearrange some furniture. "Um, feel free to eat and grab your drinks and everything. This'll take just one second."

Flux leaned her hip against the arch and watched him with that same, persistent grin as he began pulling some shelves into the corner. She would have helped, but — but he was just too fucking adorable not to stare.

She felt Korella hover at her shoulder. Stealthy, centaurs were not.

"Verdict is still pending," Korella said with a low voice.

"It better be. We barely just horsed inside."

"Mmh." They watched him rearrange a rug in a newly vacated space in front of the two computers and the cute little setup he had going on. "I can already tell this much, though," Korella said. "He's a keeper."

Flutters in the stomach. Yes. Yes, he was.

Korella nudged Flux playfully towards the refreshments. "You look fidgety. Performance anxiety? That whole 'I'm-here-to-size-him-up' look isn't doing much for the optics."

"I'm gonna go grab a drink," Flux announced more loudly, heading towards the tray of slushies.

"Don't forget, girl — subtlety is key," Korella whispered as she went.

Flux rolled her eyes, grabbing the bright pink slushie. Unlike some, she hadn’t forgotten how to blend in. She took a sip, savoring the sweet, icy blast.

Korella coming over wasn’t in the original fantasy Flux had entertained in her mind when she imagined visiting Roen for the first time. But the fact was that she had messed up, and now she needed backup. A wing-woman, if you will – nevermind the fact that she was a pixie. Without the centaur's clever intervention during the call, this little get-together likely wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Girl force rescue horse was a many faceted plan.

Roen managed to shove the rug into place just as Flux passed a couple of deliciously glazed doughnuts over to Korella.

"What kind of seating do you typically use?" Roen asked. "I can run upstairs for a couple of blankets if you want."

Flux said, "Oh, don't you worry your pretty little he—"

"Yes, please. That would be wonderful," Korella interrupted with a pleased smile. She looked at Flux. "Don't just stand there like a brick wall, girl. Go and help our host."

If no one has figured it out yet — Korella was awesome.

Flux quickly put down her slushie and hurried after Roen up the stairs. The upper level had the same organic design as the rest of the house, with a trio of rooms branching off from a small, half-moon-shaped landing.

"I mostly use Arlo's room for storage space nowadays," Roen said, moving toward the room on the far side.

Flux stepped up to the slightly ajar door instead, catching a glimpse of a bed through the gap. She peeked her head in, and the rest of her body followed without conscious decision.

There was no universe, statistically or otherwise, where she wasn’t checking out her near-boyfriend’s bedroom. This place was like a museum designed for one overly curious pixie — and she was here for the full exhibit.

"Whoa," Flux breathed, stepping further into the room. On one side, clothes hung neatly in a tall wardrobe that stretched to the ceiling — everything meticulously organized and right where it belonged. Another wall was lined with bookshelves, packed with e-readers and paperbacks, mostly academic at first glance. The desk near the bed was the only exception, its flat surface scattered with sheets of paper and one drawer left partially open.

The whole space had an undeniably masculine feel, yet with a level of order and tidiness that would never be found anywhere near Flux. Even the bed was made. Holy sparkles.

"It's… pretty boring," Roen said from the doorway, watching Flux circle around the place. "Been a long time since I spent much time here. Other than sleeping, I guess."

"It's not everyday you see this many paperbacks in one place," Flux said, her fingers trailing over the spines. "Mostly technical stuff, huh?"

"Yeah, mostly. There's some fiction mixed in, though. I liked to escape sometimes."

"Liked?"

Roen smiled faintly. "Long, long time ago, back when little Roen wasn't big enough to know that fairy tales didn't exist. Those bedtime stories don't read themselves."

Flux looked at Roen — really looked. Behind that usual charm and earnest expression, behind those kind brown eyes that warmed her like a fireplace, there was something unusual about him. Something had changed. Not just on the surface, but on a soul deep level that refracted in the way he stood, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself.

It took some time for her to notice it, but when she did, it was a stark difference. His anxiety, that nervous and awkward and utterly endearing part of him was gone — maybe not completely, but reduced to a husk of its former self. And a constant weight of exhaustion had taken its place.

Fidgety eyes were shadowed instead. A tone that always started with a cute 'um' or stammer now rang with a more even tone, as if he'd lost the ability to care somewhere along the way. His posture was a bit more guarded, a bit less honest with its insecurities than it used to be. Those previous things were still there, in the background. But they've been gutted, thrown against the wall, and put on life support as a tired eventuality took the steering wheel. Not just a mood, but a shifted state of being that was more diminished and more… more grown up.

Flux's heart twisted in her chest. She had made him grow up. And she'd give anything to breathe the life back in the void that now filled his eyes.

She sharply looked away. Because if she stared for one more second, she knew she'd throw herself at him and beg and plead — and he'd refuse to let her in.

Flux stopped by the small bedside table, idly adjusting the flexible neck of the reading lamp. She picked up a small plastic bottle and rolled it between her fingers, reading the label. "Sleeping pills?" she asked, looking up at him.

His eyes lingered on her hand. He just shrugged. "It's hard to fall asleep sometimes. Gets rid of the nightmares, too."

The bottle rattled as Flux slowly put it back down.

"Roen, I…"

"Come on," Roen said, turning away. "We're making your friend wait."

They carried two armfuls of blankets and several fluffy pillows down into the living room, including a faux fur throw soft enough to feel like it was spun from clouds. Korella had taken her own drink in the meantime and was halfway through the purple icey glass, her front legs lowered as she looked through a tea selection in the kitchen.

Flux helped Roen arrange the cozy spot next to his chair by the computer setup. She saw the case she’d picked out for him and felt a small sense of satisfaction. The other PC was a bit banged up, with spots of dust still lingering between the ventilation grilles, but it was the one currently hooked up to the peripherals.

Korella came clopping over, stretching out her skirted centaur parts in the open space. "It's perfect. Thank you, Roen," she said. She held the tray up with the doughnuts piled on top, plus some napkins she had added. "May I bring these puppies along? My parents are one of those clean freaks where the tea belongs on the tea balcony, and so on. It never took."

"Sure," Roen said, standing. "Are you also like Flux?" he made a vague gesture with his hands. "You know — computer magician."

Flux snorted. "If you consider bugging out every user interface she comes across magic, then yeah. She'd make one hell of a QA employee."

"Quality assurance," Korella supplied. "Flux might have magic, but a little side effect is that sometimes she speaks in tongues. Please excuse her — a partition of her brain responsible for speech is just signals of ones and zeroes."

Flux flew around the computer table as Korella settled into the improvised cot next to Roen's seat, and then hovering above the setup, began re-plugging the cables back in the new comp. "No, but seriously," she said with an idle nod at them. "Installing an operating system is very straightforward, once you have done it a couple of times. Korella could do it with her hooves tied behind her head."

"Now that's some vivid imagery I didn't need," Korella said.

"Then it's all about getting the drivers sorted out, then running some stress tests just to be sure," Flux said. Monitor, done. Mouse and KB, pliggedy pluggedy. The power cord was already in.

"Did you bring the software?"

"Yup. It's all on my paddie. Wouldn't forget in a million years."

Flux flew back over to their side, landing a step behind the prone centaur and Roen's seat. She flung her arms over both their shoulders in a casual assertion of confidence. "This is gonna be a breeze," she announced. "You guys look real comfy, which is an essential requirement for watching a loading bar go up." She eyed the tray of doughnuts, then made some chomping sounds with her teeth.

"Jesus," Korella muttered. She passed one of the doughnuts to Flux, who extracted one arm to grab the goodie sugar-bomb — while crucially leaving the other over Roen's shoulders.

Damn, I'm smooth.

Flux looted the legendary consumable and took a bite. The glaze was thick and sweet, the dough oh-so-pillowy. "Gohon," she chewed. "Pwessda buhn."

Roen had gone a bit stiff at first, but seemed to ease up under her touch a few moments later. He reached down and hit the power button, and the computer purred to life.

Now, the whole spiel she gave in voice chat about needing a chaperone for the setup? It was mostly bullshit. Well, to a degree. Anyone with half a brain could follow some tutorial vid on the net, and Roen was a guy with double the intellect of most. Still, having them there did shave off some time. They skimmed through the specs and performance details on the screen within minutes, confirmed the motherboard was picking up everything, and got the installation rolling soon enough.

While the progress bar inched across the screen, it was mostly ignored in favor of the vid playing on Flux's datapad propped up on the keyboard. When Korella realized Roen was completely out of the loop on the net’s celebrity scene, she pulled out the big guns — stand-up comedy. Neither of the girls were hardcore fans, but it was one of those things that everyone could enjoy, even adorably clueless humans. Leave it to a charismatic chick with a mic to turn skeptics into believers.

Eventually, the pile of doughnuts was reduced to flakes somewhere along the eighty percent mark, and Korella gave Flux one of those private girl looks. The one that said 'alright, enough horsing around'. Or maybe Flux just had some overtly centauren associations with her bestie.

"So which folder has the progs you prepared?" Korella asked after the latest vid played out — somehow having strayed to the world of nomad vloggers who roamed the outskirts — and navigated over to the datapad's files manager.

"Mmmm," Flux tongued her straw. "Two rows down… yup, yup. Now the uppermost folder with the underscore, aaaand… there. That's it."

Korella looked over the list of installers. There were a good dozen of them. "Basic shit, hm?"

"Basic shit," Flux agreed.

Roen kept looking back and forth between the two of them.

"I’ve got it from here. It’s just the boring stuff now — sorting through exe files, running setups in order, double-checking everything. Nothing exciting, but it needs my full focus." Korella waved them off with a dramatic shooing motion. "Begone, peasants. Your majesty needs her headspace."

Flux could tell Roen wanted to ask if she had it handled, but bless his heart, he was too polite to risk even the slightest hint of a question that might be taken as an insult.

She tugged at his arm. "We must flee. Before she gets all pissy and stuff. Don't let the prim exterior fool you — she's seething inside."

Roen sat for a second longer. "If it's really okay," he said. Korella's nod was enough to convince him, and he turned to give Flux a speculative look. "I'm not sure what—"

"I wanna see that project you talked about," Flux said excitedly. "The one you use your drawings for?"

A trace of that cute awkwardness flickered across his face. "Um, I don't know. It's just one of those things that would seem pointless to normal people."

Flux punched him playfully on the shoulder. "Well, you lucked the hell out, oomfie, because I'm as far from normal as you could get."

"Yeah, kinda figured that one out myself lately," Roen mumbled, but he moved away from the living room. Flux was quick on his tail. They didn't have to walk far.

Instead of going up, Roen walked behind the staircase and opened the door leading the way into the basement. Warm air hit Flux in the face, and she saw a series of rustic laminated steps descending below. "Oooooh," she said. It looked like a secret lair.

With a blast of her wings, she cut ahead and stomped all the way down to the bottom. Discovering his bedroom had been one thing, but it clearly wasn't where his heart lied. But this — she thought as the workshop spread out in front of her — this was his essence distilled into a single space.

And she was so fucking here for it.

The basement wasn't just a workshop. It was a war room like from one of those Sledgehammer 80K tabletop games — except the replica was the depiction of the real world.

A massive table dominated the space, stretching at least fifteen meters in length, curving to match the exact shape of the continent in black-and-white. The surface was a bewildering patchwork of paper and metal, with natural landmarks like the Liftic peaks in the North crafted from origami folds, and the forests and farmlands around NullCorp represented by flat, detailed pages. Cities stood out, their bluish steel tint stark against the sea of greyscale, each one unique in shape and size — and to Flux's untrained eyes, they seemed to match the aerial shots she had seen online. Even the famed gulfs and beaches of Lux City were represented by the subtle graphite gradient of the waves.

But that was just the half of it.

Flux walked around the table in wonder, her eyes tracking the spiderweb of the Mega-Nexus, spanning from one city to another in an intricate network of enclosed tubes, metal lines carving their way above the paper vistas to connect the world under a single, unified highway. Like orbital rings, each city had their own Nexus station hovering above them, the tubes open and hollow and — Flux leaned forward with her mouth hanging open — and interactive? Her gaze shifted to the edge of the table, where a custom holder had been installed to store tiny metal car figurines. They looked like a perfect fit for the Nexus stations.

"No. Fucking. Way," Flux whispered.

She slowly turned around to stare at Roen by the foot of the stairs. "No fucking way," she repeated, louder now.

"Yeah, it's…" Roen started, a bit flushed. "It's fairly robust."

"'Fairly robust'? Dude, fairly robust is what you call an influencer's puss before a dildo sponsorship. This is," Flux said, shaking her head. "It's unreal — for a solo project, too? Unbelievable. Like, this is some award-winning level of achievement right here."

His blush was an extra miracle of its own. "Flux, it's not that big of a deal. Really. It's just a hobby that I mess around with."

"Well, shit. That makes it even more impressive, not less," Flux laughed. She paced the length of the table, stopping occasionally to tap a miniature paper cutout. "Look at these! Tiny little canyons by Marrow. How'd you make them?"

Roen slowly began walking his own circuit around the table, hands in his pockets. "Bristol board — thick enough to survive my scribbling and cutting. Some of them fit with just a few folds, others need a full disassembly and some glue."

"Big words," Flux hummed, stepping in concert on the other side. "Drawing and kirigami. What about the metal parts? The cities?"

"Soldering the tunnels. Brazing, for the bigger blocks like the skyscrapers." He nodded toward the side, a small work table by the wall and equipment hanging from hooks. "The inert pieces are easy enough to deal with — it's the Nexus that's giving me the runaround."

He stopped abruptly, looking at her with a sudden gleam in his eyes. "Actually, do you want to see something kinda cool?" He didn't smile, not exactly.

It was more than that.

Of course Flux said yes. Of course she wanted to imprint that joy of his forever and ever into the present.

Roen took one of the miniature cars up and, leaning above Sirrej's lifelike miniature, held the metal piece between his fingers above the Mega-Nexus's station ring. "When making the launching ports, I had to improvise a bit, but… well. You'll see."

Flux watched with bated breath as he dropped the car into the open ended part of the metal ring. Nothing happened at first — not until Roen reached down below a table and pressed some button. The corners lit up with electrical indicators, and the ring-stations above every city sealed up with a snap.

A soft whirring sound started up from the Sirrej station. It started out slow, slow enough for Flux to make out the sound of the little car gently beginning to move around the ring. It didn't travel anywhere, didn't take any of the several lanes leaning away from Sirrej — it just kept picking up speed above the city's ringed Nexus station like one of those wind-up clocks. Getting faster with every little lap it made.

The whir arched to a higher pitch, and with every second, even higher still. The metal tubes started to rattle in their frames from the force of the car hitting and hitting and barreling against the inside of the tiny ring's walls, picking up speed until it was one continuous, shrill noise, and the model groaned as if about to implode at the seams.

And then there was a crack — and the car was in the station above Marrow.

The ring opened a millisecond later and Flux saw the smoking and blackened shape of the car right there in front of her, on her side of the table.

Flux stared at the metal husk. It hadn't just been fast. It had been instant. Faster than sound.

It was quite literally the sonic highways of the Mega-Nexus recreated on a room-wide scale. Something that had taken more than a hundred years of coordinated effort from humans and non-humans and magical races across the globe. Sure, you didn't have to account for the gods' deadly storms and the mutants clawing at the concrete foundations across vast distances…

But still. Holy fuck.

"It's something of a trade secret how the Mega-Nexus can sustain sonic speeds for the heavy tramways and the car lanes, and it's not as simple as the electromagnetics driven couplings I have here…"

Flux walked around the table, watching Roen speak and ramble about technical details that sounded urkish to her ears. She didn't need to understand, and still she would have listened to him for eternity. He looked absolutely radiant.

"…and you’re looking at inductive phase gating instead of your typical coil-on-coil acceleration. The real challenge isn’t just getting the velocity…"

Slow and steady steps, her finger trailing the edge of the table. Her human lost in his passion, and her in him.

"…it’s maintaining it without hysteresis losses frying the entire system— Mph!"

Flux fell forward, yanked his head down, and shut up that beautiful fuggin mouth by sticking her tongue down it.

Fireworks detonated behind her eyes as their mouths met, locking together in a clash of lips and heat that confirmed — then double-and-triple-checked — that he was the hardware to her software. Flux uploaded herself straight into him, bypassing all firewalls with brute force and zero hesitation. Lips meshed, breath tangled, and somewhere in the source code of this kiss, she was rewriting every damn function to prioritize him. His taste had her OS overheating, her wings nearly tearing off her back with the force of their flaps, and her heavy boots leaving the ground and pulling his head up to follow hers.

Roen had stiffened at the start. Then he had lost himself, too, in the war of the tongues and his hands went around to grip her ass, and she ground herself forward into him, and he stumbled back a few steps to keep his balance. Neither of them were good kissers. Neither of them fucking cared.

It was Roen who pulled away first.

Flux moaned with frustration as her tongue was extracted from his, though the taste lingered. His chest rose and fell rapidly, ragged breaths escaping his lips. His eyes were glazed over and dilated, and slowly coming up for air. Flux, still floating physically and metaphorically, tried to wrap her thighs around his middle, but he separated them with a firm press on the shoulder.

"Flux," he breathed.

The wanton sounds that came out of her throat were not dignified for an upper glade pixen of old blood. She pulled at his shirt, tangled her fingers in his hair, mushed her lips into his ear and down the side of his neck. And since her damn wings would just not calm down, and he had separated their lower bodies, she was now laying horizontally in the air with her feet almost kicking the ceiling of the basement.

"Flux," he repeated. His breath stirred her hair.

"Iwantyou-Iwantyou-Iwantyou," Flux growled between bites and kisses on his skin. "On me, in me, injected straight into my bloodstream."

It felt like life itself was being torn from Flux when Roen, gently but firmly, parted from her. He stepped away, swaying a bit as if drunk — drunk on her — and then braced himself over the model table with both his hands gripping the edge.

"Flux," he said quietly, eyes down on the miniature world he had built. "I… I'm sorry. I can't. Not now. Not like this."

Flux forced her wings to still, and she came back down to earth. She ran her fingers across her lips, feeling the tingles and the ghost texture of his pores. One touch, and a new addiction found.

"What can I do?" Flux said. The words were hard to string together, but they needed to be said. "How else do I make you love me — except by loving you first?" She watched his side profile, the reddened spots of her nibbles on his neck. She could fix him. She knew she could. If only he let her.

"It's not about my lack of—" he began. He let out a steadying breath. "Flux, I… I want us to happen, too. Okay? It's not that."

"Then what is it?"

Roen remained silent for a minute. Composure came back to him in slow trickles, with that deep wariness alongside it. He then pushed away from the table and went around toward the far end of the basement. Flux stared at him with a bite to her lips. She wanted to kiss away that sadness the moment it appeared like a cloud above his head. But she followed him all the same.

Roen sat down in a swivel chair in front of several monitors, one of those security systems you would see in a crime thriller. Rows of live feeds flickered between angles of the neighborhood, one with a grainy night vision overlay capturing the porch, and another showing some time-stamped footage looping in neat little grids. A bank or a casino might need something like this — not a family home.

"My brother had the cameras set up before he first asked for my help during my second year in high school," Roen said. His voice was wooden, toneless. "I didn't know it back then, but he and his thugs had already been skirting the law to make money on the side. They were gonna rob an electronics store, Arlo said. The drone would blow out the walls, he said. I found out the truth at some point. Didn't stop me from helping them six more times as the years passed."

Oh, no. Roen.

"Arlo told me the cams were for my safety. That they were reassurance that everything would be fine, and part of me believed him. How could I not? Fifteen-year old Roen was scared out of his mind and hurt and confused after Dad le—" he bit off that last word with some effort. Shivered.

"Flux. I'm not saying this as an excuse. I'm not looking for redemption for all the fucked up shit I've done. I am simply explaining the depth of the tunnel that I had dug myself into over the course of my life," Roen said. "This is not some misstep you can hide beneath paperwork. There is no escape for me. A happy ending does not exist here. And I don't want to drag you down to the bottom."

Flux’s chest constricted, her insides twisting like a knotted yarn, and there might've been a tear or two that fell down her cheeks. Pixie dust might've streamed upwards from the corner of her eyes. But she was not important right now.

"I know what they made you do," Flux said, stepping closer to him.

"You know what I did," Roen corrected. He looked to the side. "Huh. Of course you do — you're a smart girl. You probably figured out everything after that night on the bridge," he muttered, then glanced back at her. "And still you keep on pushing."

"I do," Flux said. She crept forward, legs brushing against his until she stood between him and the sea of camera feeds. With a boost of her wings, she hopped up on his chair, her knees straddling the outside of his thighs. "I'm not scared of your brother, Roen. I'm not afraid of Franklin, or the keres, or the entire Sirrej department of NullCorp descending on us in gunsmoke."

She put both her arms on the back of the chair, framing Roen's impassive face, pinning him below her body. "I. Want. You," she whispered, looking deep in his eyes from an inch away. "With all the struggles and difficulties that come with you. Your sins, your hurt, your passion. The whole fucking package with a bowtie on top."

"You're insane," Roen said.

"You flatterer, you," Flux murmured. She leaned closer and took his bottom lip between her teeth, tugging at it softly. "Of course I am — insanely in love."

Flux grunted as Roen pushed forward for one second, pressing his lips against hers in a needy, almost violent motion — and then pulled away just as quickly. She whimpered from the need, pixie dust already gushing in thin rivulets from her core and down the inside of her thighs. She pressed her knees tighter around him, beginning to slowly grind on his lap.

"F-flux," Roen stammered. Panted. Whatever ragged thing that was in his voice. "Things are getting… dangerous. Someone — someone is hunting our group. I don't want you to—"

She made him swallow her tongue once more. Stubborn, pig-headed, incredible fucking human. She began ripping at his shirt, and he was instinctively doing the same with the hem of her pants. Roen's resistance was slipping with every moment that she grinded on top of him, his worries going up in gasoline flame that made reason seem like a distant thing.

Lips smacked and breaths got heavy. Warm bodies pressed against each other, fumbling clothes out of the way and pressing, groping, feeling each other out with clumsy and desperate energy. Flux's hands were underneath his shirt, clawing at his chest, and one of his hands was already down her front and questing toward her warm, fluttering, gushing little—

"Hey lovelies! I think I just blue-screened the whole computer!" Korella's voice rang out from above.

Their heads jerked away in unison as if struck by a live wire.

"Korella!" Flux sputtered, scrambling back from Roen in a flurry of displaced clothing and pixie dust spilling from her pant leg. She scrambled off the chair — accidentally bumping Roen in the stomach with one knee, ohmygod sorry! — with her cheeks flaming like embers.

What the hell!

Flux would’ve been yelling at the centaur if she weren’t too busy dying of embarrassment. Getting boned down by the love of your life and wanting him to rearrange your guts while your bestie was practically within earshot? Maybe not the smoothest play.

Roen straightened in his chair and adjusted his shirt that might've torn a little at the neckline, his breaths coming quick and heavy. If her embarrassment was an ember, his was the entire bonfire. "Um," he breathed, looking at her, the loose pants she was tugging back in place, the screens behind her, over his shoulder to the stairway, then back to her again.

Flux yanked her clothes back into place with sharp, jerky movements — her panties in a twist in more than one way. "You. Me. Date. Tomorrow," she growled, her primal little lizard brain incapable of stringing together anything more complex.

Roen swallowed, maybe a bit intimidated. But far from deterred. "Can't do tomorrow. Long day in the lab."

Flux pounced closer to him, grabbing the back of his head and barely — barely keeping herself from continuing where they left off. "Roen Travall. You are going to stretch me out like a goddamn rubber band as soon as it's physically possible. Is that clear?"

"Yeah," Roen said. "Yes, it is," he darted in for a clumsy peck. "Oomfie."

Flux melted a little.

He was so perfect. He was hers.

And soon enough, she would show him just how far she would go to secure that happily-ever-after that he thought he didn't deserve.

24: Roen

Some days were better than others. If someone would've told Roen that a monotonous existence of titrations and recrystallizations would be preferable to sitting at home, he would have laughed. Or maybe he'd have cried. Both seemed equally likely at this point.

His hours at Derilect-Helix Co-Opt University weren't exactly thrilling. Most involved meticulously prepping lab equipment, ensuring reagents were stocked, and occasionally assisting the Professor with demonstrations. But something that had started as a means to get his hands on ifrit ashes now served as a palette cleanser for his head. In the quiet of the university, after the lecture halls emptied but the hallways still buzzed with people just a door away, he could be alone without feeling isolated. It wasn’t exactly therapeutic — he was an introvert, after all, and his batteries kept draining throughout the day — but it offered his mind enough of a distraction to process everything else in the background.

And he had a lot to process.

Arlo's investor conference was scheduled for the end of the week at the Skye Towers banquet hall, an upscale and modernized part of the city. Fancy clothes, champagne, music. The sort of affair he would’ve steered clear of, even if he actually liked the idea of mingling and sipping wines with corporate businessmen. Which, he did not. Non-criminal, innocent, regular Roen couldn't have imagined a worse way to spend a night.

But criminal Roen? He wasn’t planning to attend the ball for the social scene.

After their phone call, Arlo had sent over the details of the plan. Or at least, Roen's part of it. He didn't mention the name of the shareholder he wanted taken out, and he didn't say if any of his men — Bull or Franklin — would be involved with the operation. Roen's job was to show up, slip inside the storage rooms where they stored the lectern for the speech, use Malcolm's number to open the gateway to his hideout, grab the explosive, and port back inside the building. Only Franklin's phone had the djinn-spelled number, as far as Roen knew. So he would be involved. Probably.

Then he would rig the bomb inside the hollow part of the lectern. Slip back out, and that would be it. Dawnkill was in attendance, too. Arlo didn't say why. He just assured Roen that the cameras in the storage room would be already disabled, and the phone would be there waiting for him.

Simple. Quick. Another innocent man erased like data from a spreadsheet.

No drones, hm? No fucking drones.

If only Arlo's words, true as they had been, had offered any comfort.

Like so many times before, he wanted to distance himself. Pull the shutters so he was all but numb as the job cut another piece of his soul away, cleave and chop something that he couldn't sense, but still bled under the surface.

Except, that wasn't really an option, not anymore. Not with Flux suddenly in the picture and making him... feel.

That kiss, the way she felt above him as she tugged and mushed herself closer to his body, one presence letting the other know how much they wanted to be there and theirs — he couldn't really put the sensation into words. Though technically physical, it was more than physical. The movements and the touching, and the way she pushed forward, it let him know what his mind would never comprehend alone.

That she was present. For him, in the moment, she would remain and stay and just be there for him. And that she wanted him to be there, too.

He didn't think it was true. But he had felt it. And so closing off the part of him that could feel... he now had a reason to fight against that urge. Because for the first time since a friend's laughter or a near-forgotten father's compliment, something good was coming out of all this trouble humans go through life for.

One side pushing him toward cold disinterest. The other dragging him back into the firelight. And over the whole theater play, a hitman's gloved hand adjusted the optics of their sight.

It would be different, this time. Things would end up better than they started. He had to believe that in order to keep on going.

It was late afternoon by the time Roen stepped off the bus and returned to his neighborhood, past the quiet rows of houses and the overgrown lawns. He jogged across the street, shaded by the branching hedge maples on both sides, and adjusted the sling of his bag before turning onto his property.

Bull was waiting by the door.

Roen paused for a second before his steps resumed.

The tauren's hulking figure was leaning against the fence by the porch, dusty jeans and a sleeveless white shirt leaving his arms bare. He watched Roen approach from beneath lowered brows, head tilted down in a way that made his horns that much more visible.

He didn't say a word as Roen took the steps up. Roen could feel his eyes on him as he stepped up to the door, his hand hovering over the cellular scanner.

"I thought it would be Franklin coming to collect," Roen said. He tilted his head toward the tauren, waiting for an answer.

Bull didn't give it immediately. He shifted his weight in place, the fence groaning. "How is Arlo?"

"Dunno," Roen said. He swiped his hand against the scanner and it beeped, turning green. "Why?"

"He's been avoiding us."

"That's nothing new."

"For you, maybe. But I've been guarding his back for longer than you've been wiring for us. He kept me out of the loop for a while there, ever since the job."

"You're speaking past tense. You're back in the loop, then?"

"Yes. He called," Bull said. He didn't elaborate. Jerked his head toward the door. "Move it."

They entered the empty house with Bull shutting the door behind him. Roen shook off the dirt from his shoes and moved through the hallway without hurry. Bull followed close behind.

The kitchen wasn’t exactly prime real estate for hiding spots. Even with people living here, it was doubtful anyone would think to check beneath the liftable section of the countertop. The bags of ifrit ashes were there. Roen put them on the counter, and Bull waited for the entire pile before he swept them off with one meaty hand.

Roen closed the stash and rested his palms on the marble surface, drumming a finger. "Will you be there at the conference?"

"I'll do my part," Bull rumbled.

"We're gonna need Franklin and his phone."

Bull just stared at him silently.

Roen frowned. Where the hell was Franklin? Not that he missed the guy, but he was the one supposed to take the ashes off his hands. Things were happening, and he had a feeling not just the way his brother had planned.

"Alright," Roen said. "That's all. You know the way out."

Bull stepped around the counter, eyes slipping from Roen and going over the cold interior. He paused above the electric stove, nudging a saucepan with an idle move. Then a skillet toward the opposite side. It fell into the sink with a thunderous clatter. Coincidentally, he now stood directly in Roen's way out of the kitchen.

Bull glanced at him. "You owe me payment for the last job."

Roen took a deep, steadying breath. He stilled his fidgeting fingers. "Yeah? How so?"

"Your fuckup cost me."

"You were not even there."

"It cost me all the same."

Fuck, Arlo. What the hell are you doing?

Bull didn't have to spell it out for Roen. And it's not like it was his money — not really.

"You're standing in the way. It's upstairs," Roen said. When Bull didn't budge, he moved forward, gaze fixed on some distant point, and angled his body to slip between the tauren and the counter. It felt like navigating a narrow mountain pass. The horned head tracked him in silence as he got through, left the kitchen, and disappeared up the staircase.

His credcard was in his bag, left on the floor at the foot of his desk. He flipped the thin metallic card over, reading the number on the LED display. Twelve thousand, just shy of the low-end model being topped off. It was one of those 'safeguard' types that couldn't go in the minus and had a cap on daily spending — but in turn, allowed anyone to use them regardless of the registered name.

Roen stared at it for a moment before grabbing a pencil and writing down the serial code. Just in case.

He returned downstairs without any particular hurry, where Bull was waiting in the hallway leading outside.

"That's all I have on me at the moment," Roen said, extending the card to him. It was true enough. Other than a couple of bills in his wallet and his brother's shared net account, he was tapped for creds.

Bull turned away from the painting he'd been looking at to stare down at Roen's hand, then at him. He sniffed once — making the loop through his nose flail — and gave a small nod. "Good enough," he said.

He then lashed out with a casual fist, the back of his knuckles connecting with Roen's face in an explosion of pain.

The world flashed in black and red as Roen felt himself flung back like a ragdoll, his frail human body unable to withstand even a fraction of the force exerted by the massive tauren, his back hitting the wall and making him crumble. Consciousness cut out for a split second, and then Bull was crouching in front of him.

"Don't make a mistake again," he said quietly.

He reached down for the dropped credcard on the ground, turning it between two fingers before making it disappear in his pocket.

His cheekbone burned, the pain swelling just below his eye where the hit had landed, making it hard to see Bull stand through the blurry half-vision. There was a metallic taste inside his mouth. A throbbing started to bloom past the pain, a slow ache spreading its way from his temple down to his jaw.

The Bull-shaped smudge walked away. The door opened and then shut behind him. Steps thudded down the porch, on the gravel, fading away until there was no sound anywhere but the white noise filling his ears.

Roen sat there for an unknown amount of time, intensely aware of his own body. His breath hitched a few times, catching in his throat before evening out. The pain pulsed, insistent, demanding attention. The taste of blood lessened as he swallowed, or he simply just got acclimated to it.

He needed to move. Needed to lie down. Needed to stop feeling like he was going to fall apart.

Come on. Get up. You're not dead yet.

On the outside, anyway.

He stood, somehow. It wasn't easy, and it required some assistance from the wall, but he was back on his own two feet eventually.

Roen leaned against the wall, waiting to regain his balance. He lifted a hand to his head, but the movement sent a fresh wave of pain shooting through his skull. His vision cleared enough for him to see again, thankfully. His eye was intact and he could open it without issue. That was good. Okay, that was good.

Slowly, he walked inside the kitchen and opened the freezer, getting out a bag of ice. A clean shirt from his wardrobe was next, and by the time he had the cold compress ready, his head felt like one giant ball of inferno. The skin hadn't broken, but there would be bruising and swelling. He had bit his tongue, too, probably. It was hard to be sure. Individual aches were lost somewhere in the mix.

The sun had set by the time Roen sat down in his living room, the open packet of painkillers and empty glass of water resting on the table nearby. The cold was nice. It helped with the numbness. Helped disconnect himself from his own body until exhaustion took over, and he floated on the edge of sleep.

Back and forth. Hot and cold. More pills popped in his mouth and more water to help them glide down past an aching jaw. The faint glow of his datapad's screen was the only light in the evening to see by.

He slept. Woke a few times, then numbed the pain until he submerged again. Fresh ice from the freezer, though he couldn't remember ever standing up. Time doesn't really matter when there's no consciousness to track it.

It was dark, and then it was bright. The purple sky glared through the windows from above the distant city walls. Nesting birds let the neighborhood know it was time to start a new day, and then went silent.

Roen watched the ceiling, one hand hanging lip past the armrest, the dark powdery residue from the lab still visible beneath his fingernails. Tired. Still, so tired. He rested his eyes for a bit longer, but no more sleep would come.

He slowly turned his head, stretching his aching muscles, and leaned forward to rest his hands on his knees. Notifications littered the dull screen. He had installed that social app on his datapad as well, logging in with the same account so that they could communicate through Flux's preferred method. He picked it up from the table.

Nightbug: btw make sure to set your new browser as default

Nightbug: the built-in adblocker allows custom scripts unlike that factory garbage

Nightbug: :3

Below the messages, Flux then sent a short, looping vid about 'remote tunneling' and some werefolk girl holding up her bushy cat's tail with a flushed expression.

Roen let out a small breath. He sent a thumbs-up reaction, locked the screen, and tossed his datapad down on the couch by the window. He reached up to gently touch his face, then winced. It was swollen alright.

Which meant that he had some work to do before their date.

He stumbled into the bathroom, grabbing a glass and rinsing out the bitter taste of the painkillers with a mouthful of cold water. His reflection in the mirror confirmed his suspicions — a purple-blue discoloration was spreading beneath his eye, rapidly turning into a roadmap of bruises along with some light swelling. The ice had prevented the worst of it, but it was still plenty unacceptable.

With a resigned sigh, Roen began his online crash course in bruise concealing.

The vids he scanned through over the next hour probably put him on a list somewhere — but necessity and all. A local shop's delivery app became a lifesaver with their speeds and drone-free option. He ordered a small kit containing color correctors, concealers, foundation, and a primer, praying it would arrive in time and praying that he wasn't selecting the wrong shade.

He took a shower while he waited. No easy task when the water rained down from above, hitting the fresh, aching spot square between it and whatever he wanted to clean. He had to do some ducking and weaving to get it done.

He wasn't sure where Flux wanted to go, but he figured that it couldn't hurt to prepare, so he once again prepared his pack with all the utilities they might need; bills, paper, rain protection…

Uh. Probably not the other kind of protection. The reality of what might happen between them still hadn’t fully clicked. His strategy? Ignore it completely until the moment arrived and hope adrenaline would knock his overactive brain out of commission when it did. The recent days have been good at teaching him some humility. Sometimes, you just had to roll with the punches. Ha.

It was a little after noon when the notification 'Delivery confirmed!' showed up on his datapad, and he went to find the box already on his doorstep. Roen opened the box containing the kit, laid out the products on the bathroom counter, and stared. Well, shit. He went to grab his datapad and loaded up the vids again.

Two hours later, after cracking open a dozen tubes, bottles, and powders, and making several trips down the rabbit hole of obscure makeup websites, he hit a point where adding any more material would do more harm than good. His bathroom looked like a battlefield, and the guy staring back in the mirror, well…

Calling him decent would be an overstatement. But his skin was skin-colored, his gaze was steady enough, and that barely visible shading underneath one eye could be taken as a bad case of a sleepless night.

If sleepless nights gave you mismatched circles.

Damn it.

He looked at the time, then back at the mirror. A copy of that shade under the other eye was the best that he could do.

He rummaged through his wardrobe and changed into a pair of dark jeans, a non-descript charcoal t-shirt, and a hoodie that was just a bit too large. Not his usual style, but Flux had a way of causing him to deviate from his comfort zone, so why not. Got his bag, phone, datapad. Locked the house. Or he could've left it open, for as much safety as it offered.

Once again, they were meeting in St. Gorgon Square. It was early enough that the ads were still not cranked on full blast yet, and the crowds that milled down the boulevards were nowhere near the density of the usual Sirrej nightlife.

She spotted him before he spotted her.

"Roen, over here," Flux called, waving at him from one of the benches, cut-off hoodie and all.

He tried to avoid being too obvious as he closed in on her spot. "What's going on, Flux."

"Neeh, you know, just the usual. Hanging around, being all chill waiting for my hummie to show up," she flicked her hair back, looking around with a bored expression. "Man, I don't get how everyone goes around using pub transit on a daily basis. It's so noisy and stuffy and everything."

"Let me guess. Metro?"

"Lifts. NullCorp HQ is filled with those awful sardine boxes."

"I… I don't think elevators count as public transport, Flux."

"Well, they sure as shit should," Flux said. She blew out a breath, then looked back at him with a small up-tilt to her lips. "But hey, now that you've got a pixie girlfr—"

Her words cut off when she looked at him. The smile slowly wiped off her face as she looked at him harder.

He took a step back involuntarily.

"What is that?"

"What is what," Roen said.

Flux stalked closer. "Under your eye. What. Is. That?" She reached out and, very slowly, touched the swollen part of his face.

He tried his best to suppress the sting. Apparently, to not much success.

"They will die!" Flux snarled, her whole body locking up in a wave of rage. No trace of the smug, cocky pixie remained on a face that was now almost absent of sanity. A storm gathered in a pair of eyes that focused on nothing in particular, starting through everything.

"I'm okay, Flux. It's nothing. Just a small bruise."

His voice knocked Flux back to reality. Her eyes focused back on him. Specifically, on that badly covered part of his face.

She blinked once, as if having made a decision.

Flux then barreled forward into him, swept out his legs from under him with hand while supporting his back with the other — and then with her human held close, tore up into the sky.

"Whoa!" Roen yelled, his arms automatically locking around Flux's neck, clutching tight as the square and the buildings and the midday city rapidly reduced in size beneath them. Wind whipped his hair, tugged at his clothes, and filled his ears in concert with the frenzied buzzing of her wings.

From this angle, lying in her arms, he had a very good angle of the lower side of her jaw. It was locked in anger.

"Flux, what are you doing?"

"Idiot," he saw more than heard Flux say. "Dumb, boneheaded, foolish damn human… trying to hide this from me…"

She banked sharply, pulling them around a skyscraper, heading towards the central high-rise blocks of the city. The distant traffic below was like a stream of sluggish ants, and Roen would have worried about what a fall from this height would do to him, had there been anyone else holding him steady.

Flux's hands never wavered an inch underneath him.

The roaring winds eased as they descended, and Flux gradually slowed from a breakneck pace to a brisk glide. Shapes sharpened below, the ground surging up to meet them. Then, with barely a jolt to Roen, Flux landed in a smooth run across the asphalt. They were at her apartment building.

Roen started to untangle his arms from around her neck to try and stand, but Flux let out a growl he could damn near feel through her body. "Don't. Move."

Okay, this was getting ridiculous. Roen frowned as Flux somehow managed to fish out her datapad with one hand while keeping his lower body propped on her knee, then open the glass doors and moved sideways to get him inside. "You're blowing this way out of proportion, Flux," he said. "Yeah, I was… punched, okay? It stings a bit. But it's not like I had my fucking legs amputated by a carbide saw."

"Who?" Flux said. She kicked the door closed and then began taking the steps up four, eight, ten… infinite steps at a time, since she just flew straight over them in a circular upwards pattern.

He had to close his eyes from the dizzying speed of their ascent. "It doesn't—"

The way her arms trembled once — just a single time, then went back to being a bastion of safety — made him realize the lengths she was going right now to keep herself together. He let out a breath. He couldn't just deflect.

"Bull, hired muscle. You don't know him. Tauren. He usually kept with my brother as a bodyguard."

Flux grunted, slowing down toward her floor so they could make the turn into the hallway. "Not anymore?"

"Not since the… you know. Since everything got messed up."

They flew in silence until they arrived at her apartment door. Another scan, another entrance to get through sideways. Roen looked around the see — a surprisingly tidy room compared to the last time he'd been here. The walls still had those old posters, the couch was still more pillow fort than functional furniture, but everything else had been cleanly packed away, the carped vacuumed, and the computer parts organized into plastic boxes underneath the wall-mounted screen.

It was almost as if she'd been expecting them to end up back in her apartment after today…

Oh. Right.

"Uh. Can I move now?" he asked, turning his head in a way that made Flux's hand slip under the back of his neck.

Flux flew past the kitchenette, over her couch, and carried him inside the open door of her bedroom. A king-size bed dominated the room, draped in a light blue cover with a laptop sitting at its center. Hovering over it, she nudged the laptop aside with her knee before easing him gently onto the mattress. The pillowy surface near swallowed him as his body sank into it.

"Stay here," Flux said. She then zipped outside and disappeared toward the adjacent bathroom.

Despite his protests that he was fine, Roen found himself relaxing into Flux's bed. It was the kind of comfort that could tempt even a well-rested man into a midday nap. Exhaustion from the early morning slowly crawled back in, and if it wasn't for the insistent throbbing of his face, he would have called this heaven.

He heard water running, some cabinet opening. A splash. Then silence for a minute. He reached back to adjust the pillow behind his head, propping it up a bit.

Flux returned to the bedroom carrying a small basin of water, a damp cloth — was that one of her tees? — and a little plastic tube. She dragged the bedside table a bit closer, set the basin on it, and then lowered herself onto the bed.

Or rather, onto him. She settled with her knees on either side of his stomach, like a cowboy on a saddle, frowning down at him as she inspected the bruise hidden beneath his eye.

The position made it hard not to recall their heated kissing session in the basement.

Flux's thoughts, however, were nowhere near that moment.

She leaned forward, and with an intense expression on her face, used the wet cloth to begin lightly dabbing at his face. She started with the side that wasn't swollen, the cloth cold against his skin.

"That's just makeup," Roen said, smiling a bit despite himself. It hadn't been the best idea, in retrospect.

"Shush," Flux said.

She worked in silence for a minute, using another dry piece to soak up the runny paint before it could drip down onto the pillow. The front-leaning part of her spiky hair tickled his forehead.

She went to dip the wet shirt in the basin, wrung it out a bit, then leaned back above him. She applied zero pressure, just the gentlest little touches, when she neared the swollen part of his face.

Flux drew back an inch when he reacted to the touch. "Does it hurt?"

"No. Just — just a bit cold," he said. "It's nice."

Flux stared at him for a second. She swiped an arm across her eyes, trying to mask a sniffle. She then went back to dabbing at the bruise, now somehow halving that feathery touch she had used before.

"Flux," he said.

Her lips trembled. They then compressed into a hard line.

"Flux, I'll be—"

"Don't you fucking dare say it's fine. Nothing — nothing even remotely is fine about this."

Roen quieted at that. He supposed that with the water slowly revealing the dark black-and-blue discoloration of his skin, he would be fighting an uphill battle. It probably looked worse than it felt.

Roen closed his eyes, breathing out. Well. Must've looked pretty fucking bad then.

"Thanks, Flux," he whispered. "You're incredible."

Another sniffle. Something wet falling on the side of his head. Something soft and small and delicate pressing against his forehead, and then the cloth was back at his face.

"Tell me everything," she said at some point, once the makeup had come off and she had the tube of nymph arnica cream squished on her finger. She began applying the soothing medicine, and he began speaking.

He told her about the early days, about a brilliant scientist called Tim Travall and his two sons. How the sons woke up one day and found themselves alone in their home. The younger boy becoming dependent on the older one, and the older one extending a safe hand to lead him down a slippery path lined with moral roadblocks that no youth should have to face. How the older boy played the market, played people, and played the law with his small group of organized crime. Crime that started out small, with robbery, with beatings and intimidation. Crime that evolved into drone hits, with higher stakes and higher rewards. He told her everything that happened in the last couple of weeks — Malcolm, Dawnkill, all of it. And he told her about the final act of crime that would come in just a fistful of days, at a certain investor's conference, where that boy would have to kill again.

It wasn't easy, dredging up a near decade of trauma and a slow descent into complete isolation. The crippling fear of Arlo's thugs circling Roen like sharks, driving him further away from reaching out for help. And at the lack of anyone else — the intense need for approval from the only person who gave a damn.

Flux listened through the whole thing in silence. She cried, at times, but quickly recovered and shook her head and urged him to continue with a wordless hand down the side of his face. The contents of the tube went under his eye in small, gentle little touches. At some point, she had brought him a glass of water and some painkillers — and insisted on feeding it to him, hand on the back of his neck.

Again, so ridiculous. But kind of sweet, too.

He was surprised when she admitted that she and Korella had done their own investigating. It never really led anywhere, she said, and there wasn’t much someone with her skillset could do against people who barely used the net. She hadn't known about Malcolm, and tracking him wouldn't be of much use anyway. All their footprints on the net started and ended with him.

"We will figure something out," Flux murmured. She bowed down and gave a peck on his head. "No matter what, I'll get you out of this."

"Moments like these really made you wish for a squad of sec-corp enforcers on speed dial," Roen said, smiling.

"Oh, trust me, I'm bringing in the cavalry," Flux said, squinting down at him. She jabbed a finger into his chest. "But not until you're stashed away somewhere nice and safe — far from even the slightest hint of suspicion. We're still working on that part." She looked to the side for a moment, then back at him. "The real question is this; are you willing to let your brother take the fall?"

Roen stirred a bit. "What do you mean?"

"If NullCorp gets involved, they won’t be handing out candy. Arrests will be made. Tensions could spike into outright violence. And with an explosive in play in a public venue — hells, Roen. Chances are, they will be the ones who start shooting first and ask questions on the autopsy table."

Roen thought about it, though not for long. He reluctantly nodded. "They need to be put away. Dawnkill, Malcolm… Arlo. They've all done too much harm. They'll continue to do so if nobody stops them."

"And this fancy ball is gonna be our best shot of doing it. Our only shot, if your brother is really planning to disband the group. We need to catch them in the act." Flux's eyes flashed. "Give me five minutes with this Malcolm guy's computer, and I'll have all the info we need cracked over to my paddie."

"Hey, hey. Slow down there, nightbug," Roen said. He nudged her in the side. "Your nerd is showing."

"Oh, he's showing alright," Flux said. "My nerd is right where he's supposed to be, and he ain't going nowhere until he's back at full health." She gave her handiwork one last glance, then let out a small huff before swinging her legs off his prone form.

"Sorry for ruining the date," Roen said, with only a small hint of sarcasm.

Flux shot him a sassy, exaggerated look, the kind you give a mischievous puppy when it chews up your socks but is too cute to scold properly. She took the dirty basin and rags and began to walk out.

"Where would we have gone?" Roen asked.

Flux paused in the doorway. "You ever been outside of Sirrej?"

Roen shook his head. "No. Not a single step."

"Heh. Same, kind of." Flux shrugged. "It was a tour bus running a scenic route along the outskirts, offering a taste of the wilds without actually exposing civvies to danger. Apparently they had a couple of wildrunners on retainer — part of the new program. And, well, you know how social media is. If there's a chance to capture a live vid of mutants getting blown to pieces, people are all over it."

"Sounds… intense. Sounds like you."

Flux smirked. "Maybe some other day, then. It's not going anywhere. We can let randos beta test it for us in the meantime."

She then left him to rest.

25: Roen

Roen dozed off for a while. When he woke late into the afternoon, he found a note from Flux telling him she had gone out for a quick shopping trip.

Head pounding, Roen gingerly got out of bed for a bathroom visit. The bruise was looking — well, like a bruise would, he supposed. Still angry. The cream had done its job, though, and there was more yellow-and-green than black now. Praise the wonders of modern medicine.

He washed his hands, cleaned off the remainder of smeared paint from the base of his ears, and returned to Flux's bedroom. The neon lamps above the bed had automatically turned on at some point, casting the room in an atmospheric navy-blue glow. Roen sat on the mattress and fished out his datapad from his bag to check his notifications.

EternalEclipse: yo I got a meeting set up with Mr. Vurres for u

EternalEclipse: hes a djinn*

EternalEclipse: just letting u know, I already told nightbug

He could only stare at Korella's message with a mix of shock and bewilderment. He typed out a quick reply.

Roen: What, why?

Roen: Nevermind that, how, actually? Djinns don't just meet people on a whim.

He only had secondhand knowledge of djinns, but one thing was common knowledge — just booking a consultation with one cost a fortune, well beyond what the average civilian could afford. If Korella had paid for a meeting, it was the financial equivalent of stuffing a small family home into his pocket. Except, in this case, the 'house' was completely useless, because an actual wish would run her at least thirty times that amount.

No reply. His messages went unread.

She was joking, right? Surely she was…

No. This was exactly the kind of insane stunt Flux would pull. It was just like her to try and solve an impossible situation with something so ridiculously expensive and outlandish, it would plunge them into lifelong debt — even if it somehow worked. Flux and Korella clearly came from well-off families, but this? This was several leagues above that. Buying a wish, off the books due to the criminal nature of the situation — they'd be talking multi-trillionaire CEO kind of wealth here.

Roen sat in humbled silence, just now realizing the lengths Flux was willing to go for him. He didn't know you could have a sinking feeling, but also the opposite, positive equivalent at the same time. It wouldn't work. It couldn't. But the fact that she was trying damn well near brought him to tears.

Roen gripped the side of the bed, head bowed. There was so much happening and so many things have changed. Within the coming days, the uncaring vapors of the megacity would eat them alive, if they let it. It was a place where shooting stars plummeted from the skies with a price tag dragged behind, and your wish was just another monetized product. Corpos and treacherous families, hired guns and the pending payment six feet below the graves they prepared — things would soon come to a head underneath Sirrej's neon lights.

But for now…

For now, he just wanted to spend some time with a cute girl who actually wanted him there.

Roen rooted through the fridge to find leftover pizza, frozen pizza, and those tiny circular pizza rolls he didn't know the name for. A few bags of assorted chips and other packaged snacks rounded out the collection, none of them offering much in terms of actual nutrition. He couldn't find anything else. And so pizza it was.

He turned on the vent hood and started up the oven, and within the next thirty minutes had two plates stacked with hot, greasy pizza rolls, the cheese still soft and the crust crisping up in all the right places. He wasn't too keen on the idea of pairing them with energy drinks — of which Flux had far too many in her bedroom's mini-fridge — and so he made a nice, cold, frosty jug of lemonade.

He was in the process of putting everything out on the table when the apartment door clicked open, revealing an out-of-breath pixie under the assault of several plastic bags hanging off her in a tangled mess.

"Huuuugh," she said. Not that the weight was giving her trouble — she had bodily carried him across the city. It's just the geometry of the loops were a little all over the place.

Roen took that as a cry for aid and helped disentangle her.

She had gone on quite the trip; aside from basic necessities from soap to tissues, she got several bags of groceries, non-perishables like canned beans, beef, more frozen food than you could eat in a month, and extra medicine from a non-gov pharmacy. They didn't sell heavy-duty stuff, but required no identification either. And it's not like Roen was on the verge of death over here.

"Ooooh, yum," Flux said, putting down a sack of red onions on the counter before strolling over to the plate of pizza rolls to sample the goods. Chomp, chomp. Food in belly, pixie happy.

Roen began filling up the fridge. "Do they sell hamburgers pre-maid?"

"Mm, probably. Why?"

Roen shrugged. "It just sounds like something you would know."

Flux thoughtfully chewed. She looked from Roen to the plate, then back. "Have you eaten already?"

"Not yet."

Flux seemed to do some math in her head. She then frowned, grabbed one of the pizza rolls, and walked over to him. "Say 'aaaaah'."

Finishing up stacking the fridge, Roen turned to the pixie and her extended piece of sustenance aimed at him. He thought about resisting, but then just shook his head, plucked the pizza roll from her hand and took a bite. "I haven't been hungry."

Even as he said that, the empty pang of his stomach made itself known with sudden ferocity.

"Mhm," Flux said with suspicion. She pointed at the pillowy couch. "How about you plant your butt and I'll be back in just a moment, 'kay?"

Roen raised his brows, but acquiesced. It was just as soft as before. "Why do I have a feeling I am some sort of a prisoner now?"

"Because you damn well fuggin are," Flux said over her shoulder as she went into her bedroom. Facing the opposite way, Roen could hear some shimmying and then clothes hitting the floor through the open door. "I'm not letting you out of my sight from this day forward. Fais comme chez toi, or something to that effect."

"What is that, Liftic?"

"No clue. Some pre-Godswar lingo the family keeps going on about."

Roen didn’t mind crashing at Flux’s place. Some might have been intimidated by a girl with a personality so forceful that she outright decided for you — no, you were staying here, and yes, you were going to like it.

But then again, most others didn't really have the issues that Roen had. Mental or familial. Having someone hold onto him this tightly was a new experience — and not at all unpleasant.

More shimmying. A satisfied sigh, and then Flux rounded the couch wearing some comfy looking sweatpants and a cream colored shirt a few sizes too large for her.

"We'll have to make a visit to your place tomorrow and grab some clothes for you," Flux said. She poured two glasses of lemonade, holding them up as she carefully stepped between the table and the couch. "Scoot over pliz."

Roen did so, as much as the pillows allowed. Flux plopped down next to him, her side smushed into his, and handed over one of the drinks. "TY, YW," she said.

"Meaning?" he asked. He took a sip of the lemonade, trying to ignore the way her thigh felt against his.

"Meaning that I'm a very polite person. Yup-yup." Flux leaned forward to snag her keyboard, settling it onto her lap before shifting sideways on the couch. She stretched out, casually draping her legs over Roen’s, positioning herself just right so she could reach both her keyboard and the mouse on the table. "You comfy?" she asked, wiggling her bare toes on his other side.

"Um. Yeah, sure," he said. He didn't know it was possible to feel so wanted so casually. Unsure where he could safely place his hands, he hesitated only for a moment before lightly resting them on her knees.

Flux didn't say anything. But as she reached down to power on her PC, she did get that smug look on her face. The one that declared, 'yeah, I've got a hummie as my seat — get fucked, bitches'.

The TV mounted on the wall turned out to be one of those giant computer monitors with an insane resolution that only the biggest enthusiasts had the horsepower to run. Roen would've expected her desktop to be as chaotic as her room, but, while overwhelming, there was a system to her madness. She used two different browsers for two different purposes — one for work, the other for entertainment — and she kept the number of tabs nice and neat and precisely organized.

It was the speed at which she navigated that gave Roen a hard time to keep up. He would still be reading something on one page before she pressed the alt and tab keys and switched to another. She even did it out of pure habit, sometimes. Click, clack, two rapid presses to get back to the same window in the span of a second. It was like watching a submarine conductor operate a robust control system. A very cute, toesies-wiggling little captain.

She showed him her job. Lines after lines of code scrolled by in a mesmerizing way that reminded him of the movie Hatrix, executing automatic movements all across the net, websites flashing past and scanned and catalogued quicker than the eye could follow. She had lists and spreadsheets. Those were a bit easier to understand, but still intimidating enough on their own.

Flux bragged with abandon, clicking and ranting, her nose turned up in a victorious manner. Roen didn't dare interrupt for a second. He could tell that she was having the time of her life.

"See, they're messing with the DNS records. Tiny changes that nobody would notice, but you can't fool the algo. Upcoming corporations all think they're slick until you whack them in the wallet a few times. Gotta keep those server farms running smoothly, gotta control the narrative…"

Roen watched the pixie speak, one hand idly resting on one thigh white the other played with the hem of her pants around the ankle. She was careless, free. Beautiful.

And she was all his.

"And… and…" Flux wound down like a record player. She stretched up both arms, letting out a ginormous yawn that even he could feel in his bones. "Blegh," she said, looking at him. "You must be zonked, huh?"

Roen glanced at the clock at the bottom of the screen. "A bit, yeah. It's getting pretty late." At the lack of a distraction, the throbbing ache of his eye was also starting up again.

"Say no more. One comfy bed, coming right up." Flux started wriggling out of her prone position.

"I'm not stealing your bed for the night, Flux," Roen said with a dangerous tone.

She tilted her head. "Who said anything about stealing, oomfie?"

And that's how Roen ended up standing in Flux's room, wearing one of her sweatpants a bit short around the ankles, another fresh layer of medical cream smeared around his eye and an impatient pixie looming behind him with her feet tapping on the ground.

"Go on. We don't have forever. Go on, hippidy-hop!"

"What's wrong with the couch? I crashed there once before," Roen asked.

"Too late, bud. You’ve already marinated my mattress in your scent — you might as well own it."

Roen shifted in place. He wanted to argue, but sometimes Flux just dug herself in to a point of becoming an immovable object. "Are you sure? I don't want to make you uncomfortable or anything."

He felt her finger poke him in the back. It somehow managed to convey a shovelful of stubborn insistence. "It's a rare piece of furniture with plus fifty health regen," she muttered. "Silly hooman."

It was an easy surrender. As Flux went to turn off the lights, Roen took another dose of painkillers and made himself comfortable under the covers, mindful to only take up one side of the bed. There were so many blankets, there was virtually no chance of having to wage a tug of war in the middle of the night.

Roen exhaled slowly, settling onto his good side and facing away from the door. The overhead neon lights turned off, darkness swallowing the room, leaving it nearly pitch black. Only the faintest glow of the city filtered through the shutters.

He heard her enter the room and gently pull the door closed. Then, silence. It stretched on — minutes, maybe, or perhaps just a trick of his muddled senses, thrown off by all the unfamiliar sensations around him. Everything was soft and warm, and he kept his eyes open, half-afraid that if he blinked, he’d wake up back in his own house, in his own room. Alone.

He then heard a shuffling on the other side of the bed, felt the weight of the mattress shift. Soft sounds, someone slipping under the covers.

Silence, again.

A bit more shuffling, and then — a hesitant arm slipped around him from behind and come to rest on his stomach.

Roen felt his body tense up. His heart began to pick up the pace, and he felt her arm freeze a bit, hovering, as if trying not to spook a wild animal. He closed his eyes, then, focusing on the physical sensation, grounding himself. It didn't happen right away, and it took a bit for him to get used to… to being touched. But his heartbeat calmed, at some point. His muscles unwound.

Having her hand there, pressing against his front, it felt — nice.

Flux moved again, then. Her arm held him a little closer, and her body gently pressed into his back. She was warm. She was tender and careful, like easing the lid off a shaken soda bottle, letting the pressure hiss out in slow, measured breaths.

Roen's shoulders shook, just once.

Flux suddenly crushed him against herself, wrapping both arms around him in a fierce hug from behind. Her forehead nestled against the back of his neck, and one leg hooked over his, pulling him in even closer. “It’s okay. It's okay, Roen,” she whispered over and over, her voice a soft, steady presence in his ears. One hand traced slow, soothing circles over his chest.

He didn't even know when it was that he started crying. But when it came, he couldn't stop.

Flux's body was a steady presence behind him, letting him know with skin against skin that she cared. She held him, rocking him ever so slightly, the little breaths as she murmured soothing words warming the side of his face. Embarrassed, he tried to bury his face in his pillow, but she tightened her grip on him and gave him somewhere safe to fall apart without fear of being lost. "You're not alone, Roen. You'll never be alone again," she whispered.

At some point, he quieted. At some point, the tears stopped flowing and he slipped into dreamless slumber.

The only constant that remained was the girl holding onto him with enough strength to fill the cracks between all his broken pieces.

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Thanks for reading these early chapters. If you haven't yet, please leave a review for the first book in the series (Zevara)!