It takes fifteen minutes that feel longer, but Dee does appear, pulling back a raggedy cloth hanging over a doorway. She says, oblivious to Gray's gruff aura polluting the place, "Well, look what the cat dragged in." She clocks Zef and her eyebrows rise. "And you're back, as well. Gray finally made a friend?"

Gray says, "Don't got time, Dee. You got a power generator 'n a net blocker I can borrow?"

Dee's expression freezes. Something about the way she looks Gray over raises the hair on the back of Zef's neck. Like she's got x-ray vision of the psychological variety.

"What's wrong?" she says.

"Nothin', just need the gear," Gray says.

"Bullshit. You're in some sort of trouble." She puts a finger on the desk in front of her, tapping it. "What'd I tell you? If you're in trouble, you tell me. Up shit creek? I know those waters better than anything in my antique roadshow here. So I'm asking again. What's wrong?"

Gray's expression is so sour, it looks like Dee tasted it with the way she sucks her cheeks in, but Gray doesn't give ground. Doesn't even answer her. He says, "You got the gear or not?"

Zef watches the exchange with acid reflux burning up his esophagus. Cogs turn in his head. Dee clearly cares about Gray. They've had enough interaction for her to worry. Apparently not enough that Gray trusts her with his true motives, though. Gray icing her out feels like watching a film where Zef knows the ending. An ending he doesn't like.

Dee stares into Gray's cold face, and hers melts. "Third door down the hall on the right. If you're not gonna accept my help, you can get it yourself."

"Zef. You know what you're looking for," Gray says.

Hating that he feels like an obedient lap dog, but hating the tension in the room more, Zef goes through the curtain-covered door into a hall. Dee says something inaudible in a firm, near-mothering tone that gets cut off by Gray before they're too far away to overhear at all.

The third room on the right is a patchwork of equipment in neat piles like a farmer's field of crops, with vertical shelving built into the walls out of scrap. Zef locates the stuff he needs, but his mind strays.

This is the most distance he's had from Gray all night and day. It's the best opportunity he's got to run. Gray will, in all likelihood, catch up to him, but better to try than give up.

For reasons Zef can't tease out, running feels like giving up.

He tries to piece it all together. Gray taking him on this beautiful night, crossing off items on his bucket list. Whispering wanton confessions in the dark. Turning on Zef, claiming none of it mattered, putting together this scheme to destroy Rylan. Then Dee, looking at Gray—through him—and in a matter of seconds knowing something's up.

Gray could be gruff, distant, bad-tempered. He'd been that way when Zef met Dee for the first time. Gray's foul mood then had been a result of his implants paining him. This time, it's because he's plotting murder.

Somehow, Dee took one look at him and knew the difference.

Dee's voice down the hall rises, warping from feminine into an otherworldly bellow. Deep. Thundering. The hair on Zef's arms stands up. She's loud enough he hears every word.

"You think I of all people won't understand what you're going through? I'm not giving you pretty pet theories, not giving you platitudes or advice from an agony aunt column, I am telling you 'cause I lived it."

Zef's heart flips. Whatever Gray says back, it's short, cutting, and too low to hear. Footsteps stomp down the hall. Dee shouts, "Oi, I'm not done."

Gray appears in the doorway. "You got the gear?"

Zef swallows, the generator under one arm and the net blocker in hand. Seeing this, Gray says, "Good. Let's go."

Dee, however, blocks the hall. She looks larger somehow, more imposing. When Gray goes to shove past her, her arm locks around his shoulders. Gray's implants make him strong. He should be able to keep going, but Dee's arm stops him dead. He stiffens, looking at the arm touching him with caustic dislike.

"Don't. Touch. Me."

Dee starts to say something, but the words don't come out. Her posture changes, tension turning to paralysis. Her jaw shuts hard enough, her molars make an audible click. Slowly, the worry in her pinched brow morphs into hurt. Taking in the slight glow of Gray's tattoos, Zef makes the connection.

He's using his gild to paralyse hers.

Only, Zef didn't think she had any. He knew what to look for—the subtle scars from even the smallest implant, and Dee didn't dress conservatively enough to hide them.

Yet, Gray puppets her like her entire body is composed of tech.

She stands, releases him, and steps back. The movements are mechanical. Creaking. Her twisted expression chips at the caked layers of dust and grit around a fossil in Zef's memory. It is a mix of things—pain, guilt, betrayal, fear, but that last one?

She's not scared of Gray, she's scared for him.

As a trans guy, Zef got used to telling the difference between fear based on hatred and fear based on love. Dee's is the latter.

"We're going," Gray says.

He stalks away, releasing Dee. She slumps. Puts a hand to her chest.

Zef passes her, wondering if she'll try to stop him.

She just clutches her heart and says, "Don't know you well enough to ask, but I will anyway. Whatever he's up to, try and stop him. Maybe you'll have more luck than me."

Gray snarls, "Zef!"

Zef reluctantly follows, but the pleading look Dee gives him is etched behind his eyelids.

Gray doesn't speak as they return to the Nanosoft building, and once there he only speaks to give orders. They set up the generator, hook up the Faraday cage, and program the net blocker so it lets Gray through the firewall, but no one else in the vicinity. At every turn, Zef considers whether to refuse to help, whether to try and run, or whether to stay and ask the questions buzzing in his brain, beginning with, "What the fuck was that?" But he can't shake the feeling he knows too little, is still missing too many pieces, and as a result he's asking all the wrong questions.

He keeps picking at that fossil unearthed while watching Dee try to intervene on Gray's behalf, only to get rebuffed. Pushed away. It's a familiar skeleton Zef buried in his backyard, poking through the surface after years of erosion. If he could just unearth it and look at the whole thing, he'd understand better.

Turning on the generator brings the Faraday cage to life with an electric hum. Gray stands in front of it with his hands in fists. He steps inside and closes the door, puts his arms behind his back as though they're bound and says, "Take a picture. Send it to her."

Briefly, Zef feels that odd tickle in his brain as Gray removes the block on his net access. He can finally text his dad.

It might be too late to beg, but Zef still tries. "What if I refuse to send the photo?"

Gray's glowering expression hardly changes. "You gonna make me force you?"

He could. If he can hack Zef's implant to block his Net access, he can force Zef to send a text.

So Zef takes a photo. The violet bloom of a bruise on Gray's cheek from their bar fight gives the picture an edge of verisimilitude. Makes it look like he put up a fight before Zef got him in the cage. Had the bar fight been part of the plan, too? How much of it was planned, and how much was improvisation? From the bruises to the dejected hunch of his shoulders, Gray looks every bit the part of a downtrodden captive. Except in the eyes. In his eyes is a spark of unmitigated loathing.

It's strange to send Rylan a message. She'd always been the one to initiate contact. His breath gets all knotted up when Rylan replies.

>>Good. Keep him there. I'll arrive shortly.

Gray timed it all perfectly. Down to the point of her arrival back in the country.

"She's coming," Zef says.

Gray exits the cage, closing it a fraction. His fingers linger on the chain-link wire.

He won't meet Zef's eyes. "Time you got goin', now."

Zef's jaw works. Gray's goodbye stings harder than any hornet. It's potently absent of intimacy. All the things Gray said and did tonight, they hurt something awful.

But through them, Zef's coming 'round to realising something. Like this hurt and the buried fossil of another are twins, and he's understanding more about the nature of this beast by comparing the two.

When he got his uni acceptance, Ollie had congratulated him, slapped him on the back and hugged him. The words that came out of Ollie's mouth were all the right ones, said with all the wrong feelings. Because what had been good for Zef at the time had been wretchedly bad for Ollie.

Zef had packed his bags, and he'd left Ollie. Alone.

Maybe being a phone call away rather than two trailers down shouldn't have made a difference, but it had, because Zef didn't just go to uni, he went away and came back a different person from the one Ollie knew. Not a totally different person, just different enough to create a gulf between them. He'd left Ollie in more ways than one.

Now he looks at Gray and a well of grief rises in his throat so thick with fear and yearning he can't speak around it.

From the moment they met, Gray walked from one contradiction to the next. Wanting to protect Zef, then getting him into danger. Treating him tenderly then with gruff cruelty. One moment he could ask Zef to touch him, trust him, then snap like it had all been too much. He turned things like stolen kisses and the scars unveiled at tattoo parlours from the best, most intimate dreams of Zef's life into nightmares.

Of course he had. For god knows how long, Gray had been hounded, hunted, followed. Wish I could sleep. He'd known Zef was another hunter, but he must have hoped. Thought you were different. Every little touch and gesture of trust had been a question. A test. I like you. I shouldn't. There'd been no rest for him, no respite or sanctuary. The tech that protected him was also a kind of cage. Zef, with all his nerdy knowledge, could unlock it, or trap him there permanently.

All this time Zef had been breaking his rules, Gray had been, too. Trying desperately to trust a man he hoped would help instead of hurt him. Afraid of being alone as much as he feared letting anyone in. A push and pull that made his actions look contradictory when they came from the same wounded feeling.

Before his courage fails him, Zef sends his dad a quick text message.

>>Don't know about you, but I could eat enough tamales for four people.

Matthias will understand. Get train tickets. Get them for four people. Wait for me.

All this time, Gray had been alone.

Zef can't leave him like that.

"I'm not going anywhere."