Archive of Our Own ^beta

Mike’s heart thudded in his chest. He could feel it under his skin, the hot ba-bump, ba-bump of blood rushing through his veins.

Kane’s warpod hung heavy in the sky, casting a deep shadow across the Deluxe landscape behind it, blotting out the deep orange glow of the sun glinting off of metallic buildings.

Deluxe was beautiful, at this time of day. Heaven-like, glowing with a bright shimmering haze. He’d loved this place, once—he still did love this place.

Mike blew out a measured breath and turned to Julie. Her hair looked like it was on fire, a glowing halo of bright red livewires. “You ready?”

She gave him a curt nod, turning and offering her arms to him. He took them, holding them behind her back like he’d learned years ago. Arrest procedure.

They lifted up out of the pod in a hard-light elevator at the same time that Kane rose from his warpod across from him. Mike blinked in shock. He’d actually come out to negotiate.

“I can’t believe this is working,” he muttered to Julie, who was standing wooden in his arms.

Julie was frowning down at the thin air between them and Kane, face shadowed and stoic, but she lifted her head as Kane stepped forward, looking over at him. Her eyes traced over Kane’s face. Searching.

“Let’s get on with it, Chilton,” Kane called across the divide.

Right. Job to do. “It’s simple,” Mike said. “I’ll send her over. She turns off the Genesis Pod, and then I’ll surrender. No escapes, no protests.”

Mike’s idea. He was the one Kane really wanted—Julie seemed convinced that Kane cared about her, which had to be true at least a bit because he’d come up to negotiate, but when it came to Abraham Kane, hate was always more powerful than love. And Kane hated Mike. To have Mike willingly surrender…

He had to agree. This had to work.

Kane narrowed his eyes. Stoic. “And what happens if I don’t agree to your terms?”

Mike—made his face blank. Glanced over at Julie, trying to weigh his options.

“Don’t tell me you came all the way up here with just a bluff!” Kane strode forward, fists clenched victoriously.

Kane had always been too good at reading Mike, even now. Or maybe Mike was just a bad liar. 

“One more step and I’ll drop her!” Mike called out, holding Julie out by the shoulders. Please don’t take another step. Please don’t take another step.

“No you won’t!” Kane said gruffly. Too easily. “You don’t have the stomach for this.”

Mike’s heart thudded in his chest. Ba-bump.

Julie pushed herself out of Mike’s grasp, going over the edge with a cry of fear. Mike lunged after her—“No!” Kane cried in the background—Mike grabbed her hand.

Julie gasped, shuddering, staring down into the empty air dangling below her. She looked back up at Mike, who was gripping her forearm with both hands. Her hair glowed in the sunlight, and Mike didn’t think she had to fake the fear in her expression.

Mike tore his eyes away from her. Looked up at Kane. Narrowed his eyes in a forced glare. “I should let her go!”

“No, wait!” Kane made an aborted movement forward, arms outstretched as if to catch Julie himself. His eyes were wide—panicked. “I’ll do it.”

Mike frowned, studying Kane’s face closer. This was maybe the most emotion he’d ever seen from him.

“Just—don’t hurt her,” Kane said, and his voice was soft. Raw and ragged. “Please.”

Mike’s mouth dropped open, shock running down his veins like cold poison. “If I didn’t know you any better—” he squinted at Kane, then went to heft Julie back onto the roof of the pod— “I’d almost believe you cared.”

The barb fell flat in the open air. The wind in his lungs was ragged, breathing in and out he cares, he cares, he cares about her, why does he care about her what did she do.

What had Julie done to make Kane look human like that? To make Kane look like—

He pushed the thought out of his mind. Far, far away. This was for Motorcity. And he could worry about Julie later.

The pod drifted forward, linking onto the warpod with a metallic clank. Julie wouldn’t look him in the eye—of course, they were supposed to be acting like they didn’t know each other. She was an intern right now, not a Burner.

Still. Julie turned and walked across the divide easily, slowly, footsteps loud in the heavy silence. Her back was straight. Shoulders squared.

She slowed, next to Kane. Didn’t look at him, but ducked her head and murmured something quiet. He said something low in response. 

A flicker of deja vu lit in the back of Mike’s mind, just for a moment.

When Mike was eleven, his grandma died.

He’d known it was coming, was the thing. It was easy to know, because she was old, and he’d known since he was a little kid that old people die. Sometimes he would lie awake at night, bracing himself for it, like jumping into a cold pool. Grandma’s going to die. I’ll have to be good about it. I have to get ready. It was just something he had always known, something he’d been waiting for. Not like the other kids in his classes, who had parents instead of grandmas—but Mike liked his grandma, she was really nice to him, and he knew some parents weren’t that nice (like Chuck’s, but he didn’t say that to Chuck because Chuck didn’t like when he said that), so it wasn’t like he wanted to switch—but it was just different. It was a different situation. He didn’t like waiting.

But most of the time, he and his grandma got along good. She was a good grandma, she would let him run around and jump off the furniture most of the time, and he told her everything. So he would have to brace himself for her dying, sometimes, when he thought of it, but most of the time they had a good time, and he was pretty happy, overall.

Anyway.

A representative from KaneCo came to talk to them about “next steps,” in the early spring. This was when his grandma was still alive, and so she sat in with them, to talk to the representative, and the representative went on about Mike’s potential for Security Forces based on how he tested in Kids’ Club, and how Mike could move into the Junior Cadet Wing, if he wanted—

“Why would I do that?”

The representative blinked at him. “Well,” she said, shuffling her holo-screens, “There are other options too, but the Junior Cadet Wing would be if you wanted to go in on a more focused Security Forces track, aiming to be a cadet of some kind, or maybe a strategist—”

“But I live here,” Mike interrupted. “I don’t need to live somewhere else.”

“Mike,” his grandma warned softly. Mike frowned, looking between her and the representative.

“I know you live here, Mike,” the representative said soothingly. “But this is—we’re talking about future directions. Your grandma is…” she gave his grandma an apologetic look. “Not going to be fit for taking care of you forever.”

Mike frowned. “But she’s fine.”

The representative hesitated.

“She’s fine,” Mike said again. “She’s right here.” He gestured to his grandma, as if the representative might be blind. Except she wasn’t blind, so Mike didn’t get it.

“Yes, well…” the representative hesitated, adjusting her glasses. “We’re not saying this would happen right away. But, Mike, your grandma is on our radar for potential issues in qualifying for guardianship in the near future—that just means it might get very hard for her to take care of you. So you would go somewhere else, so that she could… rest. And wherever you end up, KaneCo would take care of you, of course,” she added hastily.

Mike looked between his grandma and the representative. His grandma had pursed lips, eyebrows raised politely—her let’s get through it face. The slow dread was sinking in, dissolving into him like a throat cube on the tongue.

He dug his feet in.

“But,” he said, “But, I could take care of her. I could…”

“Mike,” his grandma said, giving him a look. Don’t argue with the nice lady. Mike clamped his mouth shut, frustration building in his chest.

“I’m sorry, Mike, but eleven-year-olds aren’t allowed to be caretakers,” the representative said, and she did look sorry, which made him more mad, for some unfair reason. “But I can promise you, you’re both going to be taken great care of. KaneCo doesn’t let people slip through the cracks.”

When the representative said future directions, it turned out to be more like two weeks. Two weeks, and then his things were packed, and all the furniture and the room dividers were folded back into the floor of their pod, and it was just empty and big and shiny, like it was straight from an ad.

Mike watched Deluxe go by underneath them, the smooth glide of the pod through the air, and hated it for the first time.

“Habibi,” his grandma said gently, putting a hand on his shoulder. His heart scrunched up inside of him. 

The words came on their own: 

“Nana, I don’t wanna go.”

His grandma sighed, pulling him in to her side and rubbing up and down his arm. “I know,” she said. “I know.”

Mike turned his face into her shirt, curling in towards her.

“Listen,” she said, above him. “Did I ever tell you? I didn’t want to go either.”

Mike twisted his head to look up at her. “Go?” As far as he knew, his grandma had always lived here, since even before Deluxe was built. There was nowhere else, pretty much. And definitely nowhere as good.

“Up to Deluxe,” his grandma said. “Above the dome.”

Mike frowned, processing. “You didn’t want to move up to Deluxe?”

“No, I didn’t.”

He pulled away, making a face at her. “Really?”

“Yes, really,” she said. “Is that so surprising?”

“But, that’s… Motorcity,” Mike said. He cast around in his head for the words to explain the glaringly obvious point. “It’s, like… dirty.”

She pursed her lips at him, evaluating, and Mike was struck with the strange sense that he’d said something wrong—but it was a fact. Everyone knew Motorcity was dirty, he wasn’t being mean, he was just telling the truth.

“It was called Detroit, back then,” she said. “My home. My neighborhood, with all the people that I knew, my old mosque, my old school.”

She frowned, staring off into the distance, eyebrows furrowed. Mike bit his lip and watched her, waiting.

“I was… older than you,” she said. “An adult, of course. Your mother was a little girl at the time—maybe five years old, if I remember right. And all the buildings were… a sort of orange-red color, or sometimes tan and white, and decorated with art up the sides, sometimes…”

“Graffiti,” Mike interrupted. He’d seen that before, from the window at school—seen a swath of colors being wiped down from the wall, efficient with KaneCo technology that Mike didn’t understand. The painting had been wiped smaller, and smaller, into little squares, until there was just one little square of color left, and it was wiped away with just one straight swipe down.

“Yes, graffiti,” his grandma said. “But it was… things were different, it was allowed. There were some that were very impressive, I think. And the mosque—there were lots of them, actually, but the one I went to with my parents, you could see it from far away. The building was…” she frowned, putting a hand in the air as if to paint a picture. “The top was curved, and decorated in gold, and it would catch the light… and glow, sort of. You would have liked it.”

Mike hummed. He’d thought glinting glowing buildings was just a Deluxe thing—that was how most people talked about it. There wasn’t supposed to be any shiny things in Motorcity. Not just because the dome made it dark down there. It was grimy. But maybe less, when his grandma was a kid?

“I remember, I had a friend who lived in the apartment above me, and her walls were pink. Pink wallpaper, with stripes, and they decorated the windows with orange… orange beads that caught the light.”

“What’s wallpaper?”

“What it sounds like,” his grandma said. “Paper that you stick up on walls. It would have pretty patterns on it, or colors. And when we had to leave Detroit, come live up in Deluxe—I went up above the dome, and I saw all that white, and you know what I did first?”

“What?”

“I cried,” she said plainly. “I thought it all looked very ugly.”

Mike pulled back, scandalized. “Grandma!”

“Well, it’s true,” she said, unbothered and amused. “I wasn’t used to it at all. It just felt empty, at first, and there was nothing familiar there that I could… hold onto for comfort.”

Mike frowned, turning this over in his head. “But you got used to it,” he said. “You like it here now.”

“I got used to it,” his grandma agreed, looking out at Deluxe through the window. Gliding by. “We’ve had a good time together, haven’t we?”

Right. 

Reality closed back in, the air in the room pressing in on him at all sides as he remembered it was empty now. It wasn’t their living room anymore. Mike looked back down, leaning up against her side again. He didn’t say anything, throat tight.

“Hey,” his grandma said, stern. She took his head, pulling back from him gently to tip his head up. “None of that.”

There was a pressurized ache behind his eyes, a burning sting in his tear ducts—Mike blinked the sting away, trying to pull his chin out of her hand. “But, Nana…”

“Enough,” she said, keeping her hold on his chin. “You listen to me. You’re a good, strong boy, and I know you can do this. Everyone will have a point in their life when they have to do something they don’t want to do. And at that point, all you can do is try to keep your chin up and go through it with a good attitude. You understand?”

Mike stared up at her, face squished in her hands, vision blurry. “I understand.”

She studied his face for a beat. Nodded. “Good,” she said, and pulled him into a hug. “My little sunshine. I know you can do this.”

The Junior Cadet Wing was different from their pod. The walls weren’t all floor-to-ceiling window, for one. Mike’s new room was tiny, compared to his old one, a little white box in a row of little white boxes spanning down both sides of the hallway, and when his bed folded out of the wall, it took up half the floor space. If he sat down on the floor, he could feel the cool air whooshing lightly from the ventilation crack that ran between the floor and the wall. Back at home, it was in the ceiling.

But he didn’t have that much time to feel weird about it. In Kids’ Club, he used to go do Physical at seven in the morning until seven forty-five, on weekdays, and from seven in the morning until eight thirty on weekends. Now, here, he had to get up by six and go do Late Drills until seven, then go eat breakfast in the cafeteria, then go to in-house classes (that was Cadet classes, inside the KaneCo building, taught by Security Forces instructors) until twelve, then lunch, then run to jump in the transport pod to go to his old school, where now he was only taking Math and Reading in the afternoons (he and Chuck could talk before class started, in the hall, but that was it), then leave immediately after classes ended to go do afternoon drills, then dinner, then free time when he did his homework, then back to his room and lights out.

It was… a lot.

He was dealing with it.

Gabriel was his best cadet friend (only cadet friend, because of course Chuck was his best-best friend), because the two of them always got teamed up for sparring together because they were calculated at a similar skill level. Near the top of their age division in their quadrant! Which was fun, but they had to not be too excited about it, or else the others in their unit would get jealous. 

“Not jealous,” Nate protested, hurrying to keep up. “I’m just saying, they should let one of us others fight you, so then we could prove that we could beat you.”

“Uh-huh,” Gabriel said from Mike’s other side. “I’ve seen you spar, dude.”

“Shut up,” Nate said, rolling his eyes and reaching behind Mike to knock Gabriel on the head. “I’m just saying someone needs to keep you two humble.”

“We are humble,” Mike and Gabe chorused at the same time. Mike continued— “Just better than you.”

A chorus of groans and complaints broke out around them, and Mike laughed. “I’m kidding! …A little bit.”

“Both of you can shut up,” Jude said. “It’s only been, like, three weeks. We’re gonna catch up to you. And then you’ll both look like idiots.”

“Probably,” Mike said cheerfully. 

“That’s why we gotta brag while we still can,” Gabriel interjected.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter that much, you know,” Mike said. “It’s not like we won’t be in units once we’re actual cadets anyway. It’s about team effort.”

“Well, don’t take pity on us now…” Nate rolled his eyes again.

“Sorry, I can insult you again if you want—”

“Chilton!”

Mike turned. Officer Young was striding down the hallway towards him, vaguely harried-looking. “Stay back a minute,” he said. “I need to talk to you.”

Mike frowned, trading a glance with Gabriel—a shared question—and split off from his group, heading towards Officer Young.

Mike entered the gym later than everyone else, slipping towards the weapons rack to pick up gloves and a staff in his size.

The drills happening behind him echoed in the wide empty air, sounds bouncing and overlapping with each other. Yes, sir! No, sir! It all washed over him like a breeze, prickling his skin.

He fell into line on the mats next to Gabriel, who gave him a questioning look. He ignored it. Half-staff. At attention. Eyes front.

“Chilton!”

Mike almost jumped, then remembered not to. “Sir,” he said.

Commander Bose strolled down to the end of the line, stopping in front of Mike. “Eyes front,” he said. Mike snapped his eyes back down. “Care to tell us why you decided to be late to drills today? You decided you have something better to do with your time?”

“No, Sir,” Mike said. “Um, my—I—” the words stumbled in his mouth. He took a breath and started again. “Officer Young wanted to talk to me,” he said. “He said he would ping you about it.”

Bose frowned down at him, face steely. “...Tell him, in the future, that I don’t look at my messages during drills.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mike mumbled.

Commander Bose stepped away, heading back towards the middle of the line to continue the drills. Gabriel took the opportunity to give Mike a look. Mike pointedly didn’t see it, looking straight ahead.

Condition deteriorating. Assisted living. Unsure how much longer—

Probably two weeks, Mike thought sardonically, and then kind of wanted to throw up. He moved into second position half a step later than everyone else.

“Chilton!”

Mike couldn’t hide his wince this time. He already knew what Bose was going to say. “Sir,” he said.

“Did you remember to bring your focus with you today,” Commander Bose said.

Mike bit his tongue around the chest-kick humiliation. “Yes, Sir.”

“Act like it. Third position.”

Mike hit third position with a sharp forceful jab, and kept ignoring the looks the others were giving him.

He moved through the motions like they’d offended him, but Bose didn’t call him on it, so it was fine.

It was Thursday. They had War Games; Mike’s team was low-ground. Mike threw himself into it, the burn of his muscles and the shouts of people around him going high-definition, every other unimportant thing drifting away like a feather. Here, in the present moment, Mike climbed up on the flag platform and knocked Eli and Noah down from it with one sweeping strike of his staff, calculated and ruthless, and didn’t check if they were hurt.

He didn’t check if Commander Bose was watching, either, because whether or not Bose was watching Mike had still done it. This was what he was supposed to do, and he’d did it, and it was done.

“You could save some glory for the rest of us, you know,” Gabriel told him once the drill was done. Mike, breathing heavy, followed Gabe’s eyes up to the viewing platform above the arena. A sturdy man with red hair and big broad shoulders stood at the glass, hands folded behind his back. He was looking at someone next to him, in the middle of saying something, and Mike flicked his eyes away. Abraham Kane. He’d seen him on holo-screens, but never in real life.

“Oh,” he said to Gabriel, still half-breathless. “...I didn’t notice.”

Gabe rolled his eyes. “Yeah, we noticed you not noticing. You were really intense, dude.”

“Well—” Mike passed his staff from one hand to the other, looking away. “Keep up, then. Dude.”

He turned away, pushing down the cold sharp hurt that tried to bloom again in his chest now that he had a free moment to think about it. It dulled down into a tight ache, and he took a deep breath around it, heading towards the showers.

Days passed.

Mike went through the motions and paid attention either when he had to or when Officer Young pulled him away to give him updates on his grandma’s condition. None of the updates were good, but Mike couldn’t stop getting his hopes up every time he got beckoned away from the group, only to drift back into reality as soon as Officer Young started talking. He was being pulled into a heavy, dark hole, stronger than he’d expected.

All the mental preparation he’d done for ages was useless now. It had been a sort of childish thing, thinking that just thinking about it would make it feel easier. This was nothing like thinking. Some days Mike barely thought anything at all.

Mike had a headache, eating his dinner. It was dull background noise, along with the chatter from the other cadets in the cafeteria around him, and the medicine taste of the Throat Cubes, and… everything. He had a worksheet to do after this, for math, which he was dreading because he didn’t really actually get it all the way and he hated doing homework anyway, and especially tonight, all he wanted to do was find somewhere private so he could go cry on his own without anybody looking at him weird. He wanted to go back to his old pod, with his grandma, and sit upside-down in the living room and let Chuck explain the math to him, while his grandma sat in the corner with her glasses on reading over the KaneCo announcements page again.

He wanted his old bed, and the old room dividers. And he wanted to talk to his grandma.

“Chilton.”

Mike’s first thought was ugh, what now, and then he felt bad about it, so he made sure to have a really polite-looking face when he looked up and saw that Officer Young was standing over him.

“Walk with me.”

And he walked off. Mike threw a slightly-panicked look at his unfinished food, before getting up and rushing after Officer Young, with the stares of his friends on his back again.

“Sir?” Mike said, hurrying to keep pace—Officer Young was a lot taller than him, and he wasn’t walking slowly. Did something else happen? Mike didn’t say. Did you maybe make a mistake, is it someone else’s—

“Listen,” Officer Young said. “I need you to be on your best behavior for this.”

“...Yes, Sir,” Mike said, turning the words over in his mind like they would make more sense that way. This didn’t seem like another update, but if it wasn’t, he had no clue what this was about.

“Mr. Kane has… taken an interest in you,” Officer Young said.

Mike’s brain tripped over itself. “What?”

Officer Young shot him a sharp look. “Watch yourself, cadet.”

“Sorry,” Mike backtracked. “Uh, Sir. What?”

Officer Young sighed, slowing down as they reached the elevator. “Mr. Kane wants to talk to you. I want you to be on your best behavior for this. You’re not just representing yourself, you’re representing your unit, your friends, the entire Cadet Training Program of Deluxe. Understood?”

Hot blood was pumping through Mike’s veins, hyper-noticeable all of a sudden. “Yes, Sir.”

The elevator doors slid open. Officer Young tilted his head— “In.”

Mike stepped in.

Officer Young stepped in after him, and the elevator doors slid closed, and they were rising, smooth into the air. For the small piece of time that they were moving up, Mike’s sense of self, or sense of being in his body, blurred with a slight sort of phantom vertigo—not that he felt like falling over, like when he’d hit his face on the kitchen table when he was five and had to get braces—but more just a slight sliding-away-ness that he couldn’t tell if it was physical or all in his head. He took breaths in and out, and focused on staring at the doors.

They opened up at a higher level than he’d ever been on before—he knew, immediately, because of the wall-to-ceiling windows opposite the elevator doors, showing Deluxe sprawling out around them, glowing a soft white in the sun, weak spring snowflakes fluttering limply through the open empty air.

The hallway was wide and empty, not busy at all like the hallways on other floors, and his and Officer Young’s footsteps were the only sound. Mike clenched and unclenched his fists quietly as they headed down the hallway, trying to remember how to think clearly and be polite and grateful and super, super normal.

He didn’t have enough time to think before Officer Young stopped in front of a blank white door set halfway into the wall and flashed his keycard at the keypad. Nothing happened for a long moment, and Mike privately wondered if they were at the right door, because—but then there was a soft bing, and the door slid open.

“Officer,” a gruff voice said as they stepped inside the room—a voice Mike had only ever heard on TV before. Mr. Kane was right there, bigger than Mike had imagined he would be, standing with his hands behind his back all casual. Beside him, Officer Young saluted, back straight, and Mike hastily copied him, trying not to look directly at the tall, familiar figure in the room. He decided to notice the lights, instead. There was a lamp in the corner of the room, soft and rectangular and hovering in the air. That was nice.

“Sir,” Officer Young said. “Cadet Chilton.”

“Ah, perfect,” Kane said. “Dismissed.”

Mike almost dropped out of his salute, but then realized as Officer Young moved to leave that Kane had been talking to him, not Mike. Right. Mr. Kane was everyone’s superior.

“At ease, cadet,” Kane said, sounding slightly amused. Mike dropped the salute, vaguely sheepish, as the door hissed shut behind him.

For a long moment in time, Mr. Kane was quiet, examining Mike for… something, Mike didn’t know. Mike stood still and tried not to look uncomfortable with it. Mr. Kane had a pen in his shirt pocket. One of Mike’s old teachers had had that, which was a weird thought. Mr. Kane wasn’t supposed to be, like… normal.

“Mr. Chilton,” Kane said, and Mike snapped into focus again. “How long have you been in our cadet program here?”

Mike blinked. “Um…” for a brief moment his mind went totally blank. “A few weeks? I think. Sir.” and then, realizing the more helpful way of putting it, “I just joined this quarter.”

Mr. Kane hummed, looking down on Mike with a blank expression. “And how do you like it here?”

“Um.” Mike cast towards his tangled thoughts, the haze of grandma dying and had to leave and everything different, before realizing it was all unusable. There was only one right answer to this question. “It’s… nice.” And then, noticing how insincere that sounded outside of his mouth— “Uh, I like the, I like doing drills and… learning about combat strategy. —Sir.”

Mr. Kane hummed, raising a bushy red eyebrow. “Your supervisors tell me you don’t seem enthusiastic.”

“Oh, no, I am enthusiastic,” Mike babbled, insides filling with cold ice. “I really like the cadets! I just, um—”

He stopped there. He wasn’t really sure Mr. Kane would want to hear about Mike’s own personal issues, or think that they were a good excuse. But he didn’t think lying to the leader of KaneCo was a good idea, either. There was probably a professional way to explain it, but Mike didn’t know… he wasn’t sure…

“Um, my grandma is dying, Sir.”

A beat. A hot rush of mortification flooded in to fill the space the words left behind, and Mike wanted the floor to swallow him whole.

“I see,” Mr. Kane said. “...That would be difficult.”

Yeah, Mike went to say, but he couldn’t force the word out of his throat. His face and eyes were hot.

“...What do you think of Deluxe, Mr. Chilton?” Out of the blurry corner of Mike’s eye, he saw Kane turn and walk towards the large window at the other end of the room, putting his back to Mike. Mike grabbed the opportunity to suck in a shaky, silent breath and try to pull himself together.

“Um,” Mike said, and it only came out a little strangled. “...I think it’s really beautiful.” He looked from Kane’s back to the skyline outside. “...I like it here.”

It occurred to him that maybe he should thank Mr. Kane for creating Deluxe, so people like Mike didn’t have to grow up in Motorcity. But maybe that would seem too fake, or like he was a teachers’ pet? Maybe Mr. Kane got that all the time and he was sick of it? Before he could decide on whether to say it, Kane was talking.

“So do I,” Mr. Kane said. His voice was soft, like how Mike’s grandma’s voice got when she was reminiscing on something old. Mike bit the inside of his cheek around the similarity. “But do you know something, Mike? I didn’t always like building it.”

Ah. Adult life lessons time. “Why not?” Mike asked dutifully, folding his hands behind his back and bouncing quietly on the balls of his feet.

“I had a wife,” Mr. Kane said.

Mike stopped bouncing on his feet. The implications of the words settled in slowly. “...Oh.”

Kane hummed in response. “She was never healthy, really. That’s part of what motivated me to create Deluxe in the first place—to create a place where people could be safe. Protected.”

A long beat. 

“But nobody can stop death,” Mr. Kane said, turning to look back at Mike.

“...I’m sorry,” Mike said. The words were cardboard in his mouth, flimsy and useless.

“It’s alright,” Kane said. “You don’t need to say anything to me. I’ve pushed myself through it. …Do you know how, Mike?”

“...How?”

“By dedicating myself to Deluxe,” Kane said. He raised a fist, and looked like the man on the holo-screens again—strong, imposing, victorious. “By making sure that my citizens can lead long, safe lives.”

Mike stared up at him, absorbing the image. “...Does that fix it?”

Kane glanced back down at him. “I’ll be straight with you, Mike,” he said gently. “It doesn’t feel the same. I still miss her sometimes.”

Oh. Mike glanced away awkwardly, trying to hide the disappointment he was pretty sure was written all over his face.

“But.” A hand landed on his shoulder, warm and large and steady. “It gives me a purpose. It’s a way of honoring her memory, and turning it into something good, even if she’s not here.”

Mike took a shaky deep breath, glancing sideways at Kane standing over him.

“This is hard,” Kane said. “You’ll need to find a new way of living without her.”

“Yeah,” Mike said. It came out as a hoarse whisper.

“But I’ve seen you practice. I’ve seen you train,” Kane said. “You’re a talented kid, Mike. And I think you’re strong enough for this.”

Mike’s head snapped up to stare at Mr. Kane, eyes wide. “Um. Thank you. Sir,” he remembered to say after a moment.

“You don’t have to thank me,” Kane said. He patted Mike’s shoulder once before releasing it. “I have a feeling I’ll be thanking you in a few years, if you keep training hard. You’ve got grit, Mike. That’s what it takes.”

“Yes, Sir,” Mike said, still staring up at him.

“And if you need time, or accommodations, let somebody know,” Mr. Kane said. “I’ll let your supervisors know that you’re under special circumstances. After all, you’re living in our building, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Sir,” Mike said again. “Thank you, Sir.”

“I told you, Mike,” Mr. Kane said. “No need to thank me.”

When Mike turned twelve, he received a different happy birthday message than the standard KaneCo “here’s to another year in Deluxe!”

It was almost the same—still just a message on his holo-screen, here’s to another year—but underneath that, some added text that he’d never seen before. “We know that you’ll make us all proud.”

He saved it to his private storage, out of his inbox, and didn’t tell any of his friends about it. He didn’t want to make them jealous.

He was pretty sure he knew who the message was from.

Chuck had started Independent Study with R&D, down on floor seven, which was supercool, because now that both of them didn’t go to foundational schooling anymore, and Chuck was a Hovercraft Tech and Mike was a Junior Cadet, they didn’t really have anyplace to see each other anymore, except on Thursdays and Fridays in the early afternoon when Mike had a tiny bit of free time (which he was supposed to be using for homework, but whatever), and Chuck was actually in the building and usually doing research.

It was a tight squeeze, but it worked. Enough.

The white door slid open, and Mike poked his head in, blinking in surprise.

The room the other R&D professionals had pointed him towards was hidden sort of near the back of the R&D wing, in a nondescript door down a small hallway. And inside the room, giant rows of bulky machines hummed, blinking with lights and buttons. It was less brightly-lit than any other room he’d seen in the building, which made the whole place seem dim and cozy and… cramped.

“Uh, hello?” he called into the room.

There was a scuffling from somewhere in the rows of machines. “Mike?” Chuck’s voice called. “I’m back here.”

Mike stepped into the room slowly, and the door shut behind him. He held the strap of his book bag to his chest as he spun in a slow circle, taking in the machinery as he headed towards Chuck’s voice.

It was warm in here. The floor was padded with some sort of rubber squares, so his footsteps barely made a sound.

He found Chuck down one of the long aisles between machines, crouched down over a holo-screen, surrounded by more screens and biting his hand. Mike smiled at the familiar sight.

“Hey!” he said, heading down the hallway to stand over Chuck’s crouched figure. 

Chuck looked up and smiled at him automatically. “Hey.”

“Sooo,” Mike sat down criss-cross on the rubber floor. “What’s with all the machines?”

“Storage,” Chuck said. “This is the place where we keep all the data that helps keep Deluxe running—well, one of the places. They’re all, you know, spaced out.” He glanced over at Mike, suddenly alarmed— “Don’t touch anything.”

“Are they dangerous?”

“They could be,” Chuck said. “I mean, if they’re malfunctioning. Which they shouldn’t be, but, you know… these are old. Like, thirty years.”

That didn’t seem that old to Mike, but he nodded along anyway. “What are you doing in here, then? Your… superior guy said that you were organizing.”

“My what?” Chuck blinked at him. “Oh, you mean Luis. Yeah, I guess organizing is one word for it.”

He pulled a hand-size blue and white rectangle out from the machine next to him, where it had been plugged in. “I’m just recording what’s here. And trying to figure out ways to make it more efficient. Like I said, these things are super old. We could be running on a lot less energy than we are now, hypothetically… but it, you know, takes a lot of—thinking it through first.”

“Huh,” Mike said, examining the machines again. “Sounds important.”

“Sure,” Chuck said. “It should be.”

Mike frowned at him. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Chuck said. “Energy isn’t infinite, is all. Running on less energy would… be really useful.”

Mike studied Chuck. He was worrying his lip again, frowning intensely at nothing. “...But some people don’t agree,” Mike guessed. “Incapable superiors?”

Chuck sat back, smiling. “You get it,” he said. “It’s not glamorous.” He waved a hand through the air for dramatic emphasis. “It’s the—” he stopped. “I mean, I like everyone in R&D. But it’s, you know, limited.”

Chuck turned to rifle through the bag next to him, pulling out a little white scanner that looked like a handgun and plugging his little rectangle device into the hammer of it.

Mike leaned backward, lying down flat on the rubber mat, knees bent up. “Well, at least they’re likable, then,” he said.

A beat. “...What, do you not like someone in your division?” Chuck said. “You? Mike Chilton?”

“Shut up,” Mike said, without any real heat, and kicked at Chuck’s leg. “I didn’t say that.”

Chuck leaned over Mike’s legs, resting his chin on Mike’s knees. “Who don’t you like?”

Mike rolled his eyes. “I like everyone, ever, all the time and always,” he said, then dropped the act. “I didn’t say I didn’t like him, I just said he’s unlikable. There’s a difference.”

“Oof,” Chuck said. “That’s almost kind of worse. Unlikable is, like, inherent.”

“I don’t think so,” Mike said. “I think it’s a lifestyle choice. And, I mean, I get it, I just—ugh, don’t get me started.”

Chuck gave him a look, withdrawing from Mike’s knees. You should totally get started, bro.

Mike sighed, sitting back up and readjusting the strap on his bag. “It’s just stupid drama,” he said. “I’m trying not to give it too much attention, you know? ‘Cause that gives it more legitimacy.”

“Okay,” Chuck said, voice dripping in doubt. He was fiddling with the scanner, pressing a button on its screen before unplugging the rectangle device from it again. “Sure, bro.”

Mike frowned at him. “I’m serious.”

Chuck glanced up at him, apparently sensing the frown. His eyes were wide and sincere. “I know,” he said. “No, I know. I’m just saying you can talk to me if you want. And if you don’t want, you can just say that.”

A beat. Mike sighed the tension out of his shoulders. “I know. It’s just Bose.”

“Who’s Bose?” Chuck plugged the rectangle back into another slot in the machine next to them. A blue holo-screen blinked into existence next to it.

“The commanding officer for my unit,” Mike said. “...Basically our supervisor. He trains us and stuff. He doesn’t like me?”

Chuck looked up from the screen to give Mike an incredulous look. “Really?”

Mike blinked at him. “...Yeah, I’m pretty sure.”

“You?”

Mike rolled his eyes, smiling fondly. He leaned forward to rest his chin on his knees. “I think he thinks I undermine his authority. That’s the vibe I get, anyway,” he said. “I’m not trying to. But, I mean, he’s just very… harsh, as an instructor—which is understandable because that’s how he’s supposed to act. Like a ‘diamonds form under pressure’ kind of thing. But then he gets pissed when I comfort the others or tell them, like, hey, you did a good job on that, and that’s the problem. I mean, what does he want me to do,” Mike picked his head up from his knees, “He’s doing what he’s supposed to do, and I’m doing what I’m supposed to do, as a teammate, as a part of a group—I mean, it would be so bad for morale if I just never encouraged anyone else. I know that a lot of the newer or the younger guys in my unit see me as super put-together and talented and stuff—”

“Because you are?” Chuck interjected. He had a small amused smile, watching the progress bar tick up on the holo-screen as he listened.

“...I mean, yeah,” Mike said. “Technically I’m at the top of the leaderboard for my unit. But that’s kind of a… not useful way to think. We can all learn from each other, right? Like, it wouldn’t be useful for you at all to focus on ‘who’s the smartest guy in R&D.’ Even if there’s an answer.”

Chuck hummed. “I guess that’s true.”

“Anyway,” Mike said. “The point is, we’re all supposed to be working together and supporting each other. Our instructor being harsh on us helps that because then we have, you know, that common experience connecting us. But if we can’t be supportive of each other then it’s just divisive, and then it becomes about who’s the best, and everyone gets—you know, worse.”

Chuck made a face. “That sucks,” he said. “So, you know better than him, basically.”

“I don’t know,” Mike said. “I think he just feels threatened by me. I’m trying to kill it with kindness and all that. It’s not like I’m doing anything against the rules, so he can’t directly punish me about it. He’s just—always putting me on errand duty, stuff like that. But it won’t kill me, so.”

“He’s threatened by a teenager?”

“Well,” Mike said. “I mean, I think it makes sense. I just don’t like it.”

“It makes sense?”

Mike shrugged. “Well, I think I’d feel weird about it if one of the people under my command was also buddy-buddy with my boss.” he paused. “Not that I’m buddy-buddy with Kane, exactly. But… you know.”

Chuck gave him a strange look. “...Sure. I guess.”

Mike tilted his head, studying Chuck. Chuck’s head was down, tapping at his holo-screen. “...You guess?”

Chuck glanced up. “I just mean—you don’t talk about it much. So I don’t know.”

“There’s not much to say,” Mike said slowly. “Like I said. I’m not really buddy-buddy with him. It’s just…”

He paused. He had the sense that he needed to tread lightly, and he didn’t know why, and he didn’t like it.

“It’s just that he likes you,” Chuck filled in the silence. “It’s fine, Mike, I get it.”

“Do you?” the words came out sharper than Mike meant them to.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“You just said you didn’t.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did. You said you don’t talk about it much so I don’t know.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“So what did you mean?”

Chuck pressed his lips tight together, giving Mike an evaluating look. After a beat, he breathed out a long sigh, turning away. “Look, can we—not talk about it?”

Mike stared at him, weighing the frustration bubbling up in his chest. Normally, he would let Chuck change the subject if he was uncomfortable.

“...Why do you think Kane liking me is a bad thing?”

Chuck glanced back at him, almost looking nervous—or maybe just caught off guard. Guilty. “I never said that.”

“Well, why do you act like it, then.”

Chuck put his hands up—defensive, placating. “I’m not trying to, bro!”

Mike waited, staring Chuck down like he was a training simulation.

“Look,” Chuck said. “Mike, it’s not… I mean, I know you, right? And I know you… you like to be liked, you like being friendly with people, I get that. That’s a… good thing about you.”

Chuck was rubbing his hands on his pants, up and down, restless and tense. Mike kept waiting. There was a but in Chuck’s tone, and he didn’t like it.

“I just don’t… I’m not a part of the cadets, Mike,” Chuck said, not looking Mike in the eye. “I’m… I understand you, I just don’t understand that.”

“You don’t have to,” Mike said. “If you don’t understand, you shouldn’t act like—”

“I just don’t understand the appeal, Mike,” Chuck cut in. “I don’t get why—I don’t understand the appeal of being in the cadets or… or any of the—honors there. That’s fine, though, I don’t—you’re still you.”

“I know I am,” Mike said flatly. Any of the honors there… that meant Kane’s approval, Mike was pretty sure. He could be wrong. Chuck was dancing around—something.

Mike blew out a breath, trying to keep a cool head. “Look. I don’t understand how what you do is fun. I barely understand what you do, period. But I don’t go around acting like it sucks that you work here.”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“It just—it just is, okay?” Chuck tilted his head to the side, hiding his eyes behind his hair falling in his face. “Look, can we just—”

“Can’t you just be happy that I’m happy?”

“Are you happy?”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t be happy?”

“Because!” Chuck said, throwing his hands in the air. “Look, I just don’t get—”

“—You already said that—”

“Mike, I don’t get why specifically you would want to go into the Security Sector,” Chuck said, “After… what happened with your parents.”

Mike drew back like Chuck had hit him.

For a long heartbeat, his mind was static with blank shock, lungs frozen in his chest.

“But I’m trying to say—” Chuck eyed Mike nervously— “I don’t need to understand—I mean, it’s your business. It’s your life. Not mine.”

Mike’s mouth was hanging open, he realized. He snapped it shut. “Yeah,” he breathed out, unfreezing. “I know it is.”

“Mike…” Chuck was watching him with a pleading look, arms crossed like he was hugging himself.

Mike looked away. Down at his bookbag, next to him. “I need to go, I think,” he said flatly. “I’ll… see you later.”

“I’m not trying to—I didn’t want to hurt your feelings,” Chuck said, as Mike pushed to his feet. “Mikey—”

“I know you didn’t,” Mike said. “I just—I’ll see you later, okay?”

He walked away and didn’t look back over his shoulder.

He waited until he was out of R&D entirely, back out in the hallway, to let out a shaky breath and blink back the burning in his eyes.

Why would he say that?

Chuck knew how Mike felt about—about—

He took another deep breath, stalking down the hallway quickly. He wasn’t going to cry.

He wasn’t.

What a horrible thing to say to somebody.

Mike wished he could scream, or hit something—he could go spar against the training simulation in the gym, technically, but then—another part of him wanted to find somewhere small and private and curl up tight and not talk to anybody for a long time. He wasn’t sure which he wanted more.

Did Chuck think he was stupid? …Or just a bad person?

He took the back stairwell blindly, marching robotically up the clean white steps.

Chuck wouldn’t think Mike was a bad person, right? He knew Mike.

What was that, then?

Mike huffed out a breath, wandering out of the next door that slid open as he passed it. Into another hallway, this one smaller, with benches and imitation plants laid along the sides. Mike had been here before, but not often—it was kind of out of the way from where he usually went in the building.

That was fine. That meant the other cadets wouldn’t come find him here. And neither would Chuck.

He dumped his bookbag next to a plant and slumped down next to it, tucked out of view from the main hallway by the big plant pot and the plastic leaves. Here, eye-level with the plant’s roots, he could see the little blinking red dot built into its stem, could hear the faint shhh of oxygen being sprayed out from its base. He took a deep breath. His grandma had always said that plants were supposed to calm you down, or something.

Everything was silent.

The tears sprung up in his eyes uninvited, and he blinked them back, taking another shaky breath. This was fine, it was going to be fine, Chuck had already been apologetic when Mike had left, Mike just—needed to cool down some, and then they’d talk, and everything would go back to normal. It was totally fixable and not a big deal.

Except it is a big deal, a part of Mike insisted. That Chuck had implied that Mike was, like, violent, or—something?

He and Chuck had been friends since they were five. That was, like, ten whole years. Shouldn’t Chuck know that saying something like that would hurt him?

Unless he thought Mike was stupid.

Or a bad person.

Mike tilted his head back to hit the wall, glaring at nothing. He was thinking in circles and doing nothing, which were two things he hated.

He picked up his head again and pulled up a holo-screen to check his list of tasks. There had to be something he could be doing right now… homework, probably, because he’d intentionally cleared everything else so he could hang out with Chuck—

Yeah. Homework. Whatever.

He sighed, and swiped over to his homework assignments. None of them looked bearable right now.

Why would Chuck think he was a bad person?

Mike knew Chuck wasn’t a bad person, was the thing, which was probably why it was bothering him—it would be one thing to brush off someone who Mike disagreed with, but—but Chuck was nice, and considerate, and he cared about people, and they both agreed on that—why would Chuck think—?

The Security Forces weren’t bad. They protected people. They helped people. Chuck knew that. They were who you called whenever you had a crisis, or some kind of difficult situation that needed delicate handling.

But apparently Chuck didn’t even like them, so.

Mike let his head fall forward, onto his knees, and stared at nothing.

Maybe there wasn’t really right or wrong. 

Maybe there was just sides and ideas that people chose for one personal reason or another, and they all just did… stuff, and they all thought they were the good guys, but really they were all about the same, just sort of stumbling around with opinions, and they all won or lost based on various factors that didn’t have anything to do with whether they were right or not at all. 

And morals were just something people tacked on top of that to convince people to do stuff, and to… comfort kids, or something.

Depressing thought. Mike made a face to himself.

…But if there was no right or wrong, then the best option to go with would have to be the one that enforced order, right? Because if there was no right or wrong, then everything was chaos, and if everything was chaos, then anyone could get hurt at any time. And if anyone could get hurt at any time, then—then that was bad, and having an organized structure would be good, because it would—limit that, and regulate it, and make sure that it happened less—which was what Deluxe was doing, and what the Security Forces were doing, which was why they were good. And Mr. Kane was good, because Mr. Kane was trying to impose order on things, to make sure people were being… taken care of. Like Mike! Who didn’t have any family, but was still being taken care of, more or less. 

…Maybe Chuck didn’t understand that because he had parents? Maybe he didn’t understand the need, for—structure, and regulations, even though it could seem harsh sometimes? Chuck didn’t like things that were harsh. Mike knew that. Maybe that was what this was.

But Deluxe was good. Was trying to do good. And the Security Forces were good, and Mike was gonna do good, and Chuck… didn’t get it. But he was still nice, though, he just…

Yeah.

Mike blew out a breath, shifting where he sat. One of the big leaves of the imitation plant brushed against the top of his head, almost like someone patting his hair gently.

Jensen’s leg was bouncing.

It was a nervous habit he’d picked up recently. Mike had noticed. Mike didn’t care, except that it was distracting sometimes. But Mike could be distracting too, so he didn’t mention it.

Agh. Mike backspaced through another grammatical error on his holo-screen. Re-typed it.

“We have, like, three minutes,” Jensen muttered to Mike, leaning over towards him. Mike restrained himself from rolling his eyes, just barely.

“I know. Chill out, I’m gonna finish it.”

Jensen shook his head with a sigh and slumped back in his seat, arms crossed. Mike scrolled up a bit, to remember what he’d written earlier. Scrolled back down, started on the next sentence, paused. Thinking how to phrase it.

“I can’t believe you were made unit captain sometimes,” Jensen muttered. Mike smiled at him automatically.

“Well, it’s not your homework,” Mike said. “You really don’t have to worry about it, bud.”

“I don’t control what I worry about,” Jensen said.

You could, Mike didn’t say.

Jensen had been… like this, recently. Since Mike had become captain. All… tightly-wound. Twitchy. Passive-aggressive. Because he’d been passed up for captain, Mike was pretty sure, which was frustrating, because it wasn’t like Mike had asked for a promotion. If Jensen had been the one to become captain, Mike would’ve been happy for him. And normally, he was pretty sure, Jensen would be too. …He was just so weird lately.

Mike was trying to assume there was something going on he didn’t know about. Family issues, or something.

Anyway.

Mike bit his lip, re-focusing on his holo-screen. He was almost done with this report, was the thing, he could totally do it, he just needed to—do it. The closing statements. He hated closing statements, a bit.

Scroll back up again, to see how he’d phrased it earlier—okay, fine. Scroll back down. Type out a last, fakey-sounding closing sentence.

Glance at the clock.

Like a minute left. Jensen was gonna freak.

Skim over the whole thing one last time. Sure. That was fine. Submit. Sit back.

The little loading square rotated on his holo-screen for a heartbeat, then the projected grade popped up: 97%. Mike blew out a breath, smiling, as Jensen muttered an exasperated “oh my god,” next to him.

“Hey, don’t knock it till you try it,” Mike said under his breath, closing out that window and sitting back in his chair as the door behind them opened. “I’m telling you. Adrenaline works.”

Jensen rolled his eyes. “You’re just crazy.”

“Maybe,” Mike said good-naturedly. Their Strat professor headed down the steps of the lecture hall, holding a clipboard.

“If you two are done talking,” she said coolly as she passed by their row. Mike and Jensen both sat up straighter. 

“Yes, ma’am,” Jensen said. 

“Sorry, ma’am,” Mike added.

Professor Yang rolled her eyes. “I don’t want to separate you two.”

“No, ma’am,” Mike said, eyes wide and earnest. She gave him a flat look, then turned and headed towards the front of the room. Mike shot Jensen a quick smile before facing forward again.

“You need to be more organized,” Jensen told him when class let out, as they were packing up their things.

“I am organized,” Mike said, snapping his book bag shut. “I get everything done on time and I get places on time.”

Jensen frowned down at him. “Barely. Your life is stressful to watch.”

“I get that a lot,” Mike said, standing and swinging his bag over his shoulder. He shot Jensen a smile. “It’s part of my charm.”

“I don’t know why you’re trying to fight him on this,” Gabriel said, leaning over from the row above them. “You know Mike’s not gonna change. And he’s gonna keep winning.”

Jensen huffed, face softening minutely. “I guess.”

“You know you love it,” Mike said. Jensen gave him a flat look.

“Don’t push it.”

Mike laughed lightly, stepping out into the aisle and heading up the stairs. His friends followed him, shoving at each other in a brief scuffle for dominance. It was great to have a unit! Great to have friends.

Cadets like Mike didn’t often get assigned more intense, dangerous work like missions down to Motorcity, but there were still occasional easy assignments, meant to ease them into doing cadet work.

Mike had gotten a briefing earlier that day—a family that had maxed out the number of “remind me in two weeks” they could do for their kids heading into the workforce. Apparently their kids were the gifted type, so they’d been recommended for early workforce immersion by their teachers.

Mike was familiar with the process.

He wasn’t really supposed to do anything, unless things went really south. Just—stand there and make sure everything went smoothly as the KaneCo representative did her job.

He was biting his tongue, but it was soooo boring.

He bounced on the balls of his feet, just slightly, glancing around the pod. It had been a while now since he’d been in one of these—since Chuck had gone into the workforce, at least. There was a vague nostalgia in seeing the same small white cube again, the floor-to-ceiling windows that let the sunlight stream in (so unlike his room in KaneCo tower), but the sentimental feeling was dulled a bit by the fact that it didn’t really look like his grandma’s pod. Even though it was the same model, it was in its most stripped-bare, polite, glossy mode, only the standard wraparound bench folded out of the wall, as well as a square white stool for the representative to sit on. There weren’t any room dividers or couches and chairs like his grandma always liked to have unfolded.

“This is a really exciting day,” the KaneCo representative was saying. Her voice was measured and slow—reassuring. The parents she was talking to didn’t look reassured, sitting stiff and stoic, picturesque on their bench. The kids—lots younger than Mike, eleven or twelve maybe—were taking their cues from the parents, glancing between them and the representative with wide nervous eyes.

“Today is the day where you two get to be initiated into the KaneCo family!” the representative said, smiling wide. “I know it can seem scary, but really, it’s a wonderful opportunity. You’re gonna have so many people looking out for you.”

“But we have to move to a different pod,” the little girl interrupted. She had smart, piercing dark eyes. She was frowning.

“KaneCo is going to house you in a different area, yes,” the representative said. Her eyes cut over to Mike, just for half a second, and then her trepidation was gone and the calm confidence was back. “You’re gonna get to be around kids your age, who are training to do the same stuff as you. You’ll be able to make lots of new friends!”

“But we don’t want to leave our parents,” the girl said. Her face was stubborn; set. The girl’s mother closed her eyes with a slight grimace.

“Honey, I know it’s overwhelming,” the representative said. “But you’re a smart girl. Once you enter the workforce, you’ll be able to help your whole community with your smartness. Don’t you want that?”

“But I could enter the workforce and still live with my mom and dad,” the girl protested. 

Mike bit a corner of his tongue, glancing to the side.

Poor girl.

This was always the hard part for everyone, he figured. The part where you didn’t understand, at first.

“I’m sorry, sweetie, that’s not how it works,” the representative said. “Your training will be too important to split your time between different places. But you’re going to be joining an even bigger family. You’re going to be part of the KaneCo family now, and we’ll take care of you.”

“But—” the girl started.

“Lela,” her mother said softly. The girl glanced at her mom, and shut her mouth.

Mike busied himself by looking out the window at the Deluxe skyline, with the vague sense that he was intruding on something personal, even though he knew this experience just as personally. In a way, it still wasn’t his, right now. 

Negotiations and explanations of the kids’ new roles went off without any sort of confrontation. Which mainly meant Mike stood there bored and restless, but that was better than the alternative, he supposed. The kids were able to say their goodbyes while Mike and the representative waited in the adjoining transport pod—technically Mike could see the family through the glass, but he averted his eyes out of politeness anyway, and pretended not to notice when the kids stepped over the threshold with teary eyes.

As she ushered her children in, the mother gave Mike a look—an up-and-down troubled evaluation, lips pursed and eyebrows furrowed.

Mike smiled at her as reassuringly as he could. He was going to say something to comfort her—something like don’t worry, they’ll be fine, it’s not that bad once you get there—but she turned away to kiss her kids on the forehead, and the moment passed.

The kids were sniffly and quiet on the way to their new assignment—food manufacturing. The pod glided silently through the air, Deluxe sliding by around them. The representative tried to make conversation at first, but it quickly died out, and she busied herself with some sort of paperwork on her holo-screen instead. Mike watched the kids awkwardly for about half the trip, biting his tongue, before he decided that saying something was probably better than saying nothing.

“Food manufacturing is pretty cool, you know,” he said, edging over and crouching next to them gently. The boy looked up at him with a dubious look. The girl turned her head away.

“But I don’t want to do it,” the boy whispered, as if he were divulging a huge secret. Which, Mike figured, it probably felt that way to him. That wasn’t the kind of thing you could say to everybody. “I want to be in my home.”

“I know,” Mike said quietly back, matching tone—not quite whispering, but close. “It can be hard to make big changes in your life. I was sad, too, when I first left my home.”

The boy sniffled, reevaluating Mike.

“But it gets better once you’re there,” Mike said. “There’ll be a lot of people looking out for you. And you’ll get to honor your parents by working for the good of Deluxe. You can help people have happy, safe lives.”

The boy looked away, a trembling pout in his lips, but at least he looked like he was considering Mike’s words.

The girl mumbled something, not looking up. Mike glanced over at her, surprised. “What?”

“So you stopped missing your home,” the girl said. It was a question, even though it wasn’t framed like one.

Mike stopped. He wanted to say yes. That would be the simple, comforting answer. But it would also be a lie. 

He had a feeling that these kids wouldn’t be able to totally accept the truth right now, though. They didn’t have enough experience to understand it.

“I stopped… feeling the same way about it,” Mike said, choosing his words carefully. “My assignment became home, to me.”

“And you stopped missing your old home?” the girl looked up at him for the first time. Her eyes didn’t look piercing or stubborn anymore. They were just wide and asking for comfort, in a way that made her look younger than before.

Mike blinked down at her, mentally scrambling for some words of comfort that would also be true. Nothing came to mind in time.

“...Yeah,” he said instead, the words tasting like ash on his tongue. “I stopped missing my old home.”

“Hey.”

Mike tapped Chuck’s knee lightly with his foot. Chuck looked up from where he was sitting cross-legged on the floor, tapping away at something.

“I got us food,” Mike said, dangling a see-through plastic bag over Chuck’s lap. Chuck blinked at him, uncomprehending, then took it.

“Oh. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

Mike slid down the side of the wall to sit down next to Chuck, opening up his own bag with a crinkly sound. “What’cha working on?”

“...Just stuff,” Chuck said, rearranging his holo-screens absently and closing a few of them. “Things.”

Mike paused in pulling out his cube pack, frowning over at Chuck. “...Okay?”

He didn’t need Chuck to be acting weird, too. But—

“Nothing interesting, I mean,” Chuck said, waving a hand in front of his face as if to wake himself up. He gave Mike a half-smile. “Data analysis. You know.”

“Oh,” Mike said. His shoulders untensed. He popped open one of the blister seals on his cube pack with his thumbnail, digging out a throat cube. “Is it that boring?”

“Well, it would be to you,” Chuck said, finally opening up his lunch. “Anyway, I’ve told you about it before. …What about you? How’s the cadets?”

Right. The whole reason he was eating with Chuck in R&D in the first place. Mike glanced around, saw that everyone else was working and minding their own business, and then made a face.

“Don’t even get me started,” he said. “I mean, I’m really grateful for the opportunity—glad that Kane made me unit captain, I mean—but I wish… some people wouldn’t be so annoying about it. Don’t tell anyone I said that,” he added. “...I should really be in the cafeteria with them. Just…” he looked down, picking at the shiny silver packaging of his cubes. “I just can’t with them right now. I don’t know. I’ll have to get used to it, I guess.”

Chuck frowned, studying Mike’s face carefully. “...You wanna talk about it?”

Mike sighed. Glanced over at Chuck. Raised his eyebrows sardonically. You know me. 

Chuck hummed. “...Well, you can if you want to.”

“Thanks.” Mike smiled at him, knocking his shoulder against Chuck’s.

“...Anyway, how’s your independent study?” Chuck said. “You’re still doing the historical techniques thing, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Mike perked up. “Did you know the military library has videos from the global period?”

Chuck sat up, eyes wide and mouth dropping open. “No! I’m not allowed in there, you know that—seriously, like primary sources?”

“Seriously,” Mike said. “Like, super old. I mean, a lot of the bits are corrupted and stuff, but there’s a lot that’s intact. Stuff about different disciplines and schools of fighting and, like, whole philosophies. It’s so cool.”

Chuck gave him an amused look. “And how’s the actual project going?”

“Oh, I haven’t started,” Mike said. Chuck snorted. Mike waved it away. “It’ll be fine. It’s always fine. But, I mean, seriously, let me tell you. If Deluxe actually used all the knowledge we have, we would be so strong. Not that we’re not strong,” he fished another cube out of the package, “but, you know—more strong. There’s a lot of good in, you know, diversifying your sources of strength—covering your bases and all that.”

“Sure,” Chuck said.

Mike stopped talking to frown at him.

“...Well, don’t sound too enthusiastic.” Mike tilted his head, squinting at Chuck—a question.

“Sorry,” Chuck said, and he did look sorry. “I guess I’m just—out of it today.”

…Right.

Mike was struck with a sudden squeezing in his chest, something lonely and afraid and stupid. Friends grew apart sometimes—he knew that. Everyone knew that. People always acted surprised when they found out how long Chuck and Mike had been friends. They’d been there for each other for a long time.

It had been a long time. And now Chuck was in tech and Mike was in security and they weren’t in the same school anymore, and… and.

Mike brushed it off, let it roll off his back like he hadn’t felt it. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Chuck said. “Just… you know. My stupid brain.”

“Your brain’s not stupid,” Mike said on reflex. “You’re a genius.”

“Sure,” Chuck said, then smiled shyly, avoiding Mike’s eyes— “I mean, I, ha, I know. Yeah. Just, everything else about it…”

He trailed off, worrying a strand of his hair between his fingers. Mike watched it, frowning, and tried to put the pieces together in his mind.

“...So like a bad stress day,” Mike said, less to confirm and more to think out loud. “...Do you think food’s gonna help, or…?”

“No,” Chuck said, blinking like he was trying to focus. “I don’t know. No. That’s not…”

He trailed off again. Mike watched him with raised eyebrows, then turned to open his juice packet while he waited for a response. Sometimes, with Chuck, you had to wait.

A part of him was relieved, which felt ugly. He shouldn’t feel good that Chuck was having a bad day. But at least Chuck wasn’t sick of him, or anything. He shouldn’t have even thought that—of course he trusted Chuck. They were best friends.

“Do you ever… not like it here?”

Chuck’s voice was quiet, hushed like he didn’t want anybody to hear. Not afraid—well, maybe a bit, but only the normal amount—more… aware and calculated.

Mike blinked at him, then looked around. “Like… in R&D? It’s, um…”

“No,” Chuck said. “I mean.” He brushed his hair out of his eyes, giving Mike a sidelong glance. “Do they ever make you, like… do you ever—” he bit his lip, looking away. “...Never mind. Forget I said anything.”

Mike sat up straighter. Suddenly, it was vitally important that he figure this out. “What? No,” he said. “...You mean, like, the KaneCo building or whatever? The barracks? Because—”

“No, Mike,” Chuck hissed. Mike stopped talking.

He’d made a wrong step somewhere, but he couldn’t tell where. Chuck was giving him some kind of desperate look, and he couldn’t tell why.

“Like…” Chuck took a heavy breath, looking away from Mike. He was hugging his arms. Self-soothing. “Like, what do you think of Motorcity.”

The last part was hissed, barely audible. Mike froze.

Oh.

“Oh,” he heard himself say.

Chuck must’ve seen something in his face, because he blinked, and then the deadly-serious expression was gone, and Chuck was waving a hand in front of him with a nervous smile— “I mean, like, as a hypothetical, or a—I don’t know, don’t listen to me—”

Mike blinked, coming halfway back to himself. “What—no,” he said, grabbing Chuck’s hand out of the air. “Don’t do that. I’m not—” not what? “You can talk to me. You know that.”

Chuck frowned at him. Evaluating.

Mike felt sick.

“I mean, I think…” It’s dirty. The people who live there are selfish. They benefit off of us without contributing to us. It’s dangerous. It’s in shambles. The people there need help. They don’t realize what they’re doing. What do they even eat?

He couldn’t say any of that. This was a test. For Chuck to trust him. “...I think you’re the smartest person I know,” Mike said carefully. The words were like glass, tripping off his tongue gently. “...And I… trust you. To make good decisions.” He looked away. “That’s all.”

If Mr. Kane could hear him saying—but he wasn’t here, and it was fine—it was fine. Mike meant it. He trusted Chuck. 

Didn’t he?

And he hadn’t said anything about Motorcity. He hadn’t said anything that wasn’t true.

The weight of Chuck’s shoulder slumped against his. Mike glanced over, forcing a smile for his friend. 

“I love you,” Chuck said. “I hope you know that, Mikey.”

Mike nudged back against Chuck’s shoulder. “Of course. I love you too.”

“You’re my best friend,” Chuck said.

“...I know,” Mike said. “You too. You know that.”

“And we’re always gonna be friends, okay?” Chuck said. “No matter what happens.”

Mike stared at him. “...Yeah,” he said. His mouth was dry. “Okay.”

Mike woke up before his alarm.

He sighed up at the dark ceiling, letting out a frustrated growl. He wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, he could already tell. His body was tense, wired like it was preparing to run for its life.

But it wasn’t. He wasn’t. It was just…

He slid out of bed, tipping forward and pushing up into a handstand in the middle of his room.

He needed to figure out what to do about Chuck.

He’d told Chuck that he… respected his decisions, basically. Which was good because Chuck still trusted him, but bad because Chuck might do something—not stupid, because Chuck wasn’t stupid, but…

Something… problematic.

Mike didn’t understand, was the thing. Everything Chuck loved was up here in Deluxe. Safety, and science, and research, and—safety again. Chuck loved schedules and knowledge and clarity. He wasn’t, like… he wasn’t like the people who went down to Motorcity.

There was something there that Mike didn’t get. Didn’t know about.

It couldn’t be his parents, right? Chuck had already moved into independent housing, once he’d entered the workforce. It would be easy for him to never talk to them again, if he wanted to.

Mike blew out a breath and folded his legs down and under him, swinging around to a sitting position.

He stared into the dark.

Chuck didn’t like Kane. He was… scared of him, or something.

Mike knew that. But was it that serious? He’d never acted like—

Mike growled again, and got up to sit on the edge of his bed.

He didn’t like feeling like he didn’t know his friend. He didn’t like feeling like Chuck didn’t trust him. But Chuck was acting like he didn’t trust Mike, wasn’t he? He was—he should’ve—

Chuck should’ve told him. Or Mike should’ve realized. He’d always sort of brushed off Chuck’s dislike of Kane as being wary of authority figures, but—maybe he should’ve talked to Chuck about it? He could’ve told Chuck that Kane wasn’t like that. Could’ve… clarified. Explained in more detail. Chuck had his whole stress thing, but he usually listened to Mike when Mike told him something was harmless.

Or at least Mike had thought he did?

Mike flopped back on his bedspread, staring up at the shadowy ceiling. It glowed a faint off-white, reflecting the light of his alarm clock.

Chuck had to know Mike didn’t want him to leave, right?

Not just because of the whole Motorcity-versus-Deluxe thing. 

It was one thing to say you’d be friends forever. And it was another thing to actually be there for someone. If Chuck defected to Motorcity… Mike would never see him again.

Mike took a shaky breath, blinking back the stinging in his eyes. His alarm was going to go off soon, and he’d have to get up and be unit captain for drills. He didn’t have time to cry right now. He could do it later.

…His alarm buzzed, like, thirty seconds later. Called it. The automatic light flickered on, and he squinted in the sudden brightness of his room.

He took a deep breath. In, out.

Everything was fine. He was spiraling over nothing. And now he was going to go run drills, the same as every day.

He pushed himself to his feet and set about getting ready for the day—wash face, clothes, shoes, brush hair. It was muscle memory at this point, mindless.

He was in the middle of brushing his hair when somebody knocked on his door.

Well—opened his door, but they knocked first. Which, it was good that he’d already changed, or that would’ve been really awkward. Mike stepped back from the mirror to get a look at who was in the doorway, then paused in that position, confused.

Some official-looking woman he’d never seen before, dressed in a KaneCo blue blazer, stood flanked with two Ultra-Elites on either side.

“Um,” Mike said. “Hi?”

“Good morning,” the woman said. “Mike Chilton, correct?”

“...Yes,” Mike said. And then, as an afterthought, “...Good morning.”

There was a small part of him, the part of him that was still, like, three years old, that was frozen in fear. A part of him a little older that said nothing good happens when Ultra-Elites visit. Hide everything, now.

…But he wasn’t a criminal. He wasn’t a dissenter. He hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Sorry to bother you so early,” the woman said. “Sylvia Bailey. I’m with internal affairs. You’re not in trouble,” she said, holding up her hands.

It was embarrassing that that made him relax. “...Nice to meet you,” he said. “How can I… help you?”

The woman stepped into the room, one of the Ultra-Elites following her. The door slid closed again behind them.

“We’re investigating a missing person,” Ms. Bailey said. “You know Charles Ryan, is that correct?”

Mike’s heart froze in his chest.

“Yes,” he heard his body say, moving at a normal pace, not frozen, not suspicious. “He’s my friend.”

“Alright,” the woman said. “When was the last time you talked to him, would you say?”

“...Yesterday,” Mike said. “At dinner.”

He felt the words coming before they came out of her mouth, the shape of them hanging in the air. “And did you notice anything off about him? Was he acting strange at all?”

“...No.”

Oh my God was his immediate afterthought. He was lying. To internal affairs. 

…But he had to. It wasn’t a question.

“Nothing at all?”

“...No,” Mike said again. “We talked about… data analysis.”

“Data analysis?”

“It’s what he does in R&D,” Mike said. He wasn’t sure where the words were coming from. “He likes it a lot. I don’t really get it.”

“He seemed satisfied with his work in R&D?” the woman said. She looked—neutral. But maybe a bit surprised.

“Yes,” Mike said. “He likes it there. He’s always talking about it.”

“...Alright, then,” the woman said. “I have to ask you, if you hear from your friend, report it to the internal affairs line immediately.”

“Did he… do something?” Mike said.

The woman paused, studying his face. She softened slightly. “...No,” she said. “But we haven’t heard from him this morning. Trust me, KaneCo will do everything in our power to make sure he’s okay. No good Deluxian slips through the cracks on our watch.”

“...Right,” Mike said.

Right.

The highest level of KaneCo tower. 

Mike stared out the window, watching as the top floor slowly orbited, turning to show Deluxe from all different angles. It was dark out, but Deluxe was clear.

“We have a responsibility to Deluxe,” Kane said from behind him, materializing out of the shadows of the room. “You and I are made from the same stuff, Mike.”

Mike tilted his head to the side, acknowledging Kane. His tall, imposing figure was reflected off the glass of the window, hovering over Deluxe like a ghost. “Not completely.”

The wind blew, ruffling itself through Mike’s hair. It was cold—he hugged his arms around himself, wishing he had a long-sleeve shirt on. He just had a t-shirt, like he was about to go to bed, or like he’d gotten up in the middle of the night.

“...What do you mean, not completely?”

Kane’s voice was gentle, open, and close by, deep and warm in Mike’s ears. Waiting for an explanation.

“Nothing,” Mike said. If he explained, it would hurt Kane’s feelings. But then, the words hovered in the air on their own: “I care about people. Sometimes I think you got lost.”

Kane pulled back. He had been reaching out towards Mike, but now he pulled back, hurt flashing in his eyes. Mike felt it.

“That’s not true, though,” Mike hurried to say. “I mean, I know you care—”

“I built this whole city for you, Mike,” Kane said. His voice was low and soft and broken. He looked out over Deluxe, glittering. “This whole city was made to love you.”

Mike gasped a shaky breath in and out. He was on the edge of the building. “I love it too,” he said, voice thin.

“Sometimes I think you don’t,” Kane said.

They were inside. The silence was muffled. There was a large machine in the center of the room, a long silver arm with a curved blade at the end of it.

“I need you to be more like me, Mike,” Kane said gently. “It’s the only way this will work.”

“I can be more like you,” Mike said. “I can do it. I’ll practice. I’ll copy you.”

“I need you to do this,” Kane repeated. His face was sympathetic, and Mike knew there was no getting out of it. He tilted his head down, averting his eyes from Kane’s face.

“What if I’m scared,” Mike said, voice small.

“I need you to be brave.”

Mike laid down on the examination table. His hands were shaking. The machine whirred over to him, tilting at him like a puppy cocking its head to the side. Curious.

“Your friend built this machine, you know,” Kane said from behind the glass. Distracting Mike, which was kind.

“Chuck?” Mike said. “I thought he was a hovercraft tech.”

“You know he’s a genius,” Kane said.

Fair enough. That was true.

The machine leaned down and cut into Mike’s chest, deep and strong. The rib it was slicing into crunched under the force of the blade, breaking open, and Mike felt the blood spurt up, pumping in gushes with his heart, like a black-red fountain. Pieces of his bone splintered and fell into the open gash made by the machine, shards digging into the folds of his muscles and arteries. Mike would have made a noise of pain, but the blood was in his throat, choking him with a thick metallic taste. He tilted his head to the side, making sure not to move his chest too much so the machine could still work, and coughed up the blood. It splattered onto the examination table and dripped onto the floor, hot and sticky. There was blood sticking to his cheek.

“Eugh,” Mike said shakily. His whole body was fading in and out, almost unreal except for the white-hot blade cutting into his chest, snapping the cords of muscles and stringy tendons, sawing painstakingly through dry bones.

The machine pulled his heart out with a gentle metal hand, holding it up in the air. The cavity in his chest was empty and gaping in his heart’s absence, his insides prickling against the open air. 

Mike watched as the machine stuck a long, thick needle into his heart—felt the pinpoint stab, sliding deep through layers of tissue muscle and tissue, even though his heart was outside of his body. Once the needle reached the core of his heart, a sore blooming ache, it began to drain his heart of a glinting silvery-gold liquid that slid smooth into the syringe.

It hurt like being uprooted—tearing at his awareness, at something deep inside him, making everything blur as the needle pried out something vital from somewhere deeper inside him than his chest, hollowing him out. He was gasping in shaking breaths, but he couldn’t scream, couldn’t speak—his voice was being torn away from him, like wind pulling the breath out of his lungs. He was hyperaware of the cold examination table underneath him, the synthetic-room smell in the air, mingling with the warm metallic smell of blood—of the way he was shaking, melting into the table, being pulled outside of himself—

And then it was over. Mike’s heart was empty, faded from deep red to a translucent-looking pinkish white, nothing but fleshy bits. The machine injected a preservative into his heart, and a few other things, bustling around with its many arms to prepare Mike’s heart, then it nestled Mike’s white heart back into his chest.

The heart was cold against the warmth of Mike’s chest, and some air bubbles were trapped in places where it wasn’t nestled correctly, like little needles stinging in Mike’s chest. The machine fixed a metal plate over top of Mike’s heart, closing up his chest. The metal plate affixed itself into Mike’s body, clamping on and digging in mechanically. There were painkillers in its clamps—Mike could tell from the strange numb tingling there—but he could still feel the heavy cold dryness of his heart sitting like a pit in his chest.

Kane was cradling him, carding a hand through Mike’s hair. “See, now,” Kane said. “Now everything will be right. That wasn’t so bad.”

Mike couldn’t talk. There was still blood clotting in his throat. He leaned into the touch, trembling and spent and relieved. A cool calm nothingness was settling over him like a blanket—something he knew he should fight, vaguely, something that was bad, but it was impossible to resist. It was so easy to slip into not caring, now.

“Mike?”

That was Chuck’s voice. Mike opened his eyes, a strange panic seizing his sore ribs like a spasm of pain.

Chuck was standing over him. Mike was lying on the ground alone. Chuck was staring at him with a disturbed frown. Horrified. “What did you do?”

“I didn’t,” Mike tried to say, voice thick and garbled. “It’s not—”

He couldn’t speak properly.

“I can’t believe you sometimes,” Chuck said. He was hugging himself like he was upset, but his face looked angry. “I can’t believe you would do that.”

“Chuck,” Mike said, struggling to reach out a hand, trying to say everything he didn’t know how to say. The air felt thick, like water.

“This kind of shit is why I left in the first place,” Chuck said, avoiding Mike’s eyes. He was still hugging himself. “...Now you’ll need more from me, won’t you?”

No, Mike tried to say. No, I don’t need—

“God, you’re such a suck-up,” Jensen’s voice said from somewhere nearby. Mike was lying in his bed in the barracks. “Like you weren’t already better than the rest of us. You really had to go get surgery about it?”

“Go get yourself a surgery, then,” Mike muttered in Jensen’s direction, staring at the wall. “Stop being so insecure, dude.”

Jensen made an aggravated noise. “I’m gonna need to find new drugs.”

Mike blinked his eyes open with a gasp.

His room was dark. He sat up, looking to the side—no Jensen anywhere. Hadn’t he just…

Mike was shaking, a sheen of sweat coating his skin. His heart pounded in his ribs. Mike put a hand to his chest—his intact ribs. No plate, no surgery.

He sucked in a shaky breath, then blew that breath out again.

That one was pretty bad.

The digital clock glowed 2:35 in the dark.

He flopped back down in bed, throwing the covers off and shivering in the night air. He could still feel his heart beating in his chest, fast and startled. He tried to ignore it. He didn’t want to be reminded about his heart right now, or his chest, or any internal organs.

He should probably be keeping a record of these kinds of dreams, because he was pretty sure they’d been happening more often lately. But he didn’t really want to recount the whole thing again. And he wouldn’t want anybody to find his logs, if he did that, because. They’d probably make some huge deal out of it.

You’re fine, Mike told himself. It’s fine. There’s no such thing as ripping out someone’s heart. Nobody does that.

It wasn’t very soothing. Kane’s hurt face, and Chuck’s horrified upset anger, kept flashing bright in his mind, hyper-real. And the way Kane had held him, on the ground, cradling Mike so gently and petting his hair…

Mike sucked in another shuddering breath, rolling over to lay on his side and curl up. If he curled himself in the right shape, he could pretend-imagine that someone was holding him, maybe running a hand up and down his back. It’s okay, it was just a dream.

The chandeliers glowed with a soft blue blush, glinting off the steely dull shine of the walls. The light calmly illuminated the floor-to-ceiling door of the hangar, which curved down the wall like a tapestry, towering above Mike as he followed Mr. Kane deeper into the room. The whole thing had a sense of gravitas, something to live up to… or maybe that was just being in a room alone with Mr. Kane.

Mike straightened his back further.

“The star and sabers,” Mr. Kane said next to him, eyes on the giant image stretching down the wall as he moved forward. “It symbolizes the best of Deluxe.” 

Kane stopped, hands folded behind his back, frowning up at the symbol. Mike didn’t know what it meant to Kane, exactly, but he could guess. The amount of sacrifices Mr. Kane must’ve had to make, in order to forge the best of Deluxe, for the good of everyone else… Mike turned to him, putting on a smile. “It’s an honor to wear it, sir.”

“You’ll be leading your first mission today,” Mr. Kane said, still staring up at the star and sabers. “Calling the shots.” He looked over at Mike— “Do you know what that means?”

“No, sir,” because Mike knew Mr. Kane wanted to tell him. He was able to read Kane like that, by now, which he was privately proud of.

“It means you’ll be making some tough decisions,” Kane said, looking back up at the star and sabers. “Decisions that some people aren’t going to like. …Look at me, Mike. Do you know what it took for me to get where I am?”

There was something stormy behind Mr. Kane’s expression. Mike faltered awkwardly, then quickly pulled himself back together. “I, uh… I don’t know, sir.”

“Dedication. To the good of Deluxe. Without hesitation.” Kane turned to look at Mike, face shadowed and set. It was one of those quiet moments, where Mike could see the weight of leading Deluxe on Kane, the burdens he took on so other people wouldn’t have to.

“Are you ready for that?” 

Kane’s voice was almost gentle. 

Almost, because it had to be firm—he had to rely on Mike, Mike was a Commander now, not just a kid cadet.

But almost gentle.

Mike saluted, straightening his shoulders to look Kane in the eyes. “I won’t let you down.”

Kane put a hand on Mike’s shoulder—warm, steady, large. Mike blinked, salute almost dropping.

“I know you won’t,” Kane said. Smiled at him fondly, something tired and affectionate. “That’s why I chose you.”

A soft gentle warmth, like a blanket on a cold day, flared to life in Mike’s chest, pulling him in tight and wrapping around him. His salute dropped, and the smile crept across his face in spite of himself, an automatic reaction to the hand on his shoulder, to the steady fondness on Kane’s face.

Mike’s lungs were burning and tight, chest heaving, lying flat on a rough plane of dirty ground. He stared up at a ceiling of scrap and tubes, dim and barely visible through the dust.

The pure chaos that had erupted after the building was demolished was dying down now, replaced by a less-chaotic clamoring of people negotiating and comparing notes on where to go and what to do. Mike’s unit had retreated, pushed back by some ragtag force led by a car with giant wheels. Some other time, Mike might’ve had some sort of emotion or feeling about that, but he’d been busy trying to get all the people out.

All the innocent people…

He put his hands over his face with a grimace.

Hard decisions.

Was this what Kane thought was a hard decision? Choosing to destroy people rather than letting them live lives that weren’t…

That weren’t something. Weren’t Deluxe. Weren’t…

Convenient for him, Mike thought, then felt bad.

Still, he couldn’t convince himself that he was wrong. The feeling that his judgement made sense was settling in like cold clammy metal in his limbs, leaving him unbalanced and shaky.

He’d just really thought…

He blinked away the burn in his eyes, taking his hands off his face to look up at the not-sky again.

His grandma had thought Motorcity was beautiful. He hadn’t thought about that in a long time, but he’d remembered it suddenly when—when he’d come down here, hours ago now. She’d described something colorful, and he’d thought, scanning the landscape with military precision, that he could sort of see it. How it maybe used to be nice, before it started destroying itself.

He’d pitied the people who were down here. Thought they were clinging to something good that didn’t exist anymore.

The cobbled-together scrap yawning above him was the underside of Deluxe, he realized for the first time. If Motorcity was dark, it was because Deluxe had blocked out all the light.

Inside of him, something that had been restless went still, quietly reverberating his realization.

…Yeah. Yeah. That was true.

He stared up at the greenish-gray haze, catching his breath.

“...Mike?”

Mike knew that voice.

He turned his head, relief washing over him despite everything.

Chuck had brought Mike back to an old building that kind of looked like it was falling apart at the edges, with strange mismatched details everywhere in its decoration and its furniture. Mike was sitting on the floor, which was covered in a strangely fuzzy carpet, with his back against a green couch that was softer than any couch in Deluxe, as if it was halfway to decomposing.

The air smelled weird. Like a machine, in kind of a bad way. It reminded him, vaguely, of visiting Chuck in R&D, in the back rooms where the machines were big and took up most of the space. Mike could almost taste it on his tongue.

…Chuck was different.

He was taller than Mike was now. Gangly. He’d had a growth spurt sometime after Mike had last seen him. And his hair was longer, down to his shoulders. And he was wearing Motorcity style clothes, like he was a native.

It was strange. He looked comfortable here. Mike couldn’t wrap his head around it, completely, like trying to read something in a foreign language.

…Of course, Chuck had always been smarter than Mike. Mike probably should’ve listened, huh?

The tweezers slid into Mike’s neck with clinical precision. Mike didn’t flinch as Chuck slid the tiny KaneCo kill switch out of his neck, slick with blood, dropping it with a clink on the tray sitting next to them.

“You know, if I were you, I’d be screaming,” Chuck said into the silence—aiming for conversational, but landing closer to shaky.

Mike almost smiled. He would be, wouldn’t he? That was so Chuck. 

But the whole situation—the worn-out room, the carpet, his neck, Chuck next to him—was too far away to really feel it completely. He wasn’t focused on his neck, he was… well. 

Mortified? Heartbroken?

…Something worse?

He couldn’t face Chuck head-on anymore. He buried his head in his knees instead. “I can’t believe I…”

A beat of silence.

“You know, you keep starting sentences like that and not finishing them,” Chuck said. Something wet and stinging touched the cut on Mike’s neck. Mike didn’t flinch away. “I’m just glad to see you again, dude.”

…Ha. Yeah. 

That wasn’t… nothing. He guessed.

Mike smiled, faint and wry. “Good to see you too, bud.”

A long silence. A bandaid pressed against Mike’s neck.

“Hey,” Chuck’s voice said above Mike. “It’s gonna be okay, Mike.”

Mike didn’t respond. His mind was replaying Kane’s hand on his shoulder. I know you won’t let me down.

“You didn’t know,” Chuck said. A warm hand touched Mike’s back.

Yes, I did.

Mike didn’t say it out loud, the words too shameful and raw to confess.

But he had always known, hadn’t he? A little bit. Somewhere inside of him, in a place that he’d… kept secret from himself.

Because he hadn’t wanted to know. He hadn’t wanted to believe it.

But he couldn’t say that out loud. He shook his head instead, not looking up. “You don’t get it,” he said, voice coming out hoarse and shaky.

A beat.

“Maybe not,” Chuck said. “But you’re here now. We can get to know each other again.” He paused. “I missed you a lot, you know.”

Mike huffed, chest easing a bit. He picked his head up, propping his chin up on his knees instead. “I missed you too.”

“The only other guy our age I know down here is this guy named Texas. And he’s kind of crazy, so…” Chuck paused, frowning. “Well, no, you’re crazy too. Nevermind.”

Mike laughed, despite himself. “Hey.”

Chuck grinned at him, looking vaguely relieved, then turned and started tidying up the first aid supplies onto the tray. “There’s a lot of stuff I think you’ll like down here. I mean, I think a lot of it is freaky and weird, but you’ll like it. We can get Jacob to drive you around in his car, you’ll like that, it goes way faster than a pod or anything in Deluxe. Um, a lot of the food is really bad, but it was also not that good in Deluxe, so—”

Mike leaned over and hugged him, squeezing tight.

“Ack,” Chuck squeaked, tipping to the side before righting himself. “Mikey, you’re crushing me a little bit.”

“It’s good to see you,” Mike said into Chuck’s hair. “I didn’t think I’d ever get to talk to you again.”

Chuck was quiet for a moment. He wrapped his arms around Mike, hugging him back gently. “Yeah,” he said softly. “...Me either.”

“I should’ve listened to you earlier,” Mike said. “I should’ve followed you.”

Chuck blew out measured air. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “Deluxe just… lies.”

“I should’ve seen through it.”

“You like to see the best in people.”

Mike didn’t answer.

Chuck patted him on the back—half awkward, half comforting. “Inshallah Kane falls down a garbage chute for taking advantage of you like that.”

Mike burst out laughing before he could stop himself, pulling out of the hug with half-shock, half hysterical amusement. It wasn’t even funny, except Chuck had sounded so awkward and sincere about it. A year ago—a week ago, a day ago, Mike would’ve freaked out at anyone saying that.

But this was Chuck, watching Mike laugh with a pleased smile, and everything was different now.

Julie was leaning up against her car, staring up at the dome with crossed arms and a frown, away from everybody else. Nobody would think, looking at her like that, that she was in Kane’s inner circle. She was Motorcity through and through.

Except that the image of her searching Kane’s face, standing stiff in Deluxe whites, kept sticking in Mike’s mind. The memory of her walking towards Kane quietly, slowing down to murmur something to him—him saying something quiet and soft back. Like a scratch in one of Jacob’s old records, forcing Mike’s thoughts to stutter and skip over themselves. It was something in her guilty certainty that Kane would care about her. Something in the fact that she was right. Kane’s face, desperate and scared, rose to the surface of his mind—he pushed it back down again.

Mike broke away from the other Burners, with a small pat to Texas and Chuck’s arms—I’ll be back in a second—to head towards her.

“Hey, Jules.”

She turned her head towards him as he leaned up against NineLives next to her, but didn’t smile. He put his hands in his pockets—nonthreatening.

“I never knew you meant so much to Kane,” he said. Neutral and smiling. “You must be a really good intern.”

Now she did smile, uncrossing her arms, but it was something wan and nervous. “He’s my boss,” she said lightly. “That’s all.”

Oof. He’d heard that before. From his own mouth, probably a thousand times. “He was my boss, too,” Mike said, trying to keep his voice light.

Julie folded her arms behind her back, giving him a strange sort of smile. “...I’m not sure I’m following you.”

Right. “It’s nothing, just—” he pushed up off the car. “Just don’t get too close. You know? It’ll only make it harder in the end.”

Julie winced. “Actually…” she said, not meeting his eyes. “Mike—”

“Tell me,” Chuck’s voice came from behind Mike. Mike turned to see the other Burners walking up, “we get to go home now.”

“The sooner the better, buddy!” Mike said, jumping eagerly at the new conversation topic. It was similar to walking away from a conversation with Kane, an awkward mix of relief and cowardice. “Dutch has gotta get started on my new ride! I’ve already got a list of improvements we can make.”

“Of course you do,” Dutch said. Half exasperated, half fond.

“I don’t know about you guys,” Julie crossed the distance between them, putting a hand on Mike’s shoulder, “but—I could go for one last ride before we go home.”

She was smiling around at them, all Motorcity. Mike gave her a fond smile, clutching the image of her right now tight in his mind, pushing down the restless stirring deja vu in his gut.

A drive sounded good. Sounded great.

Everything was fine.

Julie Kapulsky fell from the sky.

She was a blip trying to get into Chuck’s wards, at first, a message sent to the East Gate, meant for the Burners. For Mike. Encrypted, of course, scrambled, but that was nothing Chuck couldn’t handle—

“Pretty easily, I mean, I’m just saying, if this guy wants to be a spy he’s gonna need to work on his encryptions—okay Mike slow down now,” Chuck yelped, gripping Mutt’s passenger-side door with one hand and the center console with the other.

“We can’t all be super-geniuses, Chuck,” Mike said, accelerating through a loop-de-loop in the road. Well, tube-road. Motorcity winked beneath them, slowly getting smaller and farther away as they glided upward. “Whoever this is, he wants to help. And we need help. …Not that I don’t love you and Texas—”

“Yeah, I know,” Chuck’s voice was vaguely strangled, but at least he’d stopped his little broken panicking noises to talk. “I’m just saying, don’t you think it’s kind of convenient? Like, too convenient? Like, we’re totally walking into a trap convenient?”

“Sure,” Mike said, glancing over at Chuck with a faint grin. “Still gotta check it out, buddy. Hey, if it’s a trap, I’ll owe you a… sandwich or something, when we get back.”

“Get me a new FRL instead,” Chuck said faintly, “I’ve been meaning to ask Jacob to get one.”

“No clue what that is,” Mike said, filing the information away in the back of his mind. “But sure!”

They pulled up to sub-level 12 in no time, Mutt idling just outside the entrance to the dome. The gaping, gloomy red tunnel yawned up in front of them, empty and silent. Chuck’s arm started whirring quietly, the way it did whenever Chuck was thinking about bringing his slingshot out. Mike glanced in that direction with a vague frown—he still wasn’t used to that—then turned to fumble with the door. “I’m getting out.”

“Ohmigod Mikey why would you get out,” Chuck said, voice overlapping with Mike’s.

“Whatever Kane throws at me, I can take,” Mike said, grinning back at Chuck. “Chill, dude, it’ll be fine.”

And he climbed out of the car, slamming the door shut on Chuck’s quiet whimper.

He frowned up at the entrance to the dome. “Okay, Kane,” he muttered under his breath, and stalked forward. You want me, better come get me.

“Hello?” he called out as he stepped into the tunnel, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Mike Chilton here, if this is a trap, the ambush part should start now!”

Nothing happened. He turned in a slow circle, scanning the area, heading deeper into the tunnel. But he only made it a couple of steps before—

“Wow, you’re really Mike Chilton.”

Mike glanced in the direction of the voice—a slight figure moved in the gloom, climbing out from behind a tangle of machinery and wires. A girl, he realized as she stepped out, a teenager, short and small with long glossy red hair and a clean white Deluxe outfit.

“In the flesh,” Mike said neutrally, sizing her up. He could take her in a fight. So if this were an ambush, there was someone else here. Or she had ammo he didn’t know about.

“Yeah, I see that,” she said. “Uh, I mean, I figured you might—send up a representative, or just come as a hologram, or something.”

Mike bit down an amused smile. “What kind of operation do you think I’m running? I don’t have representatives. Are you the one who sent the encrypted message?”

“Uh, yeah,” the girl said. “Yeah, yep, that’s me. Julie Kapulsky.” she stuck out a small thin hand to shake.

Mike tilted his head at her in amusement, then took her hand. “Mike Chilton,” he said. “Not that you didn’t know that. So, what brings you to Treason Town?”

Julie cringed, pulling her hand back slightly. Mike let it go, smile still in place, watching her. “I mean, you know that you’re committing treason right now, right,” he said mildly. “Unless this is all a trap.”

“It’s not,” Julie said. “A trap, I mean. —I know. I—” she drew herself up, shoulders back. “I want to help. With what you’re doing. Fighting Deluxe, I mean.”

Mike surveyed her. “We’re not fighting Deluxe,” he said. “Deluxe is full of innocent people. We’re fighting Kane.”

“Right, that,” Julie said. She seemed to deflate a little bit, nervously. “Fighting for Deluxe, really,” she said, almost to herself. “I know. I—listen. Deluxe’s system is bad. I know it is. And I’m high up in the ranks at KaneCo—I can get you insider information. Give you an edge.”

Mike squinted at her, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets. “How high up?”

“Executive intern.”

Mike blinked, shoulders dropping. “Whoa.”

Julie’s face was stoic, even as her arms came up to hug herself. “Look,” she said softly. “Do you ever just have a gut feeling you can’t ignore? I know Kane’s regime in Deluxe is bad—” she glanced away, like it hurt her to say. “—and since I heard about you leaving, I can’t ignore it anymore. I need to do something, you know?”

“...I know,” Mike said. “I can understand that.”

Her shoulders dropped, just a little, and she smiled wryly. “...I figured you might.”

He made a split second decision. Split second decisions were usually his best ones. “Do you have anywhere to be right now?”

Julie gave him a strange look. “...No, I’m free for the afternoon,” she said. “Why?”

“You should come meet Jacob. And the others.”

“Like—go down to Motorcity? Right now?”

“Sure, why not?” Mike turned on his heel, tilting his head for her to follow. “If you’re gonna help us out, it’s useful to understand what’s going on first.”

“I—guess,” Julie said, sounding alarmed, but hurrying after him. “Do I need, like… a weapon, or…? I didn’t bring—”

“It’s fine,” Mike said, biting back an amused grin. “It’s not that dangerous.” Then, rethinking, “Not where we’re going. Anyway, you’ll be with me and Chuck.”

“...Okay,” Julie said. They were nearing the entrance to the tunnel now, approaching the wide open dome with Mutt idling just outside. Julie slowed as she approached. “...That’s your car?”

“Yup,” Mike said cheerfully. “She’s like my baby.”

“...It’s beautiful,” Julie said. “I’ve never seen one up close.”

Mike grinned at her. “Wait until you’re in it.”

There was just barely enough space for Julie to wedge in next to Chuck, squashed like sardines, but they made it work. Barely. If they were gonna keep upgrading Mutt, they’d probably have to get Julie her own car, or have her ride with Texas. …And Mike loved Texas, but he didn’t want to scare Julie off that quickly.

She didn’t seem to scare easily, though. As Mike sped down the tubes, accelerating more and more to stay on the path, she held onto the side door for balance and stared out the window with a wide-eyed fascination, grinning manically at the sharp curves and loops. She only took her hands off the side door once, to pat Chuck’s arm absentmindedly when he screamed and latched onto her during a particularly gnarly loop. 

“Incredible,” she muttered as they evened out to the Motorcity road system, descending into the city, buildings rising further and further above their heads. Mike glanced over at her, a small smile tugging at his face. 

…She’d be a good fit with them, wouldn’t she. 

This was going to be great.

…So yeah, Julie Kapulsky was an angel who fell from the sky with everything Mike needed. Nestled in the heart of Deluxe power, but somehow clear-minded, aware, alert—ready to fight against her home, for people she’d never met. A self-sustaining fire in the dark.

And there was nothing more to it than that. 

Nothing at all.