When he goes to see Gray, Sami informs him that he's up and having a smoke outside.

Zef joins him, standing in the smoggy green of the streetlight and leaning against the brick half wall. Close enough to touch, if Gray wants to.

Gray doesn't meet his eyes. He takes a deep drag on his cigarette before wordlessly holding it out to Zef.

Zef takes it. A little shame curls in his lungs with the smoke when he realises it doesn't burn when he smokes anymore.

"Sami told you about Rylan."

Gray nods. "You sure she didn't know it was you?"

"Katarina kept her pretty preoccupied. She didn't even look at me."

Gray doesn't seem satisfied. "Never leaving you like that again."

"I got out."

"You got lucky." He scrubs a hand through his hair, allergic to the whole conversation. It's giving him fleas. "You didn't even have a weapon on you, but even if you did, don't think you'd use it."

"I can defend myself," Zef says, thinking about the gator he stabbed protecting Ollie.

"Easy to say. Harder to pull the trigger when a person's staring down the barrel at you."

"Gray." Zef tries to get him to look him in the eye. "Whatever happens, we agreed we'd handle it together, yeah? So what's this really about?"

Gray grits his teeth and takes the cigarette back. Puffs on it a few times. He says on the back end of a sigh, "Just don't want her... corruptin' you. Getting in your head like she did mine."

Zef didn't expect that. Gray rarely opens up about his relationship with Rylan. It's one as alien as outer space to Zef. He can't imagine how a parent could do what she'd done and justify it.

He also has no blueprint for what to say.

So he just asks a question. "What was it like? Growing up with her. You never said."

"Yeah. That was on purpose."

"Not like I'm going to judge you."

"You should." Gray shuffles uncomfortable. "Maybe that's why I ain't told you, yet. Afraid you won't— you know. Afraid you'll change your mind 'bout me if you knew it all."

Zef risks shuffling closer to nudge his shoulder against Gray's. "Give me a chance to prove you wrong."

"Need another one of these if we go there." He shakes out another cigarette and lights it up. His fingers tremble just like Zef's. Zef reaches over to steady them, cupping a hand over the flame. Gray finally meets his eyes in the glow and cigarette smoke. Clears his throat and looks away, back up at the streetlights.

"Wasn't always so bad," he starts. "That's what gets in my head and makes me wonder if I'm just...delusional. Crazy. When I was a kid, she damn near doted on me. I was her whole world. Any class I wanted, she'd hire a private tutor. Any toy, she'd have it on next-day delivery. Until—" His shoulders stiffen. "I don't know. After I came out, things got weird. She said she supported me, but I thought she'd have me checked into a gender clinic right away. She wanted me to wait and see. Take my time. I told her puberty blockers aren't permanent. She said she didn't want me jumping into anything I'd regret. Wasn't listening to me." His lips twist around the cigarette as he takes in a huge lungful of smoke. "So I joined these dark web forums for other unsupported trans folks, seeing all the ways it sucked harder for people who had no money. A week later she confronts me over who I was associating with, and I went ballistic. She'd been surveilling me. Knew about those forums. Then I wanted to try other things with the company. Make it less shitty. Guess I was growing a lil baby conscience while talking to all these people who had no silver spoon."

Zef listens, silent. It's more of Gray's history than he's ever offered. A whole other life, a whole other world. Zef never had much. He could very well have been one of those unfortunate schmucks on the dark web, trying to find a way to DIY transition without going into debt. Through it, Matthias had been there. Loved and supported him. Lost jobs and time and his legs to the grind of putting a roof over their heads.

Love wasn't all you needed, but it sure helped.

"I'm sorry," Zef murmurs. "I can't imagine— I don't know what to say. Sounds trite, saying you deserved better than that. But you did."

"Don't go feelin' sorry for me yet. Not finished." Smoke streams from his nostrils on a forced exhale. "She didn't lie, you know. When she said I wanted this gild to begin with. At the time, I thought— I don't know. I don't know! This is the part that fucks me up. Makes me think I'm not right. At the time I wanted to do whatever made her happy. Every time I rebelled a little, she reined me in harder, and instead of telling her to fuck off like I should have, I caved. I'd fawn and appease and apologise and pretend like I'd just made a stupid mistake, because all I cared about was getting back the old her. The one who loved m—" He can't finish. "But it was gone, or I'd only get breadcrumbs, and it drove me insane that a person could love so hard and convincing only to take it all away the second I became something other than what she wanted. I remember just feeling so confused. Warped. Thinking it had to be my fault because people don't just change at the drop of a hat like that."

Nausea coagulates in Zef's stomach. He's no therapist, but he doesn't need Sami to tell him what untold psychological damage that would do to anyone. Let alone a kid. Beneath that, anger boils, too.

How could Rylan flip a switch like that? Stop caring, start manipulating?

Unless the care was always a manipulation, too. Which, he supposes, it was.

Gray stays quiet a long time before he continues. "I'd do whatever she asked to make it up to her. Until one day I wake up and I don't know myself no more. Until I was fucking murdering people for her. And nobody could tell me I didn't know any better, or that it wasn't my fault, because I was old enough by then. I knew it wasn't right. But by then it was too late. I'd bought my ticket to hell. So like a damn coward, I doubled down and kept by her, until one day I grew enough of a spine to say, 'no, not that one. I can't kill that one.' Was a trans guy, and I saw too much of myself in him, and that's when I found out I'd never had a choice 'cause she'd installed a goddamn control chip in me." He shakes so bad recounting it all that the cigarette drops. He stomps it out aggressively. Fists clenched hard enough the knuckles pop. "The guy I killed got to live one year in a skin that fit him fine, and I ended it."

His fists are clenched hard enough to hurt. Zef grabs one of them and sneaks a thumb into the crease, opening the ball of his fingers to rub a soothing line over the crescent moons left by his nails.

"Gray, you were a kid."

"Teenager."

"A kid."

Gray shakes his head. "Don't absolve me of nothing." He pulls free of Zef. Starts lighting up another cigarette.

Zef snatches it from him and tosses it into the garbage bins. "I want you to quit."

"What?"

"You should quit smoking. We should. It's not good for us."

Gray stares at him like he's crazy. "I tell you I've been killing people for my mom like one of her hired goons since I started getting periods, and you want to talk about my bad habit?"

Zef reaches for the pack. Gray grips it harder at first, staring into Zef's eyes like a lost boy from old stories. Slowly, his brows unpinch, and he releases the cigarettes. Zef stuffs them in a pocket. With his hands free, he reaches for Gray. Gray shrinks back instinctively at first. Then he stops. Waits.

Zef touches his cheek with one hand. Then the other. Drawing him close until he can press their foreheads together.

"Look," he whispers, close enough it's nearly a kiss. "I can't pretend to understand what it was like growing up with that psycho for a mom. I don't think I'll ever wrap my head around what she did to you. Still does to you. But I know you. I know you've done bad things. But I'm starting to wonder whether the world leaves room for people like us to be all the way good."

"You are," Gray says. "You're so good I didn't think we could ever—"

"Shh," Zef hisses.

Gray squeezes his eyes shut. "I don't want you to end up like me."

Zef thinks about it. Gray is kind and protective and cares fiercely.

He's also a killer.

If Zef had to be, too, could he?

~ * * * ~

Zef forgot a few things about wearing makeup and dressing like a girl.

The first was how heavy it felt. Like making faces under a fine layer of clay gone the texture of concrete.

The second was how ridiculous he looked to his own eyes. Even before he escaped the closet, he hardly wore any. To him, 'lots of makeup' meant mascara, eyeliner, and lipstick.

Damo went all out and contoured Zef into a different shape. His skin got taped under the wig, pulling it taut, giving him cat eyes. He blinks in slow-mo, eyelids weighed down by a lash so winged he might take flight. She put fake brows on him. She'd pulled them out of her kit after glueing down and painting over Zef's overly large ones. They looked like little eyebrow stickers.

In a word, he feels ridiculous. He looks ridiculous. Damo did the impossible and turned a human being into the shapeshifter she came by naturally.

She was a wizard. Didn't make Zef feel any more natural tottering out of the bathroom in six-inch heels and a tailored dress.

Damo squeals. "Ah! I'm a drag mama! Look at you!"

"I feel like a—"

Zef cuts himself short. While awkwardly patting the padded bra making him curvy in the place he'd only just flattened with surgery, he'd caught sight of Gray. Gray, wearing blood-red lipstick and eyeliner sharp enough to cut yourself. Gray, smoothing a black pencil skirt over his hips. Gray in stockings with the seam up the back and stilettos casting holographic light up his unfairly calves.

Though Zef never found himself thirsting after women, men in women's clothing?

Gray in women's clothing?

Apparently an exception.

Damo twirls her makeup brush in Gray's direction. "Ah, yes, proudly presenting Lady Twatianna, princess of—"

"That is not my drag name," Gray interrupts.

Zef hardly hears. I signed up for a suicide mission. I did not sign up for more kinks.

"Respectfully, you look—hot— GOOD! You look good."

Gruffly, Gray says, "Whatever. Let's get this drag show over with." But he sounds just the eeniest, weeniest, teeniest bit pleased and— Is that a blush under the foundation? Hard to tell. He adds, "You, too."

A half hour later, Zef totters off the train six-inches taller than usual and with a breeze rustling under his skirt. He could not feel any less comfortable or more anxious.

The street bustles with early morning commuters. Gray pauses out of the way of foot traffic to reapply lipstick.

"Stop looking so sketchy," he says in an undertone.

"Can't help it." Bionic Capital HQ looms in Zef's periphery, a tower like the lightning-struck ones in tarot cards. "Never thought I'd be coming back here, let alone walking through the front door."

"Was your idea," Gray mutters. "We're early. Would be the perfect time for a cigarette, but—"

"You're quitting, right?" Zef prompts.

A sigh. He gives Zef a look. "Right. Just don't tell Damo how you got me wrapped 'round your finger."

>>Oh, babe. I knew as much the second you came slinking into my 'lil pawn shop with him under your arm like a stray kitten asking if you could keep him.

Zef wraps his lips around his teeth to keep from smiling.

He goes over the plan in his head. Damo hacked their implants to give them the profiles of Katarina and Lina, who were attending a conference today for the international divisions of Bionic Capital. They'd go through security at the front doors. Once inside, they'd have one hour before the conference started to access Rylan's computer, download the files on Project Serenity, destroy the data fort and unleash a virus to cover their tracks. If all went well, it would look like a sabotage attempt by CyberSuite, and the data fort itself would be replaced with a convincing but ultimately useless replica of garbage data courtesy of Damo.

Calculating the hour long window had been a divisive argument. Arriving too early before the conference looked suspicious, but they needed a reasonable amount of time to enact the plan. Either way, they couldn't remain long after the conference began, where their absence would be noted.

An hour gave them just enough time and plausible deniability, but it was cutting it fine. The deadline puts Zef's nerves through a tumble dryer.

Gray seems to be thinking the same thing. "If things go tits up—"

"We'll be fine."

"You run."

Zef stops tapping his foot nervously. Gray watches him, waiting for confirmation.

"You should know by now I won't leave without you."

Gray's steel turns pleading. "Zef. Got too much on my conscience already."

"We'll be fine," Zef says again.

He won't agree to what Gray's asking. They both get out, or neither of them do.