If their relationship had ever been halfway normal enough to leave room for fantasies of bringing a boyfriend home, this wouldn't be how Zef envisioned it. Lying all limp-noodle-limbs in Gray's arms, soaked in a bloody t-shirt.

'Weird' will just have to become Zef's 'normal.'

If even one of Rylan's spies has an implant that allows for thermal vision or heartbeat detection, they'll know Zef doesn't even have one foot in the grave. To this end, Damo rigged a makeshift array to Zef's implant and programmed it to display false readings. Now any scans will show Zef is a corpse cold as air temperature with a flat-lined heartbeat.

Alarmingly, Damo used bits from himself, opening up a port in his arm and unscrewing whatever he needed, saying, "Best part of all this is, since I'm made of 'obsolete' tech, none of their implants will be programmed to see through whatever I rig up for you."

To avoid being seen with Gray and lumped into the most wanted list, Damo agreed to make his way back to his bunker in search of the safest, least surveilled transport routes.

So Gray and Zef set out alone while the early morning mist still hangs over the swamp. In spite of his smaller size, Gray carries Zef with ease, one arm supporting his head and shoulders, the other under his knees. With the fingers of one, he taps Zef's arm to indicate he's seen Rylan's goons hanging around. All's going to plan.

Zef keeps his eyes shut, doing his best impression of roadkill, his head nodding against Gray's shoulder. In spite of the cool air, Zef's cheek burns where it's pressed to Gray's chest, listening to the increased thump in his heart—the only indication he's nervous.

Gray assured him that the watching goons are unlikely to interfere directly. Rylan will be recouping after the half-loss of their altercation in the warehouse. The spies will watch and report what Gray's up to. Zef didn't question his expertise on this. After evading her for years, he knows her pattern best.

Still, his heart tap dances in his throat, so he's grateful for the tech hiding it from their watching enemies. The metal stairs rattle under Gray's heavy steps, made heavier by the burden of Zef in his arms. Eyes closed, Zef knows they've arrived at his trailer door. He made the trip so many times, he can still tell by the number of steps, the turns, the scent of motor oil. Gray shifts him so he can knock with the hand under Zef's knees.

Silence at first. Then the sound of Matthias putting his prosthetics on and the rusty creak of the door opening.

Into the cold, stunned silence that follows, Gray says, "I'm sorry."

It is the first moment Zef can risk cracking an eye open. With Gray facing the trailer, there's no vantage from which anyone might see. His father's ghastly pale expression nearly arrests the words before he can whisper them. He must look really terrible, for Matthias to briefly believe the sight before him even after speaking to Zef— alive and breathing —only yesterday.

"Play along," Zef says.

Shutting his eyes again, he can't tell whether Matthias schools his expression to remain convincing. Doesn't need to. The choked sound that comes out of his dad would fool anyone with a semblance of a soul.

"My son." Zef feels hands on his face. Then, disconcertingly, a warm drop of rain. Tears. "Zef. No, Zef."

Gray says, "I'm sorry," again. His voice comes out wrong. Bitter and broken down.

Zef thought his part in this would be easy. All he has to do is close his eyes and feign sleep. Yet, as his father grasps for him, fingers clutched in the drying blood of the t-shirt, his speech staggering in a grief-stricken cadence, Zef realises this is a performance in name only. For Matthias, this is a reality he'd entertained from the moment Zef didn't meet him at the train station. They're living the alternate universe in which Gray never came back for him. Or where Damo didn't have the technology to save him.

No acting necessary.

Staying still through it makes the ache of his healing wounds twist and squirm. Zef wishes he could close his ears as well as his eyes.

Matthias says, "Give him to me."

Zef worries he'll be too heavy. His dad's not as strong as he used to be. Much harder to stay still for this part, too. Don't tense. Don't instinctively jerk upright for fear of being dropped. They manage, and further away than last time, Gray's voice says,

"I tried to save him—"

Matthias's sobs halt. A ragged breath. Anger slices through the grief as he bellows, "You didn't, though, did you?" He clutches Zef tighter, moves. Zef feels himself laid down in the breakfast nook next to the door. He keeps his eyes shut, keeps feigning death, waiting for the door to close and this to end, but before that comes the meaty sound of a punch. It's a sound Zef's come to recognize, familiar after his first bar fight, but it still takes him a second to register what it means.

"Who the fuck are you? What happened to him?"

Gray says, "Bionic Capital was after me and he..." A thick swallow. "He died saving me. I tried to save him too, but—"

"So you're the reason he's dead."

It takes a monumental effort not to move. It feels real, and a perverse part of Zef wants to defend Gray against his father's accusations.

"He trusted you," Matthias rails, voice riddled with misery. "And you let him down. Well? You've got nothing at all to say?"

Gray's voice, disconcertingly quiet, sounding no louder than the rasp of a breeze through grass, says, "I'm sorry."

"My son is dead and that's all? Is sorry gonna bring him back to me?"

"No—"

The wild, animal wail Zef hears is no sound he's ever heard his father make. "Leave! Just fuck off out of here! Oh, Zef. My boy."

By now, others in their trailers will have opened their doors. Rubber-necking. Zef's skin prickles. Adrenaline's got him shaking. Gray's boots slam and rattle the metal steps as he retreats.

They asked for a performance, and Matthias gave one deserving a golden statue and a tearful acceptance speech. But Zef hadn't anticipated how it would feel to play out, or how slivers of reality would pierce through the fiction.

Eyes clamped shut, Zef knows his dad's words cut Gray deep, and he can't chase after him or comfort him.

Please just close the door. Let this end.

Gray's footsteps retreat. Matthias shouts. "What are all of you looking at, huh? Does my grief entertain you?"

Distantly, doors slam shut. Then Zef's own.

He lets out a held breath. Finally, he stirs, staying low. In his soldier days, Matthias lined the rebuilt walls of their trailer with tinfoil. Zef, from all the old media he watched on their tablet, knew there'd been an old term for conspiracy theorists. 'Tinfoil hat.' Ironically, tinfoil is the most common and easily accessible tool to create a makeshift Faraday cage. Protected by his dad's totally reasonable paranoia, Zef can move without giving away that he's alive.

There's no relief in it. He takes in his dad's ruddy face and nearly bursts into tears himself.

"I assume," Matthias says, "that someone important was watching that."

"I'm sorry. Rylan has surveillance everywhere, setting up roadblocks. We figured the only way to get her off our backs was to convince her I'm really dead."

Matthias nods, recovering some paternal, stoic strength in the motion, but Zef isn't fooled. Matthias never was the typical father figure. Far more emotionally open.

"I really didn't want to put you through that," Zef says.

"No. If it's the best way to keep you safe, there's no need for any apologies, y'hear?" He sits heavily on the other side of the breakfast nook, wearily removing his legs. The hiss of hydraulics issues from the mechanism as Matthias unlocks them. "I'm assuming that boy was Gray."

"You didn't have to lay into him like that."

"Had to make it look real. I went easy on him. If it was real, well... Best not think about it."

Zef chews his lip. It's awkward. Like they just had a dinner party to meet his new boyfriend, only to discover his boyfriend was a dangerous thug involved in some kind of corporate conspiracy that could get Zef killed. Which, he sort of was.

"I'll give him this," Matthias murmurs. "He's either a great actor, or..."

"Or?"

"Or he really does feel guilty for getting you hurt."

Zef chews his lip. He'd agonised over the rift that had opened up between Gray and he. Difficult to get a sense for the truth through the hurt. Gray said there was nothing more to their relationship beyond the deceit, but his actions don't support the claim.

If Zef really meant so little to him, why go to all this trouble? Why rescue him rather than go after Rylan and rid himself of her for good? Then he'd shown up here, in the bayou, knowing Rylan was closing in. Came up with a plan to put her off their trail. An unhinged bastard of a plan, but still...

Zef was coming 'round to exactly what his dad said. Gray blamed himself for what happened. Kept pushing Zef away because of it.

"You should know," Zef says. "He tried to get me to leave before it happened. Before we were attacked. Insisted on it, actually. I refused to go without him."

Matthias sighs. "The fourth train ticket was for him."

"I promise, he's not as bad as he looks."

A second of quiet, then the stiff air in the trailer cracks as Matthias lets out a quiet laugh. "I've seen his face. And the way he looks at yours. You don't need to explain to me why you like him."

And suddenly, Zef wishes he could play dead for entirely different reasons.

~ * * * ~

Late that night, Damo arrives to shepherd Zef out of the bayou unseen. Dressed unassumingly in torn jeans and a hooded sweatshirt, she brings Zef similarly plain clothes to change into. He whispers goodbye to his dad while Damo ensures the coast is clear, and they head out.

They make their painstaking way back to Damo's subcity bunker, following an indirect and labyrinthine route on overground buses. Damo charted the path herself, avoiding any of the roadblocks Rylan had in place, but she assures him that many have dispersed.

For all intents and purposes, their plan seems to have succeeded.

The putrid funk of the subcity comforts Zef. It's bizarrely come to convey a sense of safety. They make it to Damo's home. The front door—an unobtrusive bit of steel wedged between crooked storefronts—opens with a creak. Damo dumps a bag on the table held up by Gus and calls for Gray as he flicks on lights.

They come on one by one, revealing an empty, silent home.

Gray isn't there.