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“Yeah, but keep sharp,” he said. “Knowing you, you’ll get surprised by the one guard who happened to pass out in a lead-lined shitter.” “I can handle myself.” “Sure you can,” he said, “but you’re wearing my fucking jacket.”
They were pale and shaking. In their white lab coats, they resembled the sickly mice they experimented on. One of them, a young guy, held a stapler; the other, an unplugged desk lamp. I said, “Two scientists, an entire lab full of nasty chemicals, and that’s the best you came up with.”
Eventually it appeared that the most diplomatic solution was to stick his fucking head in toilet water.”
“You saved me,” Matthias said to me from behind Brand. I couldn’t quite identify the expression that lit up his face, but it wasn’t nearly as comfortable as plain gratitude. “You saved my life.” “If we get you killed your first week, people will make fun of us,” I said.
he was my Companion, and he’d let the entire building fall around our ears as long as he could keep me safe.
You didn’t bring bullets to a magic fight; it bruised our sense of spectacle.
“I’m not sure what I love more,” he said. “That you called me for help, or that you asked that we carpool.”
He frowned. “Apologies, it has been a . . . long few days. Does anyone have a blade to spare? It would be better if I were armed.” It clicked. “Oh, I get it. You think this is one of them big, fancy rescues. Boy are you about to be embarrassed.”
Lord Tower hadn’t arrived yet, but Brand was there. He was doing a circuit of the room, trying to find all the eavesdropping devices. There were already three wireless transmitters in his palm. “I’m not sure Lord Tower put those out as snacks,” I said. “He’s testing me. It’s fucking rude,” Brand said.
It occurred to me that my maybe going off and dying was one more thing he wasn’t prepared to handle, not after losing everything in his life just days ago. I tried to tell him that Brand would remember to feed him if I didn’t come back. It hadn’t been my funniest moment.
“When Quinn was younger, he’d smash up onions with a hammer, and take pictures of his eyes watering. He would paste the pictures to my cigarette packs.”
I dreamed of a long, teasing conversation with someone who I knew to be both Brand and Addam at the same time.
The steam and hot water began to soften the muscles in my often-reinjured shoulder. Grimacing, I reached up to knead it. Brand knocked my hand away and began to do it himself. He’d once spent six weeks training with a professional massage therapist as a birthday gift for me.
“Addam, you don’t have to hide how you feel about him. It’s not a contest. But just know—he’s mine to watch. That will never change. Whatever happens between you is going to include me.”
“Rune, when I plugged the memory card into my phone, it looked like your head was going to explode. I’m not fucking explaining what GIS is. Just take my word—it’s a really high-tech map.”
Like most types of violence, it was over before your brain had time to add in the subtitles.
“This isn’t a place for kids,” I said, somewhat stupidly, but it was true. “I’m not a kid,” Quinn said. “Is that a lava lamp?” He squeezed past me and trotted over to it.
There are moments in your life that are so impossibly large that it’s difficult to even comprehend them. They make your very bones vibrate. Standing there, it was like my future spiraled outward. Waves of possibility crashed on each other, bound by the insane certainty that everything could start.
