***GABE***

There hasn't been nearly enough time to prep for Park's planned incursion on Peppermint. Well, maybe for Park himself - he seems to have been working on this for a long time. But for us newcomers to the plan? Me, Harris, TJ? We've been read in so recently, we can't possibly keep up with all the steps.

And yet Park, taking over as the Russell of our group of scriv friends, thinks nothing of having us come with him, with next to no knowledge of what exactly we're doing, and probably no backup either. Park even admitted before taking us out the door that Annie didn't know about this, and wouldn't sign off on it anyway if she did.

I should be in bed right now. Snug, warm, spooning with Harris, and maybe just now waking up to a beautiful sunrise. But no, the sky's torn open, spraying heavy rain over the whole damn Bay Area, and I'm shivering in the backseat of Park's Kia as the heater struggles to kick in.

At least I've got Harris' hand to hold. No direct skin contact - we've both got gloves on - but it helps anchor me to this reality.

The good news is, there's one advantage we have going into this mission, one which Park didn't need to elaborate on too much. His brother Jae works at Peppermint HQ in Bachman Creek - a site which, if I'm not mistaken, occupies roughly the same space in this 'verse that Apple HQ occupies in the Prime 'Verse. (Apple, meanwhile, is headquartered in San Jose here. Not that far off what we know, then.) Jae, apparently, has just enough sway to get us through the front door no matter how flimsy our covers may be. After that, though, I'm betting we're on our own.

Not that that's really stopped any of us before, has it? Like when Russell took us to that power plant in Washington to find the final Black Mirror fragment, the one Peppermint literally killed for. Well, we still don't know it was them, officially, but we're all smart enough to read between the lines, aren't we?

(I trust you're all raising your hands out there, mis amigos.)

"Is he gonna be there?" TJ asks Park.

"Who?"

"Your brother." He's echoing my thoughts. "It's Saturday morning. Unless he's the kind of workaholic who needs to come in every day, or he's got a ton of projects-?"

"He'll be there." Park steers onto an interchange that takes us one town closer to our destination. Well, more accurately, it forms the corner of another town between Spellman and Bachman Creek. A town that, of course, consists mostly of a bunch of concrete blocks crammed a little too tightly together. "I texted him myself, and he said he was on his way. He'll meet us in the parking lot, first things first-"

"Amaryllis, ryllis..." Harris sounds sleepy when he says it, but the speed at which he leapt to make that joke says otherwise.

Park reaches up to adjust his rearview mirror. "Next guy who quotes or even bastardizes Igloo Australia will be singing castrato for life."

Still with his eyes closed, Harris winces, then lets go of my hand so he can use both of his to cover his crotch.

As for me, I raise my middle finger and form a short but sharp ice blade, which makes me look like I just got a single French tip on that finger. "Next guy who threatens my boyfriend's manhood will find himself gutted like a fish."

Park covers his stomach. "I'd rather keep my organs internal and intact, thanks."

I blow on my ice blade until it fractures into snow, which flies by his face and hits the corner of the windshield.

"Nice to see how much you like me," he adds, "but not only am I twice your age, but I'm also a little too hetero for your taste."

TJ turns around, his fingers curled around the stem of his glasses. "Even I saw that, out of the corner of my eye. Hard not to see...well, I'm not even sure if that was supposed to be blowing a kiss or inviting him to suck your dick."

"Paws off my sweaty elf boy." Harris crosses his arms, staring daggers at TJ through eyes that look almost blazing green. How do his eyes do that, change color with his mood? They say people with green, blue, or gray eyes are all capable of that, but as a gray-eyed dude myself, I can tell you mine have stayed the same slate hue for pretty much my whole life. Well, maybe once or twice I've looked in the mirror and noticed some hazel lines radiating from my pupils, but they appear so seldom that they might as well be imaginary. Alex, though his eyes are otherwise identical to mine, has a more permanent case of this - it gives them a nice Grant Gustin kind of look. Hazel is Mom's eye color too, and surprisingly rare in demons. An angelic trait my genes don't get to express, I guess.

(Note to self: look up whether or not Grant Gustin is part-angel himself. He doesn't have the wings, but maybe his angelic ancestry is a little further up his family tree than mine.)

Park soon drives up to a huge building on the edge of the Bachman Creek city wall. Yeah, it looks a hell of a lot like our world's Apple HQ - or, worse, The Circle. (Don't ever read that book if you know what's good for you.) At the front gate, he does all the talking, and the security guard lets us in with no problem.

Though I'm pretty sure the problems will come along later, in the fullest of force.

After Park finds a place to stop the car, he and TJ get out. I'm about to follow, but Harris holds me back, pressing his hand to my chest. My left side, then my right when he remembers my heart is positioned opposite to human normal.

I let go of the button to unbuckle my seat belt. "What's up?"

"Just wanted to..." He stops talking for a moment, then chuckles with embarrassment.

I look down at his hand. His light touch weighs me down, making my heart race to compensate. "We really should be home right now."

"I know." His hand comes off my chest, then he takes my face in both hands, scoots up into my space, and kisses me. His eyes shine again, but not bright green this time. More like mint. "I love you."

"Uh..." I'd respond, but he stole all the breath from my lungs, that foxy boy. And I thought he was a plain old domestic dog.

Someone knocks on the window behind me. I turn around to see Park waving at us. "Come on out, loverboys," he sings. "You've wished each other enough luck by now, right?"

I turn back to Harris, who grins as he slides away from me and leaves the car.

"Love you too," I mutter to the seat belt as I finally unbuckle it. When I get out and stretch my legs at last, I see that our little party has grown by one, with the arrival of a guy who must be Jae. I'm surprised by how attractive he is. Not that Park isn't, but Jae clearly got all the good genes in the family. Tall, broad shoulders, beautifully-styled hair...he could be a model.

"That's really nice of you to say." Jae waves to me, then turns back to his brother and continues talking in his deep voice. "And I thought all teenagers were assholes."

"No, man. Just you."

"You're still saying that even fifteen years after I stopped teenaging. How sweet." Jae winks at Park, then claps his hands and says, "All right, gentlemen, let's get you inside and suited up, 'cause even with the relaxed dress code around here, those hoodies aren't gonna help you blend in much where we're going."

"Which is where?" asks TJ.

"Right this way." Jae beckons us forward. "I may be pretty, but that doesn't mean I don't get to work in a place where I could get my hands dirty."

"Dirty with what?" I ask. "Silicon?"

"Diodes?" asks Harris.

"Vacuum tubes?" asks TJ.

Jae winks at Park. "You guys think all we make around here is Black Mirrors, don't you?" He presses the button to summon the elevator at the edge of the parking garage. "Haha, I knew that shit wouldn't work from the get-go. Not if my brother was still around helping Team Aspen take it out."

"I, uh, didn't do much to 'take it out-'"

"Nonsense!" Jae claps his brother on the shoulder. "You were pretty instrumental in putting ol' Penner in his place, weren't you?"

"Penner kinda kicked all my ass-"

Jae beams at us all while we get into the elevator at last. "Modest to a fault, that's Dominic Park for you."

"And you know what's Jae-Young Park for you?" Park crosses his arms and glowers up at his perpetually smiling brother's face. "Salesmanship to a fault." Uncrossing his arms, he leans back against the wall. "You know that old line about selling a ham to a rabbi? That's this guy's top talent."

"You work in sales?" I'm suddenly not so sure this plan could go off without more than two or three hitches. My personal hitch-count forecast has just hiked tenfold.

"I've got a cubicle door that says so. But if you want me to, I could help you guys charm your way into the R&D labs."

TJ looks down at his fingernails, as if he wants to chew on them. A similar urge seizes me as well, but like him, I don't act on it.

"Is that why we're gonna need costume changes?" Harris tugs on his hood, which he's still wearing up as if it's raining on him in the elevator. "Lab coats all around? Or...or surgical masks? How very Lemony Snicket."

The elevator opens, revealing a long, open space that, were this not the weekend, would probably be hella crowded with Peppermint workers getting coffee, sitting with their laptops and tablets, oversharing on social media, etc. etc. It'd also look a hell of a lot better if not for the fact that the sky is totally overcast, and the massive windows that line this part of the ring-shaped building are covered in fat raindrops that make it hard to see outside. The real world is removed from this place through a blurred filter, like some celestial being took a few too many shots on Snapchat.

(Do they allow Snapchat around here? It's not a Peppermint product or service, after all.)

"We're working to add the big names to the Toybox," Jae says. "Our equivalent of the App Store, if you didn't know. Until then, that's why Peppermint is mostly for people who look for something utilitarian in their devices. No frills."

Harris stops in front of a coffee cart whose menu, printed on a chalkboard propped up at its base, boasts five different roasts and ten different flavor shots, including raspberry. (Don't tell Alex; he'd be all over that. He's a raspberry freak, even more so than his infamous chocoholism.) "No, you just put the frills in the company freebies. Speaking of which-"

"Nope." I haven't been holding his hand or anything since we left the car - we both have a certain mutual, unspoken rule against PDA in strange environments - but now, I have no choice but to pull him away from the coffee cart with all my might. "This, buddy, is not how we blend in."

He looks so cute when he pouts. Well, he always looks cute, but especially now. "I would've paid for it!"

"Not without the credits on your company ID, you wouldn't have." Jae reaches under his collar and pulls out a green lanyard with a laminated badge attached to it. "These, I can't give you, I'm afraid, so you'll have to stick with me at all times. Without this card, you'd be stuck."

"Then how come you didn't have to use it to get into the elevator?" asks TJ.

"The buttons have thumbprint scanners. Something else you'll need me for. The badges are mostly for in-company transactions, not security. They're too easily faked for that."

Park keeps looking around, all paranoid-like. "Are you sure nobody's overhearing us?" He directs his gaze at what looks like one of those poles with arrows pointing in the direction of all the major cities - San Francisco, London, Rio de Janeiro, Mumbai - except instead of arrows, there's a spiral-shaped cluster of cameras sticking out of the pole.

"You wouldn't believe the shit I've overheard around here," Jae says brightly. "Shit making fun of Mr. Mientus when everyone knows he sits in some pod somewhere and watches the camera feeds 24/7 with nothing but IVs full of saline, water, and pure caffeine-"

I clear my throat. "I'm sorry, you said Mr. Minty? Is that why they named the company Peppermint?"

"You know," Harris says, "I've been wondering about that for a while too."

"Mientus," Jae corrects me. "Ezra Mientus. And yes, that's why the company's called Peppermint. Kind of a pun between him and his partner-"

"Mr. Pepper?" I joke.

"No-"

"What?" I laugh in response to Park's nonplussed look. "Pepper's a legit name too, isn't it?"

"Only if you're the Gotham version of Poison Ivy," TJ laughs.

"No, the cofounder's name isn't Pepper," says Jae. "It's actually-"

"Jae! Hey, man, whatcha doin' here? It's Saturday! Don't you have a club hangover to sleep off, or what?"

Jae shakes his head at an incoming guy in a loud Hawaiian shirt. Pink and green with pollen-yellow tips on the flowers' stamens, completely different from Jae's neutral cloud-gray polo. It also really pops against his pale skin - the kind of pale I'm guessing is year-round and not just seasonal like my current super-fair skin tone is. Guess it's true what they say about these Silicon Valley tech giants - the dress code is Casual Friday every day.

"Club soda, more like," Jae says to his friend. "You know I don't drink."

"More for me, then!"

Jae shakes his head again, and rolls his eyes for good measure. "Ignore this guy," he says as his friend walks away, his shirt still hurting my eyes even at a distance. "He doesn't think his Friday nights are made unless he hears 'Go home, Kaden. You're drunk' from at least half a dozen bartenders."

"Or until he's had as many Bahamalama Dingdongs?" Park asks.

Harris, who gets the Peeps reference, nudges me. That's what I want for Christmas. You to make me that drink.

Annie's never gonna let us have the fixins.

So? We'll find a way. I bought you that underwear, and I want you to get me drunk enough that I'll tear it taking it off.

No! I look down, wondering what's gotten into him. Since when do you wanna get into underage drinking?

He blushes. I mean, just once so we can feel like the teenage rebels we never got to be while we were alive!

Don't do it. TJ fixes us both with the meaningful look of a guy speaking from experience. Sorry, I know it wasn't my place to speak, but...

No, it's all good. I loop my pinky around Harris' for a second. Don't worry. Your Christmas present is gonna be so much better than any cocktail.

Sure. Your cock, my tail.

No promises. Although now I think about it, I haven't gotten around to actually buying him anything, so I might just have to settle for that as his present. Then it'd probably feel hollow and predictable. He surprised me with that underwear, so I need to surprise him back. Of course, if I hadn't spent a lot of time studying and working on my final projects, I'd probably have had a moment or two to spare for surfing the web in search of something he'd love. Like I said before, he's got a talent for screwing off on his studies - that must explain how he found the time to pick up all those Hogwarts briefs. Yeah, it was never just Slytherin - it was actually a four-pack with all the houses represented. It's just that the Slytherin ones are my favorite because of the blatantly funny symbolism. Which I'm pretty sure was unintentional, because if I'm not mistaken, they're not men's underwear, but women's. Not that it stops me wearing them, though.

They're not women's panties, I swear. I thought Hot Topic threads were unisex.

You see me complaining? I reach out and flick some hair out of Harris' eyes.

"Hey, guys?"

I look up to see Jae waving us over to another elevator door, where Park and TJ are already standing by his side. Damn, we got ourselves distracted, didn't we, me and Harris? It happens sometimes, though. We get so wrapped up in being playful with each other, it's a wonder we can otherwise function as people.

Why is it hitting me so hard right now that I've never actually told him I love him? He's said the same to me at least twice now.

Maybe it's because when I was with Kyle, I was pretty quick to say it, hoping to buck the stereotype of guys not saying those three words. And Kyle was happy to hear it, but look at how quickly and suddenly our relationship ended. So even when Russell paired me up with Harris in the Guardian program (and I'm still convinced he did it on purpose 'cause he couldn't stand the thought of us not being in a relationship, for whatever reason), I was a lot more guarded with him than I was with my ex.

I still am, more than I'd care to admit.

Another elevator ride takes us up to Jae's office. "What?" I gasp when he opens the door and ushers us in. "You said it was a cubicle!"

Jae gestures around the surprisingly expansive space before opening a wardrobe off to one side. "I might've exaggerated a bit...but hey, it's nowhere near the size of Mientus' pod. Compared to that, anything's a cubicle with a peon inside."

Harris looks at the row of lab coats hanging in the wardrobe. "You sneak people into the R&D lab often?"

"Dom's always bringing in his friends for unofficial tours. Thought after the first ten or fifteen times he did it, I should be duly prepared."

Park takes the lab coats that Jae selects and distributes them among us. "Nah, he just lifted these from the dry cleaner's."

Once we're suited up (no surgical masks, to Harris' disappointment), we go down. Way down, below even the parking garage. Of course R&D resides in the basement. Why wouldn't they? No sunlight or other atmospheric factors to interfere with a sterile environment, right? I bet that friend of Jae's - Kalden or whatever his name is - probably works down here. That would explain his pallor.

I pull the lapels of my assigned lab coat closer together, but it doesn't want to button up properly. Sure, this coat is long enough for someone my height, but it's also pretty tight in the chest. Kinda like my cousin Jared - Uncle James and Aunt Becky's son. You've met those two before, if I remember correctly. Uncle James shot Alex by mistake, remember? But anyway, I'm thinking about Jared because he's tall like me, but also very skinny. He didn't really inherit his dad's burly, Punisher-like build.

The Jared I know obviously doesn't work here - he's alive and well and living in Philly these days - but what if his human died? What if it's his lab coat Jae stole from the dry cleaners for this mission? What if...?

Ding.

Now we're in the basement, and the first thing we see is a person waiting on the other side of a Plexiglas door separating a small antechamber from the big white-walled R&D lab itself.

A person I've only met once, and frankly hoped never to see again, but what can you do? Recurring appearances from dangerous enemies like Alicia Wahlberg are an occupational hazard to being Gabe Snow, I guess.

"What? Alicia, where'd you come from?" Jae's hands fly to the back of his head, and he looks the most shocked out of all of us. "I thought you were in-"

"They couldn't keep me locked up, baby." Alicia waggles her fingers at him, then flicks those same fingers at the wall.

A series of squeaks echo through the room as rubber seals pop into place all around the lab and elevator doors. Red lights bathe the room. Then an alarm goes off, and heavy white foam rains down from the sprinklers in the ceiling.

It's not ordinary fire-suppression foam, I don't think.

Because every drop that hits us expands and connects with other drops around it, forming a slowly-hardening cocoon.