Zef feels like he needs a PhD in parkour to reach Gray's hiding place. He follows the neon paint up rickety fire escapes and across questionable planks of wood connecting rooftops. The billboard he climbs across advertises platinum health insurance, and he thinks he'll need it.

But when he makes it to Gray's spot, he understands the circuitous route.

He emerges onto a balcony for a foreclosed penthouse. Boarded up. Probably because nobody could afford it in the subcity and anyone who could wouldn't live in the subcity anyway. Gray has made it a home, safely hidden and tucked away. Colourful tarps form a tent over the corner. Milkcrates stuffed with odd belongings form a city skyline against one wall. Graffiti, much of it looking like the style of Gray's stick and poke tattoos, cover the boarded up patio doors. A couple of air purifiers sputter and hum as they suck up pollution.

Beyond the glass balustrade, the subcity looks like a deep sea aquarium. Deprived of sunlight, it makes its own in neons and phosphorescence, a prismatic show of coral reef colour to compensate for the lack of real biodiversity. Zef can just make out the oxidised copper sign for the sushi restaurant they first visited together.

Gray himself sits up on a cot under the tarp, shirtless, surrounded by empty bottles and smelling like the fifteen packs of cigarettes surrounding him. Smoke dances up from the overflowing ashtray at his feet.

He regards Zef warily. "How the fuck did y—Damo told you."

"Yeah," Zef admits. "You live here?"

"Fuck off."

Zef schools his expression to not show worry or pity. "I'm not judging. View is incredible." Besides, he can't judge Gray for the state of the place. There'd been times where he and Matthias's trailer hadn't looked better.

"Can I sit with you a sec?"

"No."

"I'm gonna." He considers one of the camp chairs, but settles on the concrete at the edge of the balcony. He looks out over the city so Gray feels less observed. The cot squeaks and clothes rustle as Gray puts on a shirt.

Zef considered a long time whether to try and talk to Gray again. About Rylan, their issues, the traumatic elephant in the room. Judging from the state of Gray, he's not ready for either.

So, better to talk about something unrelated. "You promised me a tattoo."

"Didn't promise you nothing," Gray says.

"Okay, maybe not a promise, but I know what I want now."

"And what's that?"

"A little sunrise." Zef holds up his wrist. "Here. Just a little line for the horizon and a half circle sun with rays."

"Plenty o' shops and scratchers around who could do that for ya."

"I want you to do it."

Gray scoffs. "Ain't no artist."

Zef points to the spray painted boards. "Liar."

"This party trick to distract me ain't working, so fuck off."

Zef just says, "Please."

For a minute Gray looks at him with uncomprehending annoyance. Caught between his commitment to moping and giving Zef what he came for. Then he shoves up from the cot and fishes through his milk crates. He pulls out a couple packets of pre-sterilised needles, a bottle of ink, and a box of cling film. He also has, to Zef's surprise, a first aid kit.

"You just have needles lying around," Zef says.

"Used to do my T injections the old-fashioned way," Gray mutters. "Before Damo got me my implant. Hypodermic needles are different, but it'll do the job. Better 'n anything dirty."

He sits cross-legged next to Zef and extracts plastic gloves, cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol from the first aid kit. He puts on the gloves. "Safety first," he mutters. "Wrist?"

Zef holds it out. Gray hesitates. Gingerly, he takes Zef's hand like it's a spider, holding it steady while he cleans the area with the cotton swab and alcohol. "It ain't gonna look pretty. I'm no professional."

"That's okay."

A snort. "Used to be so buttoned up. I could draw a dick instead."

"You wouldn't."

Zef tries to take his hand back, but Gray holds it steady. He finishes cleaning it, then tears open the needle packet, sterilises a water bottle lid, and pours some ink into it.

He holds the ink-dipped needle between thumb and forefinger. "Moment o' truth. You sure?"

"Yeah."

"Sure sure?"

"Yes."

"This shit's permanent."

Zef says, "That's the idea."

"It's gonna hurt."

Zef's free hand nearly reaches for his chest. "Had worse. Think I can handle it."

Gray pokes him with the needle.

"Ow."

"Told you."

"Doesn't hurt bad. Just feels obligatory to say 'ow' or something."

"Most people pretend they're brass tacks." Gray taps the needle in over and over, forming a line. He wipes away the beading blood and ink with a swab. "Why a sunrise?"

Zef catches his breath. "Thought it'd be pretty."

Skeptically. "You can tell me that's the only reason but I ain't gonna believe you."

"It's dumb."

"I'm giving you a stick 'n poke on a shitty foreclosed penthouse balcony in the subcity after we finished fleein' for our damn lives. We're dumb."

Zef doesn't like looking at the needle going in, so he looks at the top of Gray's bent head, at the spiral crown of his mussed hair, greasy from days without a shower. Unfair he still looks hot cosplaying as a hobo.

"It's a complicated thought," Zef says.

"Try 'n explain it."

"Okay...it's like, sunrise and sunset are pretty, right? But they last maybe twenty minutes. Transitory. In between there's just night and day. Sometimes those nights are longer and darker than the days. But it's cyclical. Sunrise will come again. Or maybe I need to find more mundane magic in my days and nights, too. Either way, it felt like a hopeful thing. Like, things can suck. Sometimes keep sucking for a long time. But so long as I look for a sunrise, I won't sink so far past the horizon I'll never get up again."

Gray finishes the first pass of the sun and starts inking a shining ray before he answers. "Trust you to come up with something all poetic 'n meaningful."

"Makes me feel pretentious and dumb. Wish I could just want something for the aesthetic."

"Ain't nothing dumb about it," Gray says. "I'm just jealous."

Zef trips over his tongue saying, "You could get one, too."

Gray pauses, almost finished the last line. He resumes poking Zef's wrist with the needle, slow and methodical. "Matching tattoos. Now, that's dumb.

"Sorry," Zef says.

"Pipe down," says Gray. "Don't wanna mess this up."

Zef hides his smile between his teeth, but it stokes coals in his chest. The conversation's as close to normal as he's had with Gray since everything went to hell in a hankie.

It seems as good a time as any to reveal what Damo and he discovered. "We know where Rylan's new data fort is at."

Gray tenses, freezing so the next expected prick of the needle never comes.

"It's in Bionic Capital HQ," Zef says. "Damo thinks we can come up with a plan together."

Gray prods the line of a sunbeam. "There ain't no 'together.' Not involving you."

"If you think I'm letting you go it alone—"

"If you'd left me alone in that warehouse, you wouldn't have a hole in your chest, and Rylan would be nothing but a bloody smear on the wall."

The words leave Zef winded. He's probably right. If Zef hadn't been around, Rylan wouldn't have been able to control Gray anymore. But—

He really looks at Gray. Studies the exhaustion wrought deep within the shadows under his eyes, the chapped lips, the debris of empty cigarette packs and bottles of hard liquor behind him. He remembers the reckless way Gray kissed him the night before it all went wrong.

Guess there ain't no happily ever after for us. Too bad.

It's not the direction Zef thought to take the conversation, but a pseudo-masochistic part of him keeps talking. "What were you gonna do if you killed her?"

Gray shrugs. "Didn't plan that far."

"Did you plan on surviving that night at all?"

Gray doesn't answer, and an incomparable terror threatens to consume Zef whole. He wants to take Gray by the shoulders and shake him. Wants to take him by the face and kiss him and scream melodramatic words like they're song lyrics. You were gonna leave me like that? Throw everything we had away and then your life to top it off?

Instead, he steels himself. "I want to help you."

Gray scoffs. "You ain't gonna help me kill her. Made that plenty clear."

"No, but if I can help you get free of her—"

"There ain't no way you'll ever convince me of some trite 'revenge isn't the answer' horse shit, all right? So don't bother. Here's the plan, pure 'n simple. You lay low 'til Rylan forgets you exist, and I deal with my own business my way."

"And after that?"

He looks askance at the piles of debris that pass for a home. "After that, we go our separate ways."

Zef turns over his wrist, showing the tattoo. "I told you. This shit's permanent, and that's the idea. It's what I want."

"I ain't letting you die for me, Zef, so just drop it."

Zef flinches. It makes Gray's next dot go askew, slightly below the horizon line. He swears and gets some water, using a spare needle to try and wash out the stray ink. Zef doesn't mind the error; wanted this handmade from Gray specifically, flaws and all.

That wasn't what he meant to say. This isn't some Romeo and Juliet suicide mission to him. But he's starting to see that the outcome he envisions is glass half full, while Gray doesn't dare dream for better than vengeance and an early grave.

He speaks as resolutely as he dares when Gray's taking a needle to his skin. "I've got my own bone to pick with Bionic Capital, so I'm going, whether you come with me or not."

"What fucking bone?"

"They've got my life's work. Practically lorded it over me in that radio announcement. I want to take it back."

Gray gives the tattoo a last wipe and viciously rips a piece of cling film off the roll. He wraps it around Zef's fresh tattoo. "It's your funeral."

"So you're coming with me, then."

Gray glares at him, sharp as the needle he just used to stab a sunrise into Zef's bare skin, but he's not the monster he pretends to be. Zef reaches out. His fingers lightly brush the knuckles of Gray's clenched fist. For a moment suspended in time like the surface tension on a tear before it drops, Gray doesn't pull away. His hand unclenches a fraction. Zef feels the desire to reach out warring with the fear of intimacy like it's his own. Silently, he begs Gray to surrender to the former.

Gray snatches his hand away. "You're a stubborn asshole. I won't let you kamikaze your way through Rylan. But that don't make this something."

He heads back toward Damo's bunker.

Zef clenches his fist and lets the sunburnt throb of a fresh sunrise soothe the ache in his chest.

~ * * * ~

They return to a bunker smelling fragrantly of pancakes and maple syrup. Gus holds up a table with three stacks, all far too large for a single person.

Damo turns around, sees them, and says, "I may not be human but I know that humans in emotional turmoil need carbs. Tuck in. Hey, is that a tattoo?"

She grabs Zef's hand, looking it over. Under the wrap, it looks juicy with ink and plasma. She looks at Gray. "Never took you for a romantic, matching tattoos type."

"Don't got no matching tattoo," says Gray.

"Well, you should. Doesn't matter! Now you're both here and I have your undivided attention while you eat and can't interrupt."

Zef pulls a leaning stack of pancakes towards himself. He doesn't know about the emotional turmoil, but ever since starting testosterone he's been ravenous, and too often he couldn't afford to feed that hunger. Even at 3AM, he can't help himself.

Gray pulls his own plate closer, tearing off a small bite with his fork. "Undivided attention for what?"

Damo says, "I assume Zef gave you the down low on the new data fort."

A grumble of confirmation.

"Right! Then let me present to you—" Damo clicks a small remote and a holoscreen appears over the table. It's a slideshow, the first slide in a font so elaborately bombastic it looks straight out of a sixteenth century illuminated manuscript. It says—

"The Master Plan." Damo wiggles her fingers for effect.

"Hang on. You already have one?" Zef asks.

"Don't patronise me. I'm a master of multi-tasking, research and innovation! I think at the speed of light! So hold onto your chin hairs. Here are some of the issues we have with the new data fort location." She clicks the remote thingy, and the slide changes to one titled 'Possible Infiltrators' with pictures of Gray, Zef and Damo all crossed out with red X's. "Thing one: Rylan works there and will recognize Gray. If you set off security—" She makes a choking noise. "You're dead. Thing two: Zef used to work there and is also liable to be recognized by ex-co-workers and bosses. I repeat, dead. Thing three: I'm an android, and they'll know that the second I walk through the weapons detector out front because, fun fact, I am quite literally classified as a weapon by the people who made me. So, you guessed it. Dead."

Gray says, "So we call in a bomb threat until the building's evacuated, then blow it up for real."

"Oh, I'm sorry, was this your presentation?" Damo says. "Do you happen to have the equipment and expertise for a controlled demolition that won't collapse into the subcity below?"

"It was a joke."

Damo shrugs. "Not all of us can be comedians. As I was saying, hard to get in without facing the firing squad, but these two—"

She changes the slide. It shows two women's photos side by side. They look like corporate mugshots. Both women smile, one with blonde curls, the other a dark bob. Neither boast flashy gild, but their makeup and clothing have a colourful twist from the usual cap fashion.

"Introducing Lina Dietrich and Katarina Kostra, the German and Slovakian executives of Bionic Capital's international division."

She waits, as if for applause. Gray squints. Zef studies the photos, wondering if he's missing something. Are they supposed to recognize these women? Their faces have a touch of the familiar, he supposes, but he's sure he doesn't know them.

"And they're gonna help us?" Gray says doubtfully.

"In a manner of speaking." With a sly, near-giddy grin, Damo clicks to the next slide.

At first, it looks like the same slide. Except the women's faces have changed subtly. Lina looks more severe, Katarina a little softer. Or, that's not it. They look like—

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," Gray says.

Damo's grin is very much not fucking kidding them, and as she says, "Tada!" Zef gets it.

Those aren't photos of the German and Slovakian executives anymore.

They're photos of Zef and Gray in drag.