THERE WERE RUSSIANS IN HAWKINS.

        That was all Amara could think about as she left the mall, dropped Robin off at her house, and returned home for the night. It was a quarter past nine and most households were conveying accounts of their day or watching Sixteen Candles, but once again a group of castaways was among the first to unveil something the rest of the townspeople had overlooked. Sleepy, boring Hawkins had captured the attention of the Russians, although Amara had to remind herself that Hawkins was no longer sleepy nor boring after being propelled into the national spotlight following the revelation of Barbara Holland's death from a chemical leak.

        There was only one explanation Amara could come up with for why there were Russians in a town Robin often quipped was a toilet stop away from Disneyland, at least before she'd learned of otherworldly beasts and telekinetic girls, but she didn't want to consider that possibility until she and her friends had gathered additional evidence.

        "Long day?" Kevin commented when Amara swanned through the doorway after parking her car. Sat at the kitchen table with a bowl of ramen for dinner, he had had a very long day himself.

        "Yeah," Amara sighed, plonking herself in the chair opposite her brother and dropping her face in her hands. "Erica wouldn't stop badgering us to give her samples. It's bad enough that we only make three bucks an hour."

        "Hey, you're making more money than I am at this point," Kevin reminded her, though it wasn't as if he had been at Melvald's for most of the day, and not because of the demonstration at Town Hall. He subconsciously felt his gaze drift to the refrigerator where magnets littered the ground, refusing to attach to the door. "At least the Chief was in a good mood today. He said his heart-to-heart speech with Mike and El worked."

        "That, I don't believe," Amara countered, recalling Max's disclosure that Mike had supposedly treated Eleven like garbage, but it now made more sense to her where the abrupt rift in their relationship had originated from. Regardless, it was nice to see Eleven spend a day in the company of someone who wasn't her boyfriend. "El came to the mall today and she was mad at Mike for some reason. I guarantee that the Chief's at least partially responsible for that."

        "Yeah, that sounds more like him," Kevin agreed through a mouthful of ramen. "I should hope that he'll stop showing up at Melvald's every day, but he'll probably find some reason to. He's got it bad for Joyce."

        "Wait, so did you end up not going to that protest?" Amara queried, only just realizing that Kevin had indicated being at work that day when he had been looking forward to rallying against Starcourt for days. Usually, she would've caught information like that earlier on but there was something about finding out about there being Russians in Hawkins that made it challenging to think of anything else.

        "Yeah... " Kevin trailed off, thinking back to how the magnets had stubbornly refused to cling to the whiteboard at Melvald's so similar to how the ones at their house did to their refrigerator, as well as Joyce's. He wanted to believe that it was apophenia or whatever it was that the science teacher from Hawkins Middle had cited as a prospect, but Joyce had a history of being right even when nobody believed her to be telling the truth. "I kinda got caught up with something."

        "I did too," Amara spoke without thinking, acknowledging that Erica's insistence for constant free samples was in truth the last reason for her exhaustion. Even if a foreign presence in Hawkins didn't automatically connect to the Upside Down, she had no rationale for concealing it from her brother when she had relied upon him multiple times to keep their parents in the dark and therefore out of danger. "What was it for you?"

        "It's, umm, the magnets at Melvald's," Kevin relayed, and Amara raised her eyebrows quizzically in response. "They weren't sticking to the whiteboard there, or the fridge here, or the one at Joyce's house. We visited Will's old science teacher for answers and he said it could be a machine of some sort that's causing this, but I don't know."

        Amara cast a glimpse in the direction of the fridge, and sure enough, every magnet had disconnected from it and fallen to the floor. At first glance, the notion of a machine being the cause for why magnets at three points across Hawkins were losing their magnetism seemed absurd, but after everything Amara and her friends had been through in the past two years they had grown to be wary of anything out of the ordinary, anything that signaled the resurgence of the supernatural world. And then there was the fact that she, Robin, Steve, and Dustin had unearthed a foreign entity in their very home mere hours ago – it couldn't be by chance that this was ensuing all at once.

        "Dustin intercepted a Russian broadcast, and that's not the worst part," Amara began slowly. Kevin's eyes were already as wide as saucers and she idly wondered how he would take in the next part. "The music playing in the background of the recording matches one of the arcade rides at the mall. We think... we think that there are Russians here. In Hawkins."

        "What?!" Kevin spluttered. It was one thing to discover the prospect of a large-scale machine in Hawkins, but it was another to learn that there were Russians in Hawkins of all places. Unless... "Wait, do you think they know about... that? Is that why they're here?"

        "I don't know for sure," Amara had left the table and strode to the fridge, crouching down and picking up the Star Wars-themed magnet that had been used to uphold a flyer for the Roane County Fair on the Fourth of July. She pressed it against the fridge door but it clattered to the floor the instant she released it, rejoining the others. "But whatever this is, it can't be a coincidence." She suddenly stumbled upon a potential answer and pivoted to face Kevin, who had lost all interest in his dinner.

        "If there are Russians here, and there's a machine that's causing magnets everywhere to fall... could the Russians be the ones building the machine?"

NOT EVEN A TURBULENT RAINSTORM could prevent Starcourt from overflowing with townspeople. Robin, Dustin, Amara, and Steve still had half of the Russian dispatch left to translate but the notion that it had come from within the mall enabled Steve and Dustin to scout for Russians (even if Amara pointed out that they weren't likely to saunter around in broad daylight) while Robin deciphered the rest of the message. This left Amara serving ice cream behind the counter, not that she minded.

        What she did mind, however, was contending with Erica and her posse of friends.

        "I'd like to try the peanut butter and chocolate swirl, please," the girl in question demanded, her voice laced with false sweetness.

        "No," Amara shook her head, refusing to let a ten-year-old boss her around any longer. "You've had more than enough samples today."

        "Excuse me?" Erica snapped, not inclined to give up easily. It was no less than Amara expected from her.

        "You're exploiting our company policy, Erica," Amara reasoned. It wasn't as though she and her co-workers bothered to don their mandated hats anymore, but the fact remained that Erica was fully aware that samples were free and ice cream wasn't. "It's five samples per person, and you know that."

        Erica scoffed, attempting to peer into the employee room where Robin was intently listening to the tape recording. "Where's the sailor man?" she interrogated, cognizant that Steve caved to her requests for free samples easier than Robin and Amara did.

        "Sorry, he isn't here," Amara informed Erica, bracing her elbows on the table she was leaning against. "He's busy at the moment."

        "Busy with what?"

        Amara could only smile as she envisioned what Steve was up to right now. "Spycraft," she answered simply.

        Meanwhile, the aforementioned boy wasn't making significant progress locating any so-called evil Russians. Concealed behind a faux plant at the heart of the mall with a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes, he was certain he looked the epitome of ridiculous and was grateful that the artificial foliage obscured him enough that no one could see him. As he maneuvered the binoculars every which way, keeping an eye out for any person who matched the description of an evil Russian, Steve almost wished he'd offered to sling ice cream instead; as much as he despised his job, Amara had a way of picking up on details others neglected to notice and presumably would have had better luck than him.

        "You see anything?" Dustin inquired from beside Steve.

        "Uh, I guess I don't totally know what I'm looking for," Steve admitted, binoculars trained on various mallgoers congregating around the fountain, all blissfully unaware of Russians right under their noses.

        "Evil Russians," Dustin reminded him as though an evil Russian was easy to pick apart from the crowd.

        "Yeah, exactly. I don't know what an evil Russian looks like," Steve argued. It was difficult enough that he couldn't spot anyone wearing a uniform emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.

        "Tall, blonde, not smiling," Dustin offered, himself scouring for individuals who approximated that depiction. "Also, look for earpieces, camo, duffel bags, that sort of thing."

        "Right, okay, duffel bags," Steve mumbled. While he didn't know what Dustin was basing his evidence on, he conceded that they had to narrow down who was a Russian in disguise somehow. A quick scan of the food court signified to him that everyone there was authentic and he lifted his gaze to the second floor, only to pause upon spotting two of his former classmates in close contact with one another. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me."

        "What?" Dustin demanded, under the impression that Steve had discovered something of importance.

        "Anna Jacobi's talking with that meathead Mark Lewinsky," Steve bemoaned. Anna, who had turned down Steve's offer of a date two days ago (not that he would've been available) was in deep conversation with a boy on the lower end of the social hierarchy, but popularity didn't seem to be working in Steve's favor now that he was out of high school and had lost his charisma.

        "Dude, if you're not gonna focus, just gimme the binoculars."

        "Aw, Jesus Christ, whatever happened to standards?" Steve disregarded Dustin's remark, finding it sickening to witness Mark act as though he was a basketball star when in actuality he had never participated in a single game. "I mean, Lewinksy never even came off the bench."

        "Dude, you are the worst spy in history, you know that?" Dustin proceeded to yank the binoculars from Steve's grasp. Though he protested at first he quickly relented, releasing the strap from around his neck and letting Dustin utilize them. It wasn't like he was genuinely interested in Anna Jacobi or any girl he'd flirted with in the past month of working at Scoops.

        As if reading his mind, Dustin mentioned, "Besides, I don't even get why you're looking at girls. You have the perfect one right in front of you."

        "Seriously," Steve grumbled, his cheeks flushing without his permission, "if you say Amara again – "

        "Amara," Dustin deliberately chose to get under Steve's skin, not peeking up from his binoculars.

        "No, don't. No," Steve protested, the red tint on the apples of his cheeks increasing tenfold. It was bad enough that he could barely rid his mind of Amara at this point, but Dustin taunting him only reminded him for the millionth time that it was selfish of him to pursue her and drag her down. Amara had been the first girl he'd called a friend in years, the first girl whose emotions meant more to him than his own desires, and yet she happened to be the one he was falling for.

        "Amara, Amara, Amara."

        "Stop, no, no, no."

        "Amara. Amara. Amara," Dustin removed the binoculars from the bridge of his nose, shooting Steve a knowing look.

        "No."

        "Amara."

        "No!" Steve finally cut across Dustin, the tone of his voice warning him to back off. "No, man, she's not my type. She's not even... in the ballpark of what my type is, alright?"

        "What's your type again?" Dustin deadpanned. "Not awesome?"

        "Thank you," Steve said sarkily, searching through his mind for reasons as to why he and Amara wouldn't be a good match without mentioning any of her negative traits relating to her autism. Her dignity mattered more to him than any excuse he could sell to Dustin. "For your information, she's still in school. And she's never expressed any interest in a relationship. And she's my friend. I don't date girls I'm already friends with, that would be too weird. And it doesn't help that she's best friends with Robin – "

        "There you go, dragging Robin into this," Dustin interrupted. Locating evil Russians was critical, but so was proving to Steve that he was right. "Face it, you can't come up with a sufficient reason for why the two of you wouldn't be perfect together. Yes, Amara is your friend, which means you don't have to flirt with her to get her to notice you. And she doesn't care about basketball or primitive constructs such as popularity for that matter."

        "Did you not hear anything I just said?" Steve questioned, negating to divulge that his true rationale for not wanting to tell Amara how he felt was based on the belief that everything he touched turned to dust. "And 'primitive constructs?' That some stupid shit you learned at Camp... Know... Nothing?" he added, missing the fact that the name of the science camp Dustin had gone to was splayed out on his baseball cap.

        "Camp Know Where, actually," Dustin corrected, no longer giving any thought to their mission of tracking down Russians. "And no, it's shit I learned from life. Instead of dating somebody you think's gonna make you cooler, why not date someone you actually enjoy being around? As far as I'm aware, you enjoy being around Amara."

        "Yeah, dude, because she's my friend," Steve regurgitated, wishing Dustin would move on from the conversation already. "Oh wait, is that an evil Russian over there?!"

        "You're deflecting, Steve," Dustin saw through Steve's poor attempt to shift the discussion, and he wasn't going to let it go so easily. "You and I both know that you don't constantly stare at someone who's just a friend. I think if you give it a go, you could actually be with someone who makes you happy. Like me and Suzie."

        "Oh, Suzie. Yeah, you mean, 'hotter than Phoebe Cates.' Yeah, that Suzie." Steve scratched his head in mock thought, still embarrassed that Dustin had a girlfriend and he didn't, even if he allegedly had 'the perfect girl right in front of him.' "And, uh, let's think about how exactly did you score that beautiful girlfriend? Oh, yeah. With my advice. Because that's how this works, Henderson. I give you the advice, you follow through. Not the other way around, all right pea-brain?"

        "Yeah, except it wasn't your advice that won Suzie over. It was Amara's," Dustin revealed, rolling his eyes at Steve's term. "After pretending not to care didn't work for me at the Snowball, and then again on Valentine's Day, I figured I'd try Amara's advice for a change. I found someone who was interested in science, just like she suggested, and guess what? She fell for my dorky self. Maybe you could use some new pointers."

        "Shut up, man," Steve groused. Even if Dustin was right Steve would rather lose another fight to Billy than admit defeat, and Dustin understood that enough not to further aggravate him. With a heavy sigh, the aforesaid boy refocused his attention on unearthing evil Russians, wondering why Steve was making his whole situation with Amara more complicated than it needed to be.

ROBIN FINISHED TRANSLATING THE CODE shortly after two in the afternoon. The one consolation of it raining was that the demand for ice cream wasn't as high as usual despite the mall abounding with people. Perched on the table by the sliding door to the backroom, she and Amara looked over the message, occasionally sipping from their milkshakes.

        "'The week is long,'" Robin muttered, eyes fixed on her notebook. "'The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly.' Do you think I got it right?" she asked Amara.

        "You probably did," Amara reassured her friend with a smile. "You're the one who's fluent in four languages, after all."

        "Russian's not one of them," Robin yawned, exchanging her notepad for the English-to-Russian translation book. "I don't know if 'tread lightly' is right – "

        "It is," Amara insisted, gently prying the book from Robin before she could stress herself out further. Much like herself, Robin had a habit of overthinking things. "It's the code that doesn't make sense, that's what."

        "How did we even end up here?" Robin couldn't help but query, aimlessly fidgeting with her obsidian bracelet. "Just yesterday I was keeping track of Steve's rejections, and now here we are, trying to save the country from evil Russians."

        "That's sort of how it was for me," Amara brought up, reminded of her two encounters with a world many believed didn't exist, a world that shouldn't exist. "One day we were studying for chemistry, the next I was searching through the woods for a faceless monster. It just happened out of nowhere."

        "I guess," Robin smirked, taking another sip from her milkshake. "So, what do we do after we crack the code? And that's if we can crack it."

        "We bring it to the Chief, perhaps," Amara proposed, unaware that Hopper was on a mission of his own at the moment, albeit reluctantly. "He'll contact the military and alert them of a Russian presence here, and they'll send them back to Russia. And, of course, we'll make sure Steve and Dustin get the credit they deserve so they can relish in the glory of being 'American heroes' or whatever." she punctuated her statement with air quotes, earning a ripple of laughter from Robin.

        "Good ol' Popeye might actually get a date for once," Robin mused, glancing to her left to ensure they didn't have any customers waiting on them. "Some girl who would've rejected him today will take up his offer because it'd be convenient for her to fawn over a so-called American hero, and then he'll realize that what he needs isn't someone who idolizes him but rather someone who puts him in his place," she shot Amara a knowing glance.

        "Rob, c'mon," Amara groaned. Unlike Steve, she didn't bother denying her feelings to her closest friend but nonetheless avoided discussing them whenever possible. "We have bigger concerns than my nonexistent love life."

        "We translated the code and figured out it came from here in a day, 'Mara," Robin pointed out, placing her notebook on the counter for effect. "Seriously, you bring out the best in him. Why not tell him you like him?"

        "It's not that simple," Amara reasoned, peering over her shoulder to confirm that neither Steve nor Dustin was anywhere in the vicinity. They had left their position behind the fake plant near the fountain and were nowhere in sight. "Yes, I like him, but I also like what we have now. I don't want to jeopardize our friendship."

        "Who said that would happen?" Robin queried, tossing her empty milkshake in the garbage. "Just because you guys are friends now doesn't mean you'd stop being friends if you're in a relationship."

        "Yeah, but I don't know if I'm ready for a relationship," Amara asserted, causing Robin to nod in understanding. "Relationships require commitment, right? I don't know if I could handle that. And I've been vulnerable around him before but being in a relationship would call for a different type of vulnerability, if you know what I mean. This whole thing is very new to me."

        "It is for me, too," Robin disclosed, dropping her voice as she typically did when bringing up anything pertaining to being attracted to girls. "Literally every girl I've liked isn't capable of returning my feelings, and when I actually had a chance to talk to Tammy Thompson it was like my brain was moving faster than my mouth, or rather my mouth was moving faster than my brain. I made a total fool of myself that day," she paused to catch her breath and Amara recalled how Robin had made a habit of screaming into her pillow during their sophomore year. "And yes, the guy you like just so happens to be the one Tammy wouldn't stop staring at, but he actually treats you with respect. If he really cares about you, he'll wait until you're ready."

        "I'm just hoping this whole thing will go away at some point," Amara sighed, one of her legs dangling off the rim of the table. "Maybe I've just convinced myself I like Steve. That must be it."

        "Nah, you like him. I can tell," Robin grinned devilishly. "You always have this subtle smile when you're talking to him, and you practically melt when he asks if you're alright. And you do that thing where you fiddle with your hair – "

        "I hate you."

        "I love you too," Robin replied, playfully nudging Amara with her elbow.

        A knock on the back door in the employee room startled them both, reminding them that they were still employees at an ice cream parlor in addition to decoders of a Russian transmission and teenage girls navigating a world that wasn't built for either of them. "It must be that new shipment from Michigan," Robin deduced, sliding open the partition window to save herself a few seconds from walking through the employee door. "I'll be right back." She slipped through the window, leaving Amara alone to keep an eye out for customers.

        Perhaps her justification for not being in any hurry to be in a romantic relationship stemmed from the fact that she didn't understand herself enough to know what she wanted out of one. She already had a difficult enough time communicating with others and often struggled to convey her emotions, both components central to the girl advice she had given Dustin. Most people who had feelings for someone would primarily be concerned with whether the individual they were attracted to reciprocated their affections, but Amara wasn't most people. She was different from any girl Steve had previously been with and had already convinced herself that there was no scenario in which they would work out; even if Steve accepted her for her autism, she gathered that the former King of Hawkins High would quickly grow bored of her hesitancy to rush into anything.

        Amara's tendency to think in black and white often guaranteed that she was her own worst enemy.

        The employee door burst open with such force that for a split-second Amara feared it was an evil Russian arresting them for daring to investigate their covert operation. But it was merely Robin, who was beaming so wide it appeared as though her face might crack from the strain. "I got a lead!" she exclaimed.

        Amara gasped, momentarily forgetting her latest bout of self-deprecation. "What is it?!"

        "'Silver cat' refers to the delivery service! Lynx Transportation!" Robin clarified. With that, she made a beeline to the center of the mall, Amara hot on her trail. They gently pushed past Steve and Dustin, who had returned to Scoops in defeat after falsely identifying a Jazzercise employee as an evil Russian – in their defense, he had looked quite suspicious.

        "The message came from here. It refers to the mall," Amara realized, she and Robin hopping onto the ledge of the topiary tree. "Robin, you're a genius."

        "'A trip to China sounds nice," Robin read from her notepad, rotating to find an outlet that aligned with that segment of the code. "If 'The silver cat feeds' is the delivery service, then... "

        "Imperial Panda!" the words left Amara the second her gaze landed upon that particular cuisine. She almost wanted to laugh in disbelief at how obvious the Russians had designed the code to be, but they still had two sentences left to decipher. "'A trip to China' is Chinese food."

        "Okay, then 'If you tread lightly' has to refer to another store," Robin concluded, eyes roving around the food court to confirm she didn't miss anything. 'Tread lightly' was the translation she feared she had messed up and she hoped it wouldn't lead to a dead end. "But which one?"

        "To 'tread' means to walk, right?" Amara brought up, eyes trained on the outlets on the upper level. Jazzercise entered her periphery and she momentarily questioned if that could be a potential answer, but it didn't seem to fit. What did fit was –

        "Kaufman shoes," Robin declared, pointing at the shoe store just outside of Amara's field of view. "You need shoes to walk."

        "Okay, that leaves 'When blue meets yellow in the west,'" Amara mumbled. She wondered if it had to do with any stores on the west side of the mall or west in terms of direction, but that didn't answer the 'blue meets yellow' part. Or maybe it had to do with two stores... or two people, but that didn't correlate with the rest of the code. And then she remembered the part of the sentence she'd forgotten to include in the equation – the when. The answer was in the form of the gigantic clock she felt compelled to glance at amid her shifts despite having a watch of her own.

        "The clock," Amara spoke, gesturing at the blue and yellow hands that together read 2:23. "'When blue meets yellow in the west...' that has to mean a quarter to nine."

        The week is long. The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly. That had to mean the Russians were using the delivery service to ship materials under the guise of supplies for Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes at a quarter to nine, which was conveniently before the mall opened for the day and after it closed. It was subtle enough that anyone not actively looking for clues about evil Russians in Hawkins wouldn't take notice, but Robin and Amara had.

        "Amara, Robin," Steve's voice anchored them back to the present. He and Dustin had approached the two girls and were sporting equally confused expressions. "What are you doing?"

        "We cracked it," Robin whispered, still in disbelief.

        "Cracked what?" The reality of what they had just accomplished set in and Robin and Amara hopped down to be at eye level with Dustin and Steve, excitement radiating off of their skin in waves of energy.

        "The code," Amara elaborated, unable to conceal the grin that broke out across her face. "We cracked the code."

        Just yesterday, Robin had hypothesized that it would take a genius to crack the code, but she and Amara were the geniuses they'd needed the entire time. But it wasn't just Amara who was amazed at her ability to read between the lines and figure out the code – her autism proved handy in situations like these. Robin was bewildered as to how she had managed to decrypt the message just as easily as her best friend. It was the first component of a question she would find herself asking frequently over the next few days, for just like Amara she hadn't completely figured out who she was.

APPROXIMATELY TEN MINUTES BEFORE 'BLUE MET YELLOW' in the west, the quartet attired themselves in their raincoats and trooped up to the roof overlooking the loading dock at the rear of Starcourt. It was raining worse than ever, chilling their bones and decreasing the visibility, but they had to make the best of their situation. It wasn't every day you discovered that the goddamn Russians were using the trendy mall in your supposedly tranquil town as a cover for something, and Robin, Dustin, Amara, and Steve were keen to unearth what it was in spite of the downpour.

        Two men stood guard at the shipment bay, waiting for the delivery truck to finish backing up. While Amara didn't know for sure if they were Russians, that they were both equipped with large guns was at the very least a sign that they weren't to be crossed. Whatever they were transporting had to be of value for them to feel the need to safeguard it so fiercely.

        "Look for Imperial Panda and Kaufman Shoes," Amara reminded Dustin, who was using his binoculars to grasp a close-up and more vivid picture the precipitation couldn't provide. She tightened her jacket around her small frame, brushing her wet hair away from her face.

        "They're with that whistling guy, ten o'clock," Dustin relayed, motioning at a worker in a yellow rain jacket with a trolley cart of Imperial Panda boxes. The jacket itself was emblazoned with the Lynx Transportation logo – Silver Cat.

        "What do you think's in there?" Steve asked no one in particular. He had long accepted that he was the least intelligent of the four of them, though Amara insisted that he was smart even if his grades weren't top-tier. Knowledge came in many forms, and Steve was particularly street-smart.

        "Guns, bombs?" Dustin suggested, his binoculars directed toward the men congregating by the loading dock.

        "Chemical weapons?" Robin added.

        "Whatever it is, they're armed to the teeth," Dustin informed them. He acknowledged that if the guards were Russians, they weren't exactly the best at keeping a low profile. Broadcasting a code across Hawkins the four of them were able to translate and decipher in the span of two days, assuming none of the countless mallgoers would take note of an entourage of heavily armed guards just outside of their periphery... but then again, most residents of Hawkins were oblivious to the notion that their town was far from ordinary.

        "Great," Steve muttered sarcastically, blinking water droplets from his eyes and berating himself for choosing to wear a coat with no hood. "That's great."

        By now, the guards had finished unloading the delivery and had inserted a keycard into a slot to unlock a set of double doors, revealing a storage room. "Wait, what's in there?" Amara inquired of Dustin, who undoubtedly had a better view than she did.

        "It's just more boxes."

        "Let me check it out," Steve made to grab the binoculars from around Dustin's neck, wishing to contribute something of value for once. Dustin had intercepted the code in the first place, Robin had translated it, she and Amara had cracked it... what had he done other than make the connection between the message and an arcade ride?

        "No, I'm still looking," Dustin held his ground, attempting to tug the binoculars out of Steve's grip.

        "Lemme see it!"

        "Hang on!"

        Amid their scuffle Steve's hold on the binoculars loosened, causing them to clang loudly against the ledge of the roof. The din was enough for the guards to reach for their guns and the quartet instinctively ducked beneath the parapet before anyone could catch sight of them, all trembling with fear. In her panic, Amara had latched onto the closest thing within her distance, which happened to be Robin's hand. Her best friend squeezed it in response, breathing heavily as she tried to calm down her racing heartbeat.

        Confirmation that they had indeed stumbled upon an undercover Russian mission came in the form of one of the guards shouting in a language that definitely wasn't English. The four of them glanced at one another before silently agreeing to return to the ice cream parlor. They'd uncovered enough for one night and it wasn't worth getting caught when they still had so much left to learn.

        The reality of their near-miss hit them as Robin, Amara, Dustin, and Steve hastened through the employee hallway in the direction of Scoops, their shoes squelching against the floor. Steve appeared apologetic at the fact that his squabbling with Dustin had forced them to flee, but Amara wasn't about to blame him. None of them had comprehended the scope of the threat they were facing, and it had nearly cost them their lives.

        "Well, I think we found your Russians," was all Robin could say.

        Indeed they had.

published to quotev: 12/4/22
published to wattpad: 10/12/24